Lois Submerged - Waterlogged But Alive

OK, OK, I know..... in my previous blogs about my adventures in Panama I promised to tell the tale of how my Father attempted to teach me to swim and I always try to keep my promises.  Sadly, I have been unable to find a single photo of the episode of my life as a fish, but I will try to draw an accurate picture with words alone.  However, before I launch into my expose I really must explain a bit about the personal dynamics between my Father and me lest I come off as being the world's worst wimp or, worse yet, the world's most monstrous masochist.

As I have mentioned before, my Father was a brilliant, talented  but very immature and unstable person and I think I knew it even before I emerged from the womb.  Consequently while other infants were busy filling their days with guzzling milk and pooping and testing out various screams, roars and bellows to find out how to best get their way I was wrestling with the problem of how to deal with Pappy without becoming the first infanticide victim on Christian Street.  My Father had no time for children in general (they couldn't pay their way, they couldn't held an intelligent conversation, were totally useless at Bridge and the worst part was that this infant that had moved into the house and threatened to trap him in a boring middle class existence was not even a BOY.)  

I think I always knew that my prime mission in life was to NOT irritate Pappy.  I am sure I did my share of bellowing and screaming initially, but I am told I was really quite restrained for the first few years.  Then when I was about 2 there was the defining incident when Pappy told me to do something which was, to me, totally unacceptable and I remember vividly that I drew myself up, stamped my little foot and shouted, "NO".  There suddenly appeared at my eye level an enraged purple face with veins throbbing at the temples and eyes bulging from their sockets, and a strangled voice hissed,  " If you ever say no to me again  I will kill you."    And  I knew then and there that I had to adjust my approach.  After all, my Mother, with all the good intentions in the world, try as she might,  could not be expected to protect me every moment of the day and nite.  Obviously the wise path would be to never intentionally irritate this dangerous madman again. And you must remember that we lived with my grandparents so the welfare of 3 other people was also contingent on my executing flawlessly my effort to become invisible and non-irritating.  This worked fairly well for the next 14 or so years (until I learned to type and suddenly was seen as a useful commodity).  Unfortunately, the plan had a huge flaw in that one could not always tell what in the hell would set the wild guy off and consequently there would be unexpected explosions, fireworks and demolitions which would cause us to rush madly through the rubble for cover and send me  back to the drawing board to try to refine the methodology of Not Irritating Pappy.

So......when we confronted this gorgeous Olympic size free swimming pool in the Clubhouse in the Canal Zone and my Father proclaimed that he would teach me to swim I groaned inwardly but knew that I would have to cooperate while finding some way to avoid ending up stretched out lifeless and blue at the side of the pool with everyone gathered around staring down at my waterlogged corpse.  I had no idea how I was going to accomplish this, but I was brave and confident in my ingenuity and my ability to absorb an enormous amout of psychological  punishment before giving up the ghost.

My Father and I  proceeded into the shallow end of the pool , my Mother, (who could not swim) with a watchful eye and some uneasiness took a seat in the stands.  For about 2 minutes my Father demonstrated the art of holding on to the side of the pool and kicking one's legs forcefully and suggested I copy his actions, which I did with great vigor and many misgivings.  Then he showed me the proper method of stroking with one's arms as he paddled across the shallows.  Next he seized me by the waist and ordered me to put the 2 lessons together while he supported my body horizontally in the water.  I managed that part fairly well considering I was stiff with terror already. 

Next, feeling that I had had sufficient instruction and practice he ordered me to swim whereupon I naturally sank like a stone and rebounded off the bottom spluttering.  My father was frowning, but it was not a dangerous frown...yet....it was the ruminating frown.  "This is not working", he muttered.  I have another idea......I will teach you to dive and you will learn to swim in the process."  Whereupon we adjourned to the side of the pool at about the 4 foot depth level and I was told to bend at the waist, arms outstretched, and to fall gently into the water.  Yeah, sure.  There is no "gently" in a belly flop and that was all I could manage.  This process continued for 10 or 15 minutes with me totally unable to "relax and fall gently"  into the pool but at least I could touch bottom with my feet and climb the ladder to the take off point each time.....tummy smarting a bit from all the flops but still breathing  on my own.  Finally, I bgan to get a bit tired and unknowingly relaxed and accidentally did it right.  And promptly went straight to the bottom head first in a perfect dive and bonked my head on the floor of the pool with a dreadful thunk.

 "Aha", he exulted, "you've got it.....but this is too dangerous in the shallow end.....let's have you dive off the diving board in deeper water."   "But", I protested feebly,  "I can't swim".  "Never mind that", he responded.  "You will probably learn along the way and in the meantime I will be there waiting and will grab you  by the bathing suit straps and pull you up if you don't pop up on your own."   I was still seeing stars, but dutifully shlepped to the diving board, leaned over, stretched out the arms, said  desperate prayer and fell in with the most exquisite of belly flops ever executed.   True to his word, as I flailed around under water Pappy found me and pulled me up to the surface.  "Let's try that again" he said......."I think we are getting somewhere."

I will not prolong the agony for you and force you to experience with me the subsequent 4, 327 belly flops from the diving board as the afternoon continued without success.  At this point I was praying a different prayer.  "Oh, Lord, please take me now !"  There were still a few hours of daylight and I was really, really tired and smarting mightily.  Then a miracle happened.  No, I did not properly execute a dive off the diving board.........this ain't the movies.  My Father got bored.  "That's enough for today", he said brightly.  "We'll try this again next weekend." 

Ah, reprieved !  I would live to see another day and so on the following blessed day I signed up with the swimming coach, Mr. Greiser, for his class on learning to swim.  By Wednesday I was graduating from the class with honors, leaping into the deep end of the pool and swimming across and back, arms flailing and feet kicking...not the prettiest stroke in the world, but no longer sinking like  a stone......By George, I could swim!
Nothing could stop me now.

The Panama Adventure Continues

I realize that I am digressing from my stroll down thru the generations, and I promise my family that I will get back to that history as soon as I get Panama out of my system.  Having once stirred up these memories I feel that I had better continue to the end.  I am living right now in a strange condition.....part ecstacy and part misery and I don't want to have to return to this riccochetting  back and forth between pleasure and pain. Of course the pleasure part is because I can almost reexperience those halcyon days when I think and write about them....the pain comes from my character flaw of always wanting MORE. There are not that many periods in my life that I would chose to relive, (not because they were awful but because I don't think you should try to change your life in retrospect.......what's done is done and you "done" just fine under the circumstances) but I think I would love another go round at the Panama Affair.
However, this is as close as I am going to get to nibbling at that marvelous feast again so..."Thank You, Blog for this chance".

I haven't forgotten that I promised you the tale of how I learned to swim, but in looking for pics from Panama I found several that are integral to my bliss there and the photo on the right deals with one  of my joys.  There was a wonderful Library in the Zone and having always been a voracious reader I immediately got a Library Card and it was there that I made one of my most wonderful discoveries.....the Legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table.  I was totally smitten by the entire myth and gobbled up every word I could find on the subject and then daydreamed myself into the plot.  Some friend of my parents took pity on me and helped me create a cardboard helmet and shield and he even went to a wood shop and had a wooden sword crafted for me.  Please do not ask why I did not identify with Queen Guinivere instead....I had no time for such nonsense....I was a tomboy of the worst or best kind and if I couldn't be a knight of King Arthur then I would just be a cowboy riding with Tom Mix but I wanted nothing to do with satins and laces and such tomfoolery.  Anyway, I spent weeks galloping around Amador Road fighting dragons and evildoers before the attraction palled and I hung up my shield and helmet.

It was in Panama that I also learned to fish.  There was wonderful fishing everywhere off the coast and one day my parents and a group of friends who were avid fishermen decided we would all go out one evening and have a fishing party.....the experts would teach us landlubbers (who had never cast a line and and who flinched at the sight of a worm) and we would all have a jolly time.  Next thing I knew about 6 of us were all in a good sized rowboat rowing across some bay to a dock way over there somewhere and upon arriving the men in the bow proceeded to tie us firmly up with a huge rope.  I was handed a coil of fishing line with a hook on the end and some unfortunate creature impaled thereon and told to toss the hook over the side and keep the coil around my hand.  Of course, I obeyed.  To be honest, I never expected to catch a fish....in fact I almost hoped I wouldn't catch a fish because I was quite shy in those days and really didn't want any attention.  I would have been content to just sit there clutching my coil of rope and watch the others haul fish in all nite long.  The Gods heard my prayer and laughed themselves silly. They had other plans for me.   Before I knew what was happening I felt a tug on my line and then a strong jerk and pull and someone yelled, "You have a bite, Lo, pull it in." so I dutifully pulled and, lo, a good size fish promptly flopped into the boat.  I was congratulated and given a new bit of bait on my hook and back we went to waiting for a strike.  Hardly 5 minutes passed before I felt another tug on my line and then some more commotion under the boat and someone yelled, "You have a bite, Lo, pull it in" and so I did and another fish plopped in and flopped around our feet.   I swear to you that what I am tellling is the God's honest truth.  We sat there for several hours and no one else got even a nibble, but I could hardly drop my hook into the water without some damned fish grabbing it and trying to pull me in.  I was in agony because I knew that the other men were getting really irritated with me hoggging all the fish in the Pacific (I didn't blame them....it was boring for them AND annoying....I would have gladly shared all the fish in the Pacific with everyone) and what was worse, my Father, who was a notoriously bad sport was really getting pissed at being so outshone and if there was anything I didn't want to do it was to irritate my incendiary Father so I sat and prayed that the fish would go to any other hook but mine and even considered dropping my line into the water when no one was looking so I would be spared having to pull in yet another fish. and avoid having even my Mother hate me. 

Suddenly when I was considering jumping overboard and trying to drown myself we all noticed the weirdest thing.....we were all sliding off of our little wooden seats.  Thank heaven, attention was diverted from me but what was happening?  A brief examination showed that the line which we had tied up to the dock several hours earlier was now stretched tight and somehow, the water level seemed to have dropped about 3 feet so the bow of the boat was pulled high out of the water leaving only the stern half afloat.  Everyone had forgotten that the tides in Panama were extreme to say the least and, obviously, the tide was going out!  There were many moments of panic, ill concealed, while all the men clambered up to the bow and tried to climb up the rope to the dock to unattach us.  Somehow, someone succeeded and in a little while we were once more level and floating.  However, everyone had lost their taste for night fishing so back we started to the point of departure. I was all for pulling my line out of the water but was told to leave it and just troll, so, of course, I obeyed trying  frantically to put a curse on my hook so no self respecting fish would come within a yard of it, but when the fishing Gods single you out for a bunch of laughs at your expense you might as well just impale yourself on their tridents as fight fate.  Suddenly I had not a tug on my line but a jerk so monumental  that it nearly catapulted me out of the boat. I screamed and tried to hang on while the coil of rope around my hand tightened and threatened to remove those fingers permanently.  The pull was so strong it actually pulled the boat around despite the rowers and everyone was shouting and screaming either advice or curses.  Whatever was on my line had to have been  at least a whale and I can only thank the fishing Gods for taking pity on me and finally enabling it to break my line and escape.  We made it back to the shore in silence and I don't remember whether much was said on the way home.  I do know that was the last time they invited me to go fishing and, holy mackerel (if you will excuse the expression) was I glad !

Adventures in Panama

Not sure if you are ready for this, but in perusing my messy photo files I came upon this rather marvelous photo of My Mom, Dad and Me taken in 1936 when we spent 6 months living in the Panama Canal Zone.  Aren't we gorgeous?
(And don't forget, my Mamma had the most exquisite bright red hair, just a shade darker than copper wire and just as electrifying.)

I had not intended to go into this subject right now, but, having found the photo at enormous effort I decided I had better fetch it  out and stuff it into a draft blog while I had it in my grasp so to speak.  And now that I am gazing at it fond memories keep erupting all over the place so I guess I am stuck with doing a feature on our idyllic 6 month stay in, what was for us, a very exotic and exciting place.

In 1936 my Dad was given the opportunity to relocate to The Panama Canal Zone to participate in a project to build a settlement for some of the Canal Workers in Panama.  (My Dad was an Architect, Engineer and Naval Architect and was sent down by the Navy Yard In Philly where he was employed).  The whipped cream and cherry on the cake was the fact that he was encouraged to take his family with him as part of the arrangement...(transportation via a 6 day journey by ship was free).  Being extremely ingenious and aggressive, Pappy was able to locate an American resident of the canal zone who was about to return to the US on a sabbatical and arrange to rent their house while they were gone.  Naturally he had managed to find one of the more senior residents whose seniority entitled them to a fantastic near mansion in the nicest part of the Zone.  Holy Moly.....not only a sea voyage (my first ever), but a posh residence and, for us, the most exotic local imaginable.......a heavenly gift for sure.

I was in the 4th grade at the time.  Fortunately, because I was very bright and at the top of my class, leaving before the semester was quite finished and attending school in Panama in the fall until we returned was no problem.  Off we went in May just after my 9th birthday and I was out of my head with excitement over the prospect of this amazing experience.  For someone who had hardly ever been out of West Philly (not counting brief excursions to Pittsburgh and Atlantic City....max distance 200 miles) it was like being transported to the Moon or Mars, and the reality was hardly less fantastic than interstellar travel.  The Canal Zones on each coast of the Isthmus of Panama were  U.S territories.  Panama City which abutted the Zone on the Pacific side, which is where we were bound, was just a few miles journey by car or Jitney (the taxis of the area) and was almost primitive and totally exotic by our standards.  And, a few miles by car in a different direction plunged you into the Jungle....no, I mean a real jungle with wild animals (mostly monkeys were seen) and gorgous wild birds. trees festooned with wild orchids and hanging vines ala Tarzan and leaf covered paths where you had to be nimble in order to avoid certain threats like snakes and armies of huge ants which, when they crossed the path could cause you to wait for 10 or 15 minutes till their ant caboose finally passed and you could safely continue on.  Those ants were biting fools and were NOT to be messed with epecially in the numbers making up their formidable 12 or 15 inch wide moving column (many carrying bits of cut leaves on their backs).  We would tramp for hours (with a knowledgable guide to keep us out of trouble) through thickets, over streams and along various paths hacked out of the brush with huge machetes......the Panamanian curved swords.  It was so different from West Philly it might as well have been on Mars and I was in 7th heaven.

And there was more....much more.  The weather was balmy, the sky was an incredible cerulean blue, breezes ruffled the palm trees and the tropical foliage and to put it mildly, life was good.   The Canal Zone enjoyed a number of lovely Government amenities, not the least of which was a large pleasure center which featured a cafe with a fantastic old fashioned soda fountain, a Commissary where you could purchase all your groceries at fab prices and an Olympic size swimming pool, the use of which was free to residents.  At the time I did not know how to swim, but I was crazy about the water and had already spent hours frolicking in the shallows of the Atlantic ocean getting shrivelled by long immersion any time we went to Atlantic City.  I could hardly wait to get into this huge pool and frolic thererin.....meanwhile, I spent time in the lesser heaven of the soda fountain imbibing incredible chocolate sodas and dreaming of dashing back and forth with gay abandon in the deep end of the pool.  Incidentally.....the weather was always warm and tropical so swimming season never ended.  The months from around November thru March were the rainy season and the rest of the year was very dry but it was always comfortably warm. 

I can already see that this narrative is going to need several blog chapters so I am going to publish this section and go see if I can locate some other photos from that idyllic period and I will pick up the story with my incredible experience of learning to swim......which, as you may have already guessed, was not in any way ordinary or normal..........mainly because my Father decided he would undertake the project of teaching me to swim and you should already know enough about my Father to be properly terrified on my behalf.  You can stop trembling.....I can reassure you that I did somehow survive.

More later.

Crutches Complicate Life

My beloved cousin Rob just had knee surgery and Jess, his wife sent an email to update interested parties about his condition. 

One of the advantages of being such an ancient person is the fact that you usually get to experience a lot of different things in a long life and can therefore empathize, sympathize and share about many aflictions and joys that your dear ones experience.  Also true regarding Knee Surgery so I decide to reply and offer a tip or two that I had learned during my own knee surgery a few years ago.

There are one or two difficulties one encounters when living alone as a sort of hermit.  There are also innumerable advantages, but, on the minus side, one of the very worst has been when I am on crutches for one reason or another and realize that I need a third if not a fourth arm and hand.  You never question the  design of  Humans with only 2 hands until you are on crutches and realize the degree of your helplessness.

Anyway, in my usually ruthless fashion I decided to give advice whether it was wanted or not and wrote the following email to Rob.  For anyone faced with the Crutch in their future it might be helpful to make a mental note of my suggestion.

Incidentally, my letter contains a brand new Family Note....I finally figured out something about who falls where among the generations of our family.  It only took me 82 years to figure out that, rather than really being an only child,  I have had symbolic brothers and a sister for years.  Oh, happy day !.
The photo shows Herself, Rob and my Mamma.
                                                                                                             

                                        ***************************************

Hi Jess and Rob

Thanks so much for keeping me in the loop on Rob's surgery. I am so glad it is over and that he is home and shlepping around, crutches or not. Oy, the sore armpits....I know, I know. I had knee surgery some years ago and the crutches were the worst part of it plus the inability to CARRY anything. Since the cats are absolutely worthless at bringing one glasses of water I had to devise a sort of bottle canteen hanging around my neck on a string in order to get available water to my bedside or chairside. (I have since substituted a fanny pack which can also carry spectacles, a pencil, book, phone and kleenex) In case Jess is not available, Rob, you should remember this ploy.....it is better than plucking helplessly at the coverlet and with swollen tongue calling piteously for Gunga Din. As I recall from my own experience, you will be mending soon and off to physical therapy in no time.

Good luck, darling and thanks for your lovely letter and compliments....I am touched and both proud and humbled that you think so highly of me. Incidentally.......I have just figured something out and it tickles me. When struggling with who came first, Evan or Oszcar or Max, I realized for the first time that you and I are actually of the same generation.....I just arrived a lot earlier than you , Deb and Bru. I have been saying that I feel like you guys are my children, but actually you are my brothers and sister and that is just how it feels. That is how my Mamma and your Dad and Lew felt about each other too.......she was just about the same number of years older than they were  (15). An interesting little side note to ponder on.

Heal, damn you, heal !!

Love, Lo

Hummingbird Wars

So there I stand at the kitchen sink, washing kitty dishes and getting ready to face the day with brain only one quarter stirring and engaged when I think I hear the sound of a jet engine in the little outside nook beyond my kitchen window.  Even one quarter brain registers this as highly improbable so I scrunch up my eyes to try to see better and I observe that it is NOT a plane nor is it Superman.....it IS a bird....in fact several birds.........hummingbirds, to be exact and they are whirring around and dueling like crazy with their rapier-like beaks, trying to establish which one of them actually owns the feeder that is affixed to my kitchen window.  The fact that there are 5 more feeders within a 6 foot radius doesn't matter to those voracious, contentious  little beasts.  Each one of the flock seems to want to own all of them......there is, apparently, no loving kindness among hummers........just greed. But they are so remarkable and so beautiful that I must forgive them.  I love watching them.  The picture below is not me....don't I wish....but one has to sit still for hours or days to get this to happen and I no longer have the patience.  However....ain't it grand?

When even my fat, but still hungry cats,   batting me about  the  face and neck with their paws and leaping with concrete-clad feet on my unprotected tummy cannot get me up to feed them, my thoughts that the hummingbirds are probably flying in circles and bashing into walls desperate for their nectar usually galvanizes (?) me into action and I stagger out of bed and into the kitchen.  Right now I have 8 feeders hanging at various places around my house and when I peer out each morning most of them are quite empty even though they all had contents when I went to bed the night before.  (Of course, the fact that I am one of those loathesome creatures who watches TV or reads until 4 am  and consequently does not stir until at least noon probably has something to do with it.  I have not been able to train the hummers to keep the same schedule.) But what I have done to somewhat solve the problem has been to send away to Ebay for an extra set of feeders so that I can fill at least the 4 extras at night before I go to bed so that they will be all ready to be plunked up on their hooks the moment I am ambulatory. 

It usually takes 10 or 15 minutes after I hang the full feeders before the little hysterics calm down, decide they cannot defend all the feeders at once and grudgingly settle down to feed at just one or two of them.  From that point there is generally at least one bird  outside my kitchen window guzzling away every 5 minutes or so throughout the daylight hours and even into the twilight. 

I often wonder what the hell they did before I started my Hummer Smorgasbord and somehow convinced all the neighbors to do the same.  These damned birds are now obviously the Rockefellers of the bird population due to our largesse.....were they on Welfare before I showed up??   Did they perch pitously on street corners with teensy signs that said "Will Hum or Whirr for Food"?  Somewhere I read that humingbirds cannot walk though I recently saw a documentary that showed one variety that hops like hell all over the flower strewn field to find their meal.  I also learned that they cannot survive on nectar alone and must get some protein via ingesting tiny bugs.  I must admit, I have never been able to observe them doing that and it is probably just as well because I might be driven to go out with some tiny net and attempt to capture some goodies for them.  My life as a handmaiden to critters is complicated enough without that, thank you.


One of these days I will stumble upon the photo I shot out of my window with one of my very own tribe and when I do I will publish it.  In the meantime, these will have to do.  Now I must go back to washing and filling feeding bottles.  Hummers don't come cheap, you know.

The Family Takes Over - featuring Aunt Mary, Uncle Sam and Mark

I have received some lovely encouragement regarding my musings about the earlier generations of the family and on the basis of that I am going to dig into my messy files and see if I can continue to reveal the Blumenthals in all their glory.  My brain is not of its usual tacklike sharpness tonite so I will coast along and try to let the pictures do most of the talking.

Incidentally....I think it is ironic that I received no encouragement from family members directly or as comments on my blog.....but nooooooo......that would be too simple I guess.  One lovely bit of stroking came via email from Mary, a friend of my cousin Bruce Morton (Goldman), Aunt Mary's grandson.  She is a wonderful and remarkable lady who apparently takes more interest in Bruce's family than he does and I am tickled to be able to feed her interest and curiosity.  The other shout of  "more, please" came today from my cousin, Shoshana, who is granddaughter of Aunt Jenny's Bud and Great Granddaughter to the sainted Aunt Jenny.  She also happens to be the mother of the firstborn of the newest generation ***........Shosh and Mike Di Bennedetto have produced Max who was just 1 year old a bit ago and who happens to have been the first baby I have ever held in my long and adventurous life.  I must look for that photo of me holding Max to see if I can publish it here some day....such a milestone deserves to be preserved.  If I have lost it I hope that Shosh can supply me with a new copy.

The picture on the right is Aunt Mary and Uncle
Sam Goldman, either at the beach in Atlantic City or at a fake beach in some photographer's studio.  Don't know if they were already married or just courting, (I notice the rather proprietary arm of Aunt Mary draped across Uncle Sam's manly (or rather bony)  thigh so I suspect married or almost) but there they are for all to see.......in their bathing costumes yet.

Below on the left is Aunt Mary..........she was the prettiest one of the girls....I don't think anyone will argue about that and she had a sweet nature with a teensy bit more wildness than either Jenny or Mamie....I said just a bit.  After she and Uncle Sam married they moved to Atlantic City.....reasons unknown......and were not such frequent visitors as the members living in Philly, but A.C was only 60 miles away so they were present for all holidays and important occasions. Uncle Sam was an accountant....I do not know much more about him...... and they produced two children, first Selma and then Marcus  (Later to become Mark Morton).  One of the most enormous family tragedies occurred when Selma, on her honeymoon, contracted Spinal Meningitis and died after only a brief illness.  Aunt Mary never completely recovered, though she did quite well and thereafter poured all of her adoration into Mark.  He was a maverick like me.  First, he was absolutely gorgeous (unlike me).  Then he got hooked on body-building long before it was any kind of sport or lifestyle.  While a teen-ager in Atlantic City he became a Lifeguard and began lifting weights.  Then he took himself off to New York City to go to college at NYU..........acquired an equally gorgeous buddy named Hank and the two of them went about layering on as many muscles as a body could comfortably support.  They were really something to behold and I can only weep over the bodies of (figuratively) slain womankind that they surely left strewn in their wake as they swashbuckled around New York and Philly.  Somewhere around this time Aunt Mary and Uncle Sam moved back to Philly, a few blocks away from us and Aunt Mary would get all excited whenever Mark was coming home for the weekend.  "I've got to go to the Butcher, Mr Singer on 60th Street and get a big Pin Bone Roast.....Mark will be here for the weekend and he won't eat anything but roast beef," she would mutter.  (I still don't know exactly what a Pin Bone Roast was.....maybe a cross between Prime Rib and Sirloin)  Anyway.....Mark always got his beef.  Aunt Mary was a good cook and often would bring pans of some delectable doughy stuff to our house, put in on the radiator covers to rise and bake scrumptious goodies in our oven.  Oy, I can still smell it....... and taste it.......heaven.  She also made a mean Sponge Cake and some incredible muffin or bun type things that were savory not sweet, filled with ground meat, onions and spices.  Sigh, Gasp, Slobber.

Mark played the field and we wondered if he would ever find anyone he wanted to marry, but he happened upon the gorgeous Ruth.  It would  be easy to say that it was just the combination of beauty, brains, charm that did him in, but I heard that her parents owned a deli and it is my hunch that the lure of all that corned  beef may have had something to do with it too.  That pairing produced two lovely boys, Ken and Bruce.......the very Bruce whose pal, Mary, has encouraged me to write more about the family, so, Mary, consider that this is for you and Bruce.

On the right is a picture of the three sisters, Mary, Mamie and Jenny in their teens or perhaps early twenties.  When I said that Mary was the prettiest I forgot that in this picture Aunt Jenny also looked lovely........after all, she and Mary, though not identical twins, were twins nevertheless.  My grandma was not a beauty but she had all the family warmth and kindness.

This photo above is a rare and wonderful one.  It shows 3 generations of the Blumenthal women including a younger generation of offspring.  The younger generation includes my Mamma- Edna Kauffman, Selma Goldman, Charlotte Blumenthal (Uncle William's daughter) Mark Morton Goldman and Bert (Bud) and Lewis Kapnek - Aunt Jenny and Uncle Bill's boys.

Back row from left to right:
Selma Goldman, Charlotte (Uncle William's daughter), Aunt Rae (Uncle William's wife), Aunt Mary  Goldman.


Middle row:  My Mamma Edna Kauffman, my Grandma Mamie, GreatGrandma Sarah, Aunt Jenny Kapnek holding baby Lewis.

Seated in front are Mark Morton Goldman and Bud Kapnek. 

This is the only picture that has nearly the entire Blumenthal matriarchy and most of the children up to that time which I am  guessing was around 1920.  As you will  notice, my Mamma, Selma and Charlotte were much older than the Goldman and Kapnek boys.  I am guessing Mamma was about 14 here, Mark would have been around  7, Bud about  4 or 5 and Lew under 2.  The 3 girls of my Mamma's generation were tragically ill fated.  Selma, as I mentioned died on her honeymoon while in her twenties, Charlotte died of cancer in her early 30's and my Mamma died of cancer in her mid -fifties.  The rest of the family was remarkably long lived, most of them into their 80's and 90's.  One never knows what's in store for you and that is undoubtedly a good thing.

Now I must go and weep a few gentle tears for all of my beloved ancestors.

***Footnote: I was dreadfully mistaken when I said above that Shoshana had produced the first of a new generation.  I apologize abjectly to Bruce Morton whose adorable and remarkable son Evan is about 16 at this moment in time.  He was so far ahead of the new babies that I nearly forgot about him....but not for long.
Please forgive my lapse........Oy....so much to remember.....

Someone Said There Are No Coincidences

This is meant to be just a quickie....I wanted to pass on this idea while it was still hot in my brain and before I lapsed into that dreadful...."hmmm, what did I come in here for" condition that seems to come upon me from time to time these days.

There are some life lessons that are so powerful they seem to bubble up in minds scattered all over the place.  I have always felt that there are a certain number of important truths we are meant to learn in our lifetime.......we learn them not always in the same order and some of us don't learn many of them at all.   In fact, I believe there are too many to be learned in one lifetime.   My hope has been that we get other chances to learn the ones we missed this time around, but I guess  all we can do is the best we can.

Anyway, one of life's secrets came to me in a blinding flash during one of my most miserable times...... that that there are two words or concepts that can make the difference between a life of relative joy and one of pain and misery........very simply the ideas of ACCEPT and LET GO ALREADY.  Sounds easy.....NOT.....but, oh my, the difference it makes when you finally get it.  In fact, even knowing that it is the secret to happiness doesn't mean you can always keep a firm grip on it.....it has the habit of being elusive sometimes until you can unclench your teeth and your fingers and allow some long clutched but faulty idea to drop from your clawed fingers.  Then the relief can set in again.

Affirming the same idea, I found a wonderful quote on another blog today.......the writer is a gal named Lyn and her blog is called "Minny Blue".  Here is the quote:

               "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past".

Which brings back the memory of my Eureka moment above and that of a friend who had hers around the same time.    She was also a gal named Lynn (actually Marlyn), a childhood friend,  lost for years and then re-encountered when we were in our 30's.  The whole story about that will make a blog of its own, but that is for another time.  We were sitting in my studio and comparing notes on the parts of our lives that had transpired while we were out of touch and she looked me piercingly in the eye and said,

     " Don't laugh but my biggest insight during the time I was in Therapy was when I finally realized and accepted that I would never have a Happy Childhood."

I didn't laugh.......I just got up and hugged her. 

The photo was taken on

my 13th Birthday in the back yard

of our home in Philly.  This was my

childhood gang of BFF's but the only

relevant ones are the girl 3rd from the right, back row....that is Marlyn whom I quote above.  For the record, I am  the pudge seated in the center of the front row.