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questionscantaskmom · 7 years ago

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"Great things in my life”

My mom wrote this to me on September 28, 2016. The title is hers.

This story is an attempt to share with my adult sons and young grandchildren the amazing man that I loved and stayed married to for thirty years, even though we divorced and there was tremendous strife, anger and sadness at times while they were growing up.

I was lucky in love. I suppose I had what every girl wanted, I was pretty, with great, thick, wavy hair, silky smooth skin and I was thin and incredibly shapely at a very young age. I had no idea how many men and boys are attracted to and find it easy to fall in love based on a woman’s looks, but i do see it all the time now. It turned out to be a great advantage because I became social which increased the opportunity to have more dates as well as girl and boy friends in school. I learned what was important to me and it was honesty, respect and a fantastic sense of humor. I loved to laugh.

I was born into a great family, healthy, happy, ambitious and secure destined to live the American Dream. As I grew, it was clear I was the golden child sparkling with greatness, intelligence, beauty, love and adoration!

I had a fantastic grandma and grandpa to lead family rituals, holidays, celebrations and family values. We lived in nice houses in Long Island with good schools near a temple. Mom was very organized when she knew daddy would drop us off at the beach if we were ready when he had to go to work in the morning. We changed into bathing suits as soon as we woke up and waited by the car as they packed up the trunk. Once settled on the beach you would see mommy in her chair under the umbrella, Mona was asleep in the square, wooden play pen that doubled as a crib at the beach. Then there was an Army green wool blanket laid out for me and my sister to sit on to have our lunch. There was a huge cooler that had food for breakfast, lunch and supper plus fruit for snacks. When daddy picked us up at 6 or 7, we went home to take baths and right to bed. It was a wonderful time in my life.

Even though daddy died very young it wasn’t before I learned about his love and respect for family, his generous heart and his pure goodness.

Mommy was not college educated or intellectual but she wanted the best for me. She was proud to be a bookkeeper and be able to do well at her job and she showed great pride when I brought home good grades. However it was Alan who taught me about tolerance, hatred, prejudice, McCarthysm and communism.

I always dressed well with shoes and purse matching, with white gloves. I was polite and appealing.

I started listening to rock and roll in 1958 because my older sister was always playing records. My favorite song was ‘Come Go With Me’ by the Del Vikings.

One extraordinary memory was when Andrea snuck me into a rock and roll show at the Brooklyn Paramount which was a great thrill!

For my birthday, mom brought me into NYC to Radio City Music Hall to see “Please don’t eat the Daiseys” starring Doris Day And The Rockketts! and lunch at Tad’s Steak with baked potato and salad for $1.99!

After daddy died we had to sell the brand new split level house in Plainview with wallpaper and move to a junior 4 garden Apartment on 153rd Ave and 72nd St in Flushing, Queens. There was a swamp behind the apartment and we caught tadpoles in jars.

My mom slept on a high rise in the living room, Mona and I slept in the master bedroom and Andrea had the mini dining room. It sure didn’t compare to our previous homes. What stuck in my head was that my divorced uncle Ali, my mom’s brother had to cosign the lease. There were a lot of things that irritated me in those days. My mom really screwed up sending Andrea to Jamaica High School and that's when I started to grow very angry with my mom. She was selfish, looking for a husband and leaving me in charge of Mona. She never understood or even tried to understand Andrea. It took years till I finally was able to forgive her.

I had a girlfriend whose name was Joanie Costa and we went to see scary movies on Saturdays and once she took me to her church when she went for confession. I didn’t like it at all. It was dark and spooky!

We only stayed there in Queens for third, fourth and fifth grades and then my mom married a toad named Jack Kaplan and they moved us to a house in Valley Stream where I started 6th grade in Corona Avenue School. Jack had two fat children, Andre and Jacqueline, ugh!

I started Memorial Junior High School and was in 7th grade. I made friends easily and all was fine. There were a group of boys that were apparently smarter than the rest of the boys in school and they called themselves the Mafia Judea and consisted of Eric Gottlieb, Gregg Solomam, Bruce Levine and a few others whose names I don’t remember. At that age boys would call on the phone but didn’t say much. I remember going to the movies with Gregg, we loved to laugh and saw Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis films. My friends joined the youth group at The Temple Gates of Zion and we had socials and while I was shy about dancing, my feet went wild to the music of Bobby Freeman, 1958, Let’s Dance and The Contours, Do You Love Me? Because of my friendship with Diane Epstein we also went to the youth group at her temple where Eric Gottlieb’s parents were members too.

When I was 12 and 13 I was allowed to take the LIRR into the city with my girlfriend, Diane Epstein to see My Fair Lady and then go to lunch.

One of my fondest memories of junior high school was when I took it upon myself to write a bold, blunt and scathing letter to Mr. Fernandez about his unprofessional behavior in 7th grade Spanish as he verbally tortured Barbara Weiselman ruthlessly. I’m not sure if I knew or even worried that the persecution would then be turned on me, but it didn’t make me cry.

Several of the teachers hit on me. I was disillusioned. It wasn't long before I saw that will happen over and over throughout life.

Somewhere between 9th and 10th grade we pledged for sororities and had socials with like fraternities. I remember Jeff Gottfried, a football player, Alan Pollack and Larry Landis who really helped me get through algebra homework. I remember having lots of dates, going to parties almost every weekend. I had one boyfriend who picked me up from school in a convertible and drove me into NYC to see a play. I had fun in high school, I thought I was popular enough, I thought I knew everybody, and I thought they liked me for who I was, not what I looked like. I know that I was pretty and thin, but I like what my friend Bobby Davis said, “she was a stunner”.

The summer of 1965, a very magical summer for me, I was sixteen and I came up to Suffern, a place I had never heard of, to be the mother’s helper to a family from Queens, to help with a two year old boy in a stroller and a 4 or 5 year old girl who went to Deerkill Day camp.

I was in Valley Stream Central High School, in a Jewish sorority that had events and socials with fraternities at Brooklyn and Queens Colleges. Lucky for me, boys found me attractive and I had a lot of dates, dances and socials filling up the weekends on my calendar, and who wouldn’t mind the attention. Sorry to say how clueless I was, I had no idea what effect I had on the male counselors at the pool when I appeared in my bikini.

Dating counselors started happening and I remember a counselor named Jim, Phil Rhodes but once I met Alan, I wasn’t interested in anyone else.

I got invited to movies and bowling with the senior girls and the senior boys and to this day I’m close with Diane Kirmer, her sister Maxine is one of my closest friends and Stephanie Gilbert. Alfie was the godfather to our sons and I loved Alfie, one of the finest men I have known. He was so full of love, respect, with a warm and generous heart.

Alan was one of a kind, there was nobody like him, he had skills beyond most in sports, on the basketball court, tennis court, paddleball and softball field There was no one like him in sports, humor, intensity and passion. He was smart, environmentally conscious, politically connected, he marched in Washington, we spent time in bookstores as he obviously felt it was his responsibility to teach, he was always teaching. He was romantic. We were married for 30 years and are blessed with our fantastic sons, but he was tormented inside.

The summer of 1965 was a turning point in my life. I was pleasantly hit on by many of the counselors at Deerkill Day Camp till I officially met Alan, after watching him watch me as I moved around the pool deck for what seemed like days. One Friday night after the kids were asleep, I walked down past the pool and the casino to Black Birch, a couple of bungalows connected by a common bathroom for some of the counselors. I was in one room chatting and hearing the first few lines of a song and then it stopped and a new record was put on so he could listen to the first few lines of the next song. How irritating, I thought so I move into the next room to observe him playing music to his delight. He was pretty weird looking, wearing a mustard colored sweat pants and jacket, looks like he wasn’t crazy about haircuts or shaving and naturally I had no problem registering my complaint about hearing just one line from each song. That's how we met.

The next morning he invited me for breakfast and after that I did not want to date other boys ever again! I was 16 and he was 25. I was in love, not that I really knew what it means to be ‘in love’ but it’s all internal turmoil and smiles.

We were married for 30 years in spite of our differences. After raising a family with all the friends and family watching, all our travels, celebrations, deaths, losses, pain and sickness, here I am, thriving and loving and feeling so lucky to be telling this glorious story. Had I been diagnosed with cancer when I was 35, I would have been spitting bullets, furious, ready to kill to be struck down and not able to raise my boys and color my fantastic journey, but NO! At 67, I am ready and feel grateful that ALS is not like so many awful illnesses that cause pain, disfigurement, constant fear or horrible Altzheimers! I’ve had a great life. I married one phenomenal man whom I loved intensely and he loved me. We had a great romance, when he went off for spring break to Florida his senior year at CW Post College, I got a letter or a post card every single day, sometimes there were two or three words in the letter, but I loved it!

We got married and had a very full life. We had friends, went to the theatre, movies and even nice restaurants which was big because he had very little interest in food. We went camping, to concerts, to ball games, the beach and travelled in New England, the mid-atlantic states and California. We went cross country three summers, The first summer was 1971 with our eight month baby boy in a car bed in the back seat of our 1970, light blue VW bug. The roof rack had the car bed carriage wheels plus a trunk full of diapers and baby food. ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK was beautiful and we loved it!

Altogether with local travels and long distance travels we visited many of the magnificent national parks.

Acadia, dad loved the book, A Separate Peace by John Knowles and the character wanted to be the first thing the sun shined on in the morning. Unfortunately, it was one of our first camping trips, it rained and not only did we fail to dig a trench, I was pregnant and touched the tent and we were soaked and ended up sleeping in the front seats of the tiny blue bug.

We camped in Arches with Tom & Jean, Sierra Arch National Wilderness, The canyons of the Sierra Anchas containing multiple large cliff dwellings--and some of the most rugged terrain in Arizona.The Badlands, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Carlsbad Caverns, Death Valley, Everglades, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Great Sand Dunes, Great Smokey Mountains, Hot Springs, Mount Rainier, Petrified Forest, Redwood, Rocky Mountains, Saguaro, Sequoia, Shenandoah, Wind Cave, Yellowstone, Yosemite. We spent time in Boston Garden, Cape Cod, most of the 50 United States.

Your dad was one amazing person with a magnetic personality! There was nobody like him, he was an extremist, a passionate person who loved talent, education, sports, life and greatness. He was always teaching and sharing what he read and loved, Paul Robeson, James Baldwin, Kahil Gibran, the Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Martin Luther King, Joan Baez, Marnie Nixon great athletes, Larry Bird, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell. I learned tennis well and both college and NBA basketball. We went to track meets, tennis matches, marathons, we were outdoors people.

He was incredibly romantic, he loved the song “The Way you Look Tonight", he declared it “our” song and we danced to it whenever we heard it. The best surprise was when we were together on a subway train and he pulled out a folded looseleaf page from his pocket and began to serenade me with "The Way you Look Tonight" in French! Another song that he felt was “our” song was "You’re in my heart, you’re in my soul” by Rod Stewart which felt so personal about the way he felt about me.

I loved to laugh to the extent that when I met a person without a sense of humor, I felt walls instantly going up, isolating us. I am a contagious laugher, once I start, there's was no end in sight. Dad read MAD Magazine and there was a fairly heavy man dressed in white like a chef with a sledge hammer raised over his shoulder and a 5 oz can of Contadina Tomato Paste on the table. The red tomato paste splattered everywhere with the commercial saying, “how do they get those three great tomatoes into that itty biddy can!” That photo got me cracking up for years.

Unfortunately there was an excess of yelling, and screaming, quite tumultuous years when you and your brother were teens and no matter how angry I was I really want you to know the best of him, because he was the best. There was great dysfunction when Alan and his sisters were growing up and they learned to hide from the truth. To this day they are worlds apart for a reality check.

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