Martha, My Dear...

I miss my aunts in the summer...oh, I miss them year round, but the summer memories are most vivid...Brooklyn beaches with Aunt Sharyn...all it took was one glance and I was in stitches as I knew exactly what she was thinking, as the knish man lingered by our blanket...and Aunt Harriet...summers in the sixties at Lake Carmel...and then Montauk...her contagious laugh sailing in the wind...her loving smile in the sun...and I think many times about my great-aunts...my Grandmother Bella's sisters...Ida, Dinah, Irene, Shirley and Martha...and have to shake my head and laugh about my Great-grandfather Sol...six daughters!...the Tevye of a shtetl in Romania...and then Brooklyn...I look inwards for memories...and they are there...crowded seders...family weddings and bar mitzvahs...but it is my Friday night memories of the seventies that crest to the top...over the Verrazano back to Brooklyn...cramming into my grandparent's kitchen...impromptu Shabbos...coffee and homemade cookies and loud, loud talking...my Great-aunt Ida lived in that same apartment building so you never knew which cousins would be there...when I think of those Fridays...I always think of my Great-aunt Martha...the youngest of those six sisters, who passed away yesterday, just a few weeks shy of 92...my memories are of an independent, loving woman...single, when marriage was expected...a great conversationalist...and listener...talking with me about books and movies and whatever I wanted...I cherished those moments when I really got to know Martha...and my large extended family...a family that is now spread out across this country...as so many families are...we keep track of each other on Facebook...and now even Zoom...we do not see each other for years...but still kvell at the good news...and cry at the bad...and it really gave me pause to realize that dear Martha was the last of those Blitman girls to be with us...and with her passing a generation goes too...and so I wish that our dear Martha's memory be for a blessing...amen

It's a cruel, cruel summer...

so here we are...the hot days of July...four months since NY shut down in the battle against covid...and the latest report for NYC...zero deaths...amazing...incredible...don't get too excited...I mean smile for a minute...with a mask if you're outside...because I keep remembering the scene towards the end of "The Perfect Storm"...(spoiler alert)...you know the scene where Mark Wahlberg and George Clooney are all excited...they think they've steered the shitty fishing boat out of the storm...and then that big ass Poseidon Adventure sized wave looms ahead...that's how I've been feeling lately...as our country plays whack-a-mole with covid...cases down in one state...up in another...then up, up, up...I seriously wonder if we, as a nation, have the stamina and fortitude for this war...think back to what generations before us endured during World War II...think about Anne Frank...761 days in that attic...people these days can't go 761 minutes without a frappuccino...rational thinking subverted by conspiracy theories and the blame game...gaslighting, the deluxe edition...so bottoms up...breathe that ocean air safely while you can...enjoy that iced coffee under a park tree...catch up 12 feet apart outside under a tangerine sunset...then, how does the expression go?...pull up the big girl (or boy) pants...and settle in for the next battle...we can do it...just ask Rosie the Riveter...

I wish...

the day before Lauren's birthday...and, as every parent does, I reflect on what I wish for her...there is no need to look at today's news...I know this is not the world I wish for her...but before those of us wax nostalgic...us tail-end boomers born as the fifties traded poodle skirts for bell bottoms...let's not get all choked up over better times of our youth...the sixties...assassination nation...Medgar Evers...John F. Kennedy...Malcom X...Martin Luther King Jr....Robert Kennedy...and Vietnam tossed in for good measure...and civil rights?...black men and white men side by side...floating in the Mekong...the seventies...well they were ushered in with Kent State...but Lauren's generation...Columbine...911...a Middle East war with no end...Sandy Hook...and now...a pandemic...civil unrest demanding change that never seems to come...and a recession...or perhaps worse...this past New Year's Eve...when everyone dressed like flappers to usher the "Roaring Twenties"...they should have cracked a history book...and would have seen a decade that began with the Spanish Flu...and ended with the crash of 1929...maybe not the best theme in retrospect...what I wish...change that creates stronger community...elevation and admiration of our scientists...an economy that benefits and encourages all...respect and tender treatment of this earth we've been entrusted to...and, yes...like Miss America...world peace...but mostly what I wish is that this virus is eradicated...so I can see a beautiful array of smiles in the streets...in the sun...and most especially...our children smiling at us...

waiting to exhale

there is this point...this tipping point...where your brain cannot absorb anymore...this world already leaving your heart broken...you enter a state of inertia...you go through whatever routine you have been left with...or moved back to...you wake up...you get dressed...and you blink, are back in bed...repeat...it is almost summer solstice...the long days of late spring and early summer are upon on us...and the maddening news of the nation is a drum beat constant and steady under the drone of your heartbeat...but there are moments...like during a walk last week...when the delicious aroma of a fresh mowed lawn crept under my cotton mask...and I remembered so far back...working in the city in the summer...walking home from the bus stop on Richmond Avenue...hot and sticky...and the sprinklers on pristine square lawns gently waved hello to me...calling to me with each sweaty step...until I slipped off my heels...and walked across a random lawn...baptized in the cool spray and pungent smell of the earth...and all was right...as I take baby steps into the new normal...a work in constant revision and uncertainty...exhaling my fear into flowered cotton...I'll be thinking of the simple joys...watching a blazing summer sun sink into a starry sapphire sky...

burn, baby, burn...

I am not an American person of color...I will not, and really cannot, claim to know your anger if you are reading this...I do know of religious hatred...and have been at the receiving end of antisemitism...but I can hide my Jewish identity behind my married last name that is most often thought of as Italian, instead of Russian origin...as I could hide behind my maiden name...one created by my father and uncle in their early adulthood...hoping to blend in like Hellman's mayonnaise into the white, Christian fifties...but I know from the history of my people...with every fiber of my being...that I can be a High Holy Day Jew...or daily observant...or one who walks away from it all...and it would not matter...as when my ancestors were lined up outside trains bound for crematoriums...2020...our country is burning...and crumbling under the weight of collective amnesia...here we are again...this time protestors are masked...crawling out of covid confinement...the anguish palpable...the situation flowing coast to coast...like lighter fluid...and I don't have any answers...I thought we had reached the bottom of the 2020 rabbit hole when I saw the food lines in Corona...and a mile away...this is not a rabbit hole...it's an abyss...a visual indictment of why our fellow Americans of color cannot escape the grip of institutionalized poverty and incarceration...but mostly it comes down to this...that every day when a black man walks the street...there's that invisible target on his back...it's a bullseye born of hatred and fear...passed down from generation to generation...Rest in Peace, George Floyd...

Broadway baby...

another night of restless sleep...and when I am blessed with deep sleep, I am also tormented with dreams...that I mostly cannot remember, but leave me tired and dragging all day...not that it really matters in New York...the Covid epicenter...but after another night of crazed dreaming, one thought did stay with me...how the three Broadway shows I had tickets for this year...one that I just barely got in two weeks before the "pause", one that now is pushed to the fall, and one, well, who knows these days...it's the titles...the subject matter that brilliantly mirror where we were...where we are...and where we might wind up..."Jagged Little Pill" this past March...now, weren't those news conferences...statistics...and unfortunately, for some, those phone calls painful to swallow?...and much as in the thematic content of that musical, this quarantine is somewhat a time of reevaluation and contemplation...maybe confront the demons or reconstruct the path...then there was "Company"...April, now October...or maybe not...isn't that the driving force behind much of the breakdown of social distancing?...we are not generally "built" to be solitary creatures...we want company...in person company...and much as in the musical's penultimate song, "Being Alive"...that is what we crave to feel...and finally, "The Music Man"...November, if I'm lucky...wouldn't so of the many weary and frightened welcome a Harold Hill and his promises of music and joy...only this time, maybe not a trombone, but a cure...a magic wand that renders that past few months a fading memory...but this is not a Broadway show...and pandemics don't wrap up neatly in a bow in 2 hours and 45 minutes...so remember as summer beckons, and brain fog sets in...remember to avoid those "Promises, Promises"...cause quick cures are often created in "La Cage Aux Folles"...avoid gatherings where "Anything Goes"...cause if you don't you'll just be another "American Idiot"...

Sunday in the park with masks...

or not...yesterday we ventured out to Eisenhower Park for a walk...parked the car, slapped on the masks and headed out...now, I know as we have been told at least a billion contradictory ways to deal with covid, you might think...more than 6 feet out for a walk...why the mask?...the neon sign flashed as we entered the park only minutes earlier..."wear a mask"...and here's why...do you really think after so many people have been cooped up for so long...especially after the atrocious weather in April...that we were the only ones with that idea?...and after observing the multitudes of people all over the park...do you think everyone could manage the 6 feet at all times?...or that the larger groups of people were from the same household?...all the people who were maskless...they didn't even have one with them to pop on if needed...and they didn't give a shit...you know who gives a shit?...those poor health care professionals who have been at the frontline since February...to add insult to injury, there were demonstrations throughout this country for the past several days demanding that their respective cities open up...in Commack as well...again, no masks, no social distancing...crying that they need their hair done...judging by the pictures...dye ain't gonna help...but you know what, I say fine...if you feel your personal freedom is greater than someone else's health then go ahead...but you forfeit treatment should you come down with covid...I say a database of those who feel that they cannot comply anymore...or that the media is making it all up...that it's just like flu...grab your fifty rolls of Charmin when you can't breathe...just don't expect a weary nurse to meet you at the ER door...