In his prime

The universe has a weird sense of timing. Without making a resolution of it, I decided at the turn of the year to start decluttering, a little bit every day. Last week I was working on the storage shelves under the basement stairs and found a box of video-cam cassettes Jerry shot back in the '90s. I asked him to decide what to do with them, and of course he started watching. "I think you might want to see this," he said. The first tape he'd popped into the player had a long sequence of Abbie at the age of five or six -- it was at our house in the Berkeley hills, so it must have been prior to March of 1996 when we moved to the coast -- freaking out with a baggie of fresh catnip. He was a beautiful boy, and he loved his 'nip well into his dotage.


A later tape, shot at Sea Ranch, captured part of a stunt Abs used to do fairly often. He'd accompany us onto the second-floor deck, off the living room, where Jer and I often went to watch the sunset. From there he'd jump to the railing, then up to the lower section of the roof over the porch, and from there to the steeply-pitched main roof, where he'd climb to the peak and sit by the chimney to watch the sun go down. He had the best view in (or on) the house. When the show was over, he'd retrace his steps and leaps in reverse. Watching the tape reminded me that I had a couple of stills of Abbie doing his evening acrobatic routine. What a guy.

One of the other videos consisted of an existentially boring tour of the apartment that Jerry had rented for his mom at Rossmoor, a senior community in the 'burbs east of Berkeley. He'd taken the footage to West Virginia to show her where she'd be living once she moved to California. Of course, Tom's been gone for more than a decade now.

Another showed my brother and his wife in San Diego, before their son was born. Josh is 14 now, and Larry and Sheri have been divorced for ages. Another was shot one Easter at Jer's daughter's house in Marin county. It included his son Marc, who died of AIDS later that year, my mom, Lauren's then-partner Lucinda, and me in my long-haired and still relatively youthful glory. Sic transit...

My inner academic pointed out that I could have called this post "Historical artifacts unearthed during a routine household archeological dig." Yeah, that'll bring in the readers. Of course these priceless treasures will be re-archived. We should digitize them, I suppose.

I got a lot of comfort from watching that footage of Abbie in his prime. He had a good life and, on whatever level cats process such things, I think he knew it.

Yahrzeit

My mother died a year ago today, at the age of 89. She lived a remarkable life, emigrating from Germany, alone, at 17; learning English and graduating from high school in Chicago; meeting my dad-to-be, her one true love, on a blind date; and raising three pretty decent kids. Along the way she became a passionate advocate for the retarded (my sister was born with Down Syndrome; we didn't at that time call it "developmentally disabled") and a dear friend and mentor to dozens of people her age and much younger.

We had the usual mother-daughter "stuff," of course, but the turning point came when Mom and I traveled to China together in November 1996. The two of us turned out to be the only people on our tour. She was a trouper. Confronting a rural pit toilet, nothing but a hole in the ground, is a test of character, not to mention a real bonding experience. We were strangers in a strange land together, on an equal footing for the first time. Her sense of humor blossomed. We had deep, thoughtful conversations. We emerged from that trip as friends, with a much deeper understanding of each other and our respective foibles.

This morning I lit a candle, and picked out a few old photos from the hundreds that my brother Larry and my nephew Josh scanned last year.

I miss you, Mom.

Hertha Levi Basch, 12 December 1916 - 28 June 2006.

Seven Things

I encountered one of these "Seven Things" posts on somebody's topic-oriented blog a few months ago and thought "weird; why's this guy talking about himself all of a sudden?" Now I know; Terry tagged me, which means I'm it, and I get to post seven random but revelatory and perhaps entertaining things about myself. Forgive me if any of this is old news to you:

1. I used to dance on American Bandstand. I'd take the subway downtown after school, and the El to the WFIL studio at 46th and Market in west Philly. When Dick Clark was going to be out of town, we recorded several shows in advance, usually on a Saturday (I don't recall Bandstand ever having a substitute host). The girls always brought a variety of outfits, or at least a change of tops, so that, when the individual programs aired, it didn't look like they were wearing the same thing, heaven forbid, all week. The second photo is of me and Bobby Rydell at the autograph-signing station on the Bandstand set. I carried this picture in my wallet for years; you can see the creases. That sweater was multicolored and, in retrospect, deeply hideous, as was my hair at the time.

2. I have a tattoo in roughly the same place that George Schultz, Reagan's Secretary of State, is reputed to have one. I got it for my 40th birthday, at Lyle Tuttle's studio in San Francisco. The subject matter is similar to George's, too. His is a Princeton tiger; mine is a generic housecat that actually looks a bit like Stella Luna.

3. In college, I wrote my Honors English thesis on Samuel Beckett's novels. Not the plays, like Waiting for Godot, for which he's known. Nobody but English lit majors reads Beckett's novels. For the record, and from memory, they are: Murphy, Watt, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable, and How It Is.

4. I went to an all-girls high school and was part of a smartass cohort that a gym teacher dubbed "the rotten 10%." Of course we proudly adopted that as our name. It was more like 40%. I'm still a member; perhaps you are, too.

5. The only time I ever cut school all day -- as opposed to just a class now and then -- was to stand in line when Beatles tickets (Philadelphia, 1964) went on sale. This photo isn't from that era, but from about 5 years later, when I first moved to Berkeley. It's taken near Isadora Duncan's Temple of the Winds. I think of this as my Joni Mitchell era. At 118 lbs., I was willowy; I had cheekbones. I made the striped pants, and the jacket is the suede one I appropriated from my mom and eventually sewed into her Celebration of Life quilt.

6. My mother left Germany in 1933, when she was 17, lived with relatives in Chicago and graduated from high school there. My grandmother Rosi emigrated the following year. They were lucky to get out when they did. Mom met Dad on a blind date; after they were married, she had Granny dye her velvet wedding dress -- it was a December wedding -- royal blue so she could wear it on other occasions. I have it now. Last time I tried it on it fit, though I haven't worn it anywhere; it's hard to come up with an appropriate occasion in Portland. Incidentally, Granny was a dressmaker and made both Mom's wedding dress and mine for my first wedding. Here's Mom and Dad, visiting California in April 1982.

7. Speaking of which, I've been married three times. So has Jerry. That makes five marriages between us. Third time's the charm. It seems to be working so far; April 17th was our 25th anniversary.

Okay, that was the easy part. Now to come up with seven blogging friends who haven't already been tagged and whom I know well enough to torment...