Mom or Dad?

Yesterday morning, my oldest friend (as in years we’ve been buddies) Bonnie informed me that her dad, Marv Ellis, passed away.  At 91 years old, Mr. Ellis enhanced his youngest child’s life for 54 years, a bond made deep by longevity and similarity in personality.  They also shared the same birth date, as did I with her mom.  For much of our childhood, we reveled in telling everyone that not only were we sisters, but that we shared our parent’s birthdays as well.

I’m very glad that a few months ago when I saw her dad last – and was once again struck by just how charismatic he still appeared – that I let him know how much all of Bonnie’s friends thoroughly enjoy her amazingly quick wit. As I would expect, he took complete credit for her natural ability to make others laugh, although rumor has it that Reba Ellis, Bonnie’s mom, had a terrific sense of humor as well.

Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out which personality trait(s) I have, compliments of Florence and David Cohen, which would showcase that genetic connection to someone from the outside looking in.      

The slogan for my dad’s various political campaigns was “Man of Action,” because he not only had strong and progressive ideas, but he had the fortitude to bring them to fruition more often than not.  I remember many times hearing on the radio news station – most likely while waiting for the weather so I’d know what to wear – about the showdown in City Council chambers starring David Cohen.  I think most would agree that his feisty and impassioned speeches and even what appeared to be a bar room brawl once or twice might be a stretch for me to have pulled off.  

He also used to strongly suggest that I massage his feet when I walked by him, and I can’t even imagine asking my kids to do such a thing. 

Maybe I’m more like my mom.  Let’s see…

My mom keeps her opinions to herself unless I pry them out of her.  Even so, she is a woman of few words and, when she does share her thoughts, there is no dancing around:  her message is clear, like it or not. Her seemingly quiet demeanor may stand out to those who have found her to be a formidable adversary in the public arena but, as a mom, she is generally low key unless something really rubs her the wrong way.  I, on the other hand, share my opinions freely and enjoy discussing the many aspects of a particular situation, which I think is just too much dissecting for my momma.         

So upon deep reflection, I’d been hard-pressed to find personality similarities with either of my parents, which I have to admit was rather disappointing.

Last week, however, when I went into town to see my mom, my car loaded with apartment supplies, personal products, food and of course flowers, I was in for a pleasant surprise.

The routine for the past 6 months has been that I drive up to the front door of the apartment building, my mom’s caregiver Torri comes out with a big cart, we fill it up, she goes upstairs with the goods and then I begin my quest for a parking place. The drive around my mom’s building for a spot can be really quick with an immediate sighting (almost never) to a crawl for about 15 or 20 minutes (most often this is the case) around the general vicinity while cab drivers curse at me for not moving fast enough.

This time, I found a space immediately, right across the street from my mom’s apartment, before I even emptied my car.  I grabbed the spot, absolutely delighted that I’d now be able to skip the stressful meander-around-town portion of the trip that irks me the most.  I got my quarters together for the kiosk, put the receipt on my dashboard, walked proudly to the front door of my mom’s building to get the cart…and then I saw her, shaking her head in disapproval.  Yes, there was Torri, immediately reprimanding me for parking across the street and directing me to bring the car over to the front door of the building.

I tried explaining that I was very lucky to get this spot and I’m not going to move it; instead, I suggested that I walk the cart from the building across the street to my car, fill it up, and then one or both of us can walk the cart back into the building.   

Torri was not happy with this plan.  She said I should’ve pulled up to the front door of the building like I usually do, emptied the car contents on to the cart, and then looked for a spot, in that order.  I explained again that this parking place was too good to pass up and it’s really not a big deal to walk the cart across the street twice, which I’ve done on my own a good 25 times or more.

She then told me she’d stand in my spot while I drove my car to the front door to empty it out.  She was clearly trying to reverse my plan to veer from the norm, but I wasn’t budging.  We were at a standstill, she and I, and this isn’t a smart position to be in with the caregiver of one’s mom.  However, with a hot pastrami sandwich in the car for mom’s lunch, which I was afraid was now cold due to this all this silly and time-consuming bickering, I took the cart and started walking it across the street. 

Exasperated with me, she exclaimed, "Judy! You are just like Miss Florence!  You are so stubborn!”     

That’s it!  That’s what I am!  I am stubborn, just like my mom!  I was so happy and proud that Torri recognized it, the way all Bonnie’s friends and I know that she inherited her ability to deliver one-liners par excellence from at least one of her parents.   

That really, really made my day.

Sadness

This week’s entry is devoted to all of us walking around with fragile hearts.

My stepson, Matthew Minches, would have turned 24 today.

Matthew is the son of my husband David and his ex-wife Eve, and the brother of my stepdaughter, Lauren. He passed away four years ago this August after battling with rhabdomyosarcoma, a soft tissue cancer. 

Last night my kids and I toasted Matthew for his birthday and shared a dessert in his honor.  It was the first time I’ve been able to focus on celebrating his life vs. the tragedy of his losing it. 

I’m often debating with myself whether the greater tragedy lies in the life that Matthew’s missing out on vs. what we’re all missing out on because his life ended.  I heard my husband say a couple times that he feels worse for Matthew to have been robbed of life than for his (David’s) loss in not having his son.  Aware of the deep, dark hole that Matthew’s absence has caused in David’s world, I find that unbelievable.

My brother Denis, whose wife Lisa passed from cancer when she was in her 30s – just a few months after she had given birth to their son Daniel – said the two are equally bad.  Lisa missed out on experiencing great joy in being Daniel’s mom and he (Daniel) missed out on the many aspects of her personality which would’ve been such a good fit for him.   

As the stress in our home continued to mount with Matthew's birthday approaching, and I found myself asking over and over again why it was Matthew who had to be afflicted with such a dreadful disease, more catastrophic news came our way:  our dear friend Steve Lahav suddenly passed away. 

Once again I have to ask why did such a good man so entirely devoted to family have to be taken from his wife and sons (and their girlfriends) and his dad, who had recently moved here from Florida?  This makes no sense.  As for David and me, we will miss him terribly.  Steve, his wife Marcy, David and I so enjoyed and appreciated our individual friendships as well as the foursome we had become over the years.  We have already informed Marcy that she will now have the dual role of being both herself and Steve when we go out. 

Minutes after I learned about Steve, my son told me that his great Uncle Wolf (Karo) passed away, with the funeral actually falling on Matthew’s birthday.  He was 90 and had been ailing so while his passing may not have been unexpected, it remains an immense loss for his family and friends.       

I could say this week has been awful, and it has, but that doesn’t begin to cover it.    

My dear friend Ann said that no one can understand the depth of other people’s pain unless they’re living it too, and she is right.  I am convinced that people who have lost the most special people and the most powerful relationships they have ever known will never be the same without them.  

TMI

I love coupons. The only thing better than coupons for items I want is coupons I know my family or friends might want, whether for clothing, personal products, groceries, or anything else. 

Coupons make shopping fun.  I’ve always gotten a kick out of coupons that print after the purchase of a product, say at Shop Rite or CVS, which mirror what I’ve just bought or my buying preferences overall. That’s great thinking. 

Since my daughter Allison lives in NYC and also goes to CVS periodically, it’s been normal practice for me to notify her when I had received coupons via email that I thought she might want.  Over time she figured out that if she’d give the cashier my phone number, she’d get the same coupons I would, as well as those that reflected her buying habits.  With advances made to this process, she can now access the discounts right off the bat when she enters the store by plugging my phone number into a cool new coupon machine and, like magic, a couple feet of discounts will pour right out.    

Last weekend when she was home, we went together to CVS because we each had a few items to get. She made a beeline for this new fancy machine – clearly not the first time she used one like it – and was delighted when she found a coupon that she could use.    

“I can tell when you’ve been buying candy because I see candy coupons,” Allison said as we walked to the cash register.  WHAT?!?!?  Did she just say that?  OK, so I do buy a candy bar here and there.  But really…is there no such thing as privacy?  Do all my bad habits have to be publicized?  It’s like an email was sent directly to my daughter telling her how bad her mommy’s been. 

What if I was a dating single mom now, like I was 15 years ago and had bought some personal products which therefore printed out similar coupons…maybe she’d say to me, “You’re not actually doing THIS at YOUR age, Mom, are you?” (condom)  or “Mom!  Please tell me you’re not going to have a baby!”  (pregnancy test) or “Ewwww…A fungal infection, Mom?  That’s nasty.”   TMI...no doubt about it.    

Who would’ve ever thought that my guilty pleasures could be revealed through the sharing of coupons, of all things?  

The Nightmare

As you probably know by now, my husband loves his doggy more than anything else.

Sometimes David surprises me, like the other day, when I heard him tell Shea, who had his little furry face next to David’s big furry face, “I need time to myself, Shea, I’ve been tickling you all night and now I just want to relax.” 

And then other times, I’m not surprised at all. 

One morning last week when David came out of the shower, he told me he had the worst nightmare ever, and he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it.  He reiterated “worst nightmare ever” until I asked for the details.     

Since he’s already lived the worst nightmare ever – that of losing his son – he was obviously exaggerating but I could see he was, nonetheless, a bit shaken up. 

During the nightmare, David found out that the doggy he has loved for 4 years as his own actually belonged to another family.   In an effort to rectify this once and for all, David and I went to the house of the people who had raised our little guy before he came to live with us.         

When we got there, Shea immediately made himself at home, wagging his tail and chasing his doggy siblings around in what appeared to be very familiar surroundings.  David said this made him both happy and sad.

Since it seemed like his mamma was thrilled to see her family reunited, David realized he would have to come clean for her to understand how important our doggy will always be to him.  He shared his most personal business; he told her that Shea saved his life when Matthew passed away and that he can’t live without him.  He was not misrepresenting what he and I both knew to be true.   

Apparently the woman had her own reasons for wanting to keep her/our pet, so we ended up having to leave her house without Shea Doggy.  That’s how the nightmare ended, leaving David lonely and mournful. 

I told David that dream or no dream, I’m surprised he left with me; I would’ve thought he would’ve stayed with Shea.    

He appeared to agree and took it a step further.   Yes, he said, “I would’ve married the woman if I had to.”               

Really, is anyone surprised?

Over Easy

Most people who knew my dad, City Councilman David Cohen, were aware that he was a tireless advocate for the people of Philadelphia.

But what I’m sure almost no one knew was that he made the best sunny-side up or over-easy eggs in the world.

After hearing me brag about my dad’s eggs time and time again, my husband asked what he did that was so special.  So, I decided to show him, with 2 eggs, to the best of my ability:  fairly high flame, lots of butter in a hot pan, let these babies sizzle away till the liquid part of the eggs is gone, flip them perhaps (depending upon the diner’s preference), sizzle again for about 10 or 20 seconds or so and VOILA.   

My dad passed away in 2005, and I don’t think I’ve had an egg since without thinking about how much he relished his morning routine.  It started very early – somewhere between 5 and 6 am every day – and went on for hours.  It involved way more than food, too. 

He read the newspapers from cover to cover, and back then when I lived at home, there were at least 3 delivered to our house daily:  The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Bulletin (which I think was an evening paper) and the Daily News.  These dailies were in addition to a bunch of other weeklies, such as The Philadelphia Tribune, the Jewish Exponent, the Northeast Times, and many more.  While reading, he always had KYW blasting in the background, often accompanied by long bouts of static, which never seemed to faze him (yet clearly irked me, as I can still feel my twinge of annoyance some 35 years later).

My senses were on high alert from so many competing sights, sounds and smells in the kitchen, up to about 9 or 10 am. each and every morning.   My dad would bounce around from station to station in his robe and slippers, starting with making freshly-squeezed orange juice for my mom as well as her personal favorite, soft boiled eggs (yuck), which he too might have, or not.  Sometimes he would add bacon to the menu, which was as crispy as it could be without disintegrating, the darkest toast possible, freshly-brewed coffee and always his staples:  a bowl of Corn Flakes, oatmeal and/or Cream of Wheat, and Tang. 

Of the 4 Cohen siblings, I’m the only one who hasn’t followed in my dad’s footsteps by entering the political world, but I’d bet I’m the only one who has been able to come close to bringing this particular legacy of his back to life.

For that, I thank my husband, who started as a most devoted student and has nearly perfected this dish with the purchase of a cast iron skillet and, most importantly, determination to make me the best Dave Cohen eggs he can make.

And when he slides them on to my plate, I am in heaven.  

Jerry

As teenagers, my friends and I made fun of Dead Heads.  We didn’t like the music or the scene.  My one friend Janis has a younger sister Helene who was a Dead Head in high school and since she was adorable and sweet, I thought maybe I’d been unnecessarily harsh and judgmental but found after a modest amount of effort that I was still unable to warm up to the Dead Head phenomenon.  I’m not saying that Donny Osmond was the cat’s meow (really early teens), or that James Taylor (middle teens) was or even that Motown (my favorite for the last 30 years) was the only music worth listening to but, for the most part, other than Helene, Jerry Garcia seemed to attract musical extremists which was a real turn off for me. 

Skip ahead to today. 

I am now driving around with a license plate that says JGARCIA.

For those of you who don’t know, Jerry Garcia is the mastermind and musical talent who defined the Grateful Dead for many years.   

In my wildest dreams, this would never have been the case.  So how did it happen, you ask?

First, I fell in love with a Dead Head. 

Second, after we were married about 9 years, my husband felt he had to have a license plate that honored Jerry.  I have to admit this took some getting used to.  I had toyed around with buying him one years before (that’s progress on my part, don’t you think?)  but changed my mind when I realized that meant I’d have to look at it or hear about it all the time.  However, when David told me he ordered tags with Jerry’s name, I knew there was no escaping this.  My husband, a grown man, was going to have a license plate that advertised his musical idol.  Now everyone would know he’s one of THOSE guys.

The reality is if you know David, you’d know about his obsession with the Dead. They go hand-in-hand.  The fact that anyone could throw out a date as far back as the 1970s and he could name where the Dead played along with his review of the show pretty much says it all.  This band shaped his youth and even his adulthood in many ways, but advertising this seemed a bit over the top.  Couldn’t he keep this love affair private? 

NO, he couldn’t, and he enjoyed every minute of his new license plate.  He’d come home with tales about drivers honking, rolling down their windows and shouting stuff about the Dead, and isn’t this so cool, he’d ask?  No, it’s very weird, I wanted to say back, but instead I nodded and thought…WHATEVER.

Some months later, he decided to get a new car; I took his, and guess what happened next?   Since new cars need newly issued tags – initially, at least – I automatically inherited JGARCIA.  That’s right…it’s on my car now. 

I could’ve stomped my feet and said NO WAY, and believe me when I digested what was happening I wanted to do just that – but when David said he’d exchange the plates within a few months, I felt I had no choice but to act like a good sport about this. Plus, I couldn’t be the one to render JGARCIA homeless, not even temporarily – perish the thought – so yours truly came to the rescue.  Meanwhile, David’s had his new car for nearly 10 months, and there's no sign of a tag exchange. 

Interestingly, I’ve learned that not everyone thinks about the band when they see the license plate. I took my car in to be serviced a couple of months ago and the Volvo guy called out “GARCIA," thinking not of The Dead but that GARCIA was my last name.  He may have even thought the J stood for Judy.  That was an entertaining twist, and one that made me chuckle.  

The other twist is that, believe it or not, I like driving around with Jerry.

Party, Anyone?

One of the greatest pleasures I have in my world is proving my husband wrong or at least slightly skewed in his thinking.  It’s not often this happens but, when it does, I savor it.    

David made the comment after dinner at our favorite local hotspot the other night that men have more fun than women.  He said he noticed men joking around with each other, laughing, and clearly having a good time.  In contrast, women having dinner with their same-sex friends looked much more serious, were deeply engaged in conversation, and most likely were (based on his wife, I am sure) discussing situations revolving around conflict and other unsolvable problems. 

Excellent point, I responded.  When he put it that way, I almost wished I was more like a man.

But then I realized he’s making an assumption from a fairly limited vantage point.  Maybe we women are on a daily basis most interested in talking about weighty matters when we get together; however, I have concluded, based upon my own study, that no man knows how to have as good a time as a woman does...at a wedding party.     

Take these two celebrations we attended this past month.  I didn’t see any men kicking off their fashionable shoes to dance; in fact, I didn’t see that many men participating at all – not with their wives or girlfriends or partners or with each other.  I also didn’t see men smiling from ear to ear or laughing hard or singing their hearts out. Women had it all over the men when it came to letting loose on the dance floor.       

While I’m sure the men were enjoying themselves in their own way, they seemed perfectly content to sit alone, engage in iPhone activity and there even a few guys circled around an iPad to watch a sporting event.  

Although I had a blast at both weddings, I’m very excited about getting together with a friend this week to catch up on life...