665.  Past

Principles

My family

Their voices
In the very last years when both were elderly, I found at times my dad's voice could be nourishing and my mom's voice filling. This was not always the case, but it was special when it happened.

606.

Principles

Family

Though they abandon me II.

I read in Psalm 27 by the biblical David the lines:

Though my father and mother abandon me,
Adonai will gather me in.

Of course in the backs of our minds is the Commandment “Honor the father and mother,” which is true.  To do so for some of us means taking a wider swipe at it than we ever thought.  Yes, the biggest vision is full of love and acceptance and reconciliation.  This doesn't mean you can just hop there just like that.  It might be something you have to tuck away in a safety deposit box to be opened at the very end.  In the meantime your checking account is what you have to deal with day to day and that's all about a balance sheet of deposits and withdrawals.  If the latter is overdone you have to be honest about that and find the leak.

The same is true for parents.  Often we think we found the leaks and plugged them up but there was another leak, or the original leak wasn't really fixed properly.  To do so might be a big job, a huge job.  It might be easier to move to a new house.

With parents you just can't replace them like a new house.  You might have to tolerate the leak for longer than you'd like, or at least put up with the moisture.  However, mold can develop which affects your health.  Years might go by without this being detected.  You managed but your immune system is compromised, hurting.  Your parent's have affected your health in ways you couldn't imagine.  The popular 'forgive and forget' doesn't work because your hurt is a constant reminder.  As the years go by you realize when younger you couldn't even admit how you much you were hurt.  It 's much deeper than you thought.

Finally, as you get old and your parents are really old you expect a grand finalee of unity and forgiveness.  What can be more conducive to this than the sickness and the end of life approaching for the parent?  Plus you face your own approaching end.  It's not turning out as you thought.  You had a script for the whole thing.  It was even biblical. Everything had its place, the pieces all fit, the  family was completed and healed.

Not necessarily so for many of us. Not so, not so.  As with mold, you might not be able to be around it or live with it.  Your immune system became too compromised.  You are more affected than you thought. How can this be, it is near the end?  But it is, and you have to distance yourself from the mold, from you parents, even at the sad end.  The wounds were deeper than you thought.  The cold truth colder than you could  have conceived.  But you can't deny it.  You see it after all these years which is good and it has to be acknowledged.  So you are left with seeing the depth of what took place.  You also have to distance yourself from what is taking place.  Why?  Because to do elsewise is to  condone it which is wrong.  It denies you own story.  Once again you have to stand alone in non-violent protest.  You are a witness.

If he was real, David saw this.  It's not easy or pretty.  He sought Adonai.  If you believe you have to also.  If you don't, you'll have to get peace somehow from somewhere.  In the meantime as I age this all is a surprise to me.  To live on I too have to make peace somehow with it.  I have to go to God.  Somehow, in the distance, faintly seen, is still love for them, betrayal or not.  Only from a distance can this be felt, hinted at, seen with the proper hue.

If this makes some sense to you, and you know from where it comes, I honor your struggle, acknowledge it and pay homage to your life.  There is a dry feeling to this whole thing, like an ex-alcoholic sobering up.  At least it's not just you.  At least it doesn't cut you off from love.

564.

My family

Dad

Sledding

My sister emailed me and said she saw dad looking out the window in his new double room in the rehab center near Houston St.  She sent a pic probably taken soon after he was staring out the window.  She said she wondered what he was thinking. Later that evening I called and he answered and told me it was cold and snowing in New York. 

When dad was growing up in the Bronx, on one street for a couple of blocks it was deeply slanted and he and some friends had all sorts of fun sledding down it. As a city boy such experiences stand out.  I heard about that a few times along with the fact that he drew some ships, which I never knew.

Another time in the last few years or so he was passing by a father and son and he helped the father hold the boy on top of a snow mound and guide him down. The father and son were thrilled with the experience and my father's know how and assistance.  He told me this story not that long ago.  Sledding  in the city was his country experience.

When I grew up in the city I had a couple of sleds.  I recall the name American Flyer but mine was from an older and better company. I dragged it around for a time where I lived. There weren't many hills, and the snow was inconsistent, and there was always homework, but I had a few rides. I think the promise of what could be done  remained in my imagination  more than actually what was done.

That night, at the beginning of our talk, with dad in a rehab facility for a high blood rate, and with myself in Florida, dad said "it was snowing and he wished he could go sledding."  So that's what he was thinking.  I wanted to fly up and buy a sled and have one last ride with him.  One more piece of fun for dad in this life.  This broke me.

550.

My family

Holiday partying  

I've always resented
my mom's, my sister's, my niece's
'tradition' of holiday partying.

To celebrate while I am gone
seems so wrong.

How could my soul be happy?

548.  Past

Principles

Family

A tool

If you are not given a good sense of survival as a child, you will be prone to seek out principles and ideas as compensation.  The intended purpose of “principles and ideas” is to redirect you back to a balance and a workable harmony with reality as it is.  They are not the solution, but merely point you back to this reality.  Principles and ideas are not the end but a tool.

547.  Past

Principles

Family

Motivation

When you are young, pleasing your parents can provide plenty of motivation to work hard and do well.  Later, this is not enough.  You want to find out what makes “you tick,” what’s inside you, what you really want to do.  Still later, what you want to do “for you yourself” is not even enough. Sometimes it betrays itself.  So to keep active, or to get started, if your parents are still around, or at least around in spirit, you again return to your youth and you do it for them.  Finally, even this falls short and you are forced to find the impetus that goes beyond your parents and beyond yourself.  Both served as crutches to keep you going, but the deeper reasons have to come from deeper sources.

517. 

Family

Parents' Hug

(From some years ago.  Different takes from different years on my dad.  Each decade is different.)
My father will be 90 in July.  My mother turned 87 in April.  I'm no kid.  I live 1200 miles away and don't get to see them that often.  My father is normally reserved but on this visit, before I left, my father asked my mother and I and himself to huddle and hug and it was good and warm and comforting and strengthening.

, it"456. 

Principles

Family

House of Bunny

My mom Dorothy, or 'Bunny,' passed away 5 years ago and the last couple of years I've been attempting to clean up her things.  Later in her life she performed on stage in New York and Florida the life's of six stars, Charlie Chaplin, Bettie Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand and Whoopi Goldberg.  She would research their lives, not easily because it was before computers, and write scripts and go on stage.  Although away from performing during her middle years, she had a natural talent and humor and her writings and performances were very good.  I decided to make a book out of it, having my sister type up the scripts onto the computer, and would call it 'Bunny on the Stars.'  I designed the cover and wrote a brief biography about mom and a preface.

Surprisingly the bio and preface I wrote were quite effective, at least the people I know who read them were impressed.  My father started to cry and every time I read them I would become teary eyed.  They were effective enough to make me doubt the validity of my other philosophical writings.  Maybe I was being too abstract I thought.

Anyhow, I asked neighbor B to read them and let me know what he thinks.  B reads this website.  He liked them and said they were a testimony to my mother's life and the good all around job she did in so many areas.  B came over and we had a little discussion.   He gave good advice and said I should continue all my writings as they are all interconnected.  My mother, when I was age 14 asked me if there was a God and B said this explains my lifelong search to find answers.  Yes, they seemed connected.  I then added that my mom wasn't always the best mom, indeed, like the stars, was often a  small tyrant and not easy to get along with.  I said basically she dominated the house and we all served her.

For years, I added, I tried to separate myself, become my own man, have my own thoughts, but when push came to shove, and with a lot of afterthought, I was a branch and she was the root.  I was just a reflection of her.  My father, my sister, and myself all basically served her.  Now, I just accept it and don't fight it.  Trying to be tough, or an 'individual," was all doomed to failure.  You are what was put into you.

I explained all this to B and he was in complete agreement.  At one dinner together with his wife who l like, I said gently to her that she might be 'a difficult person like my mother.'  Instead of taking offense she agreed.  In a sense B's family was like mine.  I said in Jewish families and Italian families (he was Italian) this is how it often is.  He added same with the Greeks and Spanish.  I said that doesn't seem true of the Wasps, the blue bloods in Connecticut.  There it seemed the father ruled.  B said he hadn't much thought about that.

Earlier that day he showed me a picture of his son, who looked very all American, a Joe every man, who just caught a beautiful fish.  He seemed like his own man.  However, B said when his wife said something or disagreed with it, it was amazing how the son conformed to her wishes.  He postured as his own man but it was a posture.

I then shared some history.  In the Torah it is said that the 'House of David' actually stood for all the people beneath and around him.  All their individual lives and dramas and activities and doings were all housed under one heading, the 'House of David.”   I then said that all I am is someone from the 'House of Bunny' and my own name is not important.   B smiled.

I then said you're from the 'House of Barbara (his wife)' and he shook his head in agreement.

 

451.  Past

Principles

Family

A tool

If you are not given a good sense of survival as a child, you will be prone to seek out principles and ideas as compensation. The intended purpose of “principles and ideas” is to redirect you back to a balance and a workable harmony with reality as it is. They are not the solution, but merely point you back to this reality. Principles and ideas are not the end but a tool.

374.  Past

Family

Motivation

When you are young, pleasing your parents can provide plenty of motivation to work hard and do well.  Later, this is not enough.  You want to find out what makes “you tick,” what’s inside you, what you really want to do.  Still later, what you want to do “for you yourself” is not even enough. Sometimes it betrays itself.  So to keep active, or to get started, if your parents are still around, or at least around in spirit, you again return to your youth and you do it for them.  Finally, even this falls short and you are forced to find the impetus that goes beyond your parents and beyond yourself.  Both served as crutches to keep you going, but deeper reasons have to come from deeper sources.  For a time however, pleasing parents, or even a memory of them, can keep you going.  Not all motivations are to be totally pure