A Story About My Grandfather

My grandfather had this big white beard that made words disappear.

Our family would go to visit my grandparents, my father's parents, and at first it was fine, even fun. We would pray and eat and pray and walk to the synagogue and pray and shake hands with the neighbors, and go home and eat some more, and pray just a little bit more. But then he would call me into his room, close the door behind us, sit me down beside him, and begin talking.

God, I wish I had been able to get what he was saying. I mean, I got a few words here and there, to be sure. Some words did penetrate that beard. I know the basic subject was religious philosophy. I know he sometimes talked about the wonderful service we were both a part of, even though for me synagogue meant staring at the walls, occasionally bending my body like the others to avoid embarrassing him and myself.

In short, my grandfather was this happy Orthodox Jew who liked to discuss philosophy and I was a kid who didn't care. Same old story everywhere you go in the world, pretty much.

But this one was different. I was living in England when I got the late night phone call, telling me he died, that he fell and held his wife's hand before she called the ambulance; that he peacefully asked her to stay a moment with him because he knew he would soon be dead.

Late night phone calls always mean someone is dead.

My mother was on holiday with her sister in Europe when he died, and when she returned, she talked to one of her old friends and told her that when she was away, her husband's father died. In turn, my mother's friend told my mom someone else died that week, a holy man who healed her broken arm.

It's still impossible for me to imagine that all these people saw my grandfather as a holy man. He immigrated to Israel illegally to escape the Nazis, spent some time in British jail, was a cook, a milkman, he got married and had children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, he had a big white beard that held on to bits of food like it knew something we didn't. He loved religion and philosophy. Apparently, he was also a holy man; a healer. Fancy that.

Dude, Where's My Hair?

First of all, thank you all for sticking around and commenting this past week. I was away in suburban Boston for about a week for Honey's father's family reunion.

• A few cousins and I kicked a ball around and decided to have a friendly four-v-four game of soccer. I learned a few things: 1. I don't know the meaning of a friendly game (sorry, Steven). 2. I'm very very old. The game started with me running up and down the field, passing, blocking, kicking... like I was ten-years-old again. Two minutes later I said I had to become the goalkeeper. A minute later, even that was too much. I was lying in the field waiting for the vultures to collect. And here was this Steven, a man in his forties, running like it was the most normal thing in the world for a grown man to move about freely. I'd like to think the kicks he got from me were genuine attempts to get the ball and not just products of my tired body and jealous soul. I need to get in shape.

• About a hundred people there, most of them strangers to me and many of them strangers to each other, each standing up in turn, introducing him/herself and explaining the connection to the family. I had about twenty minutes to think about what to say. I was going to say my name and then say it had been almost exactly ten years since I met the first member of the family (Honey), and how great it was to be a part of the family, and all that, but before I got the mike, it was Honey's turn. "My name is... I'm the daughter of..., the granddaughter of... [standing up], and as you can see, I'm on my sixth month, soon to give birth to the newest member of the family." [Applause]. So what's a man to do? Was there anything else I could have said other than, "My name is... [now pointing at Honey's belly]. And I put it there."

• A distant cousin, on the way back home:

"I heard you lived in England for a while. What were you doing there?"
"Nothing much. I was playing in a band."
"Oh, really? What instrument?"
"Bass guitar."
"Ahhh, that's great. Me and my brother were talking the other day about how each part of the female body is a different musical instrument. Like, the head is, you know, and the breast is a snare drum, Tss, t-t-tss, t-t-tss, t-t-tss, you know? And the ass in like a bass guitar, gau, gau-gau, gau-gau, doom doo-doom doom doom. Know what I mean?"

And we still had 700 miles to go to Baltimore.