Jew Eat Yet?

Merry Christmas from the Crosbys

 

Watching Bing Crosby and his young family warble Yuletide classics every December was a staple of my childhood. I don’t know why I looked forward to these Christmas specials so much, they were pretty schmaltzy affairs and tended to feature guest stars I wasn’t that interested in such as Kate Smith, the Lennon Sisters, Mac Davis, and Karen Valentine. Of course sometimes the family, decked out in matching red ensembles with white trim, welcomed guest stars that I was more excited about: old-time friends of Bing's such as Cyd Charisse, Bob Hope, and Fred Astaire and newer stars such as Carol Burnett and, in a now infamous performance, David Bowie. Bowie appeared on Bing's final Christmas special just prior to his death and it was a memorable if somewhat bizarre exchange. Take a look:

I think I was obsessed with the Crosby family for the same reason I was obsessed with other TV families of the era from the Bradys to the Waltons. As my own family was imploding from the nuclear blast of my parents’ ugly divorce, I longed to escape into what I believed to be perfect family harmony and support. It was easy to identify with the Crosbys. Children Harry, Mary, and Nathaniel closely mirrored the ages of Bruce, Sue, and Danny Miller. Mama Kathryn was exactly my mother’s age and just as pretty. While the Millers of Chicago never got together in matching Santa outfits to sing carols as did the Crosbys of Beverly Hills, their public family dynamic satisfied so many of my fantasies about how a healthy functioning family behaves.

I knew Bing was older than Kathryn (by 30 years!) but I still remember the shock and disillusionment I experienced when I found out that in addition to the picture-perfect kids he paraded in front of the cameras every Christmas, Bing had a whole other family from his first wife Dixie Lee. These four boys were never mentioned on the Christmas specials. Why not? 

Turns out all was not so idyllic in the Crosby household. Bing’s first wife suffered from acute alcoholism and died when she was only 40. Son Gary had a brief career in a singing group with his brothers, capitalizing on the Crosby name, but created a permanent rift in the family when he published a memoir called “Going My Own Way” shortly after Bing’s death. In his book, Gary alleged that his dad was physically and mentally abusive to the boys, beating them until they bled and regularly calling them awful names. The extent of the abuse was denied by brother Phillip but largely corroborated by brothers Lindsay and Dennis, both of whom had very difficult lives and later committed suicide by blowing their brain outs. Gary and Phillip also died young, leaving nothing left of Bing’s original family today except a slew of bad publicity and a string of denials by Bing’s widow Kathryn and his second set of children. Is it possible that the allegations against Bing by his oldest son were true while Bing exhibited none of this behavior with his second family? I think so—a lot can happen to someone's parenting style in thirty years. Bing was 55 when his second set of children started to come. Kathryn might have also provided a much more grounding influence than troubled Dixie Lee.

Bing's late-life brood definitely fared better and all seem to have fond remembrances of their papa. Harry Crosby left show biz in the 1980s and became a successful investment banker. Mary Crosby gained fame on the TV show "Dallas" when it was finally revealed that it was her character who shot Larry Hagman's J.R. Ewing. Nathaniel Crosby loved golf as much as his dad and in 1981 at the age of 19 became the youngest winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship, a record that stood until Tiger Woods won in 1994.

Despite their differences in age, I hope that Leah and Charlie never feel part of two different families. I strongly doubt that will happen considering the two of them are inseparable and in no way pitted against each other as Bing's two sets of kids seemed to be at times. Here’s a photo snapped yesterday at Leah’s high school. I brought Charlie to pick her up and was immediately swarmed by gaggles of high school girls who wanted to play with Leah’s adorable baby brother. Nothing makes me more popular than wandering around L.A. with my son strapped to a Baby Bjorn. I hope Leah will never feel the need to pen a book to decry my parenting skills, but, like Bing, I can see the psychological benefits of having young children later in life. I think I’m far less neurotic with Charlie than I was when Leah was a baby, sticking a mirror under her nose every 20 seconds to make sure she was alive and agonizing over every real and imagined slight she experienced from other children.

 

I was moved enough by the death of Bing Crosby in 1977 to send his family a heartfelt condolence note. I received the above reply back from Kathryn Crosby. The card included original and appropriate lyrics penned by Bing himself from a song called “That’s What Life Is All About.” In addition to the lyrics printed on Kathryn’s thank you note, the song included verses such as the following:

Life’s never easy all the time
The hills you climb
Often lead nowhere
Of ups and downs
I’ve had my share
That’s what life is all about.

I've known success
Some mild acclaim
And thinking of it gives me pleasure
And I've had some stress
The scars remain
When Lady Luck gave me short measure.

When things went wrong
I'd fake a smile
But that's my style
'Cause I've been aroundAnd having been being around, I’ve found
That’s what life is all about.

Sing it, Bing. Of course at the end of all of Bing’s holiday specials with his family, he’d gather them around him for a rendition of the most popular Christmas song in history, one that Bing introduced in not one, but two different films. Here’s a clip of my favorite version of this song to round out my salute to Der Bingle and his clans.

I’m Trying to Be a Curmudgeon But My Son Isn’t Letting Me

 

This is how Charlie wakes up most mornings. He opens his eyes and starts smiling from ear to ear. Sometimes he starts smiling just before he opens his eyes. The kid is ruining my act, especially around the holidays. That’s when I’m supposed to be my grumpiest, Scrooge-iest, kvetchiest curmudgeon, railing endlessly against the commercialism of the holidays and how so many aspects of the season turn my stomach. Instead, Charlie’s early morning smiles start me off each day feeling like Scrooge after his transformation. I want to run to the window and throw shillings to the boy passing by in the snow, asking him to buy the biggest turkey in the window and deliver it to the destitute Cratchitts.

I’m constantly amazed at Charlie’s sweet demeanor. I read recently that babies born very prematurely tend to have a much higher threshold for pain. That makes sense, given all that Charlie had to endure during his first five months. After being intubated, poked, and prodded on an hourly basis for so many months, not to mention his six surgeries and constant IV lines, why wouldn’t he be cheerful and continually delighted to be unencumbered by external devices? (Yes, Mr. Evil Eye, I see you sitting there in the corner, threatening to lower the boom as I write about my boy’s happiness and health. Buzz off, please, or you know what will happen. Hint: it involves spitting.)

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t turned into a complete Stepford Dad just yet, and I’m still a card-carrying Neurotic Jew™ but I must say my tendency to catastrophize every minute of my existence has been tempered quite a bit this year. After going through the hell of losing a child and watching my other son fight for his life, some events that previously would have sent me over the edge have lost their power. Like on Thanksgiving when we had a waterfall of raw sewage pouring out of our 100-year-old pipes. Yawn. Or an hour ago when a car speeding out of an alley on La Brea plowed into me. Big whoop. I wasn’t hurt but my car was damaged. The guy admitted he was completely at fault and as luck would have it, he worked at a body shop a block away which is fixing my car for free. Does that sound like a scam? Like a dentist passing out candy or an orthopedic surgeon tripping people? Nah, I actually trusted this guy who seemed genuinely sorry. Maybe that’s part of my new post-visitation Scrooge mentality.

I do find myself missing our other son, Oliver, more and more each day. I hesitate to write about that because I don’t want people to feel the need to repeat any condolences or to offer their opinions on my grief process. I'm finding that the weight of this grief comes in definite waves. And the more Charlie grows and spreads his brilliant aura to all those he meets, the more I wonder what Oliver would be like and how he would be part of this wonderful time in our family. The sadness is not debilitating and takes nothing away from my time with Charlie, but I see that this particular grief doesn’t seem to lessen with time, it seems to get stronger, or let’s say more “in focus.” I'm thinking a lot about the 4-month-old boy and 18-month-old girl who died the same month as Oliver, beloved children of two bloggers I read regularly. I ache for those families. And I'm thinking about the two people I know who committed suicide this year. I’m so sad that neither of them saw another way out and I feel for the pain that their loved ones are going through, especially at this time of the year.

 

Since I’m already off the tracks in terms of “daddyblogging” in this post, here is a photo taken yesterday of a late-night cuddle between Leah and Charlie. I ask you, how could I possibly hold onto my curmudgeonliness with scenes like this going on in my house? It was great having Leah home for a rare performance-free night. As I mentioned, she’s been working like a dog all fall rehearsing for two shows, including a great production of “A Christmas Carol” you are all invited to attend. Here’s a promo of that show that the theatre put out. You can spot Leah in two scenes—she's the beautiful dancing redhead who looks like she just walked out of 1843. The guy playing my alter ego, Ebenezer Scrooge, is a wonderful actor named Christopher Winfield who makes me cry every time he transforms from pain-in-the-ass miser to holiday lovebug. 

Bah! Humbug! Happy Holidays!

Ghosts of Thanksgiving

 

I was so busy cooking and schmoozing during our fun Thanksgiving fest that I forgot to take photos. Some family archivist I am! I did manage to take the above picture of Leah and Charlie (in matching holiday orange) at our Thanksgiving table. I wanted to take a group photo of our 12 guests but never got around to it. But given my propensity for living in the past, I guess I shouldn’t fault myself for enjoying the present so much that I neglected to document it for the future!

Other than the photo above, I have this photo my brother-in-law took of Charlie with our adorable nieces Franny and Hallie. As usual, I thought there wouldn’t be enough food for our crowd but we now have enough leftovers to feed the combined reunions of the Osmond and King families. Anyone for turkey pot pie? I just made turkey soup from the carcass and will be enjoying roasted brussel sprouts through the week. We had a wonderful time with family and friends, eating, talking, eating some more, celebrating Charlie’s first Thanksgiving, and remembering those who couldn’t be with us. We had a plumbing disaster in the middle of our dinner, leading to a cascading waterfall of raw sewage in our basement but, given all that we’ve dealt with this year, we didn’t let it affect our gathering in the least. (In truth, I refused to even look at the mess until the next day—denial can sometimes be a very useful survival tool!)

My Chicago family had Thanksgiving at my cousin Sarah’s this year where my sister got a hold of one of my Aunt Bobby’s old photo albums. It included snapshots we had never seen of some of our long-departed relatives. Sue managed to sneak some photos out in her underwear (just kidding, they were very kindly lent for digital scanning) and I was especially thrilled to see the following two pictures of my rarely photographed great-great-grandparents,  Moshe (Morris/Moses) and Rivka (Rebecca) Goldkind.

 

Moshe and Rivka were born in Staszow (Stashev), Poland in the late 1850s, a few years before Abraham Lincoln was elected President. They emigrated to Canada in 1910 with their married daughter, Alta Toba Korolnek (my great-grandmother) and their three other children, Pearl Blima, Gittel Chana, and Harry Goldkin (the final “d” in Goldkind regularly appeared and disappeared over the years). I could stare at these photos for hours, thinking about these Old World relatives and what their lives were like, wishing I could converse with them at length. What a thrill it is to find images I’ve never seen. Zayde Goldkin is sitting here with “Cappy” and “Goldie,” my cousin Goldie Handelsman and her husband Julius Kaplan. Parts of my family tree get very confusing since both my great-great aunts Pearl Blima and Gittel Chana married Handelsman brothers and then two of the Handelsman daughters also married brothers. Goldie married Julius on November 10, 1929. less than two weeks after the stock market crash that brought on the Great Depression. How young and vibrant they look, I wonder if they lost a lot of money in the crash. 

As anyone familiar with this blog knows, I am obsessed with family history, my own, of course, but also other people’s including the Henry C. Jensen family who were the first inhabitants of our hundred-year-old house. Henry Jensen was born in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, the same year as my great-great-grandfather Moshe Goldkind, though the two men could not have had more different upbringings. Here is the only other photo I’ve ever seen of my great-great-grandfather. In this 1939 image, Zayde Goldkind is hanging out with three of his great-grandchildren, my cousins Diana Saunders, Rhoda (Rivka) Glickman, and my five-year-old mother on the far right. I look at the date on the photo and can only imagine what would have happened to these folks if they hadn't had the good sense to hightail it out of Poland when they did. None of my relatives who stayed in Staszow survived the war.

Here’s the only other shot of Rivka Goldkind that I’ve seen, this one taken in the late 1920s or early 1930s with her grandchildren: my Aunts Ruth and Anne and my Uncle Dave, three of my grandfather’s siblings. Auntie Anne is still with us, the only surviving child of Itshe Meyer and Alta Toba Korolnek. She is currently a great-great-grandmother of four.

Why am I so interested in my family now? And why was I so not interested in it when I was a boy and had the chance to interact with the generation that could still remember every nook and cranny of the old shtetl? I’ve been listening to Yiddish songs all weekend on my iPod and yet when I was surrounded by that language as a kid it seemed like nails on a blackboard to me. We always had Thanksgiving with my grandparents, and like all secular holidays we celebrated, our traditions were so blended with Jewish rituals that I half-believed Thanksgiving was a Jewish festival on par with Rosh Hashanah (didn't everyone baste their turkey with chicken fat?). I remember various Old World Thanksgiving visitors at our table, including my ancient Aunt Gittel Chana, my great-grandmother’s sister who lived in Chicago. She was born in Staszow on October 15, 1897 and died in 1973. I doubt I said two words to her in my lifetime. What I wouldn't give for that chance now.

The middle Goldkind girl, Pearl Blima, the one who married Gittel Chana’s husband’s brother, died in childbirth on June 27, 1927. She had a difficult time with her pregnancies, bleeding dangerously, and should not have gotten pregnant again. But her doctor thought that if she had another baby the problem would correct itself. Instead, both she and the baby died. She was 39 years old. Here is her obituary from the Chicago Tribune along with a photo I found from her passport application several years earlier.   My great-grandmother is called “Tobey Korolnek” in the obituary but I’ll eat my yarmulke if anyone ever called her that.

 If only I could raise this generation of relatives from the dead for a few lengthy interviews. What would they think of the lives of their many descendants? Maybe some of these ultra-orthodox Jews would rise from the grave on their own volition if they caught wind of my daughter's new play that opened last night for a four-week run. It’s a professional musical version of “A Christmas Carol.” Leah plays Martha Cratchitt and Miss Fezziwig and she is absolutely brilliant, if I may say so. (Here she is at yesterday's opening night party with the actor who played her papa, Mr. Fezziwig.) The cast, consisting of adults and children, is superb, and I urge you to check it out if you have a chance. It’s playing at the Lonny Chapman Theatre in North Hollywood through December 20. I’ll be seeing it several more times before Christmas, and despite the non-Jewish content I hope that if any of my Old World relatives were still around they would be kvelling over Leah and exclaiming the Yiddish version of Tiny Tim’s fervent prayer:

“God bless us, everyone!” 

What I Am Thankful For This Year

 

…and all the other family members and friends who helped us get through a terribly difficult but ultimately life-enriching time. As I sit here dry-rubbing my bird (oy, that sounds odd) in anticipation of tomorrow's festivities, I can't help but reflect, for once, on the true, non-cynical aspect of the holiday. Yeah, times are tough for everyone—I may need work, money, a new car, etc.; we may be inundated with hospital bills; and the world may be going to hell in countless ways—but I have never in my life had a Thanksgiving in which I was so filled to the brim with gratitude. Thank you to everyone who touched our lives this year. I will never forget the generosity and kindness of others. Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

 

Getting Ready for Thanksgiving

 

Is it my fault that Charlie is exactly the same size and weight as the fresh turkey I haven’t picked up yet? How else was I to see if our roasting pan was large enough? Our 1940s oven is very small but at least I didn’t go so far as to slide our son into it for a real test! Besides, in a true experiment I would have trussed his legs. Charlie enjoyed hanging out in the roaster but he has mixed feelings about the holiday. “What exactly are you celebrating,” he asked me as I scattered shallots on his head, “some mythical love-fest between the Pilgrims and Native Americans?” He had a point. “Hell,” he said as I spooned melted butter into the pan, “it wasn’t even made a federal holiday until 1941! And then Roosevelt only moved the celebration up to get in another shopping week before Christmas.” True, Charlie. But it's always a good idea to stop and give thanks. And you know what I'm grateful for this year.

And now please excuse me while I pick the sage out of my son's hair.

Interview With a Diva

Being a total control freak and fiercely protective of the content on my blog, I rarely participate in online group blogging activities. But Neil Kramer of Citizen of the Month gets me every year. One of his virtual events during the holidays is called the Great Interview Experiment. You sign up for it on his blog and send ten interview questions to the person above you. You then receive ten questions from the person after you. I enjoy participating in this random exercise and talking to new people I probably never would have known about otherwise. This year I was interviewed by a woman named NeCole who has a newer blog called Eclectic Ecstasy (love that name!). You can see my answers to her interesting questions here.

I got a chance to interview longtime blogger Laura of I Am the Diva. Laura lives in Saskatchewan with her hipster husband B-rad and their cute baby she calls Chewie. I was excited to talk to someone from “the Skatch,” a first for me.

1. You’ve had your blog for seven years. That makes you a true pioneer since blogging didn’t really hit in a big way until several years after that. Has your blog been a consistent passion of yours or have you been tempted to quit from time to time? Have you ever had an experience with blogging that made you think, “That’s it, I’m done!”

Y’know, I never really thought of myself as a blogging pioneer, mostly because – while I was *blogging* seven years ago, I had very little in the way of regular readers. I really feel that I didn’t ‘come into my own’ until a few years ago – when my blog posts began being more than just the run down of my day; when I actually attempted to write. Blogging in itself has not always been a passion, but I’d say it was safe to say that writing was.  I have been an avid journal writer and really loved every moment of English classes – from elementary school all the way up to University, with creative writing being my strong suit. In fact, when I told my parents I was going to go to college and be a Music Major, my mother was shocked. She told me years later she always thought I’d end up a writer, and here we are… an almost finished music degree/college drop-out later… am I doing music currently? Nope. But writing all the time. Dang. I should have been an English major.

Have I ever been tempted to quit? There was a time when I stopped writing regularly, when I moved to Calgary  We had no computer and I worked at Staples, so the only computer access I had was at the local library, which was – like – a stupid amount of bus transfers away. But then I got an office job, with a desk, and eventually we got a computer… and now I feel this ache – for lack of a better word, if I don’t blog regularly.

I’ve never really had a moment where I thought of shutting down for good… too much good in my life has come from me blogging. I have met some amazing people online and in real life through the magic of this blogging world.  And the times when I’ve posted something personal, or painful, and wondered whether or not it was the wisest thing to do – I would get bombarded with comments and emails from people giving their encouragement or their support. So, in this increasingly isolated world, I’ve found a real home and community among the bloggers of the interweb. I couldn’t leave it behind. It’s in my blood now.  I do, sometimes, question where to draw the line between sharing and over sharing with regards to my child or my husband. With B-rad, most times if it’s something serious or sensitive, I will ask him if I can post it first, but generally he’s pretty laid back and sometimes thinks it’s funny when I post our conversations. As for Chewie, I try to limit posting about him to things that won’t come back to haunt him, or bite me in the a$$, y’know?

2. I was surprised to learn that your insanely adorable son was born prematurely last year and spent some time in the neonatal intensive care unit. Surprised because we just finished an almost five-month stint in the NICU with our baby Charlie who was born at 24 weeks. We had an amazing experience there filled with incredible highs and miserable lows. What’s the most important thing you learned in the NICU? Aren’t the nurses there amazing?

Oh my God. First of all, I can’t imagine what you and your family must have gone through. Five months! The eighteen days that Chewie spent in NICU were the longest, most exhausting and difficult days of my life. That being said, we had a mix of amazing nurses/staff and not so amazing nurses and staff. The day he was born, we had a nurse tell us we were not allowed to hold him, but we could look at him through the isolette. After just having an emergency labour and only seeing him for a few moments before they whisked him away, I was dying to hold him and being told I couldn’t was heartbreaking. When we went back down later that evening, a very kind older nurse told us in no uncertain terms that “you are the parents, and the nurses here like to think they have the control, but they don’t. If you want to hold him, you can.” That was the first time that I realized that, as his parents, WE are the ones that are responsible for looking out for his best interest. So that was a big thing, but probably the most important thing I learned was that babies, while fragile, are not made of glass. The first time I helped the nurse change his diaper, I was amazed at how they handled him. Strong hands, but not so gingerly, the way I was doing it. They flopped him around (safely J) and he took it. It really helped me not to be so afraid of holding him, or moving him around. It was a big shiny lesson for me and B-rad.

3. I love the cool pin-up graphics on your blog and I know as a child you fantasized about being a stripper. If you were a stripper in the 1940s and had to have a “gimmick” (I assume you’ve seen “Gypsy?”), what would it be? Describe your act as Queen of the Burlesque.

I should clarify that when I had that fantasy about being a stripper – I was, like, 6 and completely naive and it was very innocent, I just wanted to be able to dance around naked. That being said – I did just finish a burlesque class a few weeks ago. I’ve always had a love for the music of the 40s… and the pin-up thing is kinda new, but I’m totally lovin’ it. If I was a stripper in the 40s, I’d probably end up being one of those cutesy adorable type strippers, y’know, with the whole “OH my GOSH! My stockings come RIGHT OFF!!” kind of play… I really thought that I’d lean toward the smoldering seductress, but in my Burlesque classes this cutesy-playful tease just showed up outta nowhere. I’m thinking my gimmick would be something along the lines of a lollipop and pigtails? It still needs some ‘fleshing out’ (pun intended)…

4. Speaking of musicals, I love that you were checking them out at the library as a kid and that you loved “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” Would it impress you to know that I received an email from actress Julie Newmar (the unfortunately named Dorcas from that film, one of the seven brides) yesterday? She thanked me for talking about her on my blog and for showing her favorite clip from her TV show “My Living Doll.” She also gave me the URL for her own blog (julienewmarwrites.com). Describe a celebrity encounter you’ve had. Have you ever been reluctant to talk about famous people on your blog for fear they might Google themselves and see what you wrote?

Actually, I AM impressed. That’s pretty sweet! (Who would name their child Dorcas on purpose? I can only assume it was a popular name at the time the film portrayed…but still…Dork-us? Puh-lease!) As far as celebrity encounters, there’s not really a whole lot of opportunity up here in the Skatch. I did hang out with the guitar player (Mark Tremonti) for the band CREED for an hour in the summer of 1998 after being kicked in the back of the head by a crowd surfer wearing steel-toed boots (SERIOUSLY!?) at a summer music festival. He was pretty cool – he signed my T-shirt and gave my friend and I a play-by-play of how Green Day would end their set: a dude in a Bee costume would play some trumpet, then Green Day would smash their guitars, and in the end the drummer would light his kit on fire. He was pretty cool guy. The only other ‘celebrity’ encounter was running into one of the kids from Home Improvement while waiting to get on a ride at Disneyland. See? Pretty boring.

As for fear of famous people googling themselves and finding my blog… I never had that fear…until now!! But maybe my boyfriend Maynard from TOOL will google himself and find out how much I love him and we’ll become pen-pals or something. The only person I’d ever be concerned about would me T-om Cruuze… cuz his people are scary. Not that I write about him or his ‘religion’ very often, but when I do… I try to make the name less googleable… like I just did. 

5. I’ve always admired Canadians and might have been one if my Toronto grandfather hadn’t moved to Chicago in the late 1920s. You were born in Alberta , lived in lots of places, and moved back to Saskatchewan 15 years ago. I’m afraid most ugly Americans wouldn’t be able to place that province on a map if there life depended on it. How did you end up in the Skatch? What one thing would you want us ignoramuses to know about the Land of Living Skies?

I ended up living in the Skatch because my dad decided to go to college when I was 14. We were living in B.C. at the time, and when he shopped around, the Skatch was the most affordable place in terms of cost of living, and housing, and tuition. So, off we went. I hated it at first, because I used to live nestled into this gorgeous valley filled with fruit trees and forests… but now I’m a die-hard prairie girl.  There are a few weird quirks that I’ve discovered about the people while living in the Skatch… here’s one that took me YEARS to adapt to, and I still struggle to this day:  In the Skatch, what the rest of the world calls LUNCH, they call DINNER. What the rest of the world calls DINNER they call SUPPER. You can imagine how confusing trying to make meal plans with a Saskatchewanian. “I’ll meet you at Taco Joe’s for dinner!” do you go at noon or at 7:00? Tricky. Also, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone wearing a ‘hoodie’ in the Skatch. Here those bad boys are known as Bunny Hugs, and they are DAMN protective of that term.  

People in the Skatch, generally, are bad drivers… and I never felt this way until I lived in an actual metropolis. In a city such as Calgary, the only way to survive is to drive by the Golden Rule and let people into your lane when they need in, or to signal when you’re turning, etc. etc. etc. If you don’t – you have crazy accidents and traffic jams and general mayhem. When we moved back to the Skatch I developed a bad case of road rage that I never had before. People speed up when you want to get into their lane, because you being in FRONT of them just CANNOT happen… and people don’t signal, they just turn whenever the hell they fell like it… they roll through stop signs, they lane change all willy nilly… my theory is that they’re small town/farm drivers that have moved into the city… news flash – the city is NOT Elbow, Saskatchewan (yes, a real place!). 

Having said all that, you will never in your life find a province filled with friendlier people… I have never seen a more beautiful sunset than the ones you get on the prairies…and the food, my GOD the food… living a province that was essentially filled with Mennonites, Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians, etc… a ‘home cooked’ meal by someone from a small town (like my mother-in -aw, or my husband’s grandmother) is absolutely to DIE for. Mmm… nothing makes something more delicious than cream gravy (which consists of meat drippings, fat, cream, more cream, more meaty drippings, salt and pepper and a bit of flour for thickening). 

Oh, and also? It’s bloody cold in the winter and scorching hot in the summer… we folks from the Skatch are tough.

6. I share your reaction to “Puff the Magic Dragon” and always sob when Jackie Paper comes no more. (I take it you don’t buy that the song was really a coded parable about drug use?) What’s another popular song that always makes you cry like a little girl?

I’m not sure how I feel about the drug use in that song, it certainly is possible… I think that may be why it affected me so much that day was because I stopped thinking about weed and started listening to the story, in the innocent way. 

Popular songs that make me cry? Listen, I’m a woman. Depending on the day, a television commercial will make me cry! But there are definitely some songs that move me each time I hear them… some examples being “The Great Gig in the Sky” “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” and “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd … “Music of the Night” from Phantom of the Opera… “Fix You” by Coldplay… “Snuff” by Slipknot… “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon… if I can find the story in the lyrics and the emotion in the music, I’m a goner, really.

7. I was once living with a family in France and was served one of their pet rabbits for dinner—with the head still on it, teeth and all! Also tripe, the stomach lining of a cow, which made we want to hurl. What’s the most disgusting thing you’ve ever eaten?

Rabbit, probably, and really it was only disgusting cuz it used to be my pet. I don’t know, I’m pretty open about food – but I also have a few allergies which help me get out of having to try things that look gross… I don’t like fish, but I don’t mind sushi – it’s the taste of the seaweed that gets me every time… OOH wait! Actually, I remember something that’s gross! When I was in the 5th grade, my elementary school had an exchange program but for teachers… so we had a Japanese teacher for a couple of months, and when she went back home she gave us all “Delicious Japanese Candies” which were seaweed flavoured, and also teeny tiny dehydrated fish – which were salty like potato chips… but they were WHOLE fish, eyes, scales, bones, everything. THAT was probably the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten. Bleh.

8. Hey, your wedding anniversary (September 4^th) is my birthday! I like the tattoos you and B-rad got to mark the day. I know you have a fondness for tattoos and piercings. If you could design a full-color tatt for your son Chewie, what would it look like?

Actually, I have a design in the works with my tattoo artist – who I really should call for an appointment… the Tattoo I’ve ‘designed’ will work the Star on my arm into it. I have a strong fondness and fascination with astrology – not as far as basing my life on my horoscope, but more the personality traits that seem to come with each sign. I’m a Taurus, oh what an earthy sign, and you are too – you earthy Virgo, you! That’s what Chewie was supposed to be had he been full term, which would have made us all earth signs as B-rad’s a Capricorn… but I digress. In the end, Chewie was born in July, making him a cancer. I don’t know if I have a photo on my blog of my wrist tattoo, but I have the glyph for Taurus on the inside of my right wrist. I wanted to get the Glyph for “Cancer”, but that’s the sideways 69. And the animal associated with “Cancer” is the crab. So – not exactly wanting a 69 or a crab permanently etched on my body, I decided on the constellation of cancer. So, hopefully soon, I will have Chewie’s constellation on my left shoulder, with the spiral from my Star working into the shoulder piece… the stars of the constellation tatt will be smaller but the same as the large one on my arm.

9. Let’s say Samantha Stevens from “Bewitched” rides her broom to Saskatchewan and agrees to transport you to one historical time period for a year. When and where are you going? What will you do there?

This is a really good but difficult question! Part of me wants to pick times like provincial France in the 1500s, or Ancient Egypt, or even Chicago in the 20s… but being female, I think i’d really miss all the rights and equality that I enjoy today… so I guess, maybe I’d like to live in California in the late 60s or early 70s! Women’s Libbers, crazy drugs and love ins (with the sweet bliss of ignorance towards acid flashbacks or STDs)… and the Music… the music would be worth the historical trip… maybe I’d live in a hippy commune or start a rock band, or maybe I’d just ‘trip’ for an entire year? 

10. Diva is a great word that I feel has started to take on more of a negative connotation in recent years. List some of the positive aspects of diva-hood. Name a few people that you consider to be the world’s all-time greatest divas.

I’ve been meaning to write a post about this very thing for ages. It really makes me crazy when the term “Diva” is lumped in with “Princess” or “Drama Queen” or whatever the Hot Pink bedazzled t-shirts are saying these days. It bothers me when Beyonce says things like: “A diva is the female version of a male hustler” WTF? 

Actually, Beyonce, a diva is: a celebrated female singer. The term is used to describe a woman of outstanding talent in the world of opera, and by extension in theatre, cinema and popular music. The meaning of diva is closely related to that of "prima donna”.

The word entered the English language in the late 19th century. It is derived from the Italian noun diva, a female deity. The basic sense of the term is "goddess”. (Thank you Wikipedia)

And wouldn’t the female version of a hustler just be a hustler who’s a girl? Why do you add “male” to the word hustler in the first place? Would you say A Pilot is the Female Version of a Male Doctor?? No, you wouldn’t. Because a) a pilot and a doctor are different things entirely. PLUS, you would never say a “Hello, I’m Male Doctor Jones, how are you feeling today?” it’s just plain dumb. Shame, Beyonce! Shame.

In my opinion, a diva is someone who has worked hard and practiced and through determination and the sheer joy and love of music has found success in her field (of course, by my own definition, I am NOT the diva… no success here, except for in my shower…for now….) When I was in University I practiced anywhere from 1 – 2 hours a day… for FOUR years…. To be a diva means you have enough love and passion for the music that you have made a commitment to yourself and the world to give the gift! To be a diva is SO MUCH more than being a self absorbed brat who wears too much makeup, dresses too trampy and is, essentially, a bitch.  Now, I know that sometimes a real honest to goodness diva can get a little on the full of-herself side, but so can a surgeon… but we don’t go around saying: “Look at that guy driving around in his Mercedes, what a surgeon!” 

I see it as the very unfortunate hijacking of a once empowering term for a successful female, and it’s been cheapened and dragged through the oversexed mud. Bleh. 

As for world class divas: I would say that any woman, or girl, who feels the music – who is moved by it, who is completely and utterly passionate about singing and the way singing makes them feel, who tries and fails and tries again… I think THEY are the world class divas. Live people, real life musicians, on the stage, in the clubs… without auto tuners, and over produced albums, and so much dancing that they can’t even perform without the aide of a backing track (I’m looking at YOU Britney Spears).  

 

Thanks so much, Laura! I will be checking back at your blog regularly. Stay warm this winter!

In Defense of Betty Draper

 

I’ve rarely seen a fictional character on a TV show engender such fierce debate and disagreement. Following the third season finale of “Mad Men” last week, Betty Draper (played by actress January Jones) has been vilified, condemned, and denounced by journalists, bloggers, and countless viewers. Others, including me, have defended her vigorously, asking the haters to remember the severe social constraints Betty faced in the early 1960s, the choices she had available to her back then, and, of course, her husband’s never-ending stream of infidelity and lies. My feelings about Betty were so strong during this season that I began to wonder if they were really about the TV character at all. The truth is that I wince when I hear people judging Betty Draper because I feel like they are talking about my mom.

One of the reasons I love “Mad Men” so much is that it feels like I’m watching home movies from my childhood. I’m the age of Bobby Draper and I’m astounded at the accuracy of every outfit, wallpaper pattern, kitchen clock, and ashtray that is seen on the show. There are some big differences between the Millers and the Drapers. For one, we were Jewish, they most decidedly were not. My father wasn’t having endless affairs and he didn’t work in advertising. But the parallels are also there. Like Don Draper, my father had a past that he wanted to forget. He came from abject poverty, had no idea who his father was, and had a mother who loved him but was mentally ill. She was institutionalized when my father was still a boy. Although he didn’t assume another man’s identity or keep his past life a secret from my mom (he couldn’t—my grandparents had him investigated when my mother announced their engagement), my father’s drive to re-invent himself mirrored Don Draper’s. Like Don, he married a privileged girl from the “right” side of the tracks.

It’s Betty Draper’s similarities to my mother that I find even more startling. My mother was born the same year as the fictional character and had a similar upbringing. In the first season of “Mad Men,” Betty states, “My mother wanted me to be beautiful so I could find a man. There’s nothing wrong with that. But then what? Just sit and smoke and let it go ‘til you’re in a box?” Everyone was shocked in the episode this season when we saw Betty speaking fluent Italian while in Rome with Don. Like Betty, my mother was extremely intelligent during an era that didn’t exactly place a high value on women’s intelligence. It was considered far more important to be beautiful, as both Betty and my mom were. My mother never completed her education or thought she was very smart. She met my dad spring break during her freshman year in college and impulsively quit school to get married just a few months later. She was still 19 when she had my brother Bruce. My sister Sue followed three years later and I came two years after that. Three kids by the time she was 24.

Betty Draper has been most criticized this season for the way she treats her children. Indeed, her somber detachment and frequent commands to “go outside and play” or “go watch TV” are chilling to watch, especially with our modern sensibilities of what it means to be a good parent, but so accurate to the times and to this character. My mother was not anywhere near as dour as Betty, but there’s something quite familiar about the distinction Betty makes between children’s roles and adult roles and her desperate desire to maintain her adult life as separate from the needs of her offspring. While I’m sure there were very hands-on parents in the 1960s who would spend hours on the floor playing with their kids, I think that was far less the norm back then than it is today. I remember with great nostalgia how we used to go out after school and every weekend, find people to play with in the neighborhood, and only return home for dinner. Our parents usually had no idea where we were or who we were with and they had no way to reach us. That would be unheard of today.

Parents of young children in the 1960s tended to be younger than such parents today but they acted “older,” or let’s say they seemed more focused on their own adult lives. The constant drinking and smoking around children was one aspect of this that is perfectly depicted in every “Mad Men” episode. Sending kids out of the room when daddy came home is another. By the way, it’s hard to fault Betty for her heavy drinking and smoking throughout her pregnancy earlier this season since that was the case for most pregnant women during that time period, including my mother and Jackie Kennedy. And when her baby is born mid-season (the baby she at first wanted to abort before she was shamed by her horrified doctor), Betty takes care of it dutifully if unenthusiastically.

I guess the main premise of my “defense” of Betty Draper’s behavior toward her children is less a defense and more a sociological observation. I think many women of that generation, my mother included, did not view having children as something that required a lot of thought or decision-making as it does (and should) for most women today. It was something that was simply expected of them—they just did it. Combine that with their youth, the modeling they received from their own parents when they were young, and the growing dissatisfaction with a society that was highly sexist and unfair to women in so many ways, and you can see why many young mothers in the 1960s were increasingly unhappy even though they were supposedly living the American Dream. Where did it all go wrong? Betty Friedan’s ground-breaking “The Feminine Mystique” was published in 1963, the year this season’s “Mad Men” took place, and I only hope that Betty Draper finds this book at the five and dime the next time she goes out to buy some cigarettes. As Friedan hypothesized in her book, women at that time were victims of a false belief system that required them to find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children. Such a system inevitably caused women to completely lose their identity in that of their family.

At the end of this season (spoiler alert to those of you who haven’t watched the finale!), we see Betty flying off to Reno with the new man in her life, ostensibly to get a divorce from Don (we’ll see if that pans out) and marry this up-and-coming politician. She has her new baby with her but her older children, Sally and Bobby, are left to celebrate Christmas 1963 with their housekeeper. My mother also left with a new man. For Betty and my mother, only another man could provide the escape hatch from their expected roles as perfect wife and mother. But for my mother, and I’m guessing Betty, this other man will ultimately prove not to be what they needed to find themselves. Au contraire.

My own mother was a fantastic mom who loved her children more than anything despite having gone through some very difficult periods in her life. Unlike many viewers of “Mad Men,” I suspect Betty Draper also loves her children far more than is evident by her behavior towards them on the show. I think that when the smoke clears following the upheavals of the 1960s and Betty’s dependence on the men in her life, she will have a very close relationship with her children. And before you attack my theories, remember that I’m well aware of all that I’m projecting from my own life into my perceptions of Betty Draper. 

Now shut up and go watch TV!

Sick Day: My 1960s TV Sitcom Cure

 

Charlie is sick with a cold. Not a huge deal but with his history we took him to the doctor who prescribed two breathing treatments that we’re giving him every few hours via a panda-shaped nebulizer (we so did not ask for a creepy animal-shaped device!). He’s already had one regular flu shot and we’re waiting for the H1N1 shots to arrive as well as a special series of insanely expensive vaccines he needs to protect himself from the potentially serious RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). Scary when preemies are released from the hospital in the throes of flu season. Especially this year, with the most flu fear-mongering on record since Europe was decimated by the Bubonic Plague. A bunch of people in my extended family (including young children) have already gotten and recovered from Swine Flu. Not to underestimate the seriousness of this illness, especially for people like Charlie, but to hear the news reports, you’d think we’d be tripping over piles of corpses on every corner. Oy.

I was just telling Kendall how much I liked being sick as a kid. Besides the fun of staying home from school, my mother always ordered a new set of Play-Doh from the pharmacy. They would hand deliver it to our house along with the two medicinal staples of my childhood: orange-flavored chewable aspirin and Vicks VapoRub. What a treat to open up the virgin cardboard cans of Play-Doh and behold the untouched blue, red, yellow, and green before my brother and sister could get their grubby little hands on them and mush up the colors into an ugly brown. But the main draw of sick days was getting to stretch out in my parents’ luxurious bed and watch copious amounts of TV.

It’s appalling how much television I watched as a kid. I’ve written often about my TV-saturated childhood. How The Waltons helped get me through my parents’ divorce, how Julie Newmar ignited my sexual fantasies, how Zoom gave me my first taste of fame, how Maude taught me all I needed to know about feminism, how Barney Fife made me feel less alone, how the Magic Door nurtured my Jewish roots, and so on. I’ve written endless posts about the highs and lows of television from the days when there were only three major networks.

Of course TV viewing practices are so different today. I have a few shows that I watch but in most cases I don’t even know what nights they air. Except for one—my favorite show, Mad Men, which concluded its fourth season Sunday night. Kendall and I are so obsessed with this series that we wait breathlessly in front of our TV set for each episode to begin, just like in the old days. I’m always stunned at how much Mad Men reflects my actual childhood whether through the constant references to 1960s pop culture or Betty Draper’s frequent bark to her children to “go watch TV” when she wants to get rid of them. I’ve heard that line has become part of a drinking game on some college campuses. Whenever Betty orders Sally and Bobby Draper out of the room to go watch TV, you have to down a shot.

I never had to be ordered to watch TV when I was the age of the Draper kids, I was already glued to the front of the screen. It horrifies me to remember that I would watch TV before school (Captain Kangaroo, Ray Rayner), while home for lunch (half an hour of Bozo’s Circus and half an hour of Let’s Make a Deal), the minute I got home from school (Garfield Goose, Mickey Mouse Club, etc.), during dinner (we had a small RCA television perched at the end of our kitchen table and would watch nightly reports of the Vietnam War as we ate sweet and sour meatballs), and of course, the full gamut of prime time fare. Yet I also remember spending countless hours outside playing with my friends. Were there more hours in the day back then?

As I think about my brain cell-killing habits today, I am most interested in my memories of the more obscure programs from the 1960s. Sure, I was addicted to top Nielsen family sitcoms such as Mr. Ed, Bewitched, Petticoat Junction, and the Beverly Hillbillies, but how about all the programs that did not withstand the test of time? Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I now present you my Top Ten Obscure TV Shows of the 1960s. There are so many more, but these are the first ten that popped into my head (that have clips on YouTube). They are presented in chronological order:

My Living Doll (1964)

I touched on this show in my old Julie Newmar post but it’s worth mentioning again. It only lasted one season and since I remember every episode (including the one in which Bob Cummings was teaching sexy android Julie how to get into a girdle) I can date the beginning of my sexual education to age five! The premise of the show was the height of Johnson-era male fantasies—developing a uber-sexy robot who will do anything you program it to. Of course much of the series would be considered appalling by today’s standards. In order to become the perfect woman, Rhoda (Julie’s character, also known as AF709) was trained in housekeeping, cooking, and total subservience to men but she often managed to have the last laugh. I remember being sad when the show was cancelled but all was forgiven a few years later when Newmar appeared in her skin-tight costume as Catwoman on episodes of Batman. 

My Mother the Car (1965)

Another show I watched religiously and one that is arguably considered to be the worst sitcom in the history of television. Pretty high concept though, I can just hear that elevator pitch: “a guy’s mom is reincarnated as a 1928 Porter automobile.” Hello? I actually watched a full episode of this series online recently and for such a preposterous premise it was surprisingly watchable (not that I needed to see any more episodes). The series was created by Allan Burns who went on to create true classics such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda. I enjoyed Jerry Van Dyke in the lead (who "auditioned" for this show via a two-episode stint on The Dick Van Dyke Show, the best sitcom of the 1960s). The voice of the car was played by sexy screen star Ann Sothern. This might have been one of the first TV themes I committed to memory (and it’s still there in my brain, taking up valuable space!).

Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1965)

I loved this show, based on the Doris Day/David Niven movie from a few years earlier (and the book by Jean Kerr), about a family who buys a gigantic but somewhat decrepit Victorian mansion in the suburbs. The show starred lovely Pat Crowley as the overwhelmed mother of four boys and Mike Miller (dad to actress Penelope Ann Miller) as college professor Jim Nash. The kids were awfully cute as was the giant sheepdog named Ladadog that made me beg my parents to get us one. Kendall and I referred to this show often when we explained the purchase of our large West Adams home. Just like the Nashes, we couldn’t afford anything smaller!

Love on a Rooftop (1966)

Does anyone remember this one? It starred the late Peter Duel (who killed himself a few years later) as architect Dave Willis and Judy Carne (Burt Reynolds’ wife at the time) as his bubbly free-spirit wife Julie. I haven’t seen an episode of this show since the 60s but I remember the scripts as mini-Neil Simon plays. The Willis’s neighbor was played by Rich Little. The series was cancelled after a year and Duel went on to much bigger fame in Alias Smith and Jones before his untimely death. I think there are still séances here every year in which people try to contact him. Carne went on to become the “Sock It To Me” girl on Laugh-In before descending into heroin addiction. Yikes.

He and She (1967)

I loved, loved, loved this show because I loved, loved, loved the stars, real-life married couple Dick Benjamin and Paula Prentiss. Benjamin played successful cartoonist Dick Hollister and Prentiss his social worker wife. Dick’s main creation, “Jetman,” had become a TV series with the lead played by egomaniacal Jack Cassidy who was perfect in the role. (Cassidy’s character seemed a precursor to Ted Baxter and he ended up playing Baxter's older brother in a few episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.) I was only eight when this show aired but I remember it as one of the most literate shows on TV. The writers (including Allan Burns) won an Emmy that year but the show was stupidly cancelled after only one season.

The Mothers-in-Law (1967)

I never missed this Sunday night sitcom. I have a vivid memory of eating ribs at our kitchen table from the Black Angus restaurant in Chicago while watching the crazy Lucy-like antics of stars Kaye Ballard and Eve Arden. The similarities to I Love Lucy were no accident–the show was produced by Desi Arnaz (now divorced from Lucy) and written by Madelyn Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll of I Love Lucy fame. The show also starred teen actress Deborah Walley (the one-time Gidget sadly died of cancer years ago) but it belonged to those two aging dames. Of course at the time the show aired I thought Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard were positively ancient. Turns out Arden was 59 when the show started and Ballard only 42. The two of them had great chemistry—almost as good as Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance!

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1968)

This was my first exposure to our beloved Charles Nelson Reilly who starred in this sitcom with Hope Lange and Edward Mulhare (based on the 1947 movie) about a house that is haunted by the ghost of a 19th century sea captain. Charles played the bumbling Claymore Gregg, a descendent of the ghost, and Mrs. Muir’s landlord. I remember the great character actress Reta Shaw as the housekeeper (remember her in Mary Poppins?) but did not care for the two child actors who played Lange’s kids. Loved the family dog, though, a wire-haired terrier named Scruffy who had the uncanny ability to cock his head on cue. Not a great show, but Charles excelled. Watching him at the age of nine, I never could have dreamed that 41 years later I’d be naming my son after him.

Julia (1968)

TV was really starting to change in 1968. The Smothers Brothers were presenting controversial political humor, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In was pushing every imaginable envelope, the very hip Mod Squad was taking over crime-solving from the older generation of TV sleuths, and Diahann Carroll broke ground as the first African-American woman to star in a TV series in which she wasn’t the maid. Carroll played Julia Baker, a single mom (her husband had been shot down in Vietnam, a country that had never even been mentioned on a sitcom before this) who was a nurse (okay, it was still 1968, there weren’t too many “lady doctors” on TV yet!) for a craggly old white guy played by Lloyd Nolan. Unlike most black women on television, Julia was actually allowed to have a sex life and got to date African-American hunks Paul Winfield and Fred Williamson. The show was hardly a hard-hitting depiction of life for African-Americans in the 1960s but that was sort of the point—to have Diahann Carroll play a regular non-stereotypical sitcom character. Still, the reluctance to delve into the racial issues that plagued the country at the time brought a lot of criticism by African-American groups. I had a bit of a crush on Julia’s neighbor Marie Waggedorn (played by Betty Beaird) who was the mother of redheaded Earl J. Waggedorn. Always great character actress Lurene Tuttle also starred in this show. Dig the psychedelic opening credits!

The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1969)

“People let me tell you about my best friend, he’s a warm-hearted person who’ll love me till the end…” Anyone who watched TV in the late 60s knew this theme song and I never forgot a single word of it. This was a sweet sitcom trying to be counterculture hip (based on the movie starring Glenn Ford and Ronnie Howard) about a widower named Tom Corbett and his young son Eddie. The show starred a pre-Hulk Bill Bixby and little Brandon Cruz  who later started a hardcore punk band and also sang for the Dead Kennedys. It was one of the first sitcoms to inject some real dramatic moments into the half-hour plotlines and it actually dealt with some serious issues during its two-year run. Oscar-winning actress Miyoshi Umeki co-starred as the Corbett’s wise housekeeper, Mrs. Livingston. I still find myself imitating Umeki’s stilted English from time to time (“Hello, Mr. Eddie’s Father!”) causing Leah to go apoplectic with cries of racism.

My World and Welcome To It (1969)

I would love to see this show again. In my memory, it was way ahead of its time and absolutely brilliant. Based on the writings and cartoons of James Thurber, it starred William Windom as a Thurber-like cartoonist working for a sophisticated New Yorker-like magazine. Windom would frequently have his daydreams and fantasies acted out (using very cool Thurber-ish animation) on this intelligent show that again was inexplicably cancelled after one season. Joan Hotchkiss played Windom’s wife (she also played Oscar Madison’s girlfriend on The Odd Couple) and their daughter was played by Lisa Gerritsen who went on to play Phyllis Lindstrom’s daughter Bess on Mary Tyler Moore.

So there you have it, kids, your guide to what to watch during your next case of Swine Flu. With the lack of original programming on TV these days, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these old chestnuts remade for current audiences. Let's see...how about Mario Lopez starring in a sitcom in which his deceased mother comes back as an iPod Touch? 

Your Children Are Not Your Children

 

It’s strange having an infant and a teenager at the same time. As a baby, Charlie is completely dependent on us for survival. Though he is no longer hooked up to the ventilators, IV drips, and various machines that kept him alive during his first tumultuous months, it is still essential that we focus on his needs 24 hours a day, there’s no way he could fend for himself in this world. My daughter, Leah, on the other hand, is in the midst of the boundary-shaping stage of adolescence that will ultimately enable her to function as an independent adult. We are still responsible for her physical and emotional well-being, as we are with Charlie, but the goal with Leah is to begin to extricate ourselves as best we can and allow her to make decisions and figure out how to get along in the world—an exciting but frequently painful process to go through as a parent. While offering loving support, we have to let her work through more and more stuff on her own, including feelings of sadness, disappointment, and grief.

Because Charlie is so dependent on us, it’s tempting to think of him as a blank slate on which we can fashion the best person our collective wisdom is capable of. But is this really true? Are we Pygmalion to his Galatea? Henry Higgins to his Eliza Doolittle? Not bloody likely. While I don’t underestimate the important role and influence Kendall and I have as Charlie’s parents, I can also see that there are already aspects of his personality that are all him, not us. As parents, we can work hard to create a loving foundation of support and trust that will benefit our children throughout their lives. We can also fuck up our kids royally and ensure their future presence in therapists’ offices. (I guess most of us do a little bit of both!) But if there’s one thing I’ve learned as an older parent it’s that we are not creating our children out of whole cloth. There is no blank slate on which we can showcase our handiwork.

On the one hand, that realization is a relief (what if that tapestry was fashioned entirely from our neuroses?). On the other hand, it’s an affront to our egos and our narcissistic desires to see our children as extensions of ourselves. I think I did that a lot with Leah which is why the early years of her adolescence were difficult for me. I had to learn not to take it personally as Leah began pulling away and wanting to spend a lot more time with her friends than with me or the other adults in her life. Which, God knows, is as it should be, but it was still a shock since I was so used to being involved in every part of her life and activities. I remember hiding in the bushes at her school when she was in Kindergarten and watching her interact with the other kids, agonizing over every slight. Let’s face it, having kids is a wonderful, joyful, and painful process. Loving anyone that much carries with it the potential for so many different kinds of loss. Even when our kids are happy and healthy, there’s an element of loss we experience every day. I grieve the little girl that Leah was just as I enjoy and celebrate the young woman she has become. After everything Charlie has been through, Kendall and I already feel a bit of a panic that he’s growing up so fast! It’s hard for me to talk about these feelings because I’m happy and excited about all the changes we see every day, but they still represent elements of loss. Do I sound crazy?

I was talking to my dad on the phone yesterday and he said to me, “As a parent, I’m only ever as happy as my least happy child.” What? Of course I understand this sentiment and recognize that it's based in his strong love for his three children, but it is so rife with dysfunction I begged him to write it down and hand deliver it to a therapist. God love him, but it’s the kind of philosophy that has led to us keeping some of our feelings from him for fear of causing too much pain. Who needs that kind of responsibility? Sometimes Leah will want to tell me something that’s going on in her life but she’ll preface it with “Now, Dad, please don’t freak out when I tell you this.” Freak out? Moi? (Hey, stop laughing all those who know me!) I don’t want to be that dad hiding in the bushes crying because some snot-nosed Kindergartener snubbed my child. And I hope I won’t be anymore. Going through the ordeal of losing a child this year and watching Charlie fight for his life made me realize more than ever how we are all on our own journeys and how going through all sorts of painful emotions can lead to many gifts. I've also seen how our own loving actions work in tandem with aspects of our children that have absolutely nothing to do with us.

When Leah was born in 1994, we sent out baby announcements that included the poem “On Children” by Khalil Gibran. I recognized the beauty and wisdom of the words back then but I didn’t come close to understanding the poem the way I do now.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
But seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

First Halloween

 

This is how Charlie woke up this morning, happy as a clam. That is, until we forced him into the requisite baby pumpkin costume.

I wonder what babies think of this strange holiday where they are dressed in some crazy outfit and a parade of terrifying goblins and ghouls come to their door. Can you guess what Leah’s costume is this year? She’s “Where’s Waldo?” Halloween was always a huge deal in our house. My mother would get so into the holiday I’d start to wonder whether the medieval belief that redheads were witches was true. She would decorate every inch of our house and organize the spookiest Halloween party in the neighborhood. I especially remember her scaring the bejeesus out of me and my blindfolded friends by passing around disgusting human entrails such as cantaloupe “eyeballs” and cold spaghetti “veins.” Every year my mother delighted in becoming the ugliest witch possible. She’d spend days dying sheets black in huge pots and fashioning her putty nose, bushy eyebrows, and hairy moles.

Below is my mom before her transformation and then just after. How many times have you seen a witch making a business call? Notice the cigarette in her hand in both pictures—truly the spookiest thing of all considering she would eventually die of lung cancer.

 

We are bracing ourselves for a huge onslaught of trick-or-treaters tonight. Everyone knows by now that Kendall gives out full-size candy bars (she just bought 300 of them—oy!) so at this point I wouldn’t be surprised to see buses of costumed moppets unloading in front of our house.

Here is seven-year-old Leah following in her grandmother's bewitched footsteps. When we were little, we didn’t stop trick-or-treating until we had several grocery bags filled to the brim with candy. It's a wonder I have any teeth left. Luckily, Leah was always into the social aspects of Halloween more than the coma-inducing sugary ones. She recently wrote a post on her blog decrying the holiday for giving girls her age an excuse to dress inappropriately. Indeed, the Halloween party held at her school a few nights ago looked like a dress rehearsal for a Cecil B. DeMille production of “Sodom and Gomorrah.” Leah looked so innocent in her Waldo costume. Not that my actress daughter is incapable of looking far older than her 14 years. Yesterday she received her final lice treatment (talk about spooky ordeals!) which involved yet again forcing a tiny comb through her voluminous red curls. As a result, her hair transformed into a gigantic cumulous cloud of auburn frizz. Instead of freaking out about it, Leah did what any seasoned thespian would do. She slapped on some make-up, grabbed one of her mother's dresses, and organized an impromptu photo shoot. Is this supermodel below really the same little witch from a few years ago? Yikes!

 

Happy Halloween, kids. Save me the Butterfingers.

Half-Birthday

 

Here is Charlie celebrating his half-birthday is an outfit hand-knit for him by the talented Ellen Bloom of L.A. Is My Beat. My son is one of the best-dressed babies in Los Angeles, certainly light years ahead of his dad!

It is so hard to believe that six months have passed since that day last April. We are so very grateful to have Charlie home with us now and that he is thriving after six major surgeries and so many months in intensive care, but I’m still feeling some of the after-effects of the PTSD that resulted from that terrifying time. This morning I was doing some work on my computer at a coffee shop on Larchmont when the clock struck the times our sons were born: 9:46 for Oliver and 9:48 for Charlie. Oliver was first and he was significantly bigger than Charlie. During Kendall’s short pregnancy, Oliver always dominated the ultrasounds, healthy and active and blocking (protecting?) his brother from view. For a while we knew that Oliver was a boy but he kept moving so much he obscured a good look at his Charlie’s parts.

But for whatever reasons, our rambunctious, full-of-life boy was not strong enough to survive premature childbirth. We still don’t know what caused Kendall to go into labor at 24 weeks, there were none of the usual infections and Oliver’s extensive autopsy showed that his body and organs were developing perfectly. But from the second he was born, the doctors struggled mightily to keep him alive. None of the lines were going in as easily as they were on Charlie. Nothing was working and with each passing hour more extreme measures were considered and then rejected as being too invasive in his fragile state. “Let’s wait until morning and see if he stabilizes” was the constant refrain. He died less than 12 hours after he was born. We miss him every day.

If I had to remember one moment from that horrific day, it would be when I had what I'd have to call an out-of-body experience in the operating room. Minutes earlier Kendall and I were in another room discussing the fact that Kendall was going to have to spend the rest of her pregnancy (weeks or even months, we naively thought) at Cedars. What?! We couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t we just go home and take it easy? We tried to bargain with the doctors. “Well, we’ll take another look tomorrow and re-evaluate,” they said as they left the room. Suddenly the contractions monitor that Kendall was strapped to went completely berserk. The needle I’d been watching left the usual position and bounced literally off the chart. And it stayed there. Kendall doubled over in pain and collapsed on the bed causing me to run into the hall and start screaming like Shirley MacLaine. The doctor who had just examined Kendall came back in the room. She put her hands between Kendall’s legs and shouted in panic: “I’M TOUCHING THE BABY’S HEAD! KENDALL, KEEP YOUR LEGS TOGETHER AND DO NOT PUSH!” Kendall was wheeled out immediately and I was told to stay put in the now empty room. The next thing I knew I was pushed into a surgical gown and thrust into the operating room.

The first thing I saw was Kendall on the operating table, her emergency C-section just completed and her internal organs in full view. I spun around to the other side of the small room and saw Oliver and Charles, each on his own surgical table with teams of doctors working around them. Both babies were a frightening color but only Oliver had bruises over much of his body. His sweet little mouth was black. Charlie was covered in bubble wrap and despite the horror of his appearance, someone told me that he was doing okay. This was when I traveled out of my body. I was desperately trying to understand what was happening but it was just too much to take in. I felt woozy and like I was in a dream and I started to bounce about the room like a pinball, coming close to several of the busy doctors who shouted at me to move back. I felt my body rising like a balloon to the ceiling of that cramped room and looking down at myself and the teams of doctors working furiously on my wife and two sons. Our OB/GYN had finally arrived and she was stitching Kendall up. I looked over to Oliver and Charles and couldn’t believe what I was seeing or how such tiny, alien-looking creatures could possibly survive. I felt like if I didn’t stop rising above them I would keep drifting past the confines of Cedar-Sinai and into space. “STOP! Those are your children,” I repeated to myself over and over again. “Your sons. There is your wife. They all need you. Come back into your body. You have to come back.” As I repeated this mantra, I began floating down into the room and back into my body. I still couldn’t process what was happening but I knew I had to be there for my family.

That’s about all of that day that I can handle right now. There’s a lot more but I’ve learned during the past six months when I need to ground myself in the present. We lost so much that day but we also gained our wonderful son who would face endless travails over the next 137 days. I wish I could say that I was always filled with confidence and certainty that Charlie would be coming home with us, but that would be a lie. In those early weeks, I couldn’t allow myself to think such a thing and it made me painfully uncomfortable when anyone said anything about it, even Kendall. But as we got to know Charlie, his wonderful personality, and his incredible drive to survive, the love I felt for him trumped any fears I had about his chances for survival. I unabashedly threw myself into hopes and prayers for the time when he’d be home in our arms. And now that time is here as we ecstatically mark his half-birthday. Never getting to know Oliver’s unique personality other than his playful in-utero antics is a sadness we’ll have to live with for the rest of our lives. But Charlie brings us so much joy and happiness that his brother’s sacrifice was definitely not in vain. Happy Half-Birthday, my beautiful sons.

Ashes to Ashes, Soup to Nuts

 

Soupy Sales died on Thursday. That name is such a part of my childhood I feel compelled to pay tribute. Truth be told, and I guess this is awful to say so soon after his death, I never really “got” Soupy Sales when I was a kid. Today I can see how his physical comedy and wink-to-the-audience hi-jinks paved the way for all sorts of comedians and children’s entertainers that would follow, but back in the 1960s I just didn’t think he was very funny. I was unmoved by his pie-throwing antics and low budget puppets. I was a loyal fan of “Kukla, Fran, and Ollie” and I didn’t think Sales could compete with the Kuklapolitan benchmark, not that he was trying to. There’s no question that Soupy Sales was a phenomenon in the 1960s. And it wasn’t only among kids. College campuses would practically empty out when his daily show was on. He held onto his goofy persona well into senior citizenhood, and like many comedians, occasionally got a chance to show off his acting chops in serious roles, often with a dark twist.

Looking back into the archives and knowing what a huge hit hit he was in various TV incarnations, I was surprised to see how wary the critics were of Soupy Sales from the very beginning. The first mention of him in the New York Times is a sour review from July 1955:

The kiddies, subjected to one abominable television pitch after another, have a new performer trying to woo their favor locally. He is called “Soupy Sales” and he made his local debut on Channel 7 last night.

The show was loud, unimaginative, and annoying. It introduced hand puppets that behaved like seedy relations of those appearing on “Kukla, Fran, and Ollie,” the program for which “Soupy Sales” is a summer substitute. At times, “Soupy” himself suggested a combination of Pinky Lee and Jerry Lewis at their most obstreperous.

For children, too, the prescription would seem to be long hours in the fresh air away from video as long as the summer lasts.

But what could we expect from mid-1950s television, right? All TV back then was sophomoric and unsophisticated compared to today, yes? NO! I was flabbergasted to look at the TV listings from the day in July 1955 when Soupy premiered in New York and realize how much better television was 54 years ago. Take a look at this sampling and tell me if you think today’s idiot programmers would put most of these shows on:

2:30—Youth Wants to Know. Rep. W. Sterling Cole, member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and the House Armed Services Committee will talk to teens.

3:00—Frontiers of Faith. The relation of churches to urban and rural life will be the theme discussed.

6:30—You Are There. “General Washington’s Farewell to His Officers,” CBS correspondents covering.

7:00—Report from Geneva. Latest news from the peace conference with Howard Smith, Edward R. Murrow, and Eric Sevareid reporting.

8:00—Variety Hour. Jack Webb, Janet Leigh, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, guests.

8:00—Producer’s Showcase. “The Four-poster,” Jan de Hartog’s romantic comedy about married life. With Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn.

8:30—Music ’55. Yehudi Menuhin and Duke Ellington will be the guests.

8:30—Concert. Leontyne Price, soprano, and William Warfield, baritone, guests.

9:00—Television Playhouse. Calder Willingham’s “Incident in July,” with Maureen Stapleton. A young married woman acquires a destructive affection for a seventeen year old boy. With Dick York.

9:00—“Man With Vengeance.” Story about a film director intent on making a superb motion picture while seeking revenge on an actor. With Barry Sullivan and Luther Adler.

10:00—Television Theatre. “Death of Billy the Kid,” with Paul Newman, Frank Overton, Michael Conrad, and others.

10:00—Name’s the Same. Panel show with Clifton Fadiman, moderator. Hildy Parks, Mike Wallace, panelists.

10:30—What’s My Line? Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, Fred Allen, panelists. John Daly is the moderator.

10:30—The Search. A new approach to the diagnosis and cure of deafness in children. Dr. William Hardy will explain the procedure to viewers.

There were so many great shows on that week. Every night featured several original dramatic productions for television starring the biggest stars of the day along with endless variety shows, classic sitcoms, concerts, serious news coverage, and cultural explorations. True, the commercials were mostly ridiculous, and some of the sitcoms would seem hideously dated today, but the overall quality of programming seemed shockingly high.

But back to Soupy. Despite my aversion to some of his antics, he definitely pushed the envelope. A few years later, he was given a night-time slot which featured classy folks like Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, and Shirley MacLaine getting pies in the face. Here’s an L.A. Times review of that 1962 show:

According to reports seeping back from the rest of the country, viewers tuned to the ABC network last Friday evening are still in a state of shock.

That was the night ABC unleashed a character named Soupy Sales. Here in Southern California we are more or less used to Soupy, especially those of us harboring teenagers in our homes.

This marked the first time, however, that a national night-time audience had witnessed Soupy—or anything like him, since Halley’s Comet last passed over.

Those who stayed the full 30 minutes got a bonus shock as Frank Sinatra (in person) came on and broke into “Foggy Day in London Town,” then stepped into Soupy’s alleyway and got pasted in the face with a meringue pie.

To the saner element in TV-land, it just didn’t square that the high-priced Sinatra would be found slumming on what probably is the lowest budget show on TV outside of the nightly weather reports.

Soupy might best be described as the poor slob’s Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. His nighttime network debut inspired many critics to dust off expletives they haven’t used since Ed Sullivan started on TV. “A mishmash of mediocrity,” said Variety. “For kids with low IQ’s,” snapped a wire service critic.

ABC executives so far have maintained a fearful silence. They won’t side in with these critics unless Soupy fails to get a mandate from the viewers, which he is just likely to receive.

After watching Soupy’s show, one gets the feeling that he is at least honest. He is not trying to tell us that TV isn’t a wasteland. He is simply saying, “Try me and see the best waste in town.”

Okay, now I feel guilty. With tributes like this, dearly departed comedians don’t need any enemies. Sorry, Soupy, I really do respect your drive and innovation. Especially after being consistently trashed by the snooty critics. Does anyone even remember that before Johnny Carson began his long stint on “The Tonight Show,” it was Soupy Sales who first took over for Jack Paar?

“Why should I be afraid to follow Jack Paar? I once followed Sharkey the Seal!” This display of reckless bravado comes from pie-in-your-eye Soupy Sales as he departs for New York to tilt at those sacred windmills left on NBC’s Tonight Show by the omniscient Paar.

“I was supposed to hit Paar with a pie when he bowed out on his last show,” Soupy reports. “He thought it would be better than a lot of tears, but he changed his mind. Instead of me, he had Bobby Kennedy and it was all tears. There was even a sign at the end of the show which read, ‘No more to come.’ I guess he figured his leaving would close up the network.”

Soupy may not be what the FCC’s Newton Minow needs to irrigate TV’s wasteland, but with a pie for a lance, he is ready to assault the problem singlehandedly.

When Soupy takes over the help of Tonight he intends to play it “cool, but enthusiastic,” just the way he did on that day he had to follow Sharkey the Seal.

“They’re always giving guys like this Carl Sandburg awards for something he did on TV. Sure, he goes on TV and picks up the bread, then turns around and makes a speech knocking TV. I don’t dig that,” says an indignant Soupy. I wanted to know if he had decided what to do on the Tonight Show.

“Not yet, but I’m not going to solve anything, you can be sure.”

Soupy could turn out to be the hit of the show.

It's not every comedian who has the hubris to publicly insult people like Carl Sandburg! Soupy was born Milton Supman in 1926. His was the only Jewish family in their small town in North Carolina. I can only imagine what that was like for him growing up in the 1930s and I’d guess that this helped lead him into a life of comedy. Soupy's life and career were not without controversy. He was famously fired from one national show in 1965 when he told kids to go into their mothers’ purses and send him all the “green paper” they could find containing pictures of the presidents. Hundreds of children across the children did this causing their parents to go apoplectic when they discovered why their kids had mailed the TV host their cash. Love him or hate him, Soupy Sales was an original. Here is some classic Soupy…

Overlapping Generations

 

I look at my son's face and see the history of my family in his smiling countenance. I never dreamed I'd have a baby a decade into the twenty-first century and I think of all my family members born during the nineteenth century that I knew so well. I wish Charlie could know them, and the ones who came before. On some level, I think he does. 

The last veteran of the Civil War died just before I was born. There were lots of people around during my childhood whose grandparents and even parents had been born slaves. I remember endless lines of old World War I veterans marching in parades down Chicago’s State Street when I was a kid. And since I was born only 14 years after World War II ended, there were obviously plenty of those youngish vets around, as well as survivors of the Nazi Holocaust including a number of my close friends’ parents.

Sometimes when you hear people talking about different generations you’d think that every person born during a previous era dropped dead on the same day, making way for the next group. Of course it doesn’t work that way. Many different generations overlap in one person’s lifetime and the older generations depart so slowly that it sometimes comes as a total shock and surprise when we realize they’re gone.

My great-grandparents, about whom I’ve written often, died when I was 12 years old. As I mentioned in one post about my great-grandfather’s recorded album of Yiddish songs, he was born less than a decade after Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. The year Itshe Meyer Korolnek arrived on this planet, George Eastman invented the first flexible, paper-based film. Republican Chester Arthur was President of the United States, Queen Victoria was in the heyday of her long reign, and Czar Alexander III had recently ascended to the throne to become the Emperor of All the Russias (his virulent anti-Semitic policies would ultimately lead to my family’s departure from eastern Europe). And yet I knew Itshe Meyer and my great-grandmother Alta Toba during most of my childhood. Even though my grandfather was born in 1907 in my family’s Polish shtetl of Staszow, he was only three when they arrived in Toronto and he never had a Yiddish accent or any of the other immigrant trappings. My grandfather died several weeks after Leah was born and most of his seven brothers and sisters died during the 1990s. Of that generation, only my Auntie Anne survives. She lives in Israel and has four great-great-grandchildren. How many people can ever say that?

When Kendall and I were kids, our obsession with old movies was enhanced by the still living stars of yesteryear. Kendall went to an event honoring Claudette Colbert and got to meet the screen legend. Her dad once interviewed (and inadvertently insulted) movie goddess Marlene Dietrich. I ran into Gloria Swanson walking her dog in New York and trailed her several city blocks. On my second date with Kendall in 1989, we went to a charity event attended by a host of MGM stars including Janet Leigh, June Allyson, and Margaret O’Brien. We also went to a Friars Club roast of Ann Miller where we mingled with other stars from our favorite films. One by one, these people started to die off, especially the stars of the 1920s and 30s. Who is left now? Perhaps only the child stars of the 30s—Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, and a few elderly holdouts such as Luise Rainier and sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine. I remember saying (in perhaps one of my gayest moments ever) that I couldn’t imagine living in a world without people like Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn. And now both are gone. Now the stars of the 1940s and 50s have become the Old Guard. Of that group I am grateful that we still have people like our friends Betty Garrett, Barbara Rush, and Eva Marie Saint along with other movie luminaries such as Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, Jane Russell, Jennifer Jones, Esther Williams, Doris Day, Leslie Caron, and Tony Curtis. By the time Charlie is an adult, who will be the screen elders? Winona Ryder? Claire Danes? Matt Damon and Ben Affleck? Oy.

I don’t know what made me start this stream-of-consciousness rant. I guess it was the recent visit from my dad and the shocking realization that my parents’ generation is now firmly entrenched as our elders. That sort of snuck up on me. I still view my parents as eternally youthful even though my dad is 77 and my mom has been dead for 10 years. Still, comparing them to my great-grandparents' generation, I'd have to say that 80 is the new 50, they DO seem more youthful than their elderly predecessors. I guess some of these issues were bound to come up being the 50-year-old father of a small baby. I see the Facebook pages of many of my old high school friends talking about their adorable grandchildren and I think “Huh? How is that possible?” I start to hyperventilate when I realize that I’ll be 63 at Charlie’s Bar Mitzvah or how unlikely it is that I’ll be around when he turns 50. Then, before I ramp up into a full-blown anxiety attack, I work at bringing myself back to my major lesson of the past six months: LIVING IN THE MOMENT. Today I am perfectly healthy and joyfully able to raise my teenaged daughter and my infant son. Today I have the benefit of my father’s wisdom, love, and neuroses, and I’m able to hear the wonderful stories from people in his generation and a few people from my grandparents’ peer group. And somewhere in the hills of Carmel, California, Doris Day is still singing “Que Sera Sera,” if not to the public at large, then at least to her dogs. Relax, Danny. All is well in the world.

Update: I was reviewing this post last night and clicked on the above link to my great-grandfather's record. As soon as Charlie heard Itshe Meyer's voice, he went nuts—flailing his arms wildly and completely rocking out. You can take the boy out of the shtetl but you can't take the Yiddishkeit out of the boy...

If You’re Ever in a Jam, Here I Am

I just put my father on a plane back to Chicago. He was here this weekend for a wedding and to meet his new grandson for the first time. As you can see from the above photo, it was a real love affair between the two of them. Although my father has been blind for the past ten years, he was able to interact with Charlie at length and sing to him in Spanish, Hebrew, and Yiddish. He also told many of his off-color jokes while holding Charlie, and I look forward to the day when Charlie will be able to fully appreciate my father’s unique talents for accents and storytelling. I definitely see a resemblance between Charlie and my 77-year-old dad and yet marvel at their very different lives. I love hearing stories of my dad’s childhood even though they are usually pretty sad. He had no father, his mother was mentally ill, and they were often homeless on the streets of Chicago. When my dad was 14, his mother was permanently institutionalized. And yet he overcame all that misery, pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and became one of the most loving dads since Robert Young.

This weekend we attended the wedding of a daughter of my father’s oldest friend, the brilliant writer Sam Bobrick. Their friendship has lasted over 70 years and, as far as I’m concerned, is the model for all friendships, past, present, or future. You’ve never seen two people love each other more or be more supportive of each other through two lifetimes of tragedies, crises, and good times. Sam and his wife Julie are two of the nicest people on the planet. Sam was friends with Kendall’s late father and Kendall and I met at Sam’s first daughter’s wedding just over twenty years ago.

Watching my dad with Charlie was fantastic and heartwarming, but it also made me ache for my mother who would be absolutely gaga for him. My mom was such a great Bubbie and it makes me sad that only Leah and my nephew Spencer can remember her and even they were very young when she was died in 1999. But I have to believe that my nephew Sammy and Charlie have a connection to her that defies the physical plane. I also like to imagine our other son Oliver firmly entrenched in my mother’s loving arms wherever they are. I know she is taking care of him on some level.

We’ve been home from the hospital for two weeks now. Dare I risk the wrath of my old friend, the Evil Eye, by saying that we are loving every second of Life with Charlie? Maybe all babies should start their lives with five months in the hospital and six major surgeries, it seems to have done wonders to make Charlie one of the most good-natured babies I’ve ever known. After being poked and prodded and intubated and IVed and cut open over and over again, little seems to faze him now. He is so fun to be around and he spreads his joy to everyone in his presence.

I am so behind in thanking the legions of people who have sent Charlie their good wishes as well as some amazing gifts including a wardrobe of handmade clothes that would make Valentino jealous (fashion show to come in future posts). What would we have done without the support of so many people during this crazy year—people we already knew and loved as well as total strangers who became interested in Charlie and followed his story over the months. These people don’t feel like strangers anymore and all are welcome chez Charles whenever they are in Los Angeles.

Here’s a small sampling of the people our son the social butterfly has taken a shine to in his early life:

Shake Your Lulav!

Charlie is wearing his first yarmulke in this photo but I admit it looks more like a French beret on his small head.  His recent hospitalization coincided with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur but we’re home for Sukkot which lasts all of this week as well as Simchat Torah next week—the “fun” holidays.

Yesterday I was in a Citibank parking lot when a young Lubavitcher approached me with an etrog and lulav, two of the ritual items used by observant Jews during Sukkot. He was part of the Chabad movement, a branch of Chasidic Jews whose mission is to help non-observant Jews return to more orthodox practices. The photo above shows a Lubavitcher approaching a secular Jew in New York. My Chasid was even younger than the guy in the photo. He asked me if I was Jewish and when I said I was, he asked if I’d shaken a lulav yet this year. A lulav is a frond from a date palm tree and you're supposed to shake the lulav each day during Sukkot. I said I hadn’t and he asked if I wanted to. Sure, I said. I always stop whenever I’m approached by the Chabadniks. I’ve written about my fascination with Chasidic culture a few times. I know I could never be part of such a group but I look forward to spontaneous interactions with them (my last encounter was learning how to “lay teffilin” in a “mitzvah mobile” in the theatre district of New York). The Lubavitcher guy in the parking lot gave me his hat and put his hand on his head. “Do I need to do that?” I asked. “No,” he replied, “it’s only because I have to cover my head and I just gave you my hat!” I held the etrog, the yellow lemon-like citron in my left hand, the tall lulav in my right, and recited two prayers. Then I shook my lulav for all it was worth. “You look good in a hat,” he said cheerfully as I was walking away. “A yarmulke would suit you even more!” Here’s a video currently making the rounds of people getting their Sukkot Shake on:

Hey, I didn’t say we weren’t a strange people. Normally, I can’t stand being accosted by people on the street but I’ll always stop and talk to the Chabad folks. It isn’t only because they’re my people, I’m equally fascinated by other religious emissaries who take the time to talk to those with different beliefs. Mormon missionaries are constantly roaming the streets of my neighborhood. You can spot the clean-cut white boys in suits a mile away and for some reason they seem to target African-American homes. They haven’t come to our house yet but I’d definitely invite them in. Except I’d be the one asking most of the questions. What are you trying to do, exactly, get people to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or simply to goose up their Christianity? What is the Mormon Church’s position on Judaism? What do you think about gay marriage? Do you really believe that Joseph Smith found golden plates containing the Book of Mormon buried near his home in New York State? Have you ever seen “Big Love?” An Osmond concert?

This morning we took Charlie, aka Chaim Yehuda Shmuel, to see his neurosurgeon for a post-op exam and to have his stitches removed. All is going well with his new shunt, thank God, and we were out of there in about 20 minutes. (The last time we went to see Dr. Danielpour we were admitted to the hospital for 10 more days!) Charlie remains a constant delight, we love every second of having him at home. I think of all the people who warned us to get all the sleep we could and to do everything we wanted because basically,they said, life as we know it would come to an end as soon as we had a baby. Having already raised a child I knew that wasn’t true. And it’s really not. Which is not to say it isn’t one of the most challenging things any person on the planet could do but I grew tired of all the naysayers during Kendall’s pregnancy. Yes, we’re tired and can’t go out as much as we did before. Big deal!

I can’t wait until Charlie can participate in the activities of our cool synagogue and enjoy the Jewish holidays. I have many wonderful memories of those days from my childhood, even if it takes roving Chabadniks to remind me how to perform most of the religious rituals.

Start peeling potatoes—only 67 days until Chanukah!  

Ease on Down the Road

 

Charlie has been waking up in such a happy mood this week. It’s so fantastic having him at home, I can’t bring myself to stop posting these photos. Please let me know when I turn into that obnoxious parent who can’t shut up about his kid (like I’m not already there?). At least I haven’t put any bumper stickers on my car proclaiming that my child was the Cedars-Sinai Baby of the Month. But oy, look at that punim, how can I not record these delicious stages of development?

We took Charlie to the pediatrician on Tuesday and as we were leaving a woman in the waiting room said, “Wow, he looks like he just came out yesterday!” Really? I was stunned by that comment because to me Charlie looks HUGE and feels like the sturdy five-month-old that he is even though I realize at eight and a half pounds he is the size of a full-term newborn. And of course this woman never saw our son when he weighed just over a pound. Every time someone asks us how old he is we trip all over ourselves. “Well, he was born over five months ago, but he’s really only seven weeks because he was born at 24 weeks, blah, blah, blah.” Too much information for total strangers who are just making conversation?

As I alluded to in my last post, now that we’re not facing imminent crisis (God-willing, pu, pu, pu), I’m experiencing some identify shifts. I’m trying to figure out my next steps in my work life and I’m also wondering what I’m going to write about on here. Scrolling back, I’m stunned at how many posts I’ve written about Charlie. Over the past five months only one post (when Ted Kennedy died) did not mention him at all. But I’ve been writing in this blog for almost five years. What the heck was I writing about before this?

Oh yeah, all sorts of crazy stuff. Old, obscure movies like the weird Ann Blyth film we watched this weekend called “Our Very Own.” Released in 1950, the film treated adoption as a dark, dirty little secret. When 16-year-old Blyth (who was actually 22 when she made the movie—and looked it) finds out she was adopted, her idyllic life falls apart, especially after an uncomfortable meeting with her sweet but wrong-side-of-the-tracks birth mother, poignantly played by Ann Dvorak. These days it’s inconceivable (I hope) to imagine parents not telling their children that they were adopted. Why lovely Jane Wyatt (pre-Father Knows Best) neglected to tell Blyth about her roots is perplexing—apparently she was worried that her daughter would feel “less than” her younger siblings who Wyatt gave birth to. 

The term “birth mother” didn’t exist in 1950 so every time they refer to Dvorak’s character they call her Ann’s “real mother.” Blyth’s spunky youngest sister is played to perfection by 12-year-old Natalie Wood who was such a delight to watch as a kid. 25-year-old Farley Granger appears as Ann’s hunky boyfriend. We met Granger a few years ago when he was here touting his autobiography about his closeted life in Hollywood. Blyth and Granger were huge stars back in the day but I’m not sure either has withstood the test of time. My favorite Farley Granger movie was Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” where he becomes the hapless victim to a sociopath played by Robert Walker. Ann Blyth is best known for her portrayal of Joan Crawford’s horrific brat Veda in “Mildred Pierce.” (Did you know that Kate Winslet is now remaking “Mildred Pierce” for HBO? I can’t wait!) I thought it would have been so cool if the producers of “On Our Own” had hired Joan Crawford to play Blyth’s birth mother. Talk about a satisfying Big Reveal! Joan would have had a field day with her one big scene.

Thank God being adopted is no longer such a big deal. We had a fair number of adopted kids in my family and we always knew who they were, I don’t remember any stigma being attached to it or feeling that they were in any way less than “real” family members. On the other hand, it wasn’t something we ever brought up in casual conversation, it was fairly hush-hush. In Kendall’s family, back in the day, the adopted kids were left off the official family tree because they weren’t “blood.” Yikes.

So much for my writers’ block, it’s scary how quickly this kind of incessant rambling comes back to me. (Are my stats plummeting yet?) Before our hospital ordeal I also wrote a lot about all my “only in L.A.” events such as the “Sing-along Sound of Music” that Leah and I attended this past weekend at the Hollywood Bowl. We’ve gone to this annual event many times and it never disappoints. Watching a film in the sold-out Bowl with 18,000 other enthusiastic fans is something everyone should experience at least once. As always, the original Liesl, Charmian Carr, was there to sing a little “16 Going on 17” for us even though she is now 66 going on 67. Carr was clearly being groomed by 20th-Century Fox to be their next big young star, and she was quite good, having beat out established actresses such as Mia Farrow and Patty Duke for the role, so it always surprised me that she never made another film. She did a few TV things and then retired to raise her children. Can you think of anyone who’s made such a public career for herself after appearing in only one film? 

Carr joined host Melissa Peterman to judge the annual costume contest. This year it was surprisingly light on the drag queens and heavy on adorable young children portraying everything from “tea with jam and bread” (from the song “Do Re Mi”) to the marionettes in “The Lonely Goatherd.” My favorite costume was a family who recreated the entire gazebo scene between Liesl and Rolf complete with a shower-curtain gazebo and the kids who were dressed as trees with dolls hanging from them while another kid zoomed by in a cardboard car with real working lights. This represented the scene where the Von Trapp kids were climbing in the trees as Captain Von Trapp returned home in his car with the Baroness. As usual, I think Baroness Schrader got a bum rap from the hissing audience and I remained the only one out of 18,000 who cheered poor Eleanor Parker every time she appeared on screen. Lucky I wasn’t beaten to death by the crowd.

Oh, and I’m sure I’ll continue to have posts about my more public family members. I was so preoccupied last month that I missed the following cool profile of Wilco on “CBS Sunday Morning.” Much of it was shot at my sister’s house in Chicago (in the heart of the city, not “suburban Chicago” as the host inexplicably states at the beginning of the segment—I’m sure that drove my sister nuts). Check out the jamming in my nephew Spencer’s bedroom:

And yes, I will continue writing about the Magical Adventures of Charlie Miller.

Every day brings new miracles such as his voice suddenly returning earlier this week. I shouldn’t even say returning, he’s been silent since the day he was born. We thought it was just a result of his many intubations and his decreased lung capacity and were starting to really worry about it when all of a sudden he started letting out with major wails. Go, Charlie! His voice is so cute it sounds like an adult voice-over artist playing a baby. We go back to the neurosurgeon next week to make sure everything is kosher with his shunt and we have a range of other appointments coming up from pulmonary specialists to physical and occupational therapists. But we are so, so grateful to have him home with us and he seems to be enjoying every moment. 

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

After a 10-day add-on to his 137 days at Cedars-Sinai, our son Charlie is home again! I was astounded by how fast he recovered from his shunt replacement surgery. When he had the first one last month it took six days just to get him extubated and several more weeks to get him back to speed. But now, less than 48 hours after the surgery, Charlie was being sent home without his oxygen tank, apnea monitor, or any other medical accoutrements. Yippee! On Saturday we were moved from the highly secure PICU to the regular pediatric floor for our last day which is just like regular hospital rooms except all the kids have a lo-jack device on their ankle to prevent any sociopaths from waltzing out of the building with them. There are big signs marking the boundaries of where you can walk around with your child without setting the alarm off. I took Charlie for a little stroll around the floor yesterday morning and as I was heading back to the room I saw a pair of security guards heading our way. “I hope they're not coming for you,” the nurse joked. And yet they were! Somehow I had set Charlie’s lo-jack off and the guards had to examine all of our identification. Oops.

Suddenly, without any of the fanfare or extensive paperwork of the NICU, the nurses came in, snipped off Charlie’s ankle bracelet, took out the PICC line they had put in for the surgery, and said we were free to go. Really? I almost felt like a kidnapper walking out of the building on our own back into the sunlight that Charlie had seen for only six days before landing back in the hospital.

Yesterday was Charlie’s five-month birthday so of course as we left the hospital complex our thoughts were on that scary day last April and our son, Oliver, who never got the chance to feel the warm sun on his skin. It was so great to be home again and though it was only 16 days since our last departure from Cedars, Charlie seemed like a different baby, so much more developed. Our dogs were excited to have us all back and apart from a few enthusiastic licks pretty respectful of the baby. We had a great night. I sang a little bit of the Kol Nidre prayer to Charlie since we were missing our synagogue’s services and also sang a bit of “Let Me Entertain You” in honor of our sacrilegious Yom Kippur Eve performance of “Gypsy” on Broadway last year.

I was on feeding duty last night and today feel an exhaustion I haven’t felt since Leah was a baby back in 1994. But even though I looked forward to complaining about typical new parent stuff like sleep deprivation, I don’t feel like complaining. I can barely keep my eyes open but it is such a happy, grateful exhaustion.

And now, I begin to contemplate my post-hospital life. I MUST get work right away and I have a few writing projects in mind based on our experience over the past five months. What will I write about on this blog now that I no longer (God willing) have complex medical procedures to deal with? I have fantasized about returning to “normal” life for so long and yet it’s a bit unnerving to find myself in the position of having to retool my identity that was so well defined for almost half a year. But I'm thrilled to find myself facing this unknown. Today is the Jewish Day of Atonement but to me it feels much more like Thanksgiving.

If It Walks Like a Duck

Charlie had his VP shunt surgery this morning and is now resting comfortably, still groggy from the anesthesia but extubated again, thank God. It’s funny up here in the PICU (and in the NICU, for that matter). You get so used to your own child’s issues that it’s easy to feel sorry for the other kids facing stuff that you’re less familiar with. You constantly think, “oh, that poor kid and those poor parents, how can they endure that? We are so lucky!” Meanwhile, the other parents are thinking the exact same thing about you.  Isn’t that largely what so-called “strength” is during times of strife? When something is happening to your loved one, you just deal with it, you don’t have any choice. And before you know it, whatever you’re dealing with becomes part of your new “normal.” If I had been contacted by a psychic last December who had given me a list of everything that was ahead for us in 2009, I would have been horrified and terror-stricken and certainly would not have wanted Kendall to get pregnant. Thank God we don’t have the ability to see into the future. As hard as it was, I am so very grateful for everything that has brought this wonderful boy into our lives. But would we have willingly proceeded if we knew we were imminently facing the loss of one child and the life-threatening status of another that included five months in intensive care and six major surgeries?

The latest surgery went very well, thanks to the expertise of our neurosurgeon, Dr. Danielpour and his associates. Charlie’s other surgeon, Dr. Frykman, found a place lower in his peritoneal cavity to place the end of the shunt’s catheter so it would be clear of scar tissue. It took a little while to get Charlie off the ventilator but he’s off it now and breathing easy. Of course a million things could happen that could make the new shunt malfunction and land us back here but what can we do but live in the moment and hope for the best? Once we leave Cedars I don’t plan on being back any time soon but if we have to eventually return for more revisions, so be it. In addition to my endless gratitude for the surgeons’ and the PICU staff’s medical expertise, I remain in awe of Charlie’s will and spirit. His stamina and strength continue to inspire me as he cheerfully endures more than most people have to face in a lifetime. The above photo was taken just prior to surgery, when Charlie was hugging his duck Linda, a gift from the NICU parent organization. We continue to get visitors from downstairs and have now added the PICU doctors and nurses to our list of heroes.

The best news is that Charlie no longer has any external tubes draining fluid from his brain. This means we can hold him again as soon as the anesthesia wears off. And that is definitely something to be grateful for! 

I Had Four Brain Surgeries and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

Whoop-de-doo, it looks like Charlie had no infection after all. Today the neurosurgeon tentatively booked an operating room for Friday morning so he can replace Charlie’s VP shunt. If all goes well on that front, and if Charlie recovers as quickly as he did after his surgery last Friday, we could actually be on our way home as early as this weekend. Hooray! The hardest thing about the past five days in the PICU is that we haven’t been able to pick up Charlie and hold him in our arms because of his EVD that is draining his cerebrospinal fluid or “brain juice” as some of the hospital staff calls it.

But Charlie, ever the trooper, is making the most of his confinement. He’s still receiving his former caregivers from the NICU and continually slays them with his heart-melting smile.Charlie’s brain spigot was turned off long enough today for a relaxing bath and he continues to enjoy the eclectic mix of crazy tunes coming out of my nifty new iPod. Here is “A Day in the Life of Charlie Miller.”

Now the countdown begins for hightailing it out of Cedars-Sinai…again. As much as we worship the staff at that hospital, we really hope that we don’t see them again for a good long while. We appreciate all prayers and positive vibes for Friday’s big surgery.

I Got a Right to Sing the Blues

My new iPod has a built-in speaker and I’ve been playing music for Charlie in his crib in our new digs in the Cedars-Sinai Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. One of the first songs I played for him was our friend Carole Cook singing “I Got a Right to Sing the Blues” written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. The song has been covered by everyone from Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney to Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald. Charlie loved it and was moving his arms in beat to Carole’s brassy rendition. And frankly, who has more of a right to sing the blues than our son?

I got a right to sing the blues
I got a right to feel low down
I got a right to hang around
Down around the river

I got a right to sing the blues
I got a right to moan and sigh
I got a right to sit and cry

Say what you choose
I got a right to sing the blues!

Here's our friend Carole letting it rip:

 

We’re still in a holding pattern waiting for the all-clear for yet another surgery in which Charlie will get a new VP shunt. This morning Charlie got a CT scan and he’s due for an ultrasound to check on how the EVD (external ventricular drain) is working and if the fluid in Charlie’s peritoneal cavity has absorbed. Because of all his scar tissue, it’s tricky for the surgeons to find just the right spot to place the catheter on his shunt. If the shunt keeps malfunctioning, the surgeons will have to consider other areas in his body such as the heart or lungs to absorb the cerebrospinal fluid but those carry greater risks so we don’t want to go there. It’s possible if all goes well that the surgery could happen later this week but it’s likely that we’ll have to wait a bit longer. That’s okay—when we leave this time, we want to stay away for more than six days!

The PICU staff couldn’t be nicer. It’s a much different environment than the NICU—eerily quiet much of the time except for the occasional wailing of a child (this unit of only eight beds houses babies to 18 year olds). We have a private room with comfortable chairs and cots and even our own bathroom. One of the unexpected silver linings of being back here so soon is that Charlie is now off oxygen. Since he was connected to all the monitors again, the nurses turned off his low-flow oxygen on Saturday morning to see how he’d do and he’s been off it ever since. The biggest drag of his current status is that he has to spend most of the time on his back in his crib so that his EVD doesn’t fall out or dump too much fluid. The stamina we need is almost harder the second time around even though we know this will be a much shorter stay. At least we still had our September parking passes for Cedars. Maybe Charlie just wanted to be in air conditioning again since it started to heat up significantly in L.A. the day he was re-admitted.

If anyone has the right to sing the blues, it’s our 21-week-old son (with a corrected age of six weeks) who is going on Major Surgery #6 and has shown amazing strength in all he has survived and endured. And yet he ain’t singin’ the blues at all. You’d be hard pressed to find a more good-natured little baby who seems to accept all that life gives him without so much as a grimace. What a teacher and role model he is.

Crossover Event

I remember the excitement in my TV-addled childhood when characters from one of the shows I watched would unexpectedly appear on another one of my favorite shows. 

The first time I remember this was when the folks from “Green Acres” landed in Hooterville and appeared on several episodes of “Petticoat Junction.” Another classic was a bizarre storyline that had the space age Jetsons going back in time and interacting with the Flintstones. Remember when an animated Samantha Stevens of “Bewitched” appeared on “The Flintstones?” Too cool. Often this device was used to test the waters of a spin-off such as when Mayberry’s Gomer Pyle joined the marines and became “Gomer Pyle, USMC” or later when Edith Bunker’s liberal cousin Maude got her own show that began on an episode of “All in the Family.” Ditto “The Jeffersons.” And then Maude’s maid Florida moved to a Chicago housing project with her family and “Good Times” was born. Occasionally these crossovers would even jump genres such as when the doctors of “St. Elsewhere” showed up drinking at Sam Malone’s bar on “Cheers.” This phenomenon is very prevalent today with many crime show casts hopscotching from one show to the next. Last year, ABC heralded “a very special crossover event” when a story arc on “Private Practice” sent the cast all the way from their Los Angeles clinic to “Grey’s Anatomy’s” Seattle Grace Hospital for a highly touted sweeps week stunt.

This week feels like Kendall and I are living a crossover event. Being in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at Cedars, it’s a brand new environment with all new people, procedures, and rituals. But just when we think we’re getting used to all the changes, characters from our previous drama, “Charlie in the NICU,” breeze into view. Oh, look, there’s Rolley, our old respiratory therapist. What’s he doing up here on the sixth floor hooking up those toddlers to oxygen? Hey, check out the cameo appearances today by NICU nurses LaQuel, Jana, and Christine, how odd to see them in this different setting! And there are our familiar surgeons, too. Hey, guys! Wow, get a load of this brand new set. Very glitzy. Oh, but wait, I recognize these old props—they must be recycled from our old show.

So Charlie did have his entire VP shunt taken out today. His third brain surgery lasted over two hours and they discovered that the source of the problem was that the end of the shunt’s catheter was blocked by scar tissue from his two abdominal surgeries. They’re still not certain whether he has an infection but he’s being treated with antibiotics until they know for sure. Charlie now has an external ventricular drain (EVD) that is draining his excess cerebrospinal fluid out of his head and into a bag. The position of the bag to his head is very important so he can’t be moved at all without the nurse’s assistance. They use a leveler to make sure everything is positioned properly. This means we won’t be able to take Charlie out of his crib very much for the next week to ten days which is a major drag. The good news is that he came back from surgery already extubated (yay!!) and already awake. But then he had to be sedated again so a doctor could insert a new central PICC line into his arm. Oy. Been there, done that. But our son is such a trooper. He’s doing well and winning new fans among the PICU staff. After the next surgery to put in a new VP shunt we’ll be moved down to the regular pediatric floor before we’re discharged. Yet another crossover event.

Two people that were important characters in my childhood died this week. Like many people my age, I had the hots for beautiful Mary Travers from Peter, Paul, and Mary. Oh, how I loved her. In her honor, I sang this Bob Dylan song to Charlie after his surgery, remembering Mary’s haunting rendition:.

Actor Henry Gibson also died. Talk about a crossover star! Gibson recited an old poem from the 1920s called “Keep a Goin” on an episode of my all-time favorite sitcom, “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” He performed the same piece several years later on the ground-breaking show “Laugh-In.” Finally, he turned the poem into a country song and sang it in my all-time favorite film, “Nashville.” Way to go, Henry! And though the poem was always a little tongue-in-cheek, I find the words inspirational and extremely applicable to my current life:

If you strike a thorn or rose
Keep a-goin'!

If it hails or if it snows

Keep a-goin'!


'Taint no use to sit an' whine

When the fish ain't on your line
Bait your hook an' keep a-tryin'
Keep a-goin'! 

When the weather kills your crop


Keep a-goin'!

Though 'tis work to reach the top

Keep a-goin'!


S'pose you're out o' ev'ry dime

Gittin' broke ain't any crime
Tell the world you're feelin' prime
Keep a-goin'! 

When it looks like all is up


Keep a-goin'!

Drain the sweetness from the cup

Keep a-goin'!


See the wild birds on the wing

Hear the bells that sweetly ring

When you feel like sighin', sing

KEEP A-GOIN'!

Shana Tova, y'all!

Return to Cedars

I can’t tell you how touched we were to receive so many beautiful comments about Charlie’s return home. The past week has been utterly joyful, one of the happiest weeks of my life. It seemed almost impossible that we weren’t going to the hospital every day as we had for so long. But guess what? We’re baaaaaaaaack. Crap.

Starting last weekend, we noticed that Charlie’s VP shunt seemed larger than it had in the NICU. Were we imagining things? Was his head just changing shape a little bit? Was it because we were seeing him in sunlight for the first time instead of the fluorescent hues of Cedars-Sinai? We knew that infections are always a risk with VP shunts but Charlie had none of the signs—no fever, no change in behavior, no trouble eating or sleeping, and no puking. You couldn’t find a more delightful, happy baby. But by Monday morning, even I had to admit that the back of Charlie’s head was starting to resemble the anatomy of a Ferengi from “Star Trek.” I got an appointment with our neurosurgeon this morning so he could take a look. Kendall and I both fully anticipated that he would tell us that everything was cool and to take Charlie home. We were so sure we’d be back by his next feeding that we didn’t even take any extra formula. Instead, after examining him, the doctor sent us to the emergency room where our son had to have x-rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, and cerebral spinal fluid taps. Turns out his shunt is not working properly, damn it, and the fluid is leaking into his head, creating that Ferengi effect. Before we knew it, after only five full days with no hospital visits, the familiar wrist bands were slapped on the three of us and Charlie was re-admitted. This time we’re in the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) instead of the NICU. Sigh.

Charlie will have his fifth operation tomorrow morning but we’re not yet quite sure what that will be. It’s possible that they will only have to enter through the abdomen to change the location of the catheter that is depositing the fluid in his peritoneal cavity. If that were to happen we could be home fairly soon. But a more likely scenario is that they’re going to have to remove the entire shunt and replace it with a temporary spigot (I forgot the scientific name) that automatically diverts the fluid out of his head into some kind of external apparatus. Then we’ll have to go through a full round of antibiotics to clear any infection (around 10 days), followed by another surgery to place a new VP shunt. I’ll provide an update when I know more but I just wanted to inform you what was going on so you can keep Charlie on those prayer lists a little while longer.

It’s a major drag, of course, but if we got through 137 days in the NICU, I suppose we can get through a few more weeks in the PICU. Our old social worker and several of our beloved NICU nurses came up to see Charlie, shocked that he was back so soon and delighted by how well he seemed to be doing otherwise. I thought I’d be in our synagogue tomorrow night welcoming in the year 5770, but instead I’ll be waiting for the surgical shofar to blow at our well known stomping grounds. Happy New Year to all of you. I know it will a happy year for us…as soon as we get our boy home again. 

Charlie’s First Weekend

I love this photo I took of Charlie yesterday—one of the first to show actual sunlight on his face, not the fluorescent lighting of Cedars-Sinai. Now that Charlie is home from the NICU and I’m still writing about him I feel like I’ve crossed over into the land of true DaddyBloggers, something I was always very self-conscious about. Oh, I’ll be writing about Nazis and Swedish film stars soon enough, but how can I NOT write about this miracle in our lives? And with feedings every three hours, what else IS there in our lives right now? That is not a complaint, by the way, just a joyful realization. For four and a half months I dreamed of being able to moan about sleep deprivation and I’m thrilled to find myself in that place! And it’s really not so bad—I’m taking a lot of naps during the day which is unheard of for me. One thing that is a concern is that Charlie still has no volume. He cries but there is very little sound. The NICU doctors advised us to wait it out and see if his voice comes back after his vocal chords get a chance to heal after all those intubations. To be honest, there’s this small guilty part of me that doesn’t mind the lack of loud crying—I remember those exhausted moments when I could feel the piercing baby wails entering my veins and wreaking havoc on my entire nervous system. But of course I want Charlie’s voice to be normal and it can be a bit tricky hearing him in his crib, even though it’s right next to our bed. We have to use an alarm clock to wake up for those middle-of-the-night feedings.

We had such a fun first weekend at home, the first time I wasn't waking up and driving to the hospital in 137 days. Charlie had all sorts of visitors starting with his Aunties Campbell and Joy and our friend Helena who brought him a giant blue dog we named Hershek. Yesterday a neighbor brought over hot homemade popovers and Grandma came by along with Aunt Brooke and Uncle Scott who brought more grub which we laid out in a buffet in Charlie’s crib (don’t worry, he wasn’t in it at the time!). Brooke and Scott’s daughters, Hallie and Franny, were thrilled to meet their new first cousin for the first time. Taking a page from “Peter Pan” (which is Leah’s next musical she just started rehearsing), they declared their “fairy talent” to be “babies.”

 

Today Charlie had his first pediatrician appointment and we were shocked to discover that he’s gained a whopping 7 oz. since he left the NICU. He’s now 8 lbs. 5 oz. Does Jenny Craig make a formula for preemies? I rarely post current photos of myself because I'm so neurotic but below is a photo Kendall surreptitiously took of me and Charlie during one of our afternoon naps yesterday. If that doesn't make every moment of terror we've lived through over these past months worth it, I don't know what does. 

HOME!!

We finally have our baby home and we are so incredibly grateful. What an amazing, terrifying, wonderful journey it was to get here. As thrilled as I was to leave the NICU, I was a total wreck yesterday, bursting into sobs every time I saw any one of the dozens and dozens of people who have been involved in keeping Charlie alive all these months. I don’t think I’ve had that many tears since this whole ordeal began. As Charlie got placed in the cute departure pram they use to escort the babies out of the building, our nurse Christine paraded him through all six of the NICU bays. In each one, nurses, respiratory therapists, and doctors came rushing over to see him and say good-bye. There were many hugs, tears, and promises to come back and visit. Some of those nurses are so special to me I still well up every time I think of them (tears flowing right now). We got to see many of the talented doctors who saved Charlie’s life again and again. In addition to the nurses, I came to feel like the neonatologists, surgeons, residents, and hospitalists were members of our family. It was hard saying good-bye to our brilliant occupational therapist Jean and our social worker Alva who was there with us every step of the way and who I practically used as my own therapist throughout this process.

It’s now the next morning and I am still too filled with emotion to adequately write about these fantastic people and what they meant to us over the past four and a half months. As Charlie saw them all leaning over him on his parade out the door, he waved and seemed to be sending his own thanks. While there was plenty of paperwork, medications, and follow-up appointments to go over, I was a little surprised at how easy it was to get out of there. “They’re letting us just walk out with him?” I kept thinking to myself. Charlie enjoyed the ride home, his first exposure to sunlight and fresh air, and he seemed immediately at home in our house, even with our excited dogs trying to lick his face at every turn (can I Purell our dogs’ tongues?). Last night Leah cut off Charlie's hospital bracelet and he was a free man for the first time in 137 days! I just gave him his 6 am feeding and he’s now resting happily between me and Kendall who is sleeping after waking up for the 3 am. Charlie’s screechingly loud apnea monitor went off several times during the night (all false alarms) reminding us of the constant barrage of beeps and alarms in the NICU and how great it is to be in such a calmer, more serene environment. Right now Charlie is hearing the morning birds chirping for the first time ever and stretching out on our bed next to his mom, one hand resting on my computer and his little feet hiked up on my leg. It’s a whole new world over here with many new routines we need to figure out along with countless new joys and challenges. Again, I thank all of you for the life-saving support and concern you’ve shown to our family over these months. I am bursting at the seams with gratitude on all fronts.

Charlie Makes His Move!

After 137 days in the Cedars-Sinai Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, our son Charlie is scheduled to come home the day after tomorrow! Woo-hoo! There are a few things that could delay that departure a bit but today was the first time we were given an actual date. The fact that the date is September 11th freaked me out for about half a second, but I guess that infamous spot on the calendar will now have some added (and quite joyful) meaning for us.

The reason the doctors were reluctant to commit to a date until today is that we’ve been playing around with Charlie’s oxygen for weeks. As you can see in the above photo, he’s been off oxygen completely (except during feeds) and they were trying to see if he could go home without any oxygen at all. He’s just on the border of needing it but even though he barely gets a whisper (his flow is 1/16th of a liter for those of you who know what that means) it makes a big difference in his saturation levels. So, finally, minutes after making the decision to try to wean off all oxygen for two more days to see what will happen, the neonatologist said fuck it, she'll just send him home on oxygen for a while so that we can leave this week. (Okay, she didn’t actually say “fuck it” but that was the idea!) The photos here are the last ones you’ll see of Charlie’s unadorned face for a while—he went back on nasal cannulas just after I took them. I’m fine having him stay on oxygen for as long as it takes his lungs to fully develop. It just means that wherever we go we’ll have to shlep along his portable oxygen tank and the apnea monitor that will be connected to leads held in place by a large Velcro belt across his upper chest.

I am so full of excitement and emotion that I can barely speak...or write—I’m headed back to the NICU for our final 48-hour stint. It seems hard to believe that Charlie is finally about to head out into the world after arriving 16 weeks early last April. I will miss so many people in the NICU and am bursting with gratitude for all of the incredible individuals who kept our son alive all this time through their medical expertise, care, compassion, prayer, and positive thoughts. And the journey will continue with Charlie—we already have appointments for a whole new slate of medical professionals outside the confines of the NICU. Kendall and I both had to work through some feelings about leaving the place where our other son died (inches from where Charlie currently resides) but I know deep in my heart that Oliver is not stuck there in that hospital, he will be coming home with his brother in his own way.