The Nogg Blog: thoughts from Ozzie

For the New Year . . .

2012-01-03T07:20:00.000-08:00

Samuel 1919

While others watched the 2012 bowl games she sat on her bed with the falling-apart family album and flipped straight to her hands-down favorite picture of the naked baby boy where on the back someone had long-ago scribbled Samuel 1919 and in today’s scenario she thought WOW if One-Hour Photo found this in your order they’d right away call the Vice Squad and you’d be hauled up on pornography charges and she wondered if baby Samuel was still alive and if he was he wouldn’t be a baby of course but really old like Zeyde and could be his wife had already died from a brain aneurysm so he’d moved from their brick bungalow with the iron bird bath shaped like an enormous lily pad in the front yard and now he lived at Happy Acres Rest Home room 301 that he shared with Max who never stopped singing Yes We Have No Bananas and she hoped the nurses gave Samuel his medicine on time and trimmed his beard and she wondered if he had kids maybe a daughter and three sons or four sons and no daughter whatever and if he had kids then by now he’d for sure have grandchildren even great-grandchildren all spoiled rotten and she wondered if he recognized his sons and daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchildren when they came to visit him if they came to visit him and if they came to visit him did one of them at least wipe the egg yolk off his shirt-front p l e a s e

2011-12-20T08:46:00.000-08:00

The Cap Poppa Got from the Czar

I can’t remember a Hanukkah without snow. Snow in drifts as tall as a man. And that man? My Poppa-the-Rabbi, trudging home from shul in the evening darkness to light the candles. Poppa with a wool muffler over his nose, rubber galoshes flopping on his feet and his head warmed by a Persian lamb fur cap.

On any given Hanukkah night, Poppa would stomp into the house, blow the snowflakes off the cap and say, “So, did I ever tell you who gave me this cap?” He’d asked this question many times before, and of course I knew the answer. But pretending I didn’t know was part of our family’s Hanukkah tradition.

“No, Poppa. Who gave you the cap?”

“The cap? The cap was given to me by Czar Nicholas, himself.

“Really, Poppa! When?”

“When I was seven, maybe eight. It was Hanukkah and Czar Nicholas just happened to be passing by our village when, through the open window, he heard me singing Maoz tzuuuur y’shooo-a-seeee. He was very impressed.”

“And what did Czar Nicholas do then, Poppa?”

“Then? What did he do then? Then the Czar bent down, shook my hand and said, ‘You may call me Nikki’.”

From the kitchen Mama would call, “Oi, Alex! Such stories you tell her.”

The Hanukkah candles we lit when I was a child were CANDLES. Fat, smooth, sturdy and orange. Not plain-Jane orange, mind you, but ORANGE. And when those candles stood in the frosty window, their flames melting the ice until it puddled on the sill, well -- anyone passing by knew he was looking at candles that meant business. Don’t mess with us, they seemed to say, if you know what’s good for you. Just like the Maccabees.

While the candles burned on those long-ago evenings, I spun my dreidel and Poppa sang his Hanukkah songs -- in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, English. I loved the singing, really I did, but Momma wouldn’t start frying her latkes until the singing was over and the candles had burned down to nubs, and sitting through Poppa’s Hanukkah concerts in anticipation of Momma’s latkes was not easy. Mama’s latkes, you see, were the true miracle of Hanukkah.

“And what makes Momma’s latkes so miraculous?” Poppa asked every year.

And every year my response was the same. “The secret ingredient!”

“And what is the secret ingredient?”

I knew the answer, but pretending I didn’t was part of the tradition. “Tell me, Poppa! What is the secret ingredient?”

Then Poppa would put down his fork, wipe the sour cream off his moustache, take Momma’s hand and whisper, “The secret ingredient is the tiny piece of her knuckle that she grates in along with the potatoes.”

Blushing, Momma would say, “Oi, Alex. Such stories you tell her.”

I did not grow up with Hanukkah shopping lists or fancy gift wrap and bows. And a gift every night? Never. I got one present and one present only. Hanukkah gelt that Poppa took from his trouser pocket and put, unwrapped, in my palm. Every Hanukkah the gift was the same. An uncirculated 1923 silver dollar that Poppa had somehow gotten his hands on the year he came to America. He kept a stash of these coins in several black, lisle socks hidden behind our stove. I don’t know who he thought he was hiding them from. I knew where the treasure was, and Poppa knew that I knew. But pretending I didn’t know was also part of our family’s Hanukkah tradition. A tradition we observed until the fateful Hanukkah of 1944.

It was the day of the fifth candle. We woke to find the radio -- gone. The Victrola -- gone. In the kitchen, Poppa moved the stove. Oi, Vey! Gevaltdt! Ganeyvim! The sock with the silver dollars had vanished. Unlike the small jar of oil that kept burning in the Hanukkah story, our seemingly inexhaustible treasure was also gone. Stolen while we slept by some non-sectarian Grinch.

I wept. Poppa fumed. Then he put on his coat, his galoshes and the cap that he got from the Czar and marched straight to the bank. That night, as he had done for years, Poppa gave me my Hanukkah gelt. I turned the coin over and over. Studied its face. It was familiar but somehow different. And then I realized what was wrong. This dollar wasn’t engraved 1-9-2-3. The numbers on this silver dollar were 1-9-4-4.

“Poppa?“

“Tochter. See how it shines, so bright. So new. So much better than the old.”

And Momma sighed, “Oi, Alex. Such stories you tell her.”

Looking back, I realize a child more perceptive than I would have gotten a clue, right then, that more than just dates on silver dollars can change. Now, when I gather with my children and grandchildren to celebrate the Festival of Lights, it’s very good, of course. But my Hanukkah is gone. It’s been replaced by frantic shopping and candles that are thin, pale imitations of the real thing. Sadly, the latkes are often made from a mix, the snowdrifts are seldom tall as a man, and the Czar never passes through our village.

It’s then I run back to a magical time. I taste my mother’s latkes. I hear my father’s Hanukkah songs, remember his stories and feel the old silver coins in my hand. These riches can never be stolen. They are safe, secure -- along with the knowledge that hidden deep in the bottom of my dresser is one 1923 silver dollar and the cap Poppa got from the Czar.

It's That Time of Year Again . . .

2011-10-21T07:54:00.000-07:00

It's Simchat Torah and we've read the last chapter of the Five Books, rolled the scroll back to Bereshit and started the story over again and I'm thinking Jeez, if I could rewind my life back to the beginning and start from scratch, maybe this time around I'd go to bed earlier and listen to more Mozart and less Chris Matthews and start walking three (okay, two) miles a day and quit dreying over the choices my kids and grandkids make and stop being pissed when my husband spills food on his clothes. All doable, but (in the scheme of things) small potatoes.

Because even with F*R*E*E* W*I*L*L* the narrative of my life (like the narrative of those fabulous flawed biblical characters) will include chaos, paradise, promises, betrayals, love, shalt-and-shalt-not, doubt, duty, ingratitude, atonement, backsliding, curses, blessings, stubbornness, acceptance, rejection, jealousy, sacrifice plus wandering wandering wandering and there's little to nothing I can do about it. What was, was. What is, is. And the end (when/where/how TBA) is inevitable, which by now is fine by me since my life (even with the shit) is pretty damn glorious.

Permission

2011-10-13T14:34:00.000-07:00

“So, Poppa. The nurse says you’ve been talking to the Angel of Death.”

“It’s true. He visits a lot. He likes to schmooze.”

This revelation came while I was sitting with my father in his room at the Mt. Sinai Home for the Jewish Aged.

“How long have you two been . . . schmoozing?”

“Since the beginning. Since I was a small boy he’s been lurking in wells, hiding on tree branches, leaning on traffic lights waiting for one misstep so he can grab me. Last night he stood by my bed and yelled, ‘Enough, Morrith. For ninety-theven yearth you have ethcaped me. Give it up, for Pete’th thake.’”

“The Angel, he lisps?”

“And reeks from garlic. This morning he schlepps with him your mother in her house shoes and apron, like she’ll be some big incentive, and he yells, ‘Remember her oxtail thoup, her brithket? Come with uth, Morrith, and again you’ll eat like a printh. It’th like the Waldorf there, only cleaner. You’ll enjoy it, I promith.’”

“What did Ma say?”

“From her pickled tongue, not a peep.”

In my father’s room, the radiator hissed rhythmically along with words to a lullaby I’d not yet forgotten.

Under my little one’s cradle stands a small white goat.

The goat traveled to sell his wares.

This, too, will my little one do.

Trading raisins and almonds.

Sleep, my little one, sleep.

A nurse checked my father’s vitals, hung another bag on the I.V. pole. “How we doing, Morris? “ she asked.

“We’re terrific,” he answered to her retreating back.

I stood by my father’s bed, heard his slow breath, saw his arms bruised purple from needle sticks. I kissed his cheek.

“Stop with the foreplay,” my father, eyes closed, whispered from some distant place. “I’m not falling for your tricks.”

“No, Pa, it’s me.”

In his bed, my father seemed to hover, deciding. “You think he’s telling the truth, the Angel? You think there is such a place and I’ll enjoy it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, Pa. I promise.”

Then I held his hand while he made up his mind.

In My Autumn Garden

2007-10-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

Where we live, autumn has arrived dressed in cool, damp wind. Perfect weather for my black Russian soul. So I write these words and send them to you . . . again this year.

“To everything there is a season,” says Ecclesiastes. “And a time for every purpose under heaven.” The poetry in these familiar words is unmistakable, but so are the generalities. Everything -- season -- time -- purpose.

Now, if we’re free to choose a specific thing for which there is a specific time and season, I nominate White-Shoes-Are-Declasse-After-Labor-Day. But such trivialities (concrete though they may be . . .) are surely not what Kohelet -- the biblical bard -- had in mind. For the text continues, “A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck that which is planted.” Ah, good. Our melancholy poet-teacher has stopped beating around the bush. This is life and mortality we’re talking about. This is the bittersweet process of looking back, looking inward and looking ahead as we age. And on this journey through my autumn garden, Kohelet -- and a seed catalog -- are my chosen guides.

*

When I was young, spring arrived with fists full of lilies of the valley. They grew in clumps near the back door of my parents' house, and even more than robins or the crocus that pushed its way up through the snow, fragrant lilies of the valley meant spring to me.

My mother loved lilies of the valley. She understood their preference for shade, their need to shun bright light. She approved of the modest green capes in which the tiny blossoms wrapped themselves. At the time, our family owned an impressive collection of empty Kraft Cheese Spread glasses (from pimento and olive, mostly), and mother often filled the glasses with lilies of the valley and arranged the bouquets around our duplex -- on the kitchen table, the dining room buffet, the window sill above her sewing machine. The blooms never lasted long. No matter how often we changed the water, the bell-shaped flowers soon drooped on their delicate necks, bowed their heads, and died. But the plants returned, every spring, to our garden. And why not? After all, seed catalogs promise that lilies of the valley -- when well rooted -- will spread indefinitely, need almost no care, and live for many years.

*

When I was young, summer arrived on the ruffled skirts of hollyhocks which grew in sturdy rows beside our wooden backyard fence. Even more than monarch butterflies or morning glories scrambling up the porch rail, hollyhocks meant summertime to me.

The hollyhocks stood taller than I. The flowers -- pink, peach, red, white -- big as saucers, sheer as tissue paper -- hung like Lilliputian dresses at an outdoor bazaar. In my hands the blooms morphed into brides with their attendants, princesses surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, a line of headless ballerinas. In my summer garden, make-believe grew real as hollyhocks, but by September the flowers had gone to seed. Not to worry. Horticulturists say hollyhocks are a robust lot, and once established will last a long time.

*

Soon the short days of autumn will be here, with asters, goldenrod and mums blooming through chilly wind, frost and the first snow. But eventually we must deadhead the plants, rake up twigs and leaves, renew depleted soil. We’ll cast away stones, gather stones together, and put our gardens to bed for the winter -- our hopes for renewal waiting like seeds in the earth.

Today, however, I remember a trip Don and I took to Holland some years ago. In a village near the Zuider Zee we visited a tulip farm where acres of cut tulips were piled in heaps -- luminous purple, blue, orange, crimson, yellow, green -- like splendid dead parrots. While the cut blossoms lay unattended, workers gently placed the tear-shaped bulbs in burlap bags for shipment overseas. The flowers would be burned and plowed back into the earth. “This process may seem heartless,” the tulip farmer said, “but the transient beauty of young flowers is less prized than the enduring wisdom in the bulb.”

*

“One generation goes, another comes,” says Ecclesiastes, and to rail against this certainty is a waste of precious time. Unlike hollyhocks or lilies of the valley, our seasons will not last indefinitely or even (in some cases) many years. This autumn I ask, who will tend my garden when I’m gone? Perhaps the answer -- and some comfort -- lies in these words from a seed catalog:

“Mature tulip bulbs produce offset buds that are clones of the parent bulb, endowed with the same characteristics and genetic code. Nourished by the mother bulb, offsets grow into daughter bulbs, and the original mother shrivels and slowly disappears. When separated from the mother bulb, the young bulbs start flowering themselves, and even if planted upside down, they instinctively turn, turn, turn and grow towards the sun.”

Copyright © 2007 Ozzie Nogg. All rights reserved.