How Do I Know I'm Old? I Keep Buying Cardigans

I am officially an old man.

Why do I say this? Simple. Over the last month I have bought four sweaters—all button down cardigans. To accommodate them in my dresser I have removed an equal number of pullover sweaters. The new batch of cardigans joins a similar number already ensconced in my dresser drawers. 

Six weeks shy of my 71st birthday I cannot say that I am dressing like my father as he almost never wore any type of sweater, though I do recall a thin grey cardigan that sometimes made an appearance in our home. Never outside. 

He never wore a pullover sweater, not that he feared his mostly bald crown would be mussed up. He had suffered from bursitis in his shoulder and sought to avoid having to extend his arms above his head to put on a pullover sweater. I, on the other hand, am still blessed with an almost full head of hair (naturally brown, not tinted as some of my friends have assumed because of my lack of grey hairs). My reluctance to pull on a sweater has to do with not disturbing my coiffure. 

Come to think of it, I cannot conjure up any memory of my father dressed what we today would call “casually.” He never wore jeans (except when stretched out on our kitchen floor fixing the dishwasher). Or chinos. If we were going out for a dinner at a delicatessen or slightly more upscale restaurant he wore a suit, usually with a tie. Fathers did that back in the 1950s and 1960s. Anyone who has seen situation comedies from that era, “I Love Lucy” or “The Donna Reed Show” or “Leave It to Beaver,” knows I am right. The only men not in suits were working class stiffs like the husbands in “The Life of Riley” or “The Honeymooners.”

My father was a boss. A garment manufacturer. Suits and ties comprised his wardrobe, though he took his jacket off the minute he opened his factory on lower Broadway every day around 8 am. Dress down to him was not wearing a tie. Actually, “dress down” was not even a term of reference back then.

Though he didn’t change into casual clothing when he came home from work he did remove his tie and suit jacket before sitting down to dinner. He would turn his chair slightly to the right, a habit I have subconsciously taken to doing as well. By the end of the meal he had loosened his belt and unbuttoned his pants at the waist (not something I have emulated).  

I bought my first two cardigans, one black, the other winter white, some 10 years ago during a trip to northern England and Edinburgh, Scotland, with our dearest friends Dave and Gemma. I had seen the zippered cardigans in Next, a British chain store, but had demurred buying them. Once back home, I regretted my decision. Fortunately, I was able to prevail upon our friends to buy and ship them to me. Whenever I wear one I am reminded of that and subsequent trips to their home in the small village of Crookham, Cornhill-on-Tweed, Northumberland, where sweaters of all types are standard pieces of everyday apparel. 

Father's Day Present, and Past

For Father’s Day, my daughter Ellie gave me a present that reminded me of my mother.

Ellie spent Saturday night preparing kreplach and chicken soup with lots of thick, sweet carrots and thin lokshen (noodles). Kreplach are Jewish wontons. Jewish meat ravioli. Jewish stuffed dumplings. Triangular in shape, at least the way my mother used to make them and Ellie did as well, kreplach are among my favorite foods. Alas, they are also among the foods I rarely get to enjoy, as they are labor intensive and messy to make.

One of the most enduring memories of childhood in Brooklyn is my mother cooking for the holidays. Each Jewish holiday brought different treats. For the night before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the signature culinary delight were kreplach. Mom would painstakingly hand-shred well-cooked brisket. With flour dusting up the kitchen and adjacent dinette, she’d roll dough until wafer thin, cut it into squares, place a dollop of shredded meat in the center and fold the edges over into perfectly shaped right angle triangles. Like a general preparing troops for battle, mom would array the boiled kreplach in lines worthy of military precision on the dinette table. It was my job to deliver some of her handiwork to the neighbors. I hated that job, not because as a young boy I’d be embarrassed. Rather, it pained me to part with any of my favorite food.

Ellie’s kreplach easily were two, or even three, times the size of my mother’s, and just as tasty. When I ate them Sunday afternoon in her apartment in Brooklyn I was instantly transported back to the 1950s and 1960s. We couldn’t finish them all, so naturally I took home the leftovers for lunch today. And that’s when the kreplach shifted my memories back to my father.

In keeping with the nostalgia moment, during lunch I turned on I love Lucy. The episodes I watched (yes, episodes; watching I Love Lucy is like eating potato chips—you can’t watch just one) conveyed the continuing story of Little Ricky getting a dog despite Lucy and Ricky’s objections and the Ricardos’ decision to move to the suburbs, to Westport, Conn.

I’ve already chronicled our father’s antipathy to the two dogs we had, each for one year (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/06/no-time-for-pets.html).

Around the time I joined our family in March 1949, we moved from an apartment on Tehama Street in Brooklyn to an attached two-floor row house on Avenue W in the Sheepshead Bay section. “Modest” would be a kind description of its architecture, layout and, most cuttingly, interior decoration, considering the resources available to our father and mother. Yet, I was content there. I think my brother was, as well. Our sister was not. She lobbied long and hard for a move to the suburbs, a move to Long Island. Her friend Pauline’s family moved to Woodmere, if memory serves, right after they both graduated from elementary school. It was the perfect time to transplant the family, right before she would be starting high school, Lee said. Pauline’s dad was no more successful than ours, so why couldn’t we move as well, Lee argued.

Dad had no desire to play the game of “keeping up with the Joneses” (in this case, the Lipsons). He continuously resisted our mother’s entreaties to shed his Buicks and buy a Cadillac (he did so once, then reverted back to form). He had no desire to ride the rails to his factory in downtown Manhattan, and since commuting by car from Long Island had less appeal than hearing Lee kvetch and moan, he chose to stay put, no doubt reasoning that Lee’s tenure at home was maybe four or eight years more, but a move to the suburbs was a life sentence.

So we stayed at 1810 Avenue W, building up memories that to this day can be evoked by the aroma and taste of simple foods made with love by a younger generation, and eaten, maybe, with a tear forming in the corner of an eye.