Here's Where I Was "Strabunsing Harum"

July 8, 2021

Dear Aunt Claire,

If you tried to call me yesterday and wondered where I was “strabunsing harum” (gallivanting about) as you always wanted to know, I was with all the other people who gathered to celebrate you and your life—and, at your request, not grieve your death. Although we’re terribly sad, I hope your ears were ringing. So many people had lovely things to say about you and your long, well-lived life. You would have loved to chat with them all!

Marc and Ted each spoke lovingly of you and how you always managed to balance your career as an occupational therapist—first working with stroke patients and later starting the OT program at Kean College of New Jersey—with being their mother, long before work-life balance was even a thing.

I recall visiting you in your office at Kean on several occasions, and I remember this story that happened during your tenure there: You woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t remember if you’d turned off the coffee pot in the office. Ever practical, you called the campus safety and security office to see if someone could go check on the coffee pot. After you made this request, the person on the other end of the phone said, “Lady, we can’t do that right now, there’s a fire on campus.” Luckily, the blaze wasn’t in your building and, as you discovered the next morning, you had, in fact, turned off the coffee machine!

Marc and Ted also talked about your optimism, your knack for connecting with strangers, and how your service as a trustee on the board of Beth Sholom Reform Temple in Clifton (now a part of Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield) exemplified your commitment to Judaism.

I have a few distinct memories from your time in that congregation: I remember how you nurtured the temple’s “Laura Fischer Memorial Library” into existence after Tante Laura died and honored her memory by serving as the librarian for many years. I wonder what became of all those Laura Fischer Library books with the blue and white bookplates. Maybe some of them made it to Ner Tamid…

At Ted’s bar mitzvah luncheon in the social hall, when the DJ told him it was time to dance with his favorite girl, instead of picking you, he picked Jodi Cook… and in the four-plus decades since, I’ve reminded him of that faux pas every so often.

Lastly, although it happened long before I entered the Jewish professional world, I knew that having a woman cantor, as that congregation did, was a big deal. I’m not sure I realized back then that Barbara Ostfeld was the first ordained female cantor, but I always knew you were quite fond of her—and it was mutual. I connected with her during my time at the URJ, and she wrote this to me earlier this week, “I'm sorry and think that this particular loss is shared to one degree or another by so many. I count myself among them. She was unforgettable.”

Unforgettable is an apt description. So many of my friends (and Ma’s and Amy’s, too) remember you—and told me so on Facebook: “I remember your aunt as a sweet, quiet, gentle soul,” said Rabbi Debbie Bravo; Ma’s friend, Kathy Kahn, said, “I remember Claire so well. What a sweetheart she was...” Amy’s lifelong friend, Maria, wrote: “Aunt Claire was a lovely person…” (I love how she called you “Aunt Claire,” just like everyone called Uncle Irv “Uncle Irv.”) Judy Tushman said, “Claire’s collection of Quimper was the first thing she showed me in her apartment. It was amazing, and so was Claire. A truly lovely person, and a pleasure to know.”

Speaking of Quimper, I used to love to scour the tables at flea markets and antique shows for the familiar yellow and blue pottery and was so excited when, on rare occasions, I spotted it. One year that happened a few months before one of your milestone birthdays, and I was thrilled to purchase the two small saucers for you, adding a small card that said that as aunts go, no one could Quimper!

Even though it was a funeral, it was nice to see Marilyn and Phyllis (they hadn’t seen each other since before the pandemic), Norma, Eddie, and Ellen (and her husband), all of whom where there for you, as was Colleen’s sister and her family, along with a few of their cousins. Phyllis told me that she was so sad about you because, “Not only were she and your mom my cousins, but they were my friends. As a matter of fact, Claire and Jash were chaperones at my Sweet 16 party which was held at the China Doll in Manhattan.”

Orit Simhoni came up from Maryland to be with us yesterday, and although I spoke with her only briefly, she told me what a mentor you always were to her in her own career as an OT. In some ways, you were an OT rock star. Our family friend and also an OT, Jeanne Weisblatt, told me she “remembered meeting your aunt a long time ago and being so excited that she was a professor of occupational therapy at Kean College.”

I remember other things about your career—like how if you have to walk steps with a bad foot or ankle, you’re supposed to start “up with good and down with the bad.” I also recall how you often had a tape measure in your purse specifically to measure the width of various public restroom stalls to see if a wheelchair could fit within them—long before the ADA was enacted into law. Mostly, I remember the story you told about sending pairs of students from Kean to the mall to take turns being pushed by the other in a wheelchair, gaining a new perspective about the real-life, daily challenges people using wheelchairs face. When one pair of students switched places in public, they reported back to you and the class that they’d inadvertently caught the attention of other shoppers, who no doubt thought they were witnessing a miraculous cure unfold.

Debbie Stone was there, too, and told me how you and Uncle Jash were in the congregation the night she was installed as president of Temple Beth Tikvah, the community you joined after BSRT got folded into Ner Tamid, and how nice it was to look out and see your smiling face. Seeing a few pictures of you on Facebook, one of my friends wrote to me: “I can see your face in her smile.”

Mrs. Marks and Cheryl Ronan from Brookshire Drive were there, too. Mrs. Marks looks exactly as I remember her, and she told me that Phyllis’ daughter is pregnant, and she and Mr. Marks are very excited about becoming great-grandparents in a few months. I wouldn’t have known Cheryl, but I did remember that we’re nearly the exact same age (two days apart, it turns out), and it was nice to chat with her. All the “kids” talked about your backyard, the scene of so many cookouts and family celebrations of all kinds. I can see it all in my mind’s eye as though it was yesterday—the patio, Uncle Irv’s garden, home plate, the pitcher’s mound near the oak tree, and all your turquoise and white napkins, serving pieces, and paper goods that were specifically for outdoor entertaining. Someone mentioned there were no fences between most of the backyards on the street, so we probably could have walked straight through them all the way to Route 23.

I also spent time chatting with Beth, who drove to New Jersey from near State College, Pennsylvania. She told me about your trip together to Fallingwater (I remember when you went with her) and also about the place (whose name I cannot remember) you visited with her when she went to see you in Detroit a few years ago. She’s coming to NYC in October, and Amy and I plan to do some museum-hopping with her while she’s here. We’ve never spent time with her, and I’m looking forward to it. In an email I wrote to her last night, I said, “No doubt, we'll bring Aunt Claire along with us in spirit” and that is definitely true. I can’t quite believe you’re gone, but I will carry you in my heart always.

xoxo,

Jane

P.S. Of course, I'll always be so grateful for your help after my surgery in 2011 and remember how you wanted to be the first one to stay with me because, as you said, you knew how to manage the drains. I could not have asked for better or more loving care during that week.

Even on the Reading Front, 2020 Was a Crappy Year

I set out to read 12 books during the year, but never clicked the “Start Challenge” button on goodreads.com. Talk about foreshadowing…

No excuses here but that the year sucked us dry in so many ways.

I started myriad books, but these three I actually finished. Interesting that all of them are fiction, not generally my genre of choice. Whatever….chalk it up to 2020!

May 2021 be a better year in every way.

What Will They Have to Fight for in the Future?

 

“She changed the way the law sees gender."

Abbe Gluck, Yale Law School professor and former clerk of RBG

I never turn on the television during the day, but this morning, when my sister called and said, “Turn on MSNBC,” I complied.
 
I cried as RBG’s flag-draped casket, her clerks as honorary pallbearers, made its way, ever so slowly, from the street, up the steps, and into the large entryway of the United States Supreme Court, coming to rest on Lincoln’s catafalque. Her own family and her Supreme Court family awaited her.
 
I watched and listened as Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt chanted the 23^rd Psalm, spoke movingly about the justice, drawing parallels between the Torah and the U.S. Constitution, and then chanted the El Malei Rachamim—an only-in-America moment that RBG, no doubt, would have appreciated.

 
As the coverage continued outside, an MSNBC reporter queried people in line as they waited to pay their respects. Among them was a woman who had driven from Philadelphia with her 12-year-old daughter and the daughter’s friend. Hearing the masked girls talk (in their 12-year-old way) about RBG and her legacy and what it means for them was... right and precious and sad and wonderful, all at once. They reminded me of a battle I fought for gender equality when I was not much older than 12, a battle I now realize RBG, though not yet a household name, was fighting right alongside me.
 
Tonight, I told my sister about the girls with these bittersweet words: “They didn’t ever have to fight to join the Key Club, but God only knows what they’ll have to fight for in the future.”

 

 

 

 

Music and Memories: Where Do They Take You?

Recently, I started the New York Times 30-Day Challenge, and this past week, one of the non-exercise day challenges was this:

Choose a song you love that you want to share with another person and ask them to do the same. Tell them why you are sharing it — does it make you think of them? Does it explain how you feel? Or does it bring back a great memory? Don’t just listen and forget it. Take time to talk about it. This is a great challenge to help you connect with children, but you also can share it with a romantic partner or best friend.

My first thought was this Facebook post from March of 2019:

The power of music: This morning Hall and Oates' "Kiss on My List" was playing in Dunkin Donuts while I waited on line. Without missing a beat, I was back at Lafayette College, it was 1983...a Saturday night and Zete was spinning disks. My shoes were sticking to the dance floor, friends were nearby, and all was right with the world.

Then yesterday, during the weekly pre-Shabbat Zoom gathering of the JCC Association team, one of my colleagues, a former song leader, chose “Blowin’ in the Wind” as this week’s song. He described how he first heard it at home as a third-grader in 1989 and rightly noted that the sentiment and the lyrics are as apt today as they were when they were written back in 1963. While he sang, accompanying himself on the guitar, I refrained from typing into the chat that the song and I are the same age!

In fact, there are many songs whose opening notes magically whoosh me back to places and people from my past.

Play Billy Joel’s “My Life” and I’m immediately in Mrs. Ritter’s brown, two-door Plymouth Volare. Susie, my friend Amy’s sister, is driving, and a bunch of us are squished together in the back seat, heading home from the annual Franklin-Piscataway homecoming game. The radio’s blasting, and it’s as though Billy Joel is talking directly to us, high schoolers just starting to find our voices and try out our wings:

I don't need you to worry for me 'cause I'm alright
I don't want you to tell me it's time to come home
I don't care what you say anymore this is my life
Go ahead with your own life leave me alone

The same thing happens with “Evergreen,” but instead of in a car, I’m in Bound Brook, one town over from home, at my high school’s yearbook signing dinner, slow dancing with Ross Ignall. (Ironically, that year, the yearbooks weren’t back from the printer in time for the event, so we all signed staple bound booklets, specially assembled for the occasion.)

The opening bars of “You Are” by Lionel Richie are from the same era, and those notes whisk me to Easton, Pennsylvania. It’s freshman year and I’m in Ruef Hall, Room 307, with its matching comforters, curtains and rug—the most coordinated room on our floor and maybe in the entire dorm. It’s Saturday night, the music’s mellow, and my roommate Terry and I are chilling, waiting for the clock to strike 11 so we can head out for the evening—to Zete first, then maybe a stop at another fraternity house, or, to my favorite spot, the basement of Marquis Hall, to sit in an oversized faux leather booth at “The Leopard’s Lair,” for French fries and diet Pepsi. 

Two musical pieces, though, predate Lionel, Billy, Daryl, John, and Barbra.

Thanks to WQXR, this one came blasting into the living room at 12 Webster Road when there was still a stereo and speakers along the wall where a piano later sat. All four of us were in the room at the time, and as if on a whim, my mother said to the elementary school-aged Amy and me: “Does this song remind you of another one?” A few minutes of quiet listening, and… “Hatikvah!” I shouted, surprised at having made the connection to a song from an album of Israeli songs that played often on our stereo.

Naomi Shemer’s classic, “Jerusalem of Gold,” was another of those Israeli songs. It quickly became such a favorite that I chose it as the closing song for my bat mitzvah service. For many years, hearing its soulful refrain took me back to that night more than four decades ago. More recently, it’s brought me to the back patio of the King David Hotel from whence I caught a first glimpse of the walls of the Old City in 2004—on the first night of my first-ever visit to Jerusalem. A longtime URJ board member, Arthur Heyman, z”l, had accompanied me to the spot, creating what was then, and especially is now, a sweet memory indeed.

Does Anything Quimper to This Small World Passover Story?

For nearly as long as I can remember, my Aunt Claire has been collecting Quimper French pottery (pronounced CamPear). It’s mostly yellow or white, round or octagonally shaped, and often includes a man or a woman standing in profile, surrounded by a border of dainty, yet measured flourishes of blue, green, or red paint. In addition to plates, bowls, and cups and saucers, my aunt has collected, in the course of nearly 50 years, gravy boats, serving platters, wall hangings, pitchers, vases, and more. Some out-of-the ordinary pieces are painted in shades of green, but still are adorned with the distinctive French country figures. A man on one plate, a woman on another.

When she redecorated her kitchen, sometime in the 1980s, I’m guessing, she made Quimper the centerpiece of the room, choosing wallpaper, fabric for the window curtain, and plain blue everyday dishes—all to complement the yellow pottery. She and I trekked to the Pierre Deux store in New York City to find exactly the right wallpaper and fabric pattern.

Fast forward to this past Thursday evening.

As I scrolled through Facebook, admiring all the seder tables, adorned with laptops to bring friends and family into our quarantined celebrations, this photo caught my eye:

Commenting on the photo, I said, “Chag sameach! And a weird question: Do your yellow dinner plates have figures of men and women on them? Are they Quimper?”

In his reply, the poster of the photo, one-half of a couple I know through a mutual friend (and, more recently, through my synagogue) wrote: “Yes, and I don’t know!”

Me: “What does it say on the back of the plate? My aunt has been a longtime collector of antique pieces of this French pottery, which is pronounced ‘CamPear,’ and she has an incredible collection of it. It seems her collector's eye has rubbed off on me!

Adam: “I looked on the back of the plate and it does say Quimper.”

He then sent me this photo via a direct message and our conversation continued from there:

Me: As I suspected! I foresee a blog post coming from this conversation. Stay tuned....and chag sameach!

Adam: Ha ha! Ok. They belonged to Marla’s mom, Donna Newman, and after she passed away they came to Marla.

Me: Are they your Passover dishes or do you use them year-round?

Adam: We use them on special occasions year-round.

It’s now Saturday afternoon, and I’m crafting this post—not only because I love this story of an unexpected connection, but also so I can send it to my Aunt Claire in Florida. She’ll love it, too!

Never again will a Passover come or go that I don’t think of Adam and Marla and the Quimper dishes on their holiday table.

Wishing everyone a ziessen Pesach!

My Guilt-Free Pandemic

Sheltering-in-place is hard for everyone, but perhaps more so for those of us who live alone—even if we’re introverts. Sure, I love what my sister calls “bonding with my apartment,” but that’s usually after a week of work, working out, socializing, and dealing with the stuff that goes along with running a household: laundry, garbage, recycling, cooking, bills, and all the rest.

Here are five things I won’t feel guilty about during the pandemic—and perhaps not ever again:

1. Not Cooking: Although blizzards and pandemics send many people scurrying to the kitchen to produce huge quantities of comfort food, challah, brownies, and the like, I’m not one of them. In the three weeks I’ve been home, I’ve made one batch of chili and one chuck roast—most of which is in portion-size containers in the freezer. That’s enough. Cooking brings me no joy, no comfort, and I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m going back to salads, veggie burgers, and scrambled eggs. My kitchen and I will both be happier that way.

2. Not Reading: There’s nothing that goes better with bonding with my apartment than curling up with a good book. There’s a problem here, though: I don’t have the bandwidth to read. No concentration. No attention span. No comprehension. Therefore, no guilt.

3. Not Tuning in to Minyan: Prayer can be challenging in the best of times. These days it’s nearly impossible. I think I’ll stick to a Mi Shebeirach for each ambulance siren—and there are a lot of them here across the street from NYU/Langone Tisch Hospital—and for the people I know personally who are fighting COVID-19, including a friend from my hereditary cancer network who is hospitalized on a ventilator. Any more than that is… Just. Too. Much.

4. Not Observing Passover the “Right” Way: In a year when my MacBook Air—not MetroNorth—is going to take me to the seder, does it really matter if all the chametz is out of the house or if I shake out the crumbs from the toaster-oven before Wednesday night? About some traditions, though, I say, “Pandemic, be damned.” Come the virtual seder, I’ll still want assurance that shmorah matzah tastes exactly the same as the box it comes in and that Elmo is going to make his usual guest appearance in time to sing “Echad Mi Yodea.”

5. Oreos: Drastic times demand drastic measures, and if Oreos are my comfort food of choice right now, so be it.

Stay safe, stay healthy, and wash your hands.

5 Things I Miss in These Crazy Times

Today it’s cloudy and rainy in New York City. In an earlier time (like, maybe three weeks ago), I would have welcomed such a day to stay home and hunker down. After two weeks of doing just that, though, here are five things I’m missing in the age of COVID-19:

1. Browsing for Books: Even with shelves of unread books, browsing for new ones is one of my all-time favorite activities. I can’t wait for libraries and bookstores to reopen, so I can get lost in the stacks once again.

2. Hanging Out at Union Square: Although it’s probably OK for my sister and me to hang out together as we often do on weekends, we’ve refrained from visiting each other except by video chat. Right now, I’d like nothing better than to stroll to Union Square, spend some time in Barnes & Noble, and then visit with her in Apt. U21F, which overlooks 14^thStreet on one side and south down Broadway on the other.

3. Spending Weekends at Del Boca Vista: Amy and I go out to New Jersey about once a month, and it’s a highlight in our world. We have it down to a science: We meet at “our Dunkin’” in Penn Station on Saturday morning just before 11 a.m.—in time to take the New Jersey Transit 11:14 to New Brunswick. (We both purchase e-tickets on our phones, but we activate them differently: one upon boarding the train and the other when she hears the conductor’s ticket punch. Can you guess who’s who?!) Our dad meets the train, and from there it’s on to Frank’s Pizza for lunch and then home to “the new 12 Webster Road” in DBV. A trip to Labyrinth Books in Princeton and dinner out are often on the agenda, as is breakfast at the Somerset Diner. We’re nothing if not predictable!

4. Sitting in “My Pew” at Minyan: No, my pew doesn’t have my name on it, and no worries if someone else sits there, but when all’s right with the world, Isabelle is to my right, Harriet and Albert are in front of us, and some combination of Sandra, Laura, Jesse, and/or Charlie usually are behind us. From her voice alone, Joanne makes her presence known; I don't even have to turn around and look to know when she's there. I’ve been shunning virtual services (and several invitations to “meet up” virtually with friends) thus far—mostly because my eyes are so tired from a week of work that regularly includes eight or 10 hours of screen time that I just want screen-free evenings and a screen-free Shabbat.

5. People Watching: This pastime of mine is right up there with book browsing, and except for the little bit I can do while standing in the check-out line at Fairway, it’s mostly off limits these days. Soon, I hope, I’ll be taking in lots of good people-watching on my bus ride to minyan, browsing in Barnes & Noble or visiting in Union Square after services, and that when we’re able to find a weekend that works for all of us, Amy and I will be back out at DBV, and I’ll have a chance to people-watch in Penn Station while I wait for her in front of “our Dunkin’.”

Stay healthy and safe, my friends—and if you’re so inclined, let me know what you’re missing in the age of coronavirus.