Fall 2024

Metropolitan Diary

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by Charles Troob

Dear Diary,

The optometrist who gave me eyeglasses as a little boy was chatty and warm, a real New York character.  I stayed with him as an adult.  When he finally retired, I switched to the pleasant doctor who bought his practice.   So I still travel a few times a year to the neighborhood of my childhood, on the border between Forest Hills and Kew Gardens.

Last May, I went to a grocery-café on Queens Boulevard near 77th Avenue.  I ordered a panino from the owner, a recent immigrant from Genoa.  I startled her—both of us, really—by telling her that I’d grown up on that very block.   I took my sandwich to a table by the window and gazed across the wide boulevard.  In the 1950s my older brother and I would buy stamps on the far side, in a shop on the ground floor of an apartment house.  The buildings of that era are still there, looking just the same except for the storefronts.

After my eye exam I went down into the subway.  The Union Turnpike station is also little changed in more than half a century.   I inhaled the familiar damp funk, and suddenly I was five years old once again, holding my mother’s hand as we awaited the E train, to visit my grandparents, two stops away in Jamaica….

Then I took an E train in the opposite direction, to Manhattan and 2023.

Charles Troob: This piece was written for the LP² Writing Workshop, which I’ve co-coordinated for over a decade.  I’m still learning to write!

Cell Soup

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by Lorne Taichman

I am looking down the barrel of a microscope at living, human, skin cells. It is 7:30 a.m. on a morning in April 1990. I am in my lab. I am growing these cells for my research on gene therapy. The filters on the microscope lend an eerie yellow-grey hue to the field, but the cells are clearly recognizable by their cuboidal shapes, which remind me of the cobblestones outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue.

The cells are clustered on the surface of the petri dish. A rough guess at the number – about eighty in a cluster. Yesterday there were about forty. They have doubled in number over the past twenty-four hours. Vigorous, healthy, skin cells. That doubling was accomplished by cell division, an essential activity of all living cells. Those cells may appear static and unmoving, but time lapse photography would show them sliding about, exploring the confines of the petri dish. In a few days, though, with continued cell growth, the individual clusters would merge into a confluent lawn. There will be no space for continued growth laterally, but cell division would continue, and remarkably, the cells would begin to pile up and form a multilayered tissue, much like the epidermis of the original skin. I am always amazed at this innate ability. These cells are true to their origins even when cast adrift far from the intact skin of their origin.

We get the skin from the newborn nursery in the hospital across the road. When a non-religious circumcision is performed, the nurses place the foreskin tissue, which would normally be discarded, into an unmarked container.  We are allowed to use this tissue without getting consent from the parents, because the identity of the little boy is not disclosed to us. Occasionally, cells from a foreskin grow more sluggishly than usual. I don’t like to think what poor growth might portend. Even if I did know something about that boy’s future, I do not know his identity and, therefore, cannot communicate with his parents. He is safe from any unrequested intrusion.

Cells usually grow for a limited period in culture and then, in the parlance of the profession, they poop out. Human skin cells are no exception. Like us, who are limited by aging and senescence, our cells also age when freed from the confines of our bodies. When we first cultured these cells, they would do well for the first several weeks but then they would lose their vigor and die. As a result, we were dependent on a continual supply of foreskins. With time, we learned how to achieve better cell growth and longer culture life.

One stumbling block was getting skin cells to attach to the surface of a petri dish where they can grow. Skin cells do not readily adhere, and if they fail to attach, they die. This problem was overcome with the use of what we call helper cells.

In the early 1980s, two scientists at Harvard, Jim Rheinwald and Howard Green, discovered that cells from a mouse embryo could greatly enhance the ability of skin cells to attach to the dish surface. When these mouse cells are added to the culture, they secrete chemicals that coat the dish surface and facilitate skin cell attachment. The mouse cells were appropriately named helper cells. The use of helper cells represented a giant leap in our ability to efficiently farm these skin cells in the laboratory.

The cultures are bathed continually in a nutrient broth that contains a diet of sugars, minerals, amino acids, and vitamins. In this medium, the cells grow sluggishly. They certainly would not double in number overnight. The key to outstanding cell performance is fetal calf serum. Fetal calf serum is a misnomer. It is not from an unborn calf. It is extracted from the vein of a living pregnant cow. That bovine mother, in all her tenderness and caring, has produced chemicals that circulate in her blood and nourish her developing fetus and, quite incidentally, allow our skin cells to flourish. With fetal calf serum in the mix, we can grow cells for many doublings. When I first started to work with these cells, I needed a continuous supply of foreskins. My daughters still tease me about the foreskin tissue I retrieved from the local hospital and stored in our home refrigerator until it could be brought to the laboratory. With the use of helper cells, fetal calf serum, and a few other special ingredients, a single foreskin can keep my lab amply supplied with cells for a year or so and, even longer, if we make use of cell freezing.

In culture, skin cells must grow. If they don’t, they eventually die. Cell freezing stops the clock. Cell freezing is a bit of an art. Cells are damaged by the act of freezing, especially the thawing portion. You may not believe me, but adding hefty amounts of table sugar to the freezing media avoids that damage by allowing the water crystals in the frozen cell interior to slide over one another during thawing, rather than fracturing. We have cells frozen away from a good number of newborn baby boys. I wonder if, years hence, should a little boy become ill, might his own frozen cells save his life?  Alas, anonymity. We will never know.

One final note. The recipe for skin cell growth in culture has been so refined and so successful that some have even used these cultures as living dressings to treat burn victims with their own cells. Skin cells are not the only cell types we can grow in culture to be transplanted back to the donor: others include bone marrow cells, cartilage cells, muscle cells, blood vessel cells.  The list grows.

Now that I am at an advanced age, I wonder if there might not be a way to harvest brain cells when we are young and won’t miss them, and then return them when we really need them, like today. Unfortunately, it is too late for me.

Lorne Taichman:  For most of Lorne”s career as an academic scientist he studied the growth of human skin cells in culture and the possibility of treating inherited skin diseases by genetic alteration. It was a very fulfilling and exciting pursuit. 

My Night at Rao’s

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by Susan Smahl

The summer of 1974 is forever etched into my memory as a result of two events—the ridiculously dramatic, televised resignation of President Richard Nixon and the very excellent dinner I had at Rao’s, a legendary New York City restaurant, so exclusive that I will probably never get a chance to eat there again.

My summer fling, let’s call him B,  picked me at my apartment on Riverside Drive in a black muscle car.  We were going to his “uncle’s” restaurant, Rao’s, unfamiliar to me then, but  soon regularly appearing on Page Six as a celebrity hangout.  B took the Batman route across Manhattan and after a brake-squealing, dual-exhaust roaring ride, we arrived at the tiny restaurant on the corner of East 114th Street and Pleasant Avenue.

It was early, probably about 5 p.m. and the restaurant was quiet.  Warmly greeted by B’s “uncle”, the juke box playing Dean Martin, we were seated at an ancient wooden booth, its table grooved and pitted by decades of former diners.  Late afternoon sun leaked through the slats of the blinds. Immediately, a small glass of red wine in a plain glass was placed before me.  The only red wine I had ever drunk before was sweet and cloying Manischewitz. This wine was tart, fruity but not sweet. It took several sips to get used to the drier, tangy taste. An immediate warmth spread through my body.   “Chianti,” I was told.

We were offered no menu, however, a plate appeared with seafood salad, calamari, mussels, clams, all unfamiliar, in a delicious garlicky brine, green with parsley. Lots of chopped garlic. New flavors for my unsophisticated palate.

Another glass of Chianti to wash it down with. Red with seafood? Still good! Next, a platter of lemony veal piccata, pounded paper thin, buttery, delicious and more garlic and oil dripping from crispy bread.  A little spaghetti on the side? Downing a third or maybe fourth glass of wine, (after all, they were so tiny), I brazenly tried a new vegetable, escarole, more garlic and oil. I ignored the slight burning developing in my chest.

Feeling a little woozy from the wine— the Chianti no longer tasted strange, but was now an old friend, a lifelong buddy. 

Finally, it was time for dessert.  Whole fruit was placed in the center of the table, an apple, a pear, a small paring knife.  B expertly sliced the pear and handed me a piece. A small espresso pot and tiny cups followed.  A restaurant where you sliced your own fruit and poured your own coffee!   I watched as B took a small piece of lemon rind and rubbed it expertly on the rim of his cup. I did the same.   A half empty bottle of clear liquor, slightly sticky, was placed on the table—Anisette.  B poured generous shots into our cups.  The burning in my chest increased.

Did I have room for a cannoli?  A bite, maybe, crunchy, exquisite.

Driving home westward, into the setting sun, B took the pot holes more gently,  as if he knew one extra bump would push me over the edge.  It was warm in the car and the many glasses of Chianti made me sleepy. I closed my eyes as we drove through Central Park.

Sleeping fitfully that night, tossing and turning— the burning in my chest was relentless. I learned in the morning that there is a word, a special word in Italian to describe this feeling—agita, (heartburn).  “I will never eat garlic or drink red wine again,” I vowed.   This resolution has consistently failed.  But, adding agita to my vocabulary—as well as Chianti, calamari, piccata, Anisette and cannoli— has forever memorialized my one and only excellent dinner at Rao’s on a hot summer night so many years ago.  

 

Susan Smahl imagined she might be a writer someday, in the future. She’s finally working on that goal with short pieces about her life and thoughts about this crazy world.  

A Hard Rain (A Note on Patti Smith at the Nobel Prize Ceremony)

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by Susan Smahl

Bob Dylan probably didn’t win any extra love from the masses when he received his Nobel Prize (those who love him love him and those who don’t, well, you know); Patti Smith surely did, win extra love that is, in that plush auditorium; dignified and other worldly, filled with crowns and satin gowns

It begins with a lone guitar, a beat up old Martin.  Must be a perfect guitar, I think, to be chosen for such an auspicious occasion. Certainly the camera man agrees as he provides numerous close-ups of the scratches, the tiny cracks in the guitar’s weathered body.  Weathered like the singer, like the prize winner, the Nobel Laureate.  A distant steel guitar chimes, a lonely prairie dog, then Patti’s first stumble.  I could tell it was coming: it was the meter, something was off; one word left out and you can’t get it back. How do we remember songs anyway?  We need the beat, our inner metronome. A common mass inhale as everyone, every crown and gown hopes for recovery.   Patti simply stops, humble, apologetic, then continues.  Not a titter nor a sneer among all those tuxes and gowns.   Each musician on stage is expressionless, faces flat, waiting for their next cue; even the guitarist who has followed the stumble so precisely.

An omniscient camera,  a silent, hovering eye finds a woman wiping a tear.  Surely, she knows the song.  A perfect folk song, an oral history, a traditional, written by a skinny kid from Minnesota, listened to by thousands, maybe millions of other skinny kids, then sung, over half a century later to queens and kings, sung beautifully, imperfectly, by a friend he once told a joke to.

 

Susan Smahl imagined she might be a writer someday, in the future. She’s finally working on that goal with short pieces about her life and thoughts about this crazy world.  

Two Chapters from My Unpublished Memoir

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by Andy Shapiro

 

‘Get That Caddy Outa Here’

To distribute Super Tenant, the book I self-published with coauthor John Striker in 1973, we had to trespass on the uncharted territory of New York City book wholesalers.   There were three of them who distributed to bookstores citywide: Bookazine, Golden Lee, and G.I. Distributors.  The first two ordered 800 copies.   The third turned into a troubling adventure.  John visited G.I. in Long Island City on a sales call.   The owner, Alvin Druss, impressed him.  He subscribed to the New York Times Book Review and the publishing trade journal, Publishers Weekly.  Best of all, he ordered 5,000 copies.   Gad, 5,000 copies!   At that rate, we’d sell out our first printing of 30,000 books in no time.

John was, however, slightly suspicious of Alvin Druss’s operation, so I went out to check up on G.I.  Alvin Druss seemed befuddled at a second visit from the publisher of a single title.   He was jovial, jowly, with a voice like #10 sandpaper.  He wore a beige gabardine suit, and had a big Windsor knot in his pulled-down maroon tie.  “Big Al”—that was how I came to think of him—was interrupted by a phone call from his lawyer about some restraining order just being slapped on G.I.  Strewn across his cluttered desk, were a slew of hard-core porno paperbacks, with titles like “Slash Lust,” “The Man Who Wore Tutus,” and “Stalag 14 Bondage.”  Okay, our book was named after the blacksploitation movie Super Fly, but, I mean, was G.I. the home for our prim little baby?

But then, I thought, Big Al had his own sales force—three reps who sell the city.  That was a big deal.  He would not only fill orders, I thought; he would go out and get them.  Despite the porno, I left G.I. convinced that we had made a sound distribution decision.  That is, until later in the week, when I read in the New York Law Journal about People vs. Alvin Druss.  Big Al, it turned out, was facing trial on a 69-count indictment (no doubt, a little tongue-in-cheek by the D.A.) for wholesaling hard-core pornography.  G.I. had been raided, and the cops seized 19,000 obscene publications, not to mention all of Big Al’s records.  Yikes, what kind of business had we wandered into?

About a month later, on the front page of the Village Voice, was a big expose about the Mafia crime family headed by Anthony (“Tony Ducks”) Corallo—so nicknamed because of his skill at ducking subpoenas and convictions.  Tony Ducks was a reputed capo in the Carmine Tramunti mob family.  The Voice displayed a vertical chart of the family going all the way down to the bottom, where a vector landed on—you guessed it—G.I. Distributors.

“Jesus,” I said to John, “when Big Al’s bill from us comes due, we’re gonna send you out to Long Island City to collect.”  That never became necessary.  Big Al paid up in full without any pressure on our part—thank goodness.  Indeed, he became a stalwart in the sales of Super Tenant.   (Who knew, maybe he forced his porn outlets to stock Super Tenant  in order to get their copies of “Stalag 14 Bondage.”)

Whichever distributor we were dealing with, we, of course, had to transport the books to their warehouses from storage in our Upper-West-Side basement.  Easier said than done.   We don’t got no stinkin’ money for no truck rentals!   That left us to resort to the blue two-tone 1970 Cadillac owned by John’s family.  Yep.  When Bookazine ordered, say, 500 books, we would load ten cartons into that Caddy’s capacious trunk and drive downtown to its warehouse.  We’d spot a line of idling 16-wheeled vans, engines gunning, air brakes ch-chh’ng, cabs jackknifing to insert the trailer into the loading dock.  We’d get in the truck line and, in a short while, back the Caddy into the loading dock.

“Get that fuckin’ Caddy outa here!” yelled the dockmaster.   “Move it!”  “Oh, we’re just delivering the books you ordered,” we’d reply, jumping out with ingratiating smiles.   We’d flip open the trunk—our answer to the trailer on a big rig—and lift up—remember, the loading dock swallowed our car down below—ten cartons.  Then to the amazement—or amusement—of the waiting truckers, we’d jump back into our two-tone four-wheeled delivery limousine and be gone.

What a lark—the author delivering his own book to a distributor’s loading dock!  But then I’d quickly be stymied by doubts: I was, after all, 30 years old—no longer a teenager or even a 20-something.  What was I doing playing around amidst these hard-working truck drivers and warehouse crew?  Yes, I reminded myself, this was the path I had chosen when I said no in law school to a job offer from a Wall Street law firm.  I had opted to do what I wanted to do, instead, an alternative vocation—writing—which led me still further afield, to launching my own publishing company, so to speak.  Maybe this choice would lead to failure.  If so, was that so terrible?  I, at least, had the blind hope that I would learn from any failure and adjust.  Maybe failure was ultimately as important and instructive as success in living one’s life.

*     *     *     *

Black Metal Trap Door

“Who do you have to fuck around here to get a typewriter?” I heard someone bellow.  It turned out to be the woman I was looking for in the offices of New York magazine: Leonore Fleischer.    As I’d been told, she was a jolly woman, portly and curly-headed, who wrote novelizations of movies (like “Benji”) and —more paramount for our purposes—the “Sales & Bargains” page for New York.  It was through Leonore’s intervention and rousing support that Super Tenant earned a “Best Bets” selection in the magazine.

(The revised 1978 edition of Super Tenant was dedicated “To our good friend, Leonore Fleischer.”  For years afterwards, Leonore victoriously brandished that dedication in defense of her rights as a rent-controlled tenant on Riverside Drive: “Won’t let me remodel this flat, eh?” she’d challenge her landlord.  “See this book!  See this dedication!  The authors are my pals.  Just say the word, man, and you’ll have two of the smartest L & T lawyers in the city on your ass.  They’ll tie you up in L & T court for years, man!”  Needless to say, Leonore almost always got her way.)

At this stage in the publishing process, we changed hats again—this time into publicists who made up press kits for the media.   Our press release began, “The authors of Super Tenant can answer 1,388 questions.  Here are ten of them.”   Local radio and TV stations loved the idea of a live call-in segment on tenants’ rights in New York City.  I adopted an alias—”William Darrah”—and played Super Tenant’s PR agent calling stations and booking dates for us.

For two or three months, we were on just about every radio or TV show in the city.   We were even on local newscasts.  I recall one, in particular, “The Six O’Clock News,” on WCBS-TV.  We did a three- or four-part series with reporter Jerry Wilson.  With Jerry’s crew, we taped a tour through an apartment building, using it as a prop for our running commentary on tenants’ rights.   Whatever we were shooting—an apartment door, a window AC, a fire escape—Jerry who, frankly, seemed hopped up to me, would flash a gleaming smile at one of us and say, “Gimme a burst on door locks…,” “Gimme a burst on peepholes…,” “Gimme a burst on fire escapes….”  A “burst,” we found out, was like a 30- to 45-second spiel.  Stitch all those together, and you have a three-part series.  After this series, we had, excuse me, a burst of sales.

We also sold Super Tenant directly to certain choice book stores, in addition to the three book wholesalers.   To do so, I changed hats yet again from publicist and morphed into a book-sales rep.   I’d walk in the store’s front door, almost always without an appointment.  I’d introduce myself (“Hi, Bill Darrah!”) and ask for the new book buyer.  “Do you have an appointment?”  “Uh, no.”  “Well, let me see if he’s free.”  I’d stand there shifting my weight from foot to foot, rehearsing my pitch.  “Alright, he’ll see you now.”

“Where you from?” the book buyer barked.

“Brownstone.”

“Brownstone?  What’s Brownstone?”

“We’re a New York publisher, and we have this book—”

“What! This book! A book? One book?”

“Yes, it’s called—”

“Ferget it.  We don’t deal with one-book publishers.  G’bye.”

There were, however, as many sales as there were brush-offs.  When we sold a store directly—like Doubleday’s flagship store, then at Fifth Avenue and 53rd—we had to transport the books ourselves right to Doubleday.  So, we loaded up the trusty sedan deville again.  John double-parked on Fifth Avenue, and I walked inside Doubleday, in a windbreaker and cap, ballpoint sprouting from my ear—playing a delivery man (my fourth or fifth publishing impersonation).   I dropped the carton of books onto the front register desk and announced offhandedly, “I’m delivering yer Super Tenants.”

“Oh no, no, no,” exclaimed an officious-looking manager, swooping down on me.  “Absolutely no deliveries inside the store!  Only through the lift!”  I backed away from the front register dazed.  I retreated toward the front door, looking around for some clue—a chute or even a dumb waiter.  Soon, the manager was back, anxious to get me the hell out of the store—this is Doubleday, doncha know.  He told me that the lift was outside, around the corner, on East 53rd Street (read: get the hell out of here).

So out the front door I skedaddled.  I rounded Fifth Avenue onto 53rd, feeling ridiculous, anxious to duck out of sight from the big Fifth Avenue show windows, so Doubleday shoppers wouldn’t witness whatever my next debacle would be.  Then I saw it:  a black metal trap door flush with the sidewalk.  It sat mute, without a clasp or clamp to open it.  I plopped the carton on the sidewalk and knelt down. That’s when it hit me: “Here I am kneeling on a sidewalk in midtown Manhattan, in the middle of the busy business day, with a carton of 50 books that I wrote, edited, got typeset, and printed, trying to figure out how to open a trapdoor in the sidewalk, over which throngs of New Yorkers rush.  I’m a lawyer, fer chrissakes!  How did I get here…?” 

Finally, I spied a small inconspicuous metal plate on the bookshop building’s exterior wall.  I touched it gingerly and whir-r-r, the trap door gaped open, revealing a long black conveyor belt.  I put the carton on the belt and down it went.  Suddenly, I realized that I had not gotten my signed receipt for delivery.  Obliviously, I reentered Doubleday’s.  The manager plunged down on me and signed my receipt blindly, furiously—anything to get rid of me.  I wheeled toward the door and, for my finale, skimmed a half-dozen copies of The Joy of Sex off a best-seller table.  Gingerly, I restacked them and headed for the door, afraid to look back into the baleful stare of the manager burning through the back of my neck.

Andy Shapiro published seven books before starting Brownstone Publishers, Inc., where he was editor-in-chief. The two chapters here are from an unpublished memoir he wrote during Covid.

Finding the Way

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by Mary Padilla

 

You need to pay attention.  If you lose your way, there is a real danger that you may not be able to find it again.  People have gotten lost and died here, not even very far off the trail.

Keep the blazes in sight at all times.  One stroke means straight ahead, roughly speaking.  Two indicates a change of direction.  Try not to lose sight of the last one until you find the next, or else keep one person at the first within earshot while you scout around for the second.  (Never do this hike alone.)

The marks can be on trees or rocks, often quite far apart.  A vertical pile of rocks is a cairn, which also indicates a turn.  A change in blaze color means that a different path is crossing yours.  Follow your own color to stay on your path.

You must reach the hut while there is still light.  Dusk comes early in the mountains, as the surrounding peaks block the setting sun while it is still well above the horizon.  Footing is treacherous in partial light, and bears are more likely to be out and about then.  Their vision is poor, but their sense of smell is just as keen in the dark.  Moose can be a problem too, especially if you can’t see them coming.  At least until the moon rises, you must find some secure shelter before night falls.

This was Hansel and Gretel territory.  It was also the Appalachian Trail, albeit the rather gentrified segment of it in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, where the Appalachian Mountain Club maintained eight huts a day hike apart so you didn’t need to carry a tent, sleeping bag, and food on your back.  My 10-year-old and I had come to hike the circuit.

The first day we were careful to follow the instructions.  It wasn’t always easy, as the marks were surprisingly subtle, small, at varying heights, and unexpectedly far apart.  They weren’t exactly breadcrumbs, but this wasn’t going to be a walk in the park either.  After spending the whole day on the trail we made it to the first hut while it was still daylight, and after dinner went to bed early, exhausted by our efforts.

The second day was more of the same, but conducted with somewhat less trepidation. We were getting better at knowing what to look for and sensing where to put our feet on the ground without constantly looking down.  By day three we were becoming confident about locating the marks and finding our balance scrambling across the downed branches, boulders, loose rock, and streams that crossed our path.

It was midday on day four before I realized that we had been negotiating the trail all morning without trying, having settled into the forest, unconsciously reading the blazes and managing the terrain as we went.  From then on we stayed in tune with the trail, until our descent back to civilization at the end of day eight.  It was a return to a different world.

Thirty years later we went back and did it again.  This time there was no moment of transition – the woods were within us from the beginning.

 

Mary Padilla: I write to see what will come out.

Dispatches

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by Mary Padilla

 

I wrote the book very quickly; and when it was written, I ceased to be obsessed.  I expressed some very long felt and deeply felt emotion.  And in expressing it I explained it and then laid it to rest.     

                                                    – Virginia Woolf, on  “To a Lighthouse”

                                                                                                                                                

I knew she was stage 4 from the beginning, I say

Don’t get too attached, you say

                                                                               ………

I hope the attacks are abating and you’ve been able to eat and keep your strength up, I say

Rough day, she says

If you tell the doctors you’re unable to eat and are getting weaker, maybe that would get their attention, I say

Things have been very rocky lately, she says

How’d it go with the chemo? I say

Afterwards I’m wiped out for a while, but call whenever you want – who wants to be left in peace? she says

Are things looking up today? I say

Had a good day yesterday…stronger – what good things strength and energy are! she says

                                                                               ………

How’s it going? I say

Just cancelled chemo this week – I can’t face it, she says

Is it any better today? I say

In the hospital yesterday and just tired and staying home now, she says

How are things? I say

Too sick to do anything for the last few days, she says

The last I heard you were sick and then you went incommunicado, I say

Today is the first day I could eat anything, and I have a humongous headache, she says

Better check with your doctor about that, I say

I’ll try to get an MRI, but now I’m fighting with Instacart because they abandoned my order on the sidewalk and I can’t make it downstairs anymore, she says

One thing after another, I say

                                                                               ……..

The cancer has spread to my brain – but thinking is what I do! she says

What can they do for this? I say

I’m seeing the radiation oncologists next week after a scan to check for spread to my spine, she says

How did it go at the hospital? I say

Utterly exhausted, she says

                                                                                ……..

I just spoke to her and found her subdubed and rather out of it – she may have thought I was you, I say

She wouldn’t talk to me, you say

She told me ‘I need food,’ I say

Her caretaker is coming this afternoon, you say

We had a brief conversation with big lapses before replies on her end, I say

She’s sleeping all day now, you say

I did say a couple of times that I would call back tomorrow when she might feel more up to talking, but each time she asked me not to go, I say

She seems no less tired after her hospital visit for the day of rest in the middle this time, you say

Finally she asked me to wait a minute and then disappeared, which was the same thing that had happened the last time we spoke, I say

The last time I went to visit we couldn’t wake her up to say good-by, you say

                                                                                ……..

She fell getting out of bed and broke her hip this morning and then refused surgery, but I have her medical proxy and told them to go ahead, you say

I talked to her briefly yesterday and she was totally there mentally, I say

Her cognition has clouded over now, you say

I’ll try calling again, I say

Hello…hi…hello…hi…, she says

Her doctor has put her into hospice, you say

I called again – she wouldn’t take the phone, I say

She is refusing to eat or drink, you say

                                                                                  ……..

She is nearing the end, you say

                                                                                  ……..

She died this morning, you say

 

 

 

Mary Padilla: I write to see what will come out.

Health and Wellness

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by Michael Kessler

My maternal great grandfather, Beryl Litwin, and known to us as the ‘old Zayde,’ died at 109 or 106, depending on whose records you accept. It doesn’t matter much; his newspaper obituary, which I have, describes him as the oldest person in Montreal. More remarkable than just his longevity was that he lived alone until about six months before his death and died only after falling at home, at night, in the dark, because he stubbornly refused to turn on a light on Shabbat.  Also remarkable is that he was a chain smoker. His long white beard was stained yellow from nicotine.  The old Zayde’s daily routine was to walk to his synagogue in the morning, schmooze with his cronies after services—in the synagogue in winter and in the nearby park in the warmer months—- buy his groceries for the day and prepare his own meals. The old Zayde had no known disease or illness, rarely if ever saw a doctor prior to his fateful fall, and to our knowledge took no medicines. We know he prayed a lot. Maybe he also treated himself with old world remedies, like concoctions he could prepare himself, but this is speculation on my part.

My maternal grandfather, Afroim Litwin, or Zayde, lived until 98. Notably, he died eight to eleven years younger than his father, Beryl.  Zayde was also religious, but he had adopted a little more of the modern lifestyle.  He did not live alone in his later years. At various times he lived with us (my mother was his daughter), with my aunt, his other daughter, and maybe from time to time with his other children. Zayde was a diabetic; I remember watching him shoot himself up with insulin. But other than this, I am not aware that he suffered from any other illness or disease. Like his father Beryl, Zayde never went to doctors, to my knowledge took no medications except his insulin, and was never sick enough to spend a day in a hospital or even in bed at home. I don’t know where he got his insulin, but I guess it was from the local pharmacist or maybe a clinic.

Next in line came my mother, the granddaughter of Beryl and daughter of Afroim. My mother died at 86. Again, notably, approximately ten years younger than her father and twenty years younger than her grandfather.  My mother aged in an era when modern medical care took off, the 1970s and 80s. She went to doctors; she was diagnosed with illnesses or “conditions”; she was prescribed medications; and she experienced a couple of hospital visits. She took pills for a heart condition, high blood pressure, a diabetes pill to treat what she described as a mild sugar problem, and also a sleep medication.  Maybe there was more I was not aware of. Despite the medical care, diagnoses, and pills, she died of her heart condition ten and twenty years younger than her predecessors, who had no such care or medicines.

So, now I turn to me.  I will be 77 soon. If I live to that birthday, I will have lived to at least nine years younger than my mother at her death, twenty-one years younger than my grandfather at his death, and approximately thirty years younger than my great grandfather at his death. Do you see a pattern here?  Interestingly, the pattern seems to be continuing in a straight downward line in other ways. Until about age 60, I rarely visited a doctor, took no medications other than about two Tylenols a year, and I was in excellent physical shape.  I regularly jogged, worked out aggressively in the gym, skied at almost every opportunity, and was active in other ways. My weight was also always under control.  Around age 60 I started going to doctors, at first just for an annual physical exam.  I took pleasure in hearing the doctor tell me I was in excellent shape.  But gradually there were diagnoses, referrals to specialists, prescriptions for medications, and more. I began to feel I was tumbling into an abyss, although every report was similar, like “you’re doing fine,” “keep up your exercise routine, watch your diet and take the prescribed pills.” Lipitor for high cholesterol and another pill to improve the good cholesterol, a blood-pressure med, a baby aspirin, a diagnosis of an elevated sugar problem, not serious, probably just pre-diabetes and controllable, but take Metformin every day, and then a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation, or A-Fib as it is often described, resulting in a cardiologist prescribing a couple of pills for that condition.  “Don’t worry,” she said. “If I arbitrarily pulled ten men your age off the street, four would have A-Fib. They just don’t know it. And also come in twice a year for an exam and EKG, resting and stress.” There are also a couple of other things the doctors “watch,” especially my insomnia, which has plagued me for years. And, of course, I have a regular five-year colonoscopy and endoscopy.

The more care those on my maternal ladder have had, the earlier they have died. Does this mean I should follow the data and stop seeing doctors and stop taking the meds? Most people, especially my doctors, would say that would be a crazy decision. If I listen to the doctors and continue taking the meds, should I thereby conclude that if Beryl saw doctors and took meds he would have lived to 120 or 130? Not likely. If Afroim saw doctors and took meds, would he have lived to 110? The odds were not in his favor.  If I look at it in a different way, did the doctors and meds extend my mother’s life? Will they extend mine?  I have no way of knowing. It’s easiest to simply shrug my shoulders, do what they say, and continue going to the gym. And, of course, I must worry that maybe I am more genetically related to my paternal ladder. Oh no! That would would make it too complicated.

With all this I now want to look at myself from another angle. I recently read an article reporting on the results of President Biden’s annual physical exam.  The article describes him as being in very good health for a 78-year-old man.  My curiosity drew me to the internet where I was able to find the actual six-page report by the physician to the president.  I was, and am, somewhat struck by how similar are our medical conditions.  Like me the president has A-Fib, and we are treated with the same medication. His doctor says he remains stable with no other cardiac complications while on the medication. Just like me.  He takes Crestor for cholesterol; I take the competitive drug, Lipitor. He has acid reflux and takes a medication for it, just like me. He exercises regularly and so do I. And so on.  The only major difference is that the president’s report says his blood sugar is normal without medication; mine is normal with medication. The report also says he has a stiffened gait, not serious. So far, I have escaped that one. At the end of the report his doctor says, “President Biden remains a healthy, vigorous, 78 year old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency….”  Can I say I am fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency?  No. The president has one advantage on me that qualifies him for the presidency. He was born in the U.S. I was not.

March 3, 2023

The Health and Wellness story above was written by Michael Kessler as an assignment in the Guided Autobiography LP² study group. Although sometimes seemingly tongue in cheek, it is true. Michael is pleased to note that so far he has beaten the family trend. 

Sadie

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by Judith Meyerowitz

You crossed the Atlantic in 1914 during WW I. You and the four-year-old boy who would become my father. The ship docked and your eyes searched the pier, looking for the husband who came to New York a couple of years before and whom you barely know. The ship was overbooked— passengers fleeing history— of pogroms, of Czars, of revolution, of war.

Europe was on the ship and America on the dock.

You were illiterate in English, Russian or Yiddish. What if he wasn’t there? Where would you go? You would make your way.

You held the hand of the child, protecting him from being swept off the ship into America, lost like Joseph.

The crowds filled the spaces, rushed the gangplank and you could not see. You could not see the future: the three more sons who would be born Americans and the loss of one to childhood diphtheria, Joseph’s sudden death in the heat in a subway car, your post WW II trip across the country instead of the ocean this time, nor your Californian life and the trips to Vegas with your second “husband” Sam. You played the cards you were dealt.

You couldn’t understand the language, but you understood life.  You found a way to live with a spirit and a joy. Grandmother of light as seen in your pictures and the handful of visits.

You look past the crowds now and see Joseph standing on the foreign street. New language, new land, strong Sadie.

Judith Meyerowitz has published several prose pieces and poems previously in Voices. She also writes about art for a folk art magazine. 

J Dawg

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by Judith Meyerowitz

In the summer of 2008, I became J Dawg. I was christened that in a rural village in Ghana where I volunteered for the summer. We were part of Operation Crossroads Africa, the precursor to the Peace Corps.

Our home was a house in a village without beds, running water, or lights. We slept on air mattresses, cooked on coal stoves, and the younger volunteers carried buckets of water on their heads from a well a good distance away. Until we figured out the food situation, we basically starved for several days. No running water also meant no indoor plumbing. There was an outhouse and I believed it was in the jungle with lions roaring but this was West Africa.

I was close to sixty and my roomies were mainly twenty-year-old college students except for Dina, a teacher from D.C. in her thirties with whom I shared a room. Together we watched unidentified bugs crawl up the walls that looked as scary as lions.

But I want to share with you the nights, our sleep rituals. First, we had to blow up our mattresses; then we had to attach the mosquito nets. How? We tucked the ends under the mattresses. Our heads became the apex, creating the tip of the tent. Then, we hunted for our flashlights hoping we had remembered to bring them into our woman-made shelters and not leave them out where the wild things were.

We would sit up under our tent beds and engage in girl talk as if at a sleepover. I heard about Dina’s life in D.C.. We listened in the night to the tick tock of her biological clock. “There will never be Mr. Right.”

We counted the holes in the protective netting and laughed darkly: “Were we hallucinating from the anti-malarial medication? Would we know if we were?”  With our backs against the crawlies’ wall, we got to the fundamental question: “Why were we in bed in the middle of the night in the African jungle?”

Eventually we dozed off from exhaustion, laughter, and Ghana Star Beer. But between my age and the beer, I soon had to go. Where was the flashlight? Under me! I untucked the netting, pulled up my pj bottoms which were dropping from weight loss and with flashlight in one hand and pj material in the other, I made my way into the sounds of the African night and to the hole in the box, where I semi-crouched imagining being bitten by things. With pjs and light in hand and being barely wiped or dried, I found my way being ever so quiet, back to our room with the bugs. I then had to lie down and retuck or did I first retuck and then lie down?  My hands held the light to see as I tucked in the net holes, often further tearing the netting as my pjs fell. And then I heard Dina hysterical in the dark:” Scrunch crunch swoosh, plop” the music of the night, the soundtrack to my bed-making.

Dina would continue watching me struggle and we laughed, over the top, from the ground. Night after night often twice a night scrunch crunch all around the mattress edges.

I have never been so sleep deprived nor shared such laughter.

Dina eventually married, had two children despite remaining unsure he was Mr. Right. I visited her a couple of times in D.C. but we no longer shared African nights and lost contact.

I still have a scatter pillow made from colorful Ghanian textiles with all the volunteers’ signatures and Dina’s inscription to “J Dawg”.

Judith Meyerowitz has published several prose pieces and poems previously in Voices. She also writes about art for a folk art magazine.