Tossing and Turning When Gilda's Away

My wife left me last Tuesday. 

Oh, it is not what you think. 

With Donny staying in New York for business, Gilda accompanied Ellie, CJ and Leo back to Omaha. She will be coming home today.  

Being able to help care for our grandchildren is one of the benefits she is reaping in retirement, the freedom to travel on her own schedule, for pleasure or to help out. 

I’m not embarrassed to admit I have had a hard time sleeping when she’s not lying next to me. During my career I often traveled days at a time. Frequently five days a month away from home. 

As publisher and editor I could assign others to travel with me. Ostensibly to help train or support a staffer, it camouflaged a perq of my office to keep me from being alone on the road. It worked during the daytime and through a good dinner but when my hotel room door closed behind me I could not escape the loneliness of being away from home, from Gilda. 

Her trip to Omaha brought the experience back, but in reverse. In my hotel room after dinner I would turn on the TV. I’d be exhausted but unable to fall into deep sleep. I’d set the TV timer only to be awakened from light slumber when it clicked off around 12:30. I couldn’t control the air quality in the room. The room would be stuffy. The pillows were not to my liking. I’d stumble across to the bathroom once or twice. I’d turn the TV back on and for hours watch a bad movie or some silly sitcoms. 

My TV options are better now. I can scroll through hundreds of cable stations with scores of movies. The first night Gilda was gone I watched a West Coast Yankees game and two episodes of Veep before finally closing my eyes for several hours. 

When Gilda’s home we usually go to sleep around 11:30. I wake up around 8. This past week sleep has not come till nearly 2 and has not lasted past 7:30. This blog, for example, was written about 1:30 am, a half hour after I woke up from sleep initiated at the start of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. I woke up at 7:07.

For all my complaints, the truth is I believe a partner’s independent short-term travel is healthy for any relationship. Time away allows both partners to more fully appreciate each other. To recharge the excitement of being together. 

I could never have sustained the life of a traveling salesman or similar profession that required extended overnight travel most weeks of the year. 

As much as I “suffered” through this past week, my experience is not comparable to what Gilda went through when I traveled. She was left to care for our children, to feed and, when they were younger, clothe them. To make sure they went off safely to school and back. For most of those years she also had a full-time job. And if it snowed—it always seemed to snow when I was away during the winter—she had to shovel the driveway. No, my seven nights tossing and turning cannot be compared to her years of underappreciated dedication.

There’s no guarantee my sleep tonight will be better with Gilda lying next to me. But hearing her breathing, being able to reach out and touch her arm in the middle of the night, relying on her body heat instead of the heated mattress pad to warm our bed, signals a return to normalcy. To a contentment appreciated for sure by anyone in a lifetime partner relationship. 

Her plane is scheduled to land at Newark airport at 4:30 pm. I’ll be there. 

United Airlines Strikes Again: The Silent Treatment

Did you have an enjoyable, uneventful snow day Monday? I didn’t, thanks to another United Airlines foulup due to poor communication. 

My two Omaha-based grandchildren, CJ and Leo, along with their parents Ellie and Donny, were scheduled to fly home nonstop from Newark at 3 pm. The surprising snow storm dumped seven inches on our driveway. Even more surprising, despite being heavy wet snow, it did not clog the chute of my snowblower. 

Prompted by the storm, meanwhile, United decided around noon to delay takeoff until 4:40 as incoming planes had been unable to land. So, instead of leaving White Plains shortly after noon for the one hour ride to Newark, we embarked at 1:30.

We encountered no traffic, not even as we crossed the George Washington Bridge. But, as we motored down the New Jersey Turnpike near MetLife Stadium, Donny received an alert from a travel app on his iPhone that the plane would be taking off as scheduled at 3!

He quickly checked United’s web site. Phew. United showed a 4:40 departure time. Already traveling in excess of the 55 mph speed limit, there was no reason to put more petal to the medal.

A few minutes later, however, United reversed course. Its web site reverted to the original 3 pm departure. Donny never received an email or text notice. He found out only because he was obsessive and checked again on his own.

With two children, CJ 3, Leo 7 months, plus a trunkload of luggage to check, it seemed unlikely they could pass through security and get to the gate before it closed.

When we arrived at the terminal Donny jumped out to seek a customer service agent to explain their dilemma and expedite the check-in process. Helpful though she was, it could not be done in time to make the flight.

She could not explain why United had changed the departure back to the original time.

She could, however, rebook their flight out. Instead of the non stop that would have arrived in Omaha at 6:04 pm local time, where Donny’s mother would pick them up, she offered two alternatives: The earliest non stop was Tuesday morning at 6, meaning we would leave White Plains in darkness at 3:30. But when we would get to Newark, though their tickets would say the flight originated from terminal C, there could well be a gate change to terminal A, she said. It would be a decision United would not make until the morning, most probably after they checked in.

Or, they could fly Monday evening around 5 pm to Houston, arrive around 8 then wait two hours for a flight to Omaha that would get in around midnight. But—always that “but”—she cautioned the flight from Houston probably would be delayed for two hours. They wouldn’t land in Omaha until 2 am not sure if Donny’s mother would be able to pick them up.

Truly a Hobson’s choice: travel with two kids for another 12 hours, eating airport food and hoping their children would sleep at least part of the way, maybe in airport terminals, or overnight back in White Plains, get up at 3 am and return to the airport shortly after 4.

They chose another night at grandma and grandpa’s house. Which meant I was waking up at 2:30 am. Uber was not an option, not while I am retired and still physically and mentally fit to drive.

To and from the airport was uneventful. Less than two hours. Fully clothed I crawled back into bed at 5:30 am for four hours of much needed sleep. 

Keeping Tradition Alive, Leo Wolfgang Enters the Covenant

On a snip and a prayer Rabbi Mike flew into Omaha from St. Louis to ritually circumcise Leo Wolfgang Novak, Gilda’s and my fourth grandchild. Leo joined sister Cecilia Jane as blessed children of Ellie and Donny.

Omaha has a vibrant Jewish community (there are synagogues for all three major denominations plus a Chabad House), but at 5,000 to 6,000 it is not able to sustain some of the requisites of traditional Jewish life. That includes having a resident mohel, a ritual circumciser whose function is to formally usher an eight-day-old male into the covenant God made with Abraham some 4,000 years ago.

Rabbi Mike Rovinsky flew in early Sunday afternoon a week ago for the ceremony attended in the Novak home by more than two dozen friends and relatives, many of whom had never witnessed a brit milah, the Hebrew name for the ritual snipping off of the foreskin of the penis. Done properly, professionally and expeditiously by a mohel the procedure takes about 20 seconds compared to the near half an hour it could take in a hospital by a doctor.

With more than 10,000 circumcisions to his credit since 1988, Rabbi Mike performed as advertised, explaining in detail with flashes of wit and humor the millennia-old procedure. Leo took it all like a man. I can vouch for that, as I had a close-up view as the sandek, the male who holds down the baby lying on a pillow on his lap. 

Almost eight years ago I held Finley as he was circumcised. It is a remarkable, emotional experience perhaps matched only in its powerful significance to Jewish heritage by observing a grandchild’s bar/bat mitzvah or seeing an offspring under the chupah, a wedding canopy. 

Leo Wolfgang received a name steeped in family lore. His paternal great-great-grandfather, Leo Novak, is enshrined in the West Point Hall of Fame as the winningest coach in the military academy’s history. Over a quarter of a century, from 1925-1949, Leo Novak compiled an overall record of 326-115-1. He earned more victories in men’s basketball and outdoor track and field than any other Army coach, including Bobby Knight. 

Wolfgang is in memory of his maternal great-great uncle Willy Forseter, a Holocaust survivor from the family’s ancestral village of Ottynia in Galicia, then part of southeastern Poland, now part of western Ukraine. Willy was away from the village when the Nazis rounded up the Jewish residents, marched them to a nearby forest and shot them into a previously dug mass grave. For a couple of years he survived by hiding among Polish neighbors and in the forest. When Russia liberated the region he was drafted into its army and sent to Siberia for training. After the war he returned to Poland and was reconnected with my father who had arrived in New York in 1939. Willy first made his way to Cuba and then to New York. He lived with his wife Ethel and son Max in an apartment above the 2nd Avenue Deli in the East Village and operated Willy’s Dry Goods a block away on First Avenue.  

Leo Wolfgang’s Hebrew name is Aryeh Ze’ev. Aryeh for lion. Ze’ev for wolf. 

Omaha Unbound

Gilda and I walked into the daycare room last Thursday afternoon to pick up Cecilia whom we hadn’t seen in person in nearly three months, since her family’s move to Omaha. Cecilia took one look at me and started to cry. Apparently an 11-month-old has some difficulty translating facetime images into flesh and blood figures.

She quickly recovered her poise aided by the comforting presence of her dad, Donny. For the next five days Cecilia bonded anew with her grandparents from New York. When we brought her to daycare Tuesday morning prior to our return to White Plains, our reactions had transposed. Gilda and I fought back tears (unsuccessfully, I might add) while Cecilia eagerly jumped into the arms of her caretaker, Katlyn. She had no idea it would be six weeks before we would see each other again.

By then she would have celebrated her first birthday. Perhaps she would be walking on her own. Perhaps she would have a small vocabulary beyond her babbled mmmaammmammmammama.

How Gilda and I envy grandparents who live a reasonable distance, say, no more than an hour, from their grandchildren, as we did before Ellie, Donny and Cecilia moved from Brooklyn to Omaha.

I guess there’s only one cure for missing grandchildren—embark on another visit. That’s exactly what I’ll do, this time with a quick trip next week to see Finley and Dagny in Massachusetts. 

Leaving Brooklyn Means Crossing Time Zones

My parents set up their homestead in Brooklyn in the 1940s. They raised three children of whom I am the youngest. Aside from sojourning eight weeks at summer camp, my brother, sister and I never ventured away from Brooklyn when we were young. After we graduated from high school my brother and I attended Brooklyn College. Our sister went to an out of town school—Queens College. She commuted. That is, until she finally got her wish to expand her horizons and truly go to an out of town school. For her sophomore and junior years Lee attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She came back to Queens College for her senior year.

Even after Bernie moved to Washington, DC, Lee’s Israel experience was the first and only time any of our family lived more than a five hour car ride from Brooklyn. The nuclear family had been stretched but the protective amniotic fluid had not been pierced. We could still assemble for holidays with relative ease, as long as traffic for Bernie on the New Jersey Turnpike and for me coming south from Syracuse and then New Haven cooperated. 

But in 1973 Lee moved to Los Angeles. The outward migration of offspring had begun for the Forseter family. Fast forward to present times. Lee has three children: After a stay in New Orleans, Ari lives in Washington; Lauren and Jonathan in San Francisco. Jonathan spent several years in Singapore.

Bernie’s son Eric lives near him in a Maryland suburb. His daughter Karen followed her future husband across the pond to London.

Gilda’s and my son stayed in the Boston metro after attending college there. Boston has been Dan’s home for half his life. His family is a “short” three hour drive away. Dan and wife Allison remain New York Yankees and New York Giants fans which so far they are transmitting down to their children.

Now we get to Ellie and Donny and their daughter, Cecilia, the reason for this posting. Today they moved out of Brooklyn to Omaha.

Why Omaha? Well, Donny’s parents and one of his sisters live there. But the bottom line has to do with lifestyle and affordability. It could be Omaha or Cincinnati or Asheville or any number of smaller cities. They all offer a more affordable, more spacious environment to raise a family than do Brooklyn and many New York suburbs. Sure, Omaha lacks as full a restaurant and cultural scene. But it is not the backwater it was 10-15 years ago. 

Gilda and I will miss watching Cecilia take her first steps, speak her first words, grasp a spoonful of food to feed herself. We are envious of friends who get to enjoy these milestones firsthand, not through Facetime or Facebook.

Our situation is not uncommon. Many children of our friends and family have moved a plane-ride away. The emotional hole is made larger when grandchildren are involved, especially if they were born when their parents lived nearby. We were an hour away from Cecilia. I could come by easily to take her and Ellie to the pediatrician. Or to Costco. Or pick them up for a weekend visit to our home.

Gilda and I loved taking trips to Brooklyn to explore different neighborhoods, the Brooklyn Museum or Prospect Park, Coney Island, or Brighton Beach and end the day with a visit and dinner with Cecilia and her parents. We will still go to Brooklyn but surely not as frequently.

I hope I haven’t given the impression Cecilia is more precious to us than our other grandchildren, Finley and Dagny, that proximity promoted preference. They are all equally loved and cherished, as are their respective parents. But there was never any chance of close, frequent, non-electronic observation of Finley and Dagny growing up. Dan and Allison opted to live in the Boston metro long before they had kids. Ellie and Donny lived in Brooklyn.

Not the Brooklyn of my youth. That was, and still is, very unhip. Ellie and Donny lived in trendy Park Slope, near vibrant restaurants and cultural venues, near equally hip Carroll Gardens, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, Williamsburg and Red Hook. Sure, I knew of these neighborhoods before Donny and Ellie lived in Brooklyn, even drove through them, but I never “knew” them. Never tasted them. Never observed them from the sidewalk on foot. Who now will take us to the hot restaurant only Brooklyn insiders know before The New York Times or some other outlet reveals its existence to the world?  

The move to Omaha separates Brooklyn for me and Gilda (who grew up there, as well) across the time zones of our past and present.

The move to Omaha separates our family across standard time zones. It will be harder to visit, for us and for Cecilia’s cousins. We get to see Finley and Dagny every six to eight weeks. We will try for the same frequency with visits to Omaha and return trips for holidays by Ellie’s family. 

My brother manages such a schedule with trips to and from London. He and Annette combine stays in London with side trips to parts of Europe and even Israel and recently South Africa. I guess Gilda and I will get to know the middle of the country from Mount Rushmore to the Crystal Bridges Museum of Modern Art in Bentonville,  AR, built by Wal-Mart heir Alice Walton. I presume I will show her Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville.

I’m not embarrassed to say I cried when I dropped off Ellie, Donny and Cecilia at LaGuardia Airport Monday morning. The fog shrouding the city made driving home alone difficult, the difficulty enhanced by the blurry vision of my moistened eyes.

Everything's Up to Date in ... Omaha

Last and only other time I visited Omaha was some 20 years ago. Along with one of my magazine’s salesmen I was there to drum up business from companies such as First Data. I can't say I remember much about that trip. This one made a much deeper impression, and not just because it was just a few days ago.

On our way back from Arizona and New Mexico last week, we stopped in Omaha to hook up with Ellie and Donny at his parents’ home in Bellevue, an adjacent suburb. Rodgers & Hammerstein once wrote “Everything’s up to date in Kansas City.” The same, and possibly more, could be said about Omaha.

Along the Missouri River Omaha has constructed an inviting waterfront with parks, fountains, bike share stations and a pedestrian bridge to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Even a brisk breeze—okay, a stiff wind—wasn’t strong enough to deter our walking across, letting Gilda add Iowa to the list of states she has visited.

A new minor league baseball stadium hosted the College World Series. There’s a mix of modern and refurbished brick buildings downtown that house an international array of cuisines and beers as well as funky, artsy stores. At several intersections enterprising troubadours staked out claims at each corner. The streets were sufficiently wide to keep their voices from discordant harmonizing.

There are several must-see, must-eat attractions if you spend any time in Omaha, and we dutifully played the willing tourist for Ellie, Donny and his family.

We dined in Johnny’s Café, a steak house landmark since 1922. Should you go to Philadelphia, it is required you eat a cheesesteak sandwich from either Geno’s or Pat’s. In Omaha, you must go to Runza’s for its signature chopped meat, cabbage, cheese, mushroom and onion sandwich which locals insist must be dipped in ranch dressing.

Our flight home Monday wasn’t until 1:10 pm, which gave us plenty of time to skip breakfast so we could eat our first meal of the day at the one and only Stella’s in Bellevue which had people waiting for the door to open at 11 am. Quickly the joint filled with patrons for really great burgers and fries. A single 6 oz. burger is about four inches high. But they also come in double decker and triple decker sizes. 

For the truly hungry and adventurous, or just plain exhibitionist, there’s the Stellanator Challenge. To beat the Stellanator you have 45 minutes to eat:

* 6 burger patties 

* 6 fried eggs 

* 6 pieces of cheese 

* 12 pieces of bacon 

* lettuce 

* tomato 

* fried onions 

* pickles 

* jalapenos 

* peanut butter 

* a bun 

* and an order of fries 

Gilda recently read about a slim woman, Molly Schuyler,  a Bellevue-based professional eating champion, who devoured the Stellanator  in 3:40 and then continued her eating rampage by downing four more burgers, three grilled cheese sandwiches and a basket of fries and onion rings. 

We spent Saturday at Omaha’s world class Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium. Lots of animals in natural environments or as close to natural as man can make an enclosure thousands of miles away and tens of degrees hotter or colder than an animal’s normal habitat. On the Skyfari we soared above rhinos, cheetahs, monkeys and giraffes, amazed to see small children show no fear and their parents no worry while Gilda, Ellie and I clung tightly to the restraining bar keeping us snug in our chairlift.

Omaha’s Offutt Air Force Base is home to the Strategic Command, our nation’s multi-faceted air, land and sea defense network. It’s where they took George W. Bush on 9/11, down to a bunker three stories below the surface. 

We toured of Offutt’s public areas. Prior to his retirement Donny’s father piloted a B-52 bomber armed with nuclear missiles and conventional bombs. Gilda and I are not hawks, by any stretch of the imagination. But we were impressed with the dedication and commitment exhibited by Don Novak and his colleagues. 

I Didn't Knock on Warren Buffett's Door But Sam Walton Knocked on Mine

We drove by Warren Buffett’s house in Omaha Saturday afternoon (that “we” is not the imperial pronoun. It included Gilda, Ellie, husband Donny and Rachel, Donny’s mother). Buffett doesn't live in a gated or secluded community. He resides in the Dundee neighborhood in a nice but not overly substantial structure. Nothing outlandish to make the neighbors self-conscious about his status as the second richest person in America. Just like any other house in the well-to-do Dundee neighborhood. We resisted the urge to knock on his door.

It wouldn't have phased me if we had knocked and he'd have opened the door. It would have reciprocated for the time the richest man in the world, at the time Sam Walton, woke me up one morning by banging on my condo door.

It was the Sunday of the annual meeting weekend in Bentonville, AR, back in 1981. Stock analysts, the press and Wal-Mart guests were housed in condominiums at nearby Lakes of Bella Vista. Dressed in his tennis whites—Sam had been ranked fifth in the state among amateurs—he mistook my front door for that of the chairman of a Mexican retailer, a company Wal-Mart eventually bought.

Sam profusely apologized for waking me up at 7 am and got back into his beat up pickup truck to search for his tennis partner. He, of course, had been up for several hours. His daily custom was to get into the office early and be out by 6:30 to pilot his small propeller plane to the far reaches of his growing empire of stores.

I consider myself fortunate to have known and even befriended many of the merchant princes of the last half of the 20th century, chief among them Sam Moore Walton.