WANTED A PUPPY. GOT A BROTHER

“The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose.” Garrison Keillor

I was nine years old when my brother, David was born. My father called and said, “You have a baby brother.” “Hooray!” I shouted into the phone. “Is he a boy or a girl?”

Now, some eighty years later, as I look across my kitchen table, I remember the boy, but see the man whose funny quips and gentle laughter remind me so much of our father. David is no longer the little boy who slid down the banister, jumped on top of piano, stomped on the keys---on his way down to terra firma--- bounced off the piano bench, and then ran like Hell to get away from our grandfather, the pianist.

His musical explorations continued when he fell in love with the big bass drum, and joined the band in grade school. The school couldn’t afford summer uniforms, so at the 4th of July parade, he sweated in his woolen uniform, valiantly banging on that enormous drum, while marching behind two flatulent horses.

Although my teenaged girlfriends swore that his first name was “Get out of here, David,” I acclimated to his mischief and mayhem. Most of his pranks were harmless, such as when he “borrowed” my lipstick to make himself up as a clown for Halloween, but I thought there was a limit to this sharing stuff when he gave me his chickenpox.

Most of his mischief was harmless except when he and his larcenous friend, Chuckie ran away from home, ended up on a farm and asked the farmer if they could “borrow a horse.” I want to think that Chuckie was the mastermind when they broke into our grandmother’s apartment, and ate all of the goodies in her refrigerator. David claimed that it was to teach her not to leave her window open when she was gone, because “burglars could get in.”

When he became a teenager, I was convinced that he would never be a successful criminal, because when he sneaked a smoke in the bathroom, he left a window open---just where Mother was tending her garden. Busted!

He grew tall and strong as he lifted weights in his bedroom. To this day, I don’t know how the weights left those deep indentations in his bedroom ceiling.

When he joined the Peace Corps in the 1960s, he was sent to a primitive area of Micronesia for two long years. The letters and audiotapes sustained us, but we knew his homecoming was overdue when a coconut fell on his head, and then he wrote, “I am looking forward to reading the Sears Catalog.”

I don’t know when my little brother became my big brother, but it happened. To the outside world, we have changed, but with our memories, stories and shared laughter we reach beyond the touch of time.

Once, when I was angry with my brother, I yelled at my mother, “You should only have had one child!” I didn’t mean it, but she considered it, and I’m sure if she had taken my advice, I would not be here to tell this tale. Once a Prince always a Prince!

Esther Blumenfeld “Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.” Charles M. Schulz

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

At one point in my life, I earned certification from the Atlanta Jewish Board of Education as a teacher of Social Ethics. For all of my efforts, I was awarded a lovely certificate and a not so lovely class of 15-year-old students. Soon, I decided that the best way to grab the attention of boys who would rather be playing baseball, and girls who’d rather be polishing their fingernails, was to
role-play.

For my first lesson, I didn’t need many props---a walking cane, some cotton balls, pebbles, gloves and a pair of reading glasses lightly coated with Vaseline. The student, whom I volunteered to become old in an instant, put cotton in her ears, pebbles in her shoes, the glasses on her nose and the gloves on her hands. Yes, and after all that---she needed the cane.

I instructed another student to play the role of a bank teller, and gave her a form for her “elderly customer” to fill out. I also instructed her to speak softly and rapidly. Rapid is easy for teenagers. Then I asked three other students to get in line behind the “old lady.” One was a man late for work, another was a mother who needed to pick up her children at school, and the third was a fellow on his way to meet his girlfriend. I do not need to describe the rest of the exercise, but the reaction of the class was illuminating.

The conversation went something like this: “Getting old is hard.”  “It doesn’t have to be. My grandparents wear hearing aids and Grandma walks with a cane, but they just took a cruise to Japan and brought me a Samurai Sword.” I don’t know what the sword had to do with the conversation, but sometimes it’s hard to keep kids on track. One girl said, “I’d rather die than get old.” A chorus of “That’s stupid!” followed with glowing personal stories about their grandparents. But then the gadfly said, “Yes, but what if you get really sick when you are old?” Whereupon, I said, “What if you get really sick when you’re young?”

Then I asked, “So, what’s the worst thing about getting old?” Silence was followed by an illuminating comment from the back of the room. “The worst thing about getting old is when people treat you as if you are invisible—like you don’t matter anymore.” And, then the bell rang. Those students are now dealing with their own aging parents, and I often wonder if they remember the lesson.

P.G. Woodhouse said, “There is only one cure for grey hair. A Frenchman invented it. It is called the guillotine.”  I must admit that as I age, I sometimes fight the perception that I am becoming invisible, but then I remember that there is my inner essence and that belongs to me. If people show a glimmer of interest, I may or may not choose to share it with them.

One morning, I was alone, sitting at the top of a mountain, watching the sunrise. I thought, “In this big universe, do I really matter?” Then I heard a loud sneeze. It bounced from mountain to mountain. “Oh, nuts!” I thought, “Moses got a burning bush, and God sent me a sneeze.  Then I spied a hiker, and realized I wasn’t alone on the path.

My friend, Carol, a recorder of oral histories was commissioned to interview residents in nursing home, and then their stories were framed and hung outside of their rooms. The purpose of the exercise was that the elderly should not be pre-judged as “just old folks,” but as people who had made something of value with their lives. It was a brilliant exercise to battle prejudice—which comes from pre-judgment. It reminded everyone who entered a room that, “I’m not who I was, but that doesn’t mean that I am nobody.”

The hard thing about growing old is to accept the stupid remarks that come from the most unwelcome sources. A person is only invisible to those who don’t want to see them.  Margaret Atwood said it best; ”I’m not senile. If I burn down the house it will be on purpose.”

Esther Blumenfeld (“The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.”) Henry Wadsworth Longfello

DREAM ON

Many years ago, when I graduated from the University of Michigan, I was informed that I had an over-abundance of credits in philosophy, psychology and English. Because of University policy, I could only claim two of those areas of study as “minors”. I can’t remember which two I selected. However, I do remember immersing myself in the works of Sigmund Freud, and discovering early on that the good doctor had provided himself escape hatches to some of his theories involving dreams.

I remember clearly that he wrote, “All dreams are wish fulfillment, attempts of the unconscious to resolve a conflict of some sort---something recent or from the past.” Then he covered his butt by discussing dreams that “do not appear to be wish fulfillment.” Whew!

When I worked full-time as a deadline writer, my friend Nancy, who was an artist used to call me and describe her dreams. They appeared to her in vivid colors, and then she would translate them to canvas. I kept my mouth shut during these glowing descriptions, because my dreams consisted of words running across a piece of paper, and they were in black and white. All night long, I dreamed words and more words. I never knew if the occasional “cha-ching” was the paper moving through my dream machine, or my husband’s snoring. A few times, I woke up and scribbled something on a piece of paper in the dark, but it never made any sense in the morning since I couldn’t read what I had written.

One of the most famous dream stories is the one about Jacob, who put a stone under his head, fell asleep and dreamed of angels running up and down a golden ladder. If I had put a stone under my head, I’m sure I wouldn’t have such a dazzling dream, but rather I would have awakened with a headache and a very stiff neck.

In his early works, Freud would have found a sexual connotation to Jacob’s dream, but in his Interpretation of Dreams (Fifth edition, 1919, Chapter 6, Section E) Freud said that he never claimed that all dreams require sexual interpretation. At some point he even said, “Even a cigar may be just a cigar.” Rest easy, Jacob!

So, why all of this talk about dreams? It’s because for the first time in my life, I had a colorful geometric dream, and this is a big deal for someone who almost flunked geometry. I dreamed of a solid, golden sculpture made of squares, triangles and rectangles---gleaming in the distant sunlight. I woke up feeling good.

My first impulse was to call my broker to advise him to invest in gold bricks, but I thought better of that. Don’t know why I dreamed it, or why I remember it, but I suspect that my dream was more Tiffany than Freud.

Nightmares are a different kind of dream. When my nephew was a very little boy, he had a bad dream about monsters in his closet. I told him that I would stuff them into my suitcase and take them home with me. Now that he is an avant-garde artist in New York, I guess I should ask him if he wants them back.

Actors have nightmares about forgetting their lines on stage. With some plays, that might not be such a bad thing. I often have nightmares about my computer, and I’m not even asleep. The best dreams are those that when you wake up and have to think, “Did that really happen?”

Joseph, a prisoner in Pharaoh’s hoosegow had the best political dream. He dreamed about 7 fat cows that were eaten by 7 lean cows, and 7 fat ears of grain eaten by 7 lean ones. Joseph got out of prison when he predicted that a famine was coming. Pharaoh put enough grain aside to save his people and Joseph became something like Vice President of Egypt.
 
And, I learned that grain has ears.

Esther Blumenfeld (Sleep tight, but first check the mattress for bedbugs)

PRETTY IS AS PRETTY DOES

My eyes always glaze over when visiting my favorite used bookstore. So many books! So little time! Naturally, I wasn’t paying attention as I rounded a corner and almost ran my shopping cart into two young women approaching from the opposite direction. First, I apologized, and then I stared. I had never, in all my years, seen two bodies totally covered from head to toe with colorful tattoos. As far as I could see, there was no skin space left untouched.

I pointed behind me and said, “The tattoo books are that way.” “Thanks,” said one of the young girls. “How did you know that’s what we were looking for?” “I’m psychic,” I replied. “That’s awesome!” said the other girl. She was the one with the tarantula on her exposed cleavage. I walked away wondering how far down that hairy spider would slip as gravity beckoned in coming years.

Obviously, perceptions of beauty differ. Judge Judy got it right when she said, “Beauty fades---dumb is forever.”

My mother was a very beautiful woman. She was the whole package with jet-black hair, a patrician nose, sapphire blue eyes and flawless alabaster skin. As she aged, her hair evolved into a white wavy cloud, but people still commented on her beauty. However, she began to worry about the “laugh lines” around her eyes. A friend told her that dabbing a moistened rectal suppository on those wrinkles would make them disappear. One morning, as he walked into the bathroom, my father discovered this ritual, and commented, “Dear, I think you are putting that stick in the wrong place.”

I don’t know who said that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but he must have qualified it with “Love is blind.” Mother always said, “If you want to be beautiful, you must suffer.” She might have been right, because I understand that a full body wax is like being flailed but not quartered.

In Saul Bellow’s book, Ravelstein, Ravelstein says, “Young women are burdened by glamour maintenance.” A friend of mine in the fashion industry once told me that models that look like twigs are sometimes so hungry that they will eat Kleenex.

I have seen young women, pursuing beauty, with more holes in their heads than they were born with. Nostrils, ears, cheeks, lips and tongues are pierced and studded. The most memorable was a belly button hammered shut with a spike—wide and long enough to hang a slab of beef.

Several years ago, I received a gift of a neck message aboard a cruise liner. Naturally, the masseuse wanted to sell me some of the expensive beauty products aboard ship, so she asked me, “If there is one part of your body you’d like to change, what would that be?” I thought for a few moments and answered, “Honey, I have had these body parts for 60 years. By now, I am pretty used to them. I don’t think I want to change a thing.”  Jean Kerr said it best: “I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want---an adorable pancreas?”

Esther Blumenfeld (a smile is the best face lift)  

GATHER WHAT YE MAY

People collect all kinds of things. Elizabeth Taylor collected diamonds and husbands. One definition of collections is, “The action of collecting someone or something.” She did both.

Another definition is, “An amount of material accumulated in one location.” Graham Barker began his naval fluff collection in 1984. I’m not sure where he mined his collection, but by now he should have enough belly button lint to fill a mattress.

Bill collectors don’t collect people named, “Bill,” nor do they collect bills. They should be called money collectors, but I guess then people would confuse them with the Internal Revenue Service---a profession that sounds as if they only go after people who swallow their money.

Some collections such as stamp, coin, paintings and baseball cards can become quite valuable. Who knew that a first edition, Superman Comic Book, would bring big bucks---certainly not my husband’s mother---who threw it away. And, who would have guessed that Wolfgang Laib’s collection of pollen (from Hazelnut) piled up in the 18 x 21 ft, atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, would be featured as a work of art? The entry fee does not include a dose of
Antihistamine.

Sucrologists collect sugar packets. Inadvertently, they often team up with ant collectors. Some people enjoy collecting seashells. Novices forget that sometimes the shell they have collected is someone’s home. Nothing smells as pungent as the demise of a slimy critter that has crawled out of a conch shell in a collector’s suitcase. However, it’s a good trick to pull on airport security.

Collecting New Year’s resolutions is not a good idea, because there’s no place to keep them. My father collected books. When he was 85-years-old, he and my mother moved into a Senior Residence. I asked him, “Dad, is it difficult for you to move again?” He replied, “No, not as long as I have my books. My books are my portable homeland.” When he died, we donated his collection to various libraries.

However, it was more difficult to dispose of Uncle Bill’s collection of malformed teeth. Uncle Bill was an oral surgeon and was very proud of his tooth collection. Over the years, he had amassed hundreds of extracted teeth, mounted them on black velvet, and displayed them in glass cases in one room of his beautiful home in a suburb of Chicago. When he died, none of his kids wanted to sink their teeth into that collection, so they donated it to the “Collection Terminator.”
Hundreds of years from now, some archeologist, digging around, will ask, “Why did all of those weird toothed people end up at the city dump?”

Esther Blumenfeld (My British friend will “collect” me at noon)