Day 76 Nat'l Emergency: Remembering My Last Aunt

If this had turned out to be a normal Memorial Day weekend Gilda and I would be in Colorado at the Allenspark Lodge outside Denver attending a First Cousins weekend to celebrate the life of Lily Weinrich who passed away in April 2019. She was 93.

Lily was the youngest of four Gerson sisters and an elder brother. The only one born in the United States, she was, in my estimation, the prettiest of the Gerson sisters. 

Like my mother, Sylvia, she had three children. Like her, a boy followed by a girl followed by a boy. Vicki delivered two boys. Pola, the oldest sister, never married.

I don’t know where Lily’s family lived at first. My earliest recollection is a house at 8 East Drive, Garden City, Long Island, that they moved into in the early to mid 1950s. From the front yard you could see the newly erected Roosevelt Field shopping center built on the airstrip where Charles Lindbergh took off on his historic non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic to France on May 20, 1927. 

The house was a split level ranch with a large side and back yard on which Lily’s husband, Ben, built a patio with pastel colored cinder block tiles. The basement had two levels. In the lower level Ben erected an HO-gauge model train set for his children that I envied. 

My family always seemed to be spending part of most weekends with Aunt Lily and her family, at our house or theirs. The ride from Brooklyn to Garden City on the Belt Parkway and then the Southern State Parkway took about an hour. When we would arrive in the afternoon my father would invariably shuffle off to an unoccupied bedroom for an hour’s nap. 

Often my brother, sister and I would sleep over in Garden City. If the sleepover came after a visit by Lily’s family to Brooklyn, all six children would be packed into the back seat. Actually, five sat on the bench seat. The sixth and youngest, Steve, would lay across the shelf in front of the rear window. 

Lily reveled in relating the time a toll taker counted the children in the car and asked if they were all hers. She coquettishly smiled and said she loved her husband. 

When we stayed over at Aunt Lil’s we usually took a bath after a hard day of playing. My cousin Mike, a year younger than me, and his sister Linda, three years further down the line, bathed with me until their mother observed her daughter displaying an unsettling interest in Mike’s and my anatomies. 

Invariably we never packed toothbrushes before our sleepovers. Lily’s pragmatic solution was to squeeze toothpaste onto our forefingers and instruct us to brush.

The Gerson sisters were unique. Not in the way they stayed connected for more than eight decades. Not in the sibling rivalries and disagreements, some of them petty (e.g., who made the better Thanksgiving turkey), that pitted one or more against another. Nor in the conflict with their older brother, the foursome unified against Sol, for decades.  

What distinguished each of them was their dedication to work outside the home. They were no Rosie the Riveter filling in for assembly line workers drafted into the military during the Second World War who went back to the homemaking front at the war’s conclusion. They became accomplished members of the labor force, the married trio working as partners with their husbands in their respective family enterprises.

Lily’s husband operated a men’s clothing store, the Loyal Men’s Shop, a few doors down from the Apollo Theater on 125 Street in Harlem. Ben moved his family to Garden City in the 1950s, but the tiresome commute to Manhattan prompted him a decade later to jump on an opportunity to move his store to the suburbs—the far suburbs. He planted his renamed young men’s store, Ben’s, along the main drag of Bayshore, in Suffolk County, Long Island. The family moved into a white colonial home in nearby Brightwaters. 

A few years later, in early 1967, Ben didn’t wake up one morning. Widowed in her early 40s, Lily became the sole proprietor of Ben’s. My brother Bernie, by now licensed to drive, and I used to travel out to Bayshore several times a year to update our wardrobes with more modish clothing, apparel our father invariably found incompatible with his taste. Arguments would ensue, he’d swear he wouldn’t pay Lily, we would keep the clothing and the next time we saw her during a holiday or family get-together, she would admonish Dad for being a fashion Luddite. 

 At the store one day a stray black dog, perhaps a cross between a German shepherd and a hound, ambled in and promptly adopted Lily. She named him Zeke. He was her constant companion for about a decade. One day he went out and never returned. Lily accepted his departure as gracefully as his entrance into her life. 

She closed Ben’s in the early 1980s, relocated to Manhattan, to an apartment on East 80 Street between First and York Avenues, and worked as a bookkeeper, mostly for a jeweler. 

She became a family conciliator. When Gilda and I balked at my parents’ plan to swap one of our cars for a larger car my father no longer wanted, Lily smoothed over our differences. After decades of the four sisters excluding contact with not just their brother Sol but his three sons and their families as well, Lily bridged the divide after Sol passed away. Many a weekend she would ride a bus to Middletown, NY, to assist Paul, Sol’s youngest, in his jewelry business. The reconciliation became official with the sons’ attendance at Gilda’s and my wedding. 

Perhaps as a byproduct of running a store that catered to a young clientele, Lily retained an ability to relate to younger generations. When she heard of her great-aunt’s death a year ago, our daughter Ellie wrote, “I have the fondest of memories of spending time with Lily, especially with (cousin) Ari that one day we went to museums with her. I also remember having some lovely conversations with her when I first graduated from college and moved to NYC.”

On the day of the New York City blackout August 14, 2003, I walked from Park Avenue and 55th Street to Aunt Lily’s apartment. She was a cool and collected 78-year-old. I stayed a while until Gilda connected with me for the trip back to White Plains.  

Her son, Steve, eventually with his wife Grace, lived with Lily in Manhattan. They all moved to Kansas and then to New Mexico. 

The last years of her life, as the last of the Gerson siblings whose parents emigrated from Lodz, Poland, in 1920 and 1921, were spent in declining mental acuity. She passed away in her sleep April 1, 2019. 

Her children Michael, Linda and Steve had planned the cousins weekend as a celebration of her life. As a young adult Lily had hoped to become a nurse. She took courses at Mount Sinai Hospital. Her cancelled memorial weekend is another casualty of COVID-19.  

Commuter Edition

I’ve been getting lots of compliments lately, mostly from women, about what a great and considerate husband I am. It’s all because Gilda broke her wrist last summer.

Her injury has long been healed but the practice of my driving her to and from work Monday through Wednesday during her healing and rehabilitation has continued well beyond her return to physical fitness. Our female, married, friends can’t believe I put myself out in my retirement by waking up at 6 am to drive her into Manhattan and return in the afternoon after her work day concludes. They wonder if their husbands would be so accommodating.

Truth be told, while I don’t relish the loss of sleep and the disruption of my afternoon, I have an ulterior motive for being her chauffeur—I like to eat well. Gilda is a fabulous cook who often was too tired to whip up a dinner for two after she drove herself home. But as a passenger, she pays me back by cooking up nightly feasts (as I write this blog at 5:30 pm she is in the kitchen preparing tonight’s repast). 

Two months ago I wrote about our listening to the BBC World or the Pulse music station, both on Sirius Radio. Often on my way home after dropping Gilda off in the morning or when driving to pick her up in the evening I listen to Pandora, mostly folk and folk rock, music I sing along with that brings back memories of the decades when I was a teenager through my thirties. 

I was never into heavy metal, punk rock or anything that I considered “noise.” When I went off to Syracuse University for my master’s degree, my sister gave me the following LP albums:

Stonehenge by Richie Havens;

Tapestry by Carole King;

Days of Future Passed by The Moody Blues;

Tea for the Tillerman by Cat Stevens;

Ladies of the Canyon by Joni Mitchell;

Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits by Bob Dylan.

That last album contained a Milton Glaser psychedelic poster portrait of Dylan. Gilda had the album, as well. We hung one of the posters in Dan’s room when he was young, its whereabouts now unknown to us. Also unknown to us, Ellie loved that portrait. Last year Donny wanted to give her a framed copy of the poster. He was ready to spend several hundred dollars when I told him we had another copy in the attic. The framed poster has become a cherished addition to their bedroom. (And no, I didn’t charge him for the poster.)

Back to the commute: Each way the trip generally takes 45 to 60 minutes. We avoid most of the morning traffic by leaving White Plains around 6:45. The first bottleneck usually presents itself at the Bronx border, around Van Cortlandt Park, near an area under construction. It’s always amusing, and somewhat dispiriting, to read an electronic sign alongside the roadway telling motorists “Your speed is 4 mph.”  

Crossing the Fordham Road Bridge can be a pain, but the most exasperating part of the journey centers on the double-parked trucks along Fifth Avenue above 125th Street that shunt two lanes of traffic into one.

Below Marcus Garvey Park, it’s an open road until we get to Mount Sinai Hospital. I’m amazed the hospital doesn’t flex its muscle and demand better traffic control at its doorstep. From 102nd Street to 98th, even ambulances with blaring sirens have a hard time penetrating trucks and taxis that are double-parked. It’s the same obstacle course later in the day when I return. 

Here are a couple of things I wonder about:

Having spent the last two days driving in fog and rain, barely seeing the white lane markers, I wonder if there is an inexpensive way to paint fluorescent lane markers on our streets and highways;

I wonder if there is some secret international diplomacy afoot behind the drop in gasoline prices. I wonder if the United States has not struck a deal with Saudi Arabia to let the barrel price of oil float to its market level. Many analysts opined the Saudis did not back an OPEC cutoff of supply as a means of hurting Iran and Venezuela that don’t have the financial resources to withstand lower oil prices the way the Saudis do. 

My guess is the real target is Russia, part of the Obama administration’s overall plan to fiscally squeeze Moscow because of its actions in Ukraine and Crimea. 

Stairway to the Animal Kingdom and a Letter from Israel

I've often fessed up I hate exercising. But I do take advantage of natural exercise moments, such as taking the stairs rather than the elevator. After leaving the car on the fifth floor of Gilda's self park regular garage at Mount Sinai hospital Wednesday afternoon before a doctor’s appointment, I chose to walk down the stairs. Halfway down I saw an animal curled up on the landing. Furry. Grey with a black streak down its back. Pointed snout. And a black Zorro mask across its eyes. He, or she, took one look at me and went back to sleep.

I quickly retreated away from this slumbering raccoon and jumped on the elevator. I advised the garage attendant to call the police or animal control squad. It took him a while to understand me. He said he’d call housekeeping. A few blocks later I stopped in the hospital’s garage security office and told them about the raccoon. They, too, promised to call the proper authorities. When I returned to the garage 90 minutes later the attendant said no one had shown up. I did not go looking to see if the raccoon was still napping.

At what age do we transfer authority? Here’s the thing. When visiting with the sleep apnea specialist Wednesday I couldn’t stop thinking how young he was. Probably no older than our son Dan, who is 35. I’m used to conferring medical authority on doctors older than me, or my age, or at least in their fifties. But as I age—and I expect to continue to do so for decades—doctors I see will be getting progressively younger. I’ll have to train myself to trust them.

I have the same questions concerning education experience and gravitas when I see young, talking heads dissecting world events on television. Or when their cohorts talk business, except when it comes to technology. When I watch a baseball game the players don’t seem as young as they really are. Again most of them are younger than Dan, but they look older. Or am I merely transferring my age bias to my brain and making them appear older?

By the way, I’ve decided to do an in-hospital, overnight sleep apnea test rather than an in-home test. My young doctor convinced me the results would be more useful.

Letter from Israel: Gilda's cousin lives in Kvuzat Yavne, a kibbutz about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Gaza Strip. Her kibbutz is among the most successful, with a varied economy including the canning of pickles and olives that she helps manage. Here's an excerpt from an email we received Wednesday:

“So much has happened and is happening. We average 2-3 missile attacks a day. Our homes have no secure rooms but the rest of the kibbutz is covered. Some of the missiles have hit pretty close. The Iron Dome is a miracle and has been shooting most rockets out of the sky. The fallout from this is very dangerous in itself but less than direct hits.

“Two new ways to get around: 1) always plan where to run for cover if you’re caught outside when an air raid siren goes off; 2) when driving, always have the radio on loud so you can hear when they break in with an announcement of an attack. If it’s by you, stop the car, get out and take cover.

“Our son Eldad was called up during the first few days and is now on the border with Gaza keeping watch to prevent infiltrations . Much as it is worrying, those that have family members fighting  inside Gaza have even greater fear.

“To those who attended Eldad and Tehila’s wedding on Kibbutz Saad (which Gilda and I did, along with her brother, sister and her husband), the kibbutz (on the border with the Gaza Strip) today is an armed camp. Heavily shelled. There were two direct hits in front of the dining room right where the chuppa was. The elderly, children, and most of the residents have moved to safer surroundings. 

“We have 60 seconds to make it to shelter; they have basically zero. Funny how there were once emergency plans to evacuate Saad to us…

“All the kibbutzim around the Gaza Strip are empty of almost all their civilian residents. It’s impossible to live with constant shelling and bombardments. The fear of tunnels has turned the whole area into a nightmare. Shelling is something you learn to live with, no matter how nerve racking, if you have a safe room to take cover in. Infiltrating terrorists through a tunnel under your home is a whole new ball game. Every evening now we hear the numbers of the soldiers killed over the last 24 hours.”

Do I Have Apnea? Let Me Sleep on It

I couldn’t have asked for a more timely article to appear in the newspaper. A day before I am to meet with a specialist on sleep apnea testing at Mount Sinai Hospital, The New York Times printed an article comparing the experience of one of its staff writers to an in-hospital overnight test with a new home version (http://nyti.ms/1nOF0nZ). 

I had already met with a colleague who assured me (if that is the right term) I was a prime suspect for sleep apnea, a condition “characterized by pauses in breathing or instances of shallow or infrequent breathing during sleep. Each pause in breathing, called an apnea, can last from at least ten seconds to several minutes, and may occur 5 to 30 times or more an hour.”

For one, I snore a lot. Second, my uvula (it’s not as “dirty” as it sounds—it’s the teardrop piece of your body suspended at the back of the upper palate) was larger than normal. When lying down, my uvula inhibits the flow of air. Air vibrating around the uvula can cause snoring. Third, in the past, when napping, I sometimes was startled into alertness with the sensation I had stopped breathing for a moment. 

Four out of 10 adults snore, but when your bedmate finds it interferes with her sleep, it’s time to do something about it, if possible. The first doctor assured me (there’s that word again) something could be done, but only after a test confirmed I indeed suffered from sleep apnea.  

Surgery is an option I will not consider, as it is not always successful. Instead, I could wind up wearing an appliance while asleep that projects the lower jaw forward, creating a wider air pathway as well as encouraging more nasal and less oral breathing. I already wear an appliance on my lower teeth to protect my molars from grinding away enamel, so I don’t expect any resistance to that remedy if it is prescribed.

Few events in my life aren’t blog worthy—heck, it’s cheaper than therapy—so you can look forward to finding out how my snoring issue is resolved, to Gilda’s satisfaction, we both hope.