Meat Fest 2008

It's her annual visit back to the echos and corners of her other home. Living in polite cornfields and a healthy diet necessitates flights to noise and insight and ventures and laughing and in between beef ribs and swedish meatballs and the best fried chicken in the world we argue the same arguments we have had since twenty - five years ago.

"...Remember the Miss America contest and they asked her if she'd pick work or family and you said work and I said family but your family wouldn't couldn't fill the place of work but family or the idea of it is more important to me I am too shy stop laughing I am that book when we first got together My Name Is Asher Lev but I think now I understand oooh real apples so it's almost healthy how deeply complicated that decision would be to tell the truth over protecting your family art is brutal but that what you have to see you always said that no really are you going to eat that..."

Hyman

He has lived across the hall from Florence since the day in 1961 we moved in. He never spoke to us kids and we kids never spoke to him but everybody knew everything and we knew to be respectful and silent as he came and went.

Later when Florence got sick, I bumped into him more, a slight nod at some point started, but mostly it was the Lower East Side perusing we all do as we gaze from the corner of our eyes, letting the person know "I see you I still don't talk to you."

Today, a day of unburying my mother's life from all the papers she kept, I go get a cafe con leche from the Dominican place that used to be the Giorgianni Brother's market. I needed to cry and caffeine makes it go faster.

There he was pushing his shopping cart full of laundry. I let him know it's Shia on the 3rd floor who died. Not Hannah's brother. How old he asks? Well, Shia had to be late 70's because he and his wife were younger than my parents. "70's?" he asks? "That's young. I'm 91."

And then we talked. Fifty years not a word, today we talked.

He takes care of himself. The Vet Administration gave him home aides but what for. He has LifeLine. "Just like having a person there." Still, the Vet Administration's been great to him. Full disability.

World War II I ask?

"Yeah. I got captured in France. Was a POW in Germany. Stalag 11B." After, he used to get together with the other guys at these reunions but he doesn't go anymore. "Most of these guys have checked out."

I try to help him get his cart up the five scattered steps between the courtyard and the elevator, the same steps we needed 2 maintenance guys to get Florence in and out of the building. "Nah. I got a system. I'm still pretty strong!" and bump, bump bump the big cart pops up each step.

The blond mommy and her little blond boy came out of the elevator. When I was growing up I could count on 3 fingers all the blonds in the neighborhood. Now it's just normal. The little boy is dressed like Robin Hood.

Hyman lights up like a Ferris Wheel at night. "whatcha got there, huh!?" and then in the time honored Lower East Side act of loving family, he pulls out a $1 bill and stuffed it in the little boy's hand. "Here! for Halloween!" and the time honor response from the mommy, "What do you say?" "Thank you!" and they skip out.

Hyman tells me, "I'm going on a cruise." I think well maybe the nephew out on Long Island is going to take him some place warm. A mischievous twinkle in his eye, he says, "Guess where?!" Obviously I am wrong about the Caribbean.

"Europe! I'm flying into Rome and then taking a cruise all over Europe. Athens." With your nephew? I ask. "No. By myself." I look so shocked he gets this big grin and I see a young soldier who got grit and guts and verve.

Then a shrug. "People see an old man alone, they're very helpful." but still that wicked fun twinkle.

He says, "I told them, don't give me no 6 months from now deal because I don't know if I'm going to be around then. Gimme something now."

There's light and sun and crisp air and coffee and old newspapers and scribbled notes and doors and landings and scattered steps and elevators and little boys in Robin Hood outfits and dollar bills appearing out of nowhere.

And then he says "Gotta do this. This trip is my last hurrah. Then I'll go quietly."

Sunday Memories: Autumn in New York...

Starting Out: The early 70's. When we still lived at home with parents in different states of involvement. There were no cell phones. There was no texting. In fact, the kid I liked was homeless and crashed a lot at Gypsy's on 2nd and A. So Dating meant meandering fruitlessly around Washington Square hoping to crash into him, along with my friend who was hoping to crash into the boy she liked (he was a male hustler uptown so we never knew when he'd show up).

Once we bumped into the boy we liked Dating was Folk City open mike night (no longer there) or Bagel City on 6th Avenue (still there). When it got dark enough and the park was technically closed Dating became serious, climbing up on top of the forts of the playground built for kids to crawl all over, and groping under coats and pants. After, maybe they'd walk us home, hoping to get an invitation to sleep over - not so much for sex as much for shelter on the living room couch.

The So-Called "Adult" period: It was the 80's. Dating was usually running into him at a bar everyone went to, and then taking him home because our apartment was the best and closest. Dating meant afterward, the nonchalant "oh yeah um thanks, see ya" and then rushing into the dining room to discuss endlessly over cigarettes (mine) and juice (my roommate's) everything about him. The talks were the majority of Dating.

The I'm Settled Down Now period: It was the 90's. There was no dating We were all grown up, having made fast pronouncements at neighborhood restaurants like Arturo's (no longer there) and then living together and being seen as a permanent fixture where our two names were said so often together they mushed together. After the break-ups there were terrible affairs which looked like dating but really was just heartbreak after a documentary or kung fu movie at the Quad (still there), Village Cinema (still there), or St. Marks (not still there)

There Are Other Things More Important period: Millennium. Dating meant knowing that living together was now more about how habits meshed. To find out there were brief dinners, drinks, lots of coffee in cafes (still there), and many, many emails. Surprise. The love must go further than the housekeeping.

"The future is open wide. Dream of better lives the kind which never hate": There's only a sense that time is running out and standing quiet and still once it hits the street. Dating becomes a single word of yes and walking through crisp air together listening to the not-knowing-finding-out of a heart.

Walking the Walk, Walking the Talk

the only shoes she wore, the contract I found in her papers.


"Self Contract Feb 22 - Feb 29 Mid 1988


From this day forth I choose to do the following.

1. Every AM I will push the blue bedroom chair into the middle of the room and push it back at the the time I go to work

2. Every PM at bedtime - I will turn on ALL the lights of the house & then turn them all off.

3. I will look through one pile of music or drawer of music every day.

4. Every day I will read several pages of my high school diary.

5. Do A.C.T. in AM

This is an irrevocable agreement which I make with myself.

Florence D. Moed
4.47 PM Feb 21-88"

Where Do You Go to...

...hope?

... pray?

... dream?

...cry?

...rest?

...remember who you are?

...let your imagination run wild?

Sunday Memories - April Showers Bring May Flowers

It was one of those rare departures from home, the kind only Doc seemed to be able to pull out of me. Meandering with her through scenery previously only seen on TV, I relished the brief moment I could forget my entire life and just be a girl in a nice pair of jeans. No one really cared what I thought and we all nodded politely, except when that kid pissed me off with his republican shenanigans. (But that's another story.)

However, even travels to far away lands offer moments and memories of familiarity. A ramshackle house, a long picnic table booming with food, much to drink and smart minds eager to speak. And as people drifted in and out of inlets and kitchens a friend and I found ourselves alone with another guest.

She was a New York sparrow. Looked delicate and cute, but was tough as nails, could survive anything and had.

It wasn't the champagne that loosened tongues and poured story into waiting ears. It was the heart.

Years ago, her mother fell ill. She did what we had all done - picked up the reins of care and the slow and fast osmosis of changing places - from daughter to mother and from mother to daughter - began.

One day an opportunity arose for the mother to take a shower. It seems that taking a shower at the place she lived in was no longer an option. The mother and daughter were going to a home where there was a stall big enough to accommodate the mother's walker or wheelchair, can't remember which.

So the mother asked if, when they got there, could the Sparrow give her a shower?

Can you imagine having to ask your child to bath you?

The Sparrow of course readily agreed. But then realized this shower would require her to be in the stall with her mother. It would be an intimacy never before exchanged between them. It wasn't that they didn't like or love one another. They very much did. But there wasn't that warmth and physical affection so often seen on Leave it to Beaver. Or Father Knows Best. Or even Star Trek.

So she packed a swim suit so she could get in the shower with her mom.

When the time came, and the water poured and the mother was carefully situated, the Sparrow, snug in her suit stepped into the shower.

There is a moment with a parent where you see a sudden nakedness that goes beyond skin and breasts and tufts of hair in quiet places. Our moms, our grandfather, our aunt our heart our soul our life no longer lived as a child because that child now lived in the rounded shoulder or paper thin fragile skin a hand full of tremors the eyes tired resigned to the greater need to be cleaned and the desperation to not be humiliated in the process the hope some dignity could still clothe the soul...

... The Sparrow looked at her swimsuit wondered at the barrier she had placed between this woman her mother and herself wondered what was it about seeing her mother naked and then having her mother see her naked at this point in life she was 60 her mother near 90 what was it that had put the suit between them in the first place...

She slipped off her swimsuit now them both naked in this shower, she began gently soaping her mom and and she said they started to laugh and weep and laugh and weep and laugh until there was no difference between the tears pouring from shower heads and those from brokenhearted eyes.


***
Plenteous grace with Thee is found, grace to cover all my sin;
Let the healing streams abound; make and keep me pure within.
-- Charles Wesley

Up in Smoke

There was such an assumption of it being OK to smoke. Like putting on deodorant or finally getting to wear an under-wire bra. A Bar Mitzvah almost where the incantation rumbles out of a cardboard pack "Today you are troubled enough to have to sit down and contemplate life as deeply as one can while smoking on the toilet."

The Remains of the Day

The boxes collected from nearby beach towns of Jersey or Coney or maybe even Seneca Falls aren't her voice raging with life and insistence on the work of expression nor are they the seeking hand of her last year yearning for someone to hold it nor are they her gorgeous explosive hair refusing ugliness and age but rather singing singing her indefatigable lust for attempting once more something of promise.

Sunday Memories: A "Chuck Close" portrait of Florence

Many years ago, I sat a few seats away from Florence at a WOW performance of the play Claire wrote about her. As I recollect, the humor was pretty broad and the depiction of Claire's mom not exactly flattering, so I gave Florence a few nervous peeks to see if she was upset at all. She was laughing her head off.
-- Carola



I'm not sure if this is an apocryphal story but I seem to remember you told me that when you told Florence we had broken up, she hit you. Not that I condone parental violence, but I appreciated the strength of her feelings for me which I perhaps didn't recognize before. It was nice to have her on my side, even if it meant she wasn't taking your side as one might expect... Also, even though in conversation you knew Florence reveled in language, it was in her letters to me that I really caught the full blast of her storm of words, ideas, and the sometimes incomprehensible connections between them. And there was the sometimes florid, over the top, extravagant, extremely complimentary, appreciation (was it love?) she expressed for me. I was sometimes awed by her.
-- Joni



When I think of your mom, I picture her sitting at the piano, either playing herself or giving the lessons.That's the image that keeps coming to mind. I also remember you playing the violin with her at the piano. She treated us like grown ups, even when we were little kids. She didn't talk down to us.
--Marcy



We were too poor for a decent wedding. So our first time together spent walking around New York. We didn't even have carfare. [Eventually] we saved money to go to the Catskills. [But before that] we went mostly to churches and synagogues because they didn't cost.
-- Seymour [Florence used to refer to him as her "first husBANd"]



I remember that she gave herself a tap dance class for her 65th birthday. And how surprised I must have looked: one can be 65 and still do everything! And us walking around, talking, through the rather dark and empty streets, and you saying "wait a sec" and walking into a lesbian bar because Florence might be there. And her voice.
And the way she smiled. And going to the diner around the corner for lunch. [And] Florence being somewhere in the neighbourhood, calling, but not willing to come up.
-- Joke



She taught me to pronounce Dvorak correctly (silent "D"). We took long, slow walks on Avenue C and ate in the yuppy cafes that have replaced the bodegas. And talked and talked and talked. I admired her intrepid character - strength against adversity. And against the humiliations and diminishment of old age. She had a complete world view, uncompromised by hedonism or sentimentality. And fittingly strong opinions.
-- Naomi



I have an experience in faith related to Florence. I was actually amazed at how much her death touched me, and also all these friends and clients that have been passing away in last weeks. (it seems as if I am going from memorial to memorial). So that morning I have chanted and read and even cried for her, and realized that all the positive that I can do in this life time besides healing, I should do. So I called the chapter leader who have asked me to become a group chief (which I declined because of "organization" issues and I was struggling with that) and accepted the appointment. This is totally related to Florence's passing so I thought you should know.
PS-and...adding to the last experience..my son just started dating a girl from Coney Island..
-- Nurit

And Under The Category of "Life Goes On..."

I asked Sissy when she knew she was beautiful. I thought it was when she had her children, her being like the mom everyone dreams of having and goes to therapy to get over the fact they didn't.



So that's why I said, when you had kids, right? She said no. It was when she was only 35, divorcing, raising two boys on her own, working a heartbreaking job saving little babies from bad events and dealing with an aggressive breast cancer that refused to cooperate with some of the treatments. That's when she, every day, pulled it up, that something, that knowing, that grabbing onto the incredibleness of who she knew she was, what she was really made of and how strong she had always been, so that she could live and love those kids and make sure they had a safe home with a great mom in it, the one everyone dreams of having....

Shona Tova

I go to Little Gdynia to meet Doc for a meal.

Faye is there with her grandson. Her husband, Leslie is now gone a year at least. That means she'll be able to say kaddish at the services next week for him. All I see is that day he boasted how she was the smartest math teacher in the world as she gently put his arm into his jacket. They both survived the war and the camps but met each other here in New York when they came to start a new life, a new year.

Faye is now drained, her eyes watery. She may be facing 90 but she can't quite see it. Her grandson talks animatedly to her, like he is trying to live six lives for her so she isn't so damn lonely dieing without the man she loves.

I go over to say Good Yontiv. The grandson tells me he now is in Los Angeles. No, not the TV business. His girlfriend got into rabbinical school. Thank G-d, I say. Faye beams.

Five men yell and laugh in the back. The Right this, the Left that, Stalinism and....

Doc skips in. Pierogis and kielbasi and little cups of soup. Sour cream, sauteed onions, I have a chocolate egg cream. Talk pours out faster than delicious rain from another season, mothers and lovers and hopes and grief and hunger and peace and dreams. Desire.

For a new year for a new year for a new year.

The men all laugh and voices rise into chords from a Schoenberg symphony. Suddenly a glass breaks on the tile floor.

"Mazel Tov!" we shout to them.

"What!? Now you're married!?" one shouts back.

"No! You're married." we retort.

Faye's grandson is waving to me from the door. I jump up, a kiss on Faye's cheek. She says, pointing to him, kvelling like crazy, "This is my grandson." I don't say I know you told me. I just grin a billion smiles for her so maybe the joy evaporates her permanent tears. I feel my own eyes soften with age each second.

Doc makes me laugh just when I'm swallowing mushroom barley. We talk about all the meals we ate on Yom Kippur. I win. Two years ago from the 35th Street Chinese bakery a pork bun for breakfast before I realized I was eating tref on the holiest of the holies. She's runner up because she made dinner reservations this year for right after the fasting begins.

Since it's between Rosh Hoshanna and Yom Kippur, we don't count the kielbasi.

The men, windbreakser, comfy shoes, relaxed pants, those faces we know in our fathers our uncles our neighbors our lives.

One says, "you sure we're not married?"

"You are," we say. "But to him..." pointing to his old friend.

"Oy! him!?"

"What? You thought you were going to be happy?"

"Wasn't the first two times...."

"Good night, girls," they call to us, leaving with little bags of dessert or dinner.

"Good night, Good Yontiv, shona tova, a happy new year..."

A new year a new year a new year...

Sunday Memories - The Bar

Florence took me here I guess in 1976 for a drink. What I remember, so vaguely through exhaustion and booze, was, so that we could have an enjoyable time, I got her a bit drunk on scotch - that being her drink of choice outside the house (the house drink being watered down sherry). I probably had scotch too. We stood leaning against the bar all the way in the back.

I think, again through the haze of exhaustion and booze, that at that time having been recently invited out of her home, I was living up the street and new to the neighborhood. And one night after a screaming match on the phone with my sister about how one would identify the sexuality of our mother, I stormed down to this bar and ordered the second drink I knew about. Rye. Doubles. And got very very drunk. A very very nice man made sure I got home without being killed along the way. After all this was Second Avenue in the mid 70's. When New York was New York and filmmakers were in school preparing to make films about it.

My two visits to this bar gave me a place to go in the neighborhood. I knew no one else, nothing else, was so alone, working as a housekeeper, baby taker-carer, cleaning girl. But now I knew this bar. So I started walking in a lot. And soon the guys behind the bar knew my name and soon I knew the names of their friends and soon we hung out outside the bar and one bartender was my roommate for a while and everyone who lived with me those years were regulars at the bar and when I finally figured out how to not be a domestic but be a college student I did my homework at that bar and if I wanted to introduce my hope for love to my family, I didn't take them to my parents. I took them to the bar because that bar was home.

"Tonight I can write the saddest lines." - Neruda

In The Still Of The Night



The call from P. at 2:13 am. Some thing's more wrong than usual wrong.

No! Don't wear that tee-shirt. You like it. You will always remember you wore it this night. Wear the one you hate.

The cab driver didn't realize Columbia stops going two-ways at Delancy. He tries to speed on the East River Drive service road but hits all the red lights on Grand Street.

Does running fast through an empty courtyard, past the fountain, on the same stones I ran as a child, does running fast slow down bad things?

Two years of "normal" going from a woman who could walk to the bathroom on her own to this fragile sparrow of ancient skin struggling to breathe her eye already traveling to other places.

I ask her can I take you to the doctor the sound "no" not from parched lips unable to close for fear of suffocation but from gut clinging to home.

She sips water after I sing her sutras.

Too much distress. I know the wishes made ten years ago. What decision can I live with what decision can I not? P. listens, tilts her head, raises eyebrows, nods, listens.... I pull out old papers words scratched out other neatly typed what decision can I live with what decision can I not?

It is near 3am. Doctor Russia calls back immediately. If it is another flare-up then the hospital can treat it. If it is the end we can get her home. I can refuse intubation. It's win-win I say to P. I'm going to call 911.

I ask again you are in so much distress I want to take you to the doctor I promise I'll bring you home. I promise you I'll bring you back home and the word yes is her trust in me that she raised me not to lie.

He is tall huge like a redwood. She is officious. They both stomp around with many big FDNY emergency bags. Two more show up. Such heavy boots. I know the neighbors below must know something big is happening. She orders everyone around.

Suddenly my mother is no longer mine. She is theirs and I cannot stop them or the massive amount of medical equipments flying out of boxes and bags or the law that said the form we didn't get filled out means they have to do everything. When I hear Florence cry out I snap "no more" or "stop that" or something and one of them steps in front of me to keep me from her side.

The stretcher doesn't fit in the elevator so they tip her up. If they went a bit higher she'd be on her own two feet.

They try to put me in the second ambulance. "No! I'm riding with my mother." They make me ride shotgun, not in the back holding her hand.

She says "Stop taking pictures please." "I'm not taking any of you, just my mother." "It's breaking HIPAA patient confidentiality." "She's my mother. I'm her HIPAA person." "Ma'am, it's breaking confidentiality." I mutter under my breath, "I'll take a picture of my mother if I want to." But I'm too tired, too tired, too tired. "I'll take a picture of the coffee cups instead." The driver grins. My camera malfunctions.


The fundamental things apply
As time goes by

In March, when Florence and I spent 10 hours in the ER (The ER Visit-Part Two: The Walls of Jericho) there was a doctor there some addict was screaming at. I remembered him. Tonight he became Florence's ER doctor.

"Do you understand what that means if we do that?"

"Yes."

"Ok honey, ok sweetheart, I'm sorry, we're almost done, it's a bit uncomfortable, we're almost done..."

"Your mother was biting the tubes.

"Biting?"

"Yes. She didn't want them."

"I'm glad she was biting them."

"Let's make her as comfortable as possible now."

"I want her home."

"This is Dr. Palliative Care."

"What seems to be happening is..."

"Should I call my sister or can we wait..."

"Call your sister, now. Tell her to get here as soon as she can."

"The lab result just came back. It looks like she had had a heart attack and that's why..."

"Claire, I'm on the train platform. I couldn't find any cash for a car service."

"Florence, Louise is on the train platform. You have to hang in there until she gets here. You have to. I know you can do it. Hang in there."

"You're looking at the machine to tell you how she is doing. I'm going to turn off the machines so that you can just be with her."

"I can't remember the Cole Porter song, You're the Top. I didn't bring her cassette player to play her old songs..."

"Do you know when your sister might get here?"

"Florence will wait. She's going to wait until Louise gets here."

"Here. I just downloaded Pandora on my I-Phone. It's not all Cole Porter but similar. Here, put it by her ear..."

"Florence! Louise is here!"

"Hi Florence."

thank you thank you I love you thank you so much for giving me I'm so grateful for I love you music is the most important thing in my life I got so much from thank you for my passion I'm so sorry so grateful for this I love you thank you so much I love you I'm so sorry I love you thank you


Then softer than, a piper man - one day it called to you
And I lost you, to the summer wind

Near 6:25am, on the first day of Rosh Hoshanna, while Louise and I were taking turns holding her hand, the two of us talking to each other in that allegro molto staccato of words that we've always done, Fred Astaire, Ela and Sinatra playing into her ear from of the I-Phone of Dr. ER, in some brief second of some brief exhale, Florence (Frances) Deutsch Moed died.

My sister and I offer profound gratitude to Pearline Edwards, Ghislaine Carrington, Dr. Portnoi, Nurse Peters, Dr. Pool, Dr. DeSandre and the incredible staff of Beth Israel on both the 5th Floor and in the ER, the many FDNY EMT we rode with, and our incredible friends and her students and neighbors and beloved family who loved, supported, and travel this road with Florence and with us these past two years.

A memorial service is tentatively being planned for November 23 in the morning at Henry Street Settlement.

In Lieu of Flowers...

Tell the truth.

Tell yourself the truth.

Don't let your bullshit compromise either of the above.

Don't lie. Unless you're drunk. Then really don't lie.

Don't steal.

Accept hand-me-downs.

Look fabulous in your own clothes. They may have started out as hand-me-downs but they're yours now. Proudly recount their lineage. Never feel ashamed about that.

Never take a taxi.

Walk everywhere.

Don't wear a coat in winter.

Carry your own weight to the point of pathology. Better to err on independence than not.

Refuse to lose at the hands of cowardliness, mediocrity, stupidity, and the need to blend in.

Suffer aloneness at the risk of fitting in with any of the above.

Refuse to feel fear. If you do, ignore it and keep going. Just like Florence did that night during a World War II blackout under the Manhattan Bridge by the movie theater (now a Chinese market).

Always put your work first.
Always do your work.
Always put your work first.
Always do your work.

Rage against the Machine. Even when it looks like it's related to you.

Risk being laughed at by morons when you do something no one else is doing. Just like when Florence put on those roller skates in 1972 and skated up and down Grand Street and all those people laughed at her and then a couple of years every one had disco skates.

Start your entire life over at 60 like you were a 14 year old. Because on some level, you still are.

Fight back just like Florence did all the times someone mugged her or tried to mug her during the 1970's.

Don't EVER quit.

Know that that beer, that sandwich, those shoes, that jacket, those pants, that avenue, that movie house, that proper grammar, that street, that bar, that woman, that dance, that etude, that sonata, that scale, that subway, that bus, that hotdog, that boardwalk, that beach, that ocean is Your New York.

It Was Hers.

"Louise is the Smart and Good One." - Florence's description of my sister two weeks ago. (I was "the Nice One.")

From Louise:

"My mother, Florence Moed, died on Tuesday, September 30, at age 84. She had dementia and had been failing for a while. The immediate cause of death was a silent heart attack and her death was quick. My sister and I are relieved. She was quite uncomfortable and no longer herself.

My mother had a difficult and often unhappy life. She had little love or support growing up from her extremely dysfunctional parents. She dealt with that, in large measure, by focusing intensely on being a serious pianist and piano teacher. Parallel to her devotion to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms was her love of the popular music of her era, sometimes referred to as the Great American Songbook. It drove her nuts that she was so emotionally attached to these songs whose lyrics she sometimes found insufferably sexist. She was a lifelong progressive and a contrarian, especially regarding anything she viewed as bourgeois, such as marriage, sleepaway camp, taxis, and boasting about the accomplishments of one's children or grandchildren. She was very hard-working, honest, both very thrifty and extremely generous, and humble to a fault. She could be extremely irrational and volatile about personal emotional issues that she couldn't handle. Childhood with her and my father was not easy. Nonetheless, despite her quirky and difficult characteristics, she was a great mother. My sister and I were very devoted to her and tried as hard as we could to make her feel better about the life she had lived."

Louise Moed