by Anne Kaier
“Andrew,” she said, “don’t stub your cigarette out in my pansies.” She felt like a jerk the instant she said it. His hand was shaking, there in her walled garden. The last guest had left after the reading he’d persuaded her to hold so he could sell more copies of his memoir. She was pissed because she’d corralled people on a beautiful spring day to hear a middle-aged bipolar guy read about his adventures in manic depression though he never came to her readings. Not even when she launched her first book of poems.
“Look, I’m just squeezing out the last bits of tobacco. It’s good for the plants.” He rubbed the stub with his thick thumbs and put it in his pocket. In the afternoon sunshine, the blue-black marks under his eyes looked even darker. “I’ve been depressed for the last four days.”
There it was: depressed. The word was strangely intimate spoken just between the two of them. In his book, she thought, he writes superbly about depression and mania. You feel like you’re on a crazy-wired ride with him. And all afternoon he’d propped his leg on a wrought iron bench and talked brilliantly, entertaining an audience of her friends and people they both used to work with. But he never talks about his down feelings, she thought, not to me anyway. For that matter I haven’t laid eyes on him for months. Just emails. Late at night.
Suddenly, she was afraid he’d start speaking in a simple, straightforward way. She pushed up the sleeves of her lavender linen jacket and leaned down to deadhead some pansies. “Not to worry. It went really well, don’t you think?”
He sighed, took another cigarette from the packet that jutted above his paunch. “Hey, we even sold a few copies. That shrink friend of yours, Julia, she bought three. That’s my kinda lady.”
Sure, she thought, a gay shrink who’s even crazier than you are. Who talks a blue streak. See how long that would last.
She and Andrew had been friends for seventeen years, starting long after his divorce, but before he took up with bug-eyed, blue-eyed Lisa. He had been the best copywriter in the same corporate Marketing Communications department where Helen kept clients happy as an Account Executive. When she was thinking about leaving to teach English lit, he sent her an email, telling her she had the right to be happy. No one had ever put it quite that baldly to her. She printed out the flimsy email, took it down to the garden and read it over and over, sitting under the yew tree. Two months later, she had a teaching job.
Now, the late afternoon light glimmered on the garden wall; clouds moved faster across the sky. She tucked her auburn hair behind her neck with a comb. “It must have been harder for you today, with people who used to know you at work, in a different way.” Perhaps if she stuck to what they had just shared, she could comfort him and duck the thuggish arm of depression that threatened him.
‘‘Christ, yes. Always is. It’s like being naked and having a physical in front of your high school classmates.” He gathered up the left-over Doritos he’d brought. Then he opened his arms and embraced her. She could smell the sweat on his neck. His voice filled the small garden: “Can’t thank you enough.” On his way through her yellow living room to the front door, he looked back and smiled: “Keep the salsa.”
Thursday, May 31, 2007
That Spot
by M. Ingrid Wiese
I hear her before I see her, my mother’s distinct bellowing laugh from the back of the restaurant. It is the laugh I listened for as a child, when I was lost in the grocery store. I meet my mother and her sisters at Rain on 82nd and Columbus. New York is enjoying its first summer day, and I’m warmed by the lingering rays of early evening sunshine. Inside, I shiver in the air conditioning.
I find my mother Mom at the head of the table, flanked on either side by an Aunt. Aunt Kay is on her left, Aunt Sandy on her right. My sister Maiken is sitting conveniently close to the exit. I squeeze Maiken’s shoulder, give her a wink and slide into the seat next to her, directly across from Mom.
I can’t help but notice that she looks fuller since I last saw her in the dressing room at Nordstrom’s over Christmas. She was trying on prosthetic breasts, twisting and turning and sucking in her gut to get a better angle in the mirror.
“How do these look?” She asked me after she had taken out the B pads and inserted the C’s.
“Great, Mom. Your fake breasts look great, Mom.”
“I’m serious.” She takes off the bra, and I try not to stare at the concave skin where her once magnificent mammaries once sagged.
“Well. The B’s would be great for everyday, but the C’s would be nice for those special nights when you and Dad go down to Harbor Lights. Why don’t you just get both? I mean, how many women get to wake up in the morning and pick out their boob size? It might be the only perk of a double mastectomy. You just went through chemo, I think you can spoil yourself a little.”
She laughed in the dressing room that day, the way she is laughing now. But after a her second drink her laugh changes a little bit. I'm guessing she is on drink two, after allshe has been here for nearly fifteen minutes and her hands are still shaking. She catches me looking at her hands and hides them under the table before calling the waiter over to order another bottle of wine. Those hands, now hiding under the table, once entertained me through Father Flavian’s Sunday Homilies by delicately tracing animal shapes across my back. People always tell me that I have my mother’s hands.
I watch her, watching our glasses, wondering how much longer before she can take another sip, wondering if we will notice that her glass is almost empty while ours are still full. She looks around the table to see if there is anyone here who can drink like her, looking to find an accomplice or someone to hide behind.
She drinks number three quickly, and by number four, she no longer feels the need to hide her consumption. She barely notices that one side of her Chico blouse has raised up under her chin, while the other has dropped down to mingle with her ever-changing waist line. She boldly drinks the fifth and sixth with no fear of what anyone around her thinks. By the time the food comes, she is slurring her words and speaking loudly.
“How is the wine? Shall I order you another? Are you ready? You need a red?” She asks the table.
Those who drink with her are her allies. I, the sober daughter, the one who counts every glass, the one who won’t allow her to drink in my home, the one who planned that intervention ten years ago, I, am the enemy. My presence is an intrusion on her plan to drink. She resents me before I even arrive.
“How was your flight? Did you have a good visit with Kirsten? What’s new at home?” I ask.
She ignores me. These questions she happily answers over the telephone, but tonight she pretends it is too loud in the restaurant for her to hear me. She doesn’t want my attention. She turns herself away from me to avoid my “abandoned kitty” routine, the one where I push myself up against her leg, purring and posturing and begging for her to touch me. Thankfully, gone are the insecurities that haunted my youth, that this behavior is because of me, that I’m not loveable, that I’ve done something wrong.
Before therapy and ACOA meetings, Al-anon and AA, I would have thought Mom’s performance tonight was about me. But it’s not. It’s about Mom getting drunk, and I am standing in the way. Her sisters don’t drink as much as her, but she doesn’t realize it. She hides from me, behind them.
Aunt Sandy knows. She knows Mom is a drunk, and she looks down her nose at her, rolls her eyes at my Uncle when she doesn’t think anyone else is looking. She does the same thing when I get sensitive or loud or try to control my mom so she doesn’t embarrass herself or us.
“Want to drive in the car with me, Mom?”
“No, we can all take a taxi.”
“I drove here. I’m parked right outside. I could give you a ride. I rented a convertible and we could put the top down and drive through the city and talk.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t seen you since Christmas, and I’d love to have five minutes alone with you.”
“Well that’s silly – we can all go together.”
“But Mom – I came all this way. Can’t I borrow you for five minutes in the car?”
She’s back to pretending she can’t hear me. Aunt Sandy rolls her eyes, and I know someone’s being judged. But is it me, or is it Mom? Am I feeling pathetic, or defensive?
I look through the droopy lids and try to find a window into my mother. She’s gone, the woman who planned my birthday parties, chaperoned my sixth grade class to Disneyland and taught my Girl Scout troop how to make hats from weaving reeds together. Gone, the woman who wrote short stories, macraméd bikinis, and painted Picasso like masterpieces that my Dad proudly hung over the mantle. She’s gone, been kidnapped by a selfish stranger who’s afraid to be alone in the room with me.
I try not to be offended when she refuses my ride.
She knows what will happen if she takes my outstretched hand. I’ll get embarrassed when she flirts with the waiter on her way out or trips on the sidewalk as we walk across the street. I’ll have to help her into the car and buckle her into her seatbelt. She knows I’ll try and wake her when she falls asleep during my sister’s play and begins snoring. She knows I’ll try and help her down the stairs, when in her mind she’s perfectly fine. She thinks I will try to keep her from ordering a glass of wine at the intermission.
But I won’t.
It's not that I've given up, the truth is that I kind of like it when her buzz reaches that spot when she relaxes. That special spot between high and obliterated, when Her crankiness and insecurity fade. Right after bottle one, right before complete and utter intoxication. Right then, she is sweet and lovely and likely to put her arm around me – her lids half open, her body weight pushing against my arm like a dead body, her lips against my ear, “I love you honey. Mommy’s favorite. You turned out okay.” Right there, between the shame of having everyone judge my mother, and the pure joy of having my mother touch me and tell me that she loves me.
I push her and her sisters in the cab, "I'll be right behind you. I'll meet you there."
As the cab drives away, I see her throw her head back. I hear her laughter streaming down 81st street.
I hear her before I see her, my mother’s distinct bellowing laugh from the back of the restaurant. It is the laugh I listened for as a child, when I was lost in the grocery store. I meet my mother and her sisters at Rain on 82nd and Columbus. New York is enjoying its first summer day, and I’m warmed by the lingering rays of early evening sunshine. Inside, I shiver in the air conditioning.
I find my mother Mom at the head of the table, flanked on either side by an Aunt. Aunt Kay is on her left, Aunt Sandy on her right. My sister Maiken is sitting conveniently close to the exit. I squeeze Maiken’s shoulder, give her a wink and slide into the seat next to her, directly across from Mom.
I can’t help but notice that she looks fuller since I last saw her in the dressing room at Nordstrom’s over Christmas. She was trying on prosthetic breasts, twisting and turning and sucking in her gut to get a better angle in the mirror.
“How do these look?” She asked me after she had taken out the B pads and inserted the C’s.
“Great, Mom. Your fake breasts look great, Mom.”
“I’m serious.” She takes off the bra, and I try not to stare at the concave skin where her once magnificent mammaries once sagged.
“Well. The B’s would be great for everyday, but the C’s would be nice for those special nights when you and Dad go down to Harbor Lights. Why don’t you just get both? I mean, how many women get to wake up in the morning and pick out their boob size? It might be the only perk of a double mastectomy. You just went through chemo, I think you can spoil yourself a little.”
She laughed in the dressing room that day, the way she is laughing now. But after a her second drink her laugh changes a little bit. I'm guessing she is on drink two, after allshe has been here for nearly fifteen minutes and her hands are still shaking. She catches me looking at her hands and hides them under the table before calling the waiter over to order another bottle of wine. Those hands, now hiding under the table, once entertained me through Father Flavian’s Sunday Homilies by delicately tracing animal shapes across my back. People always tell me that I have my mother’s hands.
I watch her, watching our glasses, wondering how much longer before she can take another sip, wondering if we will notice that her glass is almost empty while ours are still full. She looks around the table to see if there is anyone here who can drink like her, looking to find an accomplice or someone to hide behind.
She drinks number three quickly, and by number four, she no longer feels the need to hide her consumption. She barely notices that one side of her Chico blouse has raised up under her chin, while the other has dropped down to mingle with her ever-changing waist line. She boldly drinks the fifth and sixth with no fear of what anyone around her thinks. By the time the food comes, she is slurring her words and speaking loudly.
“How is the wine? Shall I order you another? Are you ready? You need a red?” She asks the table.
Those who drink with her are her allies. I, the sober daughter, the one who counts every glass, the one who won’t allow her to drink in my home, the one who planned that intervention ten years ago, I, am the enemy. My presence is an intrusion on her plan to drink. She resents me before I even arrive.
“How was your flight? Did you have a good visit with Kirsten? What’s new at home?” I ask.
She ignores me. These questions she happily answers over the telephone, but tonight she pretends it is too loud in the restaurant for her to hear me. She doesn’t want my attention. She turns herself away from me to avoid my “abandoned kitty” routine, the one where I push myself up against her leg, purring and posturing and begging for her to touch me. Thankfully, gone are the insecurities that haunted my youth, that this behavior is because of me, that I’m not loveable, that I’ve done something wrong.
Before therapy and ACOA meetings, Al-anon and AA, I would have thought Mom’s performance tonight was about me. But it’s not. It’s about Mom getting drunk, and I am standing in the way. Her sisters don’t drink as much as her, but she doesn’t realize it. She hides from me, behind them.
Aunt Sandy knows. She knows Mom is a drunk, and she looks down her nose at her, rolls her eyes at my Uncle when she doesn’t think anyone else is looking. She does the same thing when I get sensitive or loud or try to control my mom so she doesn’t embarrass herself or us.
“Want to drive in the car with me, Mom?”
“No, we can all take a taxi.”
“I drove here. I’m parked right outside. I could give you a ride. I rented a convertible and we could put the top down and drive through the city and talk.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t seen you since Christmas, and I’d love to have five minutes alone with you.”
“Well that’s silly – we can all go together.”
“But Mom – I came all this way. Can’t I borrow you for five minutes in the car?”
She’s back to pretending she can’t hear me. Aunt Sandy rolls her eyes, and I know someone’s being judged. But is it me, or is it Mom? Am I feeling pathetic, or defensive?
I look through the droopy lids and try to find a window into my mother. She’s gone, the woman who planned my birthday parties, chaperoned my sixth grade class to Disneyland and taught my Girl Scout troop how to make hats from weaving reeds together. Gone, the woman who wrote short stories, macraméd bikinis, and painted Picasso like masterpieces that my Dad proudly hung over the mantle. She’s gone, been kidnapped by a selfish stranger who’s afraid to be alone in the room with me.
I try not to be offended when she refuses my ride.
She knows what will happen if she takes my outstretched hand. I’ll get embarrassed when she flirts with the waiter on her way out or trips on the sidewalk as we walk across the street. I’ll have to help her into the car and buckle her into her seatbelt. She knows I’ll try and wake her when she falls asleep during my sister’s play and begins snoring. She knows I’ll try and help her down the stairs, when in her mind she’s perfectly fine. She thinks I will try to keep her from ordering a glass of wine at the intermission.
But I won’t.
It's not that I've given up, the truth is that I kind of like it when her buzz reaches that spot when she relaxes. That special spot between high and obliterated, when Her crankiness and insecurity fade. Right after bottle one, right before complete and utter intoxication. Right then, she is sweet and lovely and likely to put her arm around me – her lids half open, her body weight pushing against my arm like a dead body, her lips against my ear, “I love you honey. Mommy’s favorite. You turned out okay.” Right there, between the shame of having everyone judge my mother, and the pure joy of having my mother touch me and tell me that she loves me.
I push her and her sisters in the cab, "I'll be right behind you. I'll meet you there."
As the cab drives away, I see her throw her head back. I hear her laughter streaming down 81st street.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
REUVEN
by Elliot Ratzman
Israel, 1998.
Reuven opened his door before I knocked. He was, to me, a tall man, statuesque, broad-shouldered and fit, especially for someone in his late sixties. His thick black beatnik glasses on a furrowed brow and salt and pepper buzz cut echoed the fashion when he first left America. He smiled briefly then it disappeared into a half-grimace of serious talk.
Months before, Reuven was referred to me by an anarchist anti-Zionist professor at Stanford. The professor, after learning of my political affiliations, surmised that Reuven would be a suitable contact. Rueven had been a Communist activist in his native Detroit, and in the late 1940s no less! In Israel, he had been an administrator at the Overseas School and was remembered fondly. Iris, our graduate administrator looked up, delighted, when I mentioned his name – “I love that man” she said in her flawless accentless English. “We disagreed politically, of course” Iris was Mizrachi and was no- nonsense in her demeanor, hardly utopian leftist material “but he is an amazing person. Give him my best!” After acquiring his email address, sending him Iris’ greetings, and arranging a time, I traveled by endless bus ride to his Jerusalem neighborhood Kiryat Yovel near Har Herzl.
Showing me into his tidy apartment which he shared with his wife, he sat me down while I spied the overflowing shelves of books, leftist journals and workers’ newspapers. After he returned with a cup of tea, he spoke to me in rapid-fire Hebrew, forgetting I was only in level “Aleph”, but the passion of his words was strangely soothing, like the unknown meaning of prayer in another language. Realizing his mistake, he apologized, switched to English and chastised me for not knowing more Hebrew, then smiled.
He described his immersion program on a kibbutz north of Jerusalem nearly fifty years before, “I was learning a hundred Hebrew words a night, with urgency. After all, I was here to build the revolution and needed to learn the language as soon as possible.” That passion was channeled over the next four decades into a series of radical projects: a Trotskyite group, a solidarity effort with professors at the besieged Palestinian Bir Zeit University, a stint in jail after meeting with PLO representatives in Romania in the early 1990s. After his retirement as Vice-Provost, he had written a brief history of the Israeli peace movement.
As with so many leftists I have worked with, Reuven was obsessed with the Correct Description of the current political moment. It is incumbent to describe the world with the Right Words, lest one’s analysis betrays the Truth and thus, the Revolution. We talked politics and the possibilities of consciousness-raising and organizing, somehow, the American overseas students. His hands punctuated his talk with karate chops to the table. His intensity was not something to get in the way of; I found myself wanting him to find me worthy. Where would I fall in his grand scheme of Marxist analysis?
“There’s an up and coming Arab intellectual that you should take note of. He has a PhD in philosophy, a Marxist, and he’s very smart. Asmi Bishara…” He mentioned an article in Monthly Review, stopped and asked if I knew the journal.
“Oh, you mean the journal edited by, oh, what’s their names Sweezy and Magdoff?” It was an obscure publication of the graying independent Marxist left, most famous for having published an article by Albert Einstein - “Why Socialism?” - in its inaugural issue.
“Well Mr. Ratzman, you do know something!”
A few months later, Reuven joined us for lunch at Hebrew University. As usual, we talked big plans, few of which were pursued or implemented. We sat outside of one of the university cafeterias overlooking the Old City with an almost aerial view of the Dome of the Rock, and talked politics. A number of crows hopped by, picking at the overflowing trash containers, interrupting us with their loud cawing. Abruptly, Reuven cawed back. Loudly. He raised his hands as if to pounce shooing them away, a sight bringing smiles to the jaded Israeli students around us. “Beat ‘em at their own game,” he counseled.
Israel, 1998.
Reuven opened his door before I knocked. He was, to me, a tall man, statuesque, broad-shouldered and fit, especially for someone in his late sixties. His thick black beatnik glasses on a furrowed brow and salt and pepper buzz cut echoed the fashion when he first left America. He smiled briefly then it disappeared into a half-grimace of serious talk.
Months before, Reuven was referred to me by an anarchist anti-Zionist professor at Stanford. The professor, after learning of my political affiliations, surmised that Reuven would be a suitable contact. Rueven had been a Communist activist in his native Detroit, and in the late 1940s no less! In Israel, he had been an administrator at the Overseas School and was remembered fondly. Iris, our graduate administrator looked up, delighted, when I mentioned his name – “I love that man” she said in her flawless accentless English. “We disagreed politically, of course” Iris was Mizrachi and was no- nonsense in her demeanor, hardly utopian leftist material “but he is an amazing person. Give him my best!” After acquiring his email address, sending him Iris’ greetings, and arranging a time, I traveled by endless bus ride to his Jerusalem neighborhood Kiryat Yovel near Har Herzl.
Showing me into his tidy apartment which he shared with his wife, he sat me down while I spied the overflowing shelves of books, leftist journals and workers’ newspapers. After he returned with a cup of tea, he spoke to me in rapid-fire Hebrew, forgetting I was only in level “Aleph”, but the passion of his words was strangely soothing, like the unknown meaning of prayer in another language. Realizing his mistake, he apologized, switched to English and chastised me for not knowing more Hebrew, then smiled.
He described his immersion program on a kibbutz north of Jerusalem nearly fifty years before, “I was learning a hundred Hebrew words a night, with urgency. After all, I was here to build the revolution and needed to learn the language as soon as possible.” That passion was channeled over the next four decades into a series of radical projects: a Trotskyite group, a solidarity effort with professors at the besieged Palestinian Bir Zeit University, a stint in jail after meeting with PLO representatives in Romania in the early 1990s. After his retirement as Vice-Provost, he had written a brief history of the Israeli peace movement.
As with so many leftists I have worked with, Reuven was obsessed with the Correct Description of the current political moment. It is incumbent to describe the world with the Right Words, lest one’s analysis betrays the Truth and thus, the Revolution. We talked politics and the possibilities of consciousness-raising and organizing, somehow, the American overseas students. His hands punctuated his talk with karate chops to the table. His intensity was not something to get in the way of; I found myself wanting him to find me worthy. Where would I fall in his grand scheme of Marxist analysis?
“There’s an up and coming Arab intellectual that you should take note of. He has a PhD in philosophy, a Marxist, and he’s very smart. Asmi Bishara…” He mentioned an article in Monthly Review, stopped and asked if I knew the journal.
“Oh, you mean the journal edited by, oh, what’s their names Sweezy and Magdoff?” It was an obscure publication of the graying independent Marxist left, most famous for having published an article by Albert Einstein - “Why Socialism?” - in its inaugural issue.
“Well Mr. Ratzman, you do know something!”
A few months later, Reuven joined us for lunch at Hebrew University. As usual, we talked big plans, few of which were pursued or implemented. We sat outside of one of the university cafeterias overlooking the Old City with an almost aerial view of the Dome of the Rock, and talked politics. A number of crows hopped by, picking at the overflowing trash containers, interrupting us with their loud cawing. Abruptly, Reuven cawed back. Loudly. He raised his hands as if to pounce shooing them away, a sight bringing smiles to the jaded Israeli students around us. “Beat ‘em at their own game,” he counseled.
MEMORIES OF MY FATHER
by Alison Hammer Winans
My father once said to my godmother, “I have to be mother as well as father to the girls.” I was nine; Liz was seven, and my mother, an ailing, dependant wife. We lived on the seminary campus where he taught, so he was home more than most fathers. Naturally he was my favorite parent. His parents were Jews from Eastern Europe, who had for various reasons become Christian. Taking after his father, he was clean shaven and handsome with brown eyes and dark brown, wavy hair combed back from his high forehead. He dressed conventionally in grey, navy or black suits, black shirts with a white “dog collar” or his long, black cassock, but due to weight fluctuations his clothes often fit badly. Being short, stocky and slightly tubby round the waist, his love of eating fine food, cooking and feeding others was evident. He nurtured us with simple, nutritious food as well as his creative specialties—sukiyaki, fried rice and sweet & sour pork.
I could tell he was brainy by his perfectly egg-shaped head. I idolized him, wanting to grow up to be like him, recognized in a field of study. He was an Anglican missionary and an academic, well versed in classics and general knowledge, an authority on church history and the Bible. With a string of titles and degrees, he was the Rev. Canon Dr. R. J. Hammer. He took us to churches to hear him preach, impatiently driving like a speed demon to arrive early, then hurrying us along the sidewalk, our short legs moving overtime to keep up with his fast pace. During the cold weather he kept our small hands warm by holding them inside his pockets. After the service I watched him warmly greeting the congregants, with a pat on the shoulder, a gentle clasp of the hand or a brief hug, and talking, talking, talking. He loved being with people. Other times his work took him away, but he wrote letters and postcards, and returned bearing gifts.
My father must have grown up in the era when children were to be seen and not heard, and brought some of that into my upbringing. One time when I was six, he told me to lie down on my stomach to get rid of a stomachache. When I felt better, he said, “That’s because you were a good girl and did what you were told.” As well as being the dispenser of hugs and bedtime stories, he was the disciplinarian and must have spanked us, not unusual in the 50s and 60s, although I have no such memories. However I know it, because all he had to do, for us to immediately freeze and turn into good girls was to raise his hand suddenly.
During my university years, I came home briefly for Christmas. He kept producing treats from the kitchen, like hot mince pies or liver pate with crackers. Joking with my friends, I fondly called him my Jewish mother. Eating must have been his only pleasure. The times when he approached my mother with a tender touch or a kiss on the cheek, only to be pushed away, are burned in my memory. Utterly loyal, he stayed in what had clearly become an unfulfilling marriage. He did everything for her, taking extra jobs and working continuously to provide for her after his death. I suspect he also took on traveling engagements in order to get away, to have his own life, to be appreciated, to have others cook for him. Wondering how it was when they were young and in love, I asked her about the early days of their marriage. She simply said, “He wanted me to sit at his feet and worship him.”
I saw him caring for others too. Approached by beggars, he bought them food saying, “If I gave him money, he’d go and buy alcohol.” Secure in the truth of his own faith, he respected people of other faiths, and became active in interfaith networks. And a few years before he died, although recovering from surgery, he made the rounds of the hospital ward in his pajamas giving a blessing to all the other men.
At our last disastrous Christmas meal together, my mother fled to her bedroom, Liz and I were both in tears, while my exhausted father pleaded, “Come on now. Eat your dinner.” I was tired of his voice of authority lecturing me. Even when he asked me what I thought, he didn’t seem to hear me. So I escaped, at the age of 25, to make my own life many thousands of miles away, but I still had to put up with his disappointments. When I started my successful housecleaning business in California, he said, “I thought you were going to help people. Do any of your friends have proper jobs?” But I knew he loved me no matter what I got into. He always had time to scribble a letter to me in handwriting that looked like brain waves, regular with little blips, and occasionally sent $20 bills saying, “Don’t tell Mummy.”
In his later years he looked like an eccentric professor with wild grey hair down to his collar, fraying cuffs and baggy pants held up with string. Being so busy, he did not have the time or energy for self-care. On Christmas Day 1993, during our last phone call I said, “I really want to see you at Easter, to spend quality time with both of you.” He died three weeks later, having kept the extent of his heart disease a secret from us.
My father once said to my godmother, “I have to be mother as well as father to the girls.” I was nine; Liz was seven, and my mother, an ailing, dependant wife. We lived on the seminary campus where he taught, so he was home more than most fathers. Naturally he was my favorite parent. His parents were Jews from Eastern Europe, who had for various reasons become Christian. Taking after his father, he was clean shaven and handsome with brown eyes and dark brown, wavy hair combed back from his high forehead. He dressed conventionally in grey, navy or black suits, black shirts with a white “dog collar” or his long, black cassock, but due to weight fluctuations his clothes often fit badly. Being short, stocky and slightly tubby round the waist, his love of eating fine food, cooking and feeding others was evident. He nurtured us with simple, nutritious food as well as his creative specialties—sukiyaki, fried rice and sweet & sour pork.
I could tell he was brainy by his perfectly egg-shaped head. I idolized him, wanting to grow up to be like him, recognized in a field of study. He was an Anglican missionary and an academic, well versed in classics and general knowledge, an authority on church history and the Bible. With a string of titles and degrees, he was the Rev. Canon Dr. R. J. Hammer. He took us to churches to hear him preach, impatiently driving like a speed demon to arrive early, then hurrying us along the sidewalk, our short legs moving overtime to keep up with his fast pace. During the cold weather he kept our small hands warm by holding them inside his pockets. After the service I watched him warmly greeting the congregants, with a pat on the shoulder, a gentle clasp of the hand or a brief hug, and talking, talking, talking. He loved being with people. Other times his work took him away, but he wrote letters and postcards, and returned bearing gifts.
My father must have grown up in the era when children were to be seen and not heard, and brought some of that into my upbringing. One time when I was six, he told me to lie down on my stomach to get rid of a stomachache. When I felt better, he said, “That’s because you were a good girl and did what you were told.” As well as being the dispenser of hugs and bedtime stories, he was the disciplinarian and must have spanked us, not unusual in the 50s and 60s, although I have no such memories. However I know it, because all he had to do, for us to immediately freeze and turn into good girls was to raise his hand suddenly.
During my university years, I came home briefly for Christmas. He kept producing treats from the kitchen, like hot mince pies or liver pate with crackers. Joking with my friends, I fondly called him my Jewish mother. Eating must have been his only pleasure. The times when he approached my mother with a tender touch or a kiss on the cheek, only to be pushed away, are burned in my memory. Utterly loyal, he stayed in what had clearly become an unfulfilling marriage. He did everything for her, taking extra jobs and working continuously to provide for her after his death. I suspect he also took on traveling engagements in order to get away, to have his own life, to be appreciated, to have others cook for him. Wondering how it was when they were young and in love, I asked her about the early days of their marriage. She simply said, “He wanted me to sit at his feet and worship him.”
I saw him caring for others too. Approached by beggars, he bought them food saying, “If I gave him money, he’d go and buy alcohol.” Secure in the truth of his own faith, he respected people of other faiths, and became active in interfaith networks. And a few years before he died, although recovering from surgery, he made the rounds of the hospital ward in his pajamas giving a blessing to all the other men.
At our last disastrous Christmas meal together, my mother fled to her bedroom, Liz and I were both in tears, while my exhausted father pleaded, “Come on now. Eat your dinner.” I was tired of his voice of authority lecturing me. Even when he asked me what I thought, he didn’t seem to hear me. So I escaped, at the age of 25, to make my own life many thousands of miles away, but I still had to put up with his disappointments. When I started my successful housecleaning business in California, he said, “I thought you were going to help people. Do any of your friends have proper jobs?” But I knew he loved me no matter what I got into. He always had time to scribble a letter to me in handwriting that looked like brain waves, regular with little blips, and occasionally sent $20 bills saying, “Don’t tell Mummy.”
In his later years he looked like an eccentric professor with wild grey hair down to his collar, fraying cuffs and baggy pants held up with string. Being so busy, he did not have the time or energy for self-care. On Christmas Day 1993, during our last phone call I said, “I really want to see you at Easter, to spend quality time with both of you.” He died three weeks later, having kept the extent of his heart disease a secret from us.
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