True Ancestor

Solo flight

Gabe is off on his first solo trip -- a weekend jaunt to New York to visit his cousin Maya.

He's a product of his era, and his North Shore shtetl, in some ways: he's been to London, Paris, and Israel, but never New York City. He's flown dozens of times but was a little apprehensive about suddenly having to be alert and in charge of himself. Until now, airports have been one of those transitional zones, like the car (until he started driving this Fall), where he simply got used to looking at the back of his parents' heads, occasionally being handed something to eat or drink, and following along. At 15, he's ready for a change.

I remember my first, almost disastrous solo trip. At 16(?), I flew from Chicago Midway to Green Bay -- with a stopover in Milwaukee -- to visit a friend at his family's summer cabin just outside Stevens Point, Wisconsin. We were allowed to get off the plane in Milwaukee, and I got absorbed in a video game. When I looked up, the plane was gone.

I rushed over to the gate attendant. This was a simpler time, and I was a "kid" traveling alone, so they called the plane back to the gate. I was ushered out onto the tarmac, and had to board the plane through the entrance at the back, under the tail. They folded the stairs down, and as I climbed into the plane, I was greeted by the sight of every single passenger turning around in their seat and glaring at me. I know, it sounds like a bad dream, but I'm pretty sure it was real.

The rest of the trip was a lot of fun.

Every milestone with Gabe now feels like a separation, a sprouting of wings. He is quiet, disciplined, self assured but not cocky. He sees much more than he says. Sometimes I have to remind myself he's still a kid. The girls grew and left suddenly, it now seems. I'm sure someday soon it will feel the same way with Gabe. But that only occurred to me this morning, when I left him at airport security, fumbling in his pockets for his boarding pass.

--T.A. 

 

Reflections of an Old Student

Next week, within spitting distance of my 51st birthday, I begin my quest for a PhD in the History of Judaism from the U. Chicago Divinity School. I've decided to use this blog, largely dormant for the past year or more, to write about the experience, because I'm going to need a therapist, but I won't have time for one, so this blog will be it.

In June, I earned my M.A. in Divinity from the D School. A lot of my friends, most of them Jewish, didn't know Divinity was something you studied, much less earned a degree in. I get asked about it a lot: "Divinity? What's that?" The shortest answer is that it's the study of theology. The longer answer is that it's concentrated thought about and study of the (theory of the) divine. It's viewing matters of the spirit from an intellectual and historical perspective.

It's also a kind of fudge, ironically.

The urge to learn has always been with me, as have the need to write and (more recently) the enjoyment of teaching. I hope that combining these interests will yield some kind of quiet satisfaction; that sitting in the reedy silence of Regenstein Library, or in the fusty old classrooms of Swift Hall, will proffer a delightful anonymity, and an intellectual stimulation, that will keep my gray matter from settling into the Barca-Lounger of Senility. At the University, in whose shadow I grew up, I can learn for learning's sake.

Of course, it's rarely that easy. In the business world, competition is on the surface, but in the academy, it's under layers of politesse and intellectual code, creating a cozy viciousness of an almost Kabuki-esque intricacy and intensity. In the business world, you execute. In the academy, you debate and deliberate.  And then there are the more practical considerations: how do I still get my job done? How do I devote enough time and energy to the PhD? How do I get all this done, without cheating my family?

And most important: Why am I doing this?

I thought and I prayed and I analyzed and investigated. I studied, I read, I thought. I talked to people, I meditated, I did an accounting of my "internal books." Then I took the Graduate Record Exams, my first standardized test in almost 30 years; and I applied to two graduate admissions programs, and got admitted to the Divinity School, which so far has surpassed my wildest expectations.

In this space, I'll explore the experience of the older student, not just for myself, but for everyone who's curious about it. I'll explore Jewish philosophy and theology, and life in the academy, and I'll ponder how it affects life at home (without violating the privacy of the One True Wife, or of Gabe, who does not want to be written about).

I think going back to school, if you can afford it, beats the hell out of buying a Porsche or having an affair (not that I've tried either of those, mind you). It's both challenging (like a Porsche) and liberating (like a Porsche), but it costs less.

Also, it's not some shadow existence or some prestigious and presumptuous physical asset. It's a gift. As an older student, I'll care less about what my professors think of me. I'll be more directed, hungrier, more willing to take risks (I hope). And as someone involved in business, I'll be able to watch how a major university and its departments run, how they compete internally and externally, and how they are facing up to the massive changes with which colleges and universities are about to be faced.

And of course, I'll also write about the stuff I'm thinking about: meditation, syncretism, post-Holocaust Jewish theology; Jewish memory and Jewish history; and life as a man who loves his family and is nonetheless doing something terribly self-indulgent.

Read along and comment, if you like. Wish me luck, if you would. And, perhaps, think about what you would do to make a new path open for you.

More soon.

--T.A.

14

Probably my best times with Gabe occur when we're in the car. There's something about the "parallel play" aspect of it that makes it easier for him to actually enter into a conversation with his father (something that I remember dreading when I was 14). Gabe likes to roll the window down, and if I'm not paying attention, he'll stick his head out like a dog. He'll scroll through an astonishing repertoire of noises, whistles and imitations he can produce, almost like a parrot. He'll listen to the comedy channel on satellite radio. He'll make fun of me. And maybe, just maybe, he'll talk.  On the way to the dreadful White Sox-Oakland game yesterday, he was doing his homework, but on the way home, after dropping off my parents (who met us at the ballpark) we had nothing but time. And we talked.

Gabe was impressed by watching my aged and revered parents navigate the long march up the steps from our seats to the concourse, but he was saddened, too, by how hard it is for them to do these things that for him are very simple. He started asking questions about my family, about my dad's upbringing, about my dad's dad. I mentioned that I'd never met my paternal grandfather -- he died long before I was born -- but I told him what I knew of his qualities, including that he wasn't very emotionally expressive.

Gabe asked what that meant. I said that it meant he didn't really enjoy talking about his feelings, or expressing himself emotionally. Gabe said, "I'm like that, too," and then it struck me: he really is a Gottlieb.

Gabe said he'd never seen a picture of my dad "in his prime," and I said I would get the old photo albums and show him some shots. We have one old brochure from my father's summer camp; in it, there's a picture of my father, at about age 10, holding up a fish he has just caught. The resemblance to Gabe is astonishing (my dad, not the fish.)

One of the good things about being around extended family is that, when young, you're in closer and more regular contact with the stages of life. You see how people change. You see generations come and go. Just when you're getting used to being the center of the universe -- you're a first cousin once removed, or (God willing) an uncle. A huge fuss is made over the baby, and suddenly, you're not so cute and so young.

On the eve of high school, Gabe is a much more centered person than I was at that age (and probably than I am today). He does not get pressured into doing stupid things. He goes out of his way not to be hurtful, but he has a quick wit and a sharp tongue in reserve, and it seems as though his classmates respect him. He's a pretty good athlete, but he doesn't hang his self-esteem on that. He's very perceptive. He's thoughtful. He's funny as hell. And, for a 14-year-old, he's disciplined.

In some respects, I am already letting go of him. He is watching me for clues, but most of his guideposts are well beyond me, on the horizon: he is determined to be more competent, more even-keeled, more accomplished and more wealthy than he considers me to be. He doesn't say so; I just know.

Leaving the ballgame last night, he helped my father up the stairs, until my father insisted he could handle it himself. When we got outside the park, I asked for a wheelchair to take my dad from the gate to our car. About 100 yards short of the car, my dad got out of the wheelchair and walked the rest of the way. Gabe asked why my dad did that, as he was clearly exhausted.

I told Gabe that my dad has lived into his 90s because he is still engaged in the world, and because he is an optimist. He is still interested: in sports, in playing bridge, in the environment, in real estate; he still decries the idiocy of war, which deprived him of his only and dearly beloved sibling more than half a century ago. He wants to do as much as he can, every day, even if it's a little less than he could do the day before.

I also told Gabe that watching my dad has been a great lesson for me: you spend far more than half your life in physical decline -- and that's if you're lucky. If you let that get to you, the decline is (or feels) steeper, and the color leaches out of your life. My father has stayed as mentally and physically engaged in life as his mind and body have allowed. What a great thing for a son and grandson to be able to witness.

Gabe's dreams are changing; he may talk to his sisters and his mom about them; I'm not sure. He doesn't talk to me about them. That makes me a little sad, but I'm pretty sure I understand.

What I am sure of is that he is living proof of how love and evolution are somehow twinned. The love that created him, that surrounds him, that's within him, has made him a better human being than I can ever hope to be.

And that makes me happy.

--T.A.

16

Twenty years ago this weekend, I said goodbye to my first wife. We both cried; we were both relieved. She walked me the block and a half from our apartment to the Amtrak station in Springfield, Massachusetts. ('Here's your hat, what's your hurry?', was the feeling I had as she escorted me out of town.) I had one suitcase of belongings and about $200. Mere months from turning 30, I was broke, depressed, jobless and emasculated.

Twenty years on, I am none of those things. OK, maybe a little emasculated, but that comes with the territory.

The One True Wife and I celebrated 16 years of marriage last weekend. You can't pause long in life to congratulate one another, but a successful second marriage for each of us was worthy of some celebration. We'd (mostly) raised two daughters from the Wife's first marriage; had and (partly) raised a son who is a "joint production"; survived my joining her brothers in their real estate business, and a move from Denver back to Chicago and the sometimes smothering bosom of her family; weathered multiple and sometimes painful job changes on the part of the Wife, and my own perilous journey back to being a student; and through it all managed to remain close and even become closer.

Right now is a challenging and transitional time. The One True Wife has a fairly demanding part-time job; she has recently seen Oldest Daughter graduate college and begin adult life in another town; she has struggled with some health issues that have, thankfully, been merely painful but not life-threatening; we have both been busy and not terribly good at finding ways to surmount the routine and have fun.

But that's life, right?  It's all challenging, it's all transitional. All relationships are confrontations, collaborations against solipsism, alliances in combat, diplomatic relations between different planets. Marriages are the closest and most mystifying of all partnerships: the twinning of strangers, the merging of galaxies. The alchemical conversion of an emotional attachment into a business arrangement, or vice versa.

The Wife and I are rediscovering our individual interests and ambitions, and working to indulge and pursue those, while at the same time taking care of the house, and each other, and remembering to have fun. I remember standing outside the synagogue with my brother, the morning of our wedding, and telling him that I had no idea what I was doing.

I still don't. But I also have no regrets. When the train pulled out of Springfield, my life as an adult, and as a blessed human being, was just beginning.

--T.A.

20

Oldest Daughter (left) and Middle Daughter, preparing to see the Art Institute's new Modern wing.

Middle Daughter turns 20 today.She is one of those rare individuals whose child-self shines through her adult self. As a child, she was dreamy, distracted, funny, very loving, resolutely happy. As an adult, she is still all those things. To have known her for 17 years is to have watched her grow lovely translucent layers -- a sweet onion of a human being.

Middle Daughter is perceptive -- so perceptive, it seems, that it's sometimes painful to her. She sees her own foibles and everyone else's, too: she can forgive others very easily, but not herself. As a child of divorce, she learned to mediate between worlds before she even understood that that's what she was doing. Never one to be forced into taking sides, she simply interpreted one "side" to the other, moving between parental realms with a diplomat's tact and a ballerina's grace.

Middle Daughter has a restlessness, a hint of reckless abandon about her. You sense that at any moment, she could throw everything over and be living in a DP camp in Zimbabwe, giving tetanus shots and reading stories to refugee children. Or traveling across India with someone she just met. And even as you interpreted this seismic life-shift to curious friends and judgmental relatives, she'd suddenly be back in college, double-majoring in economics and social work, earning all A's and still managing to follow Phish or Dave Matthews across the country.

Last night the extended family came to our house to fete Middle Daughter. It was a scene of hilarity and mayhem. On a beautiful, breezy summer night, Middle Daughter was surrounded with love (and repeatedly startled by the whoosh-BOOM of Gabe's potato cannon firing instant hash-browns into the office park behind our back yard), partially hidden behind a brown-glass forest of beer bottles, as the 20-something cousins (with only a little help from the elders) polished off all the Leinenkugel the state of Wisconsin had brewed in the past week.

Sadly, my aged and revered parents, who spent the weekend with us, were unable to stay for the party. My mother did a gainer with a half-twist off the back step of our patio, landing firmly on her rump -- the only place on her with enough padding to forestall serious damage. A little shook up but fortunately not seriously hurt, she and the Old Man returned to my sister's city abode yesterday afternoon. This morning, I asked the Old Lady whether she shouldn't go see a doctor. "Well, I'm a little sore," she said, "but what are they gonna do: put my ass in a sling?" Her sense of humor has suffered no fractures. Nor, thank God, has any other part of her.

Middle Daughter was kind of enough to duck out of the festivities last night and call my mom, see how she was, and tell her she was missed at the party.

In toasting her, I told Middle Daughter that she and Oldest Daughter were tied for "second most important woman in my life." What else cold I say? The One True Wife gifted me not just with Gabe, but with two remarkable girls -- as different as could be, as close as any siblings -- two people who taught me to parent, called me on my bullshit, forgave me my moods, are remarkable big sisters, and who know how to party.

Middle Daughter is bursting with potential, intelligence, love, wit, wisdom. Middle Daughter is mercurial, whimsical, philosophical. Middle Daughter is 20. Time -- and so much else -- is on her side.

Happy birthday, dear Middle Daughter -- and many more.

--T.A.

When Father's Day Actually Means Something

Oldest Daughter and Gabe. Photo: Youngest Daughter. Driver: One True Wife.

I put no store (if you'll pardon the pun) by Hallmark holidays. But yesterday was the kind of Father's Day that really did remind me what an honor it is to be a father and a stepfather.

We convened for an early cup of coffee with dear friend and faithful reader Starry and members of her husband's family, who were in from various far-flung locations to spend time with the husband's father. The One True Wife and I were eager to catch up with Starry but we were soon folded into this large and friendly group, featuring Milo, one of the cutest children I've ever seen. And to be named after the hero of The Phantom Tollbooth! What a cool role model.

A few lazy and generally unproductive hours followed. I was given wonderfully stylish shirts by Oldest Daughter, who knows I never buy myself anything stylish, and who wished me a "Happy Not-Father's Day." Then my aged and revered parents came to spend part of the afternoon and have an early dinner. Oldest Niece came by, as well -- a gorgeous and hysterically funny young woman who will be attending a new business school program this Fall at the University of Tel Aviv.

I'm very lucky to be born into a wonderful family, and wound by matrimony into another: the One True Wife's entire clan, which lives within a 20-square-mile radius and loves nothing better than spending time together. If I need refuge from this cozy clannishness, I have my own family of five siblings, and parents who are wonderfully physically and mentally sound at their age (they just celebrated their 67th wedding anniversary). Part of what makes being a father special is being able to still be a son. And to be a son in front of one's children. And having fatherhood both magnified by and diminished to proper perspective in the web of two large families.

At dinner, we regaled each other with myth and legend from those families; Gabe read from a hilarious family biography he had written as part of a school project. To be able to see ourselves through his eyes revealed a lot -- mostly, how observant and articulate he can be when he's not watching TV.

After a delicious dinner of fish tacos and fruit salad, I drove the parents to rendez-vous with my sister #3, while the rest of the family did the dishes (my customary chore, from which I received a blessed reprieve). Then the children and I adjourned to the local driving range -- even Middle Daughter, who finds swinging clubs at round objects to be a very strange activity. Much hilarity ensued.

Then we stopped at Dairy Queen, and ended the evening (along with the Wife) at the fabulous basement theater of my sister-in-law and her husband, where we sat in electric massage chairs, ate ice cream and watched Slumdog Millionaire.

The world is a vast and remarkable place. And so is the Family.

--T.A.

City of Self-Importance

Henry Paulson ramping up production for the stimulus package: "Warp speed, Scottie!"

Gabe and I paid a weekend visit to Oldest Daughter in DC this weekend. O.D. graduates from college in less than 2 months, and the three of us had some memories to make.

We paid visits to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the International Spy Museum and the Newseum. We ate Chinese, Indian, and the Daughter's own inspired home cooking. We walked til our legs almost fell off, and we saw I Love You, Man, a very funny story about how to get married and make friends at the same time.

Traveling with Gabe, 13, is a little like traveling with a dog. Give him some exercise and plenty to eat, and he's very happy. At the end of the day, a little cuddling disguised as tussling, and he passes right out.

But seeing Oldest Daughter living off-campus with four friends, keeping house and nailing down post-graduation employment, it quickly becomes clear how fast these people grow up and move on. A rabbi friend of mine likes to say at bar and mat mitzvahs that, once they're 13, you only have a literal fistful of years left with them under your roof. At 14 or 15 they start high school, at 16 they get behind the wheel, at 18, with any luck, they leave for college.

Washington is an impressive and somehow ominous city. It radiates self-importance. It bathes in self-reference. In the same way that the street grid radiates out from the Capitol and the White House, the muscle of its bureaucracy and the grandeur of its collective ego seems to peer down at you from Art Deco/New Deal facades, from grand memorials, from hidden cameras.

Washington's denizens have a seriousness and a purposefulness about them that even makes Sunday feel like a workday. I left Gabe asleep in the hotel room this morning and went to a Starbucks down the street; there they all were, studying the New York Times and Washington Post like yeshiva students poring over a page of Gemara. Or else hunched toward their laptops. In a way, it wasn't all that different from the basement lounge of the U of Chicago Divinity School. Only the coffee wasn't as good.

Most of Oldest Daughter's roommates joined us for breakfast. It came up in casual conversation that three of them came from homes where the parents had divorced. I'd forgotten how common it is. They had all already met O.D.'s biological father, and it felt like there was some amiable scrutiny occurring. Maybe not. When you're a step-parent, you just assume that's what's going on. More likely it was Sunday morning, they were a little tired, hung over or both, and they were just happy to be fed.

More sobering was the fact that their job prospects are dim. A couple of them are interning for media or PR companies. These internships would ordinarily lead to a job, but the companies have made clear that that's not going to happen this year. These young women are emerging into the worst job market of my lifetime, let alone theirs.

Middle Daughter has a job waiting for her after graduation. In government consulting -- surely one of the only growth industries out there. When I told my old man what she would be making, he shook his head. "That's more than I made in any one year of my entire working life," he said. She is lucky, but she's made a lot of her own luck. Still, there's so little of the self-important about her. She seems strangely . . . mellow.

Gabe and I flew home this afternoon, leaving our hearts with Oldest Daughter -- and also our camera. Perhaps she'll bring it home with her at Passover.

--T.A.

Meet the new kid

Gabe and his new cousin (1st cousin once removed?) Lucy.

 

(picture courtesy of the proud father)

Lucy calmed right down when she met Gabe on Sunday.

I was moved all over again to see how gentle he is. He loves all creatures great and small -- but especially small. He held her as if she were a china doll.

Oldest Daughter and Middle Daughter were there, too. And the One True Wife, who, though suffering from a protracted bout of asthma, takes the most visceral delight in holding a baby of anyone I've ever seen.

My sister the grandma is over the moon. The parents, in their new home, are aglow in that astonished, delirous exhaustion of the new parent.

Which I vaguely remember.

As befits a child of the 21st century, Lucy has the Internet down. Pat.

--T.A.

Taking the stairs -- again

Gabe came through his surgery fine. The venous malformation is history. He was astonished by the power of the general anesthetic; he was smiling sleepily when we joined him in the recovery room: "My hands are so heavy!," he said in a slurred voice.

Within minutes he was his normal self: laconic, curious, a little impatient. He was also starving. I drove him and the One True Wife home, then went and got him his much-anticipated treat from Dunkin' Donuts: a grilled cheese flatbread, hash browns, and three donuts.

You'd think, with a diet like that, he'd be a little tub of lard. He's anything but. Sunday we do our third skyscraper stair-climb of the winter, and at 94 floors, the second longest. Gabe will beat me by at least two minutes, probably more. He will be sitting on a windowsill on the Hancock Building's observation deck. He will not be drenched in sweat the way I will.

Gabe is beginning to develop a young man's body. When he runs now, it seems as if his feet don't even touch the ground. When he throws a baseball as hard as he can, I'm starting to be a little afraid to catch it, and when he punches me in the shoulder, it hurts like hell. His hands and feet are enormous. His legs are starting to get hairy.
*
On the academic front, I had to give a presentation in a class yesterday. I tried to think of the last time I did this. It may have been in a religion class, ironically, in college, more than 30 years ago. This presentation was on Jacob Lassner's Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam. 
 
Lucas de HEERE; 1559, St Bavo cathedral, Ghent, Belgium

What's fascinating about this book, and the area of scholarship of which it's representative, is how it explores the extent to which the foundational stories of Judaism and Islam are interwoven. More than interwoven, the canonical stories have continued to evolve -- depending on folk-tales, renditions, editions and additions that pass between the two faiths, that emerge in one faith as a response to the other (sometimes in polemic, sometimes to fit the story to the adapting faith's theology, and sometimes just because it's a cool story).

Lassner's book does this through the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, whose encounter is touched upon in I Kings and II Chronicles, the Quran, and in numerous adaptations that emerged when Islam and Judaism were in close and sometimes harmonious contact (as you can see by the painting above, the story also fascinated the Christian community). It seems Islamic renditions of the story emphasized the fact that Solomon was a prophet of God with unprecedented mastery over the natural domain. As such, he easily mastered the riddles and challenges the Queen (who was said to be half jinn and possessed of significant powers herself) posed to him. The Jewish versions, on the other hand, were more concerned with reinforcing the natural order of God's universe -- including, of course, that men should rule over women. (On the other hand, Lassner quotes the Prophet Muhammad as saying: "No group prospers that appoints a woman to rule over them.")

What you quickly learn, when reading academic texts and then discussing them in an academic setting, is that each book raises far more questions than it answers, providing glimpses into fruitful areas of study that are still relatively untouched while delving into just one. I remember one teacher saying to me that each academic's special territory is like "his own little asteroid" -- painting a picture of a universe of Little Princes, shooting forward on their little projectiles, discovering new frontiers in their own private and parallel universes.

Is this a fruitful endeavor? I don't know. I do know, though, that my brain is tingling with new neural connections.

Or is that an aneurysm? By Sunday morning at around 8:45, when I reach the Hancock's top floor and get a glimpse of the view below, I should know.

--T.A.

On Becoming a Great Uncle (not an uncle that's great)

I remember the day during my junior year in high school when my nephew was born.

I remember trying to break a coconut with him when he was about 5, and lacerating his thumb.

I remember him going through a phase, at about 11, when he thought it was cool to make fun of grownups.

I remember laughing with him: on the beach, at White Sox games, at restaurants;

I remember us rolling our eyes, conspiratorially, when his mother (my sister) or my mother (his grandmother) would engage in eye-roll-causing behavior.

And now, a whole new generation of memories is on the horizon:
   

my nephew is a dad!

Congrats to my sister the grandma, and to her wonderful son and his fabulous wife.

Time marches on.

--T.A.