SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: CHANGE OF TIME FOR MEMORIAL FOR FLORENCE DEUTSCH MOED

The Memorial has been rescheduled to 11:00 am on December 20th, Saturday.




Please join the family of Florence Deutsch Moed at the Henry Street Settlement Abrons Arts Center in commemorating her life on December 20th, Saturday. A memorial of story and music will, in Florence's words, commence at 11:00AM. Cake and tea and coffee will be served before, after and during as eating is good during times of any emotion.

If you would like to share a story or play a piece, please contact me. We look forward to seeing you there.

Best, Claire

***

Abrons Arts Center
Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand Street at the corner of Pitt Street
New York, New York

Directions:

The Abrons Arts Center is located at 466 Grand Street at the corner of Pitt on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

SUBWAY

The Abrons Arts Center is subway accessible by taking:


* the F train to Delancey

* the J or M trains to Essex Street

* the D or B trains to Grand Street

BUS

The Abrons Arts Center is also easily accessible by bus:

* M15 to Grand Street

* M22 to Montgomery Street

* M9 to Grand Street

* M14 to Grand Street

* B39 to Essex

CAR OR CAB

Take the FDR Drive southbound and exit at Grand Street. Northbound FDR does not have an exit for Grand or South Street. Use the Houston Street exit.

PARKING

Parking lots are available on Suffolk Street between Broome and Delancey; and East Broadway and Clinton Streets.

This is Her New York

This is one of my oldest friends. We met when we were twelve.

Before that I was on Grand Street, which was tough, and she was on 109th Street and Riverside, which was dangerous. We didn't know any different and if you ran fast enough it really didn't matter.

How my then 17-year-old sister decided we should meet and how she, with me in tow, traversed the many bus and train lines from the lower east side to the upper west side to make sure we did I don't know, but within minutes of meeting one another this other twelve year old and I became the best of friends.

In the ensuing three decades we spoke all the time, we didn't speak for years, we survived a new age spiritual community together, we recovered from that community apart, I visited her when she ran away to the then delapitated Fifth Avenue Hotel to be a 15 year old groupie, she was the only example I had of successful defiance, I was a bridesmaid when she married a man, host to her and her young girlfriend at the time after she left her husband and then host again to her and her current boyfriend, and during the recent New York City blackout in 2003, even though we hadn't spoken in years, stranded, she knew to come my house and spend the night.

So during my own blackout where the lights in my heart disappeared I knew to come to her and on a rainy night at the tiny French restaurant older than how long we knew each other, just as worn and welcoming as the home we felt for one another, the food as comforting as our affection for one another, a relief spreading across a tiny table, we were reminded that 40 years of friendship held dear and strong through loss and storm and and change.

No new words were said. But walking down the streets of our shared history, an emotional neighborhood that hadn't been obliteraged by sudden and not-so-sudden events, an internal city we didn't have to explain to one another, old familiar words offered new hope.

Sunday Memories - The Writing On The Wall

There were so many things we were not allowed to do. We were not allowed to eat candy, not allowed to not practice our violinpianotheorysightsingingflute, and not allowed to watch TV unless it was Friday and we were at Gramma's.

But there were things we were allowed to do, the things that other kids never got to do. And one of them was writing on our walls. Given chalk or pencils or crayons or even pen, our walls by our beds became tomes of our lives. My sister, when studying Russian at Hunter High, wrote Yopt tvayah matz a lot, especially when she was mad. It means motherfucker. I didn't know Russian so I wrote motherfucker but disguised the letters into boxes and circles so you couldn't tell. Regardless of what we wrote, it was ours and never did I find my canvas of private musings erased or washed off. Never was I censored.

Decades later in my own and suddenly empty home, without thinking, I one night started scrawling on a wall words and rage and desire and pain and the section from Twelfth Night where my name came from.

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out 'Olivia!' O, You should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me!

That night I was just trying to remember who I was, which was hard because the last time that happened it was 1961 and I was still pre-verbal. The scrawling and uncovering got lengthy, and day after day the words took over more and more of the wall.

Eventually some sense of self returned and I hired a friend to paint the room. When confront with a wall now chock-full-of-ranting, begging and pleading to someone divine to make something anything better, my friend said nothing. But I did notice that uncomfortable squirming men do when you inadvertently reveal emotions and they just want you to be their friend they occasionally fantasize about fucking.

The new paint and the new life unfolded into more new paint and more new life and then again, even more new paint and new life. And as each coat of paint went on the walls, life offered, like an onion layer peeled back, knowledge and I'd be revealed again and again to who I was and what I felt or thought or saw or experienced. But nothing went up on the wall. The paint jobs were too nice and besides, I felt too embarrassed to let anyone living with me in on what was going on inside.

Until one night, recently. In a suddenly empty home, my newly painted walls of sweet bright hope spread open wide and welcomed me, just like before, to not know who I was or what I was all about. Without even thinking about it, little sweet notes of brutal existence once again found themselves up on the wall.

An East River Runs Through It

It is always there, wide enough to drown people, narrow enough to understand what's on the other side. I think my aunt swam in it. and maybe an uncle too. It's where I'd go, little girl running down Grand Street with a home made kite made of construction paper in second grade. I was just sure the wind by the river would pick up the kite and make it fly just like in the story books. It was where the neighborhood flasher hung out, a man we all knew by sight (the taunting response we were all taught just in case: I thought that was penis but I'm not so sure). The place my parents walked the two of us running behind or in front. The river where my friends cast their sins during the High Holy Days. The river every one of my friends and me have family pictures of - her mom and dad when they were teenagers, my mom and dad just married, her little sister in a stroller, my big sister sitting on my dad's knee. The river I just know as a part of my body, my air, my street, my life and the one I still cross on mid-night ferry rides sometimes seeking solace and comfort from a life fraught with grief and other times just a need to return back to the smells of home, the briny water, the shore front shapes, the feel of the ferry's wake, the sounds I know like I know my heartbeat, or footsteps or that small moan when delight surprises.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: MEMORIAL FOR FLORENCE DEUTSCH MOED

Please join the family of Florence Deutsch Moed at the Henry Street Settlement Abrons Arts Center in commemorating her life on December 20th, Saturday. A memorial of story and music will, in Florence's words, commence at 2:00pm. Cake and tea and coffee will be served after.

If you would like to share a story or play a piece, please contact me. We look forward to seeing you there.

Best, Claire

***

Abrons Arts Center
Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand Street at the corner of Pitt Street
New York, New York

Directions:

The Abrons Arts Center is located at 466 Grand Street at the corner of Pitt on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

SUBWAY

The Abrons Arts Center is subway accessible by taking:


* the F train to Delancey

* the J or M trains to Essex Street

* the D or B trains to Grand Street

BUS

The Abrons Arts Center is also easily accessible by bus:

* M15 to Grand Street

* M22 to Montgomery Street

* M9 to Grand Street

* M14 to Grand Street

* B39 to Essex

CAR OR CAB

Take the FDR Drive southbound and exit at Grand Street. Northbound FDR does not have an exit for Grand or South Street. Use the Houston Street exit.

PARKING

Parking lots are available on Suffolk Street between Broome and Delancey; and East Broadway and Clinton Streets.

Letters from the Deep: Part One

The family tradition of writing one another letters:

Dear Mom,
Louise said a curs word and so did I. Louise said a-s-s and and I said f-u-c-k. I'm sorry I said it. (Do not show daddy this note.) You'll find my homework in my note book. Please put back the books and do not forget any of the book. My homework (spelling and math) are the first ones in the first section. Do not mess up my paper. I changed my pantty.
Claire
TO MOM
Please do not throw this paper away!!!!!

Dear Claire
Don't say I never wrote to you at camp
Love, Louise
PS Whe you come home, I shall have a guest. You'll sleep on the couch Wed.
Love, Louise

"Lend me your ears."
Dear Mother,
Please say to me that you "love me." Don't rip this up.
Love + xxxx
Claire

Dear Claire-
When you are stirred, out there in that beautiful country, to great heights of aspiring, or being inspired, cast your yearning thought to improving your spelling....
Florence

Dear Claire,
Wish you were here. Glad you are there.
Dad

Sunday Memories - Once Only a Memory, It Returns

Unlike the daughters and sons of the socialists and communists in my neighborhood, I was taught to stand for the flag and mangle the Pledge of Allegiance like any normal grade school kid. It was a given in our home that the Kennedys were revered and that America was great.

And then, what happened... Vietnam, Kent State, too many assassinations and those god-awful Nixon and Reagan people.

There was no more standing for the flag, and almost an embarrassment of admitting where I came from. And except for one brief moment in the 1980's when I was being arrested for protesting nuclear armament at the US Mission to the United Nations, I never sang the National Anthem. Not even at baseball games.

Then it got worse. And worse and worse and worse.

In 2006 struggling to get home care benefits for my 83 year old, ailing, almost completely blind, incontinent, befuddled, barely ambulatory mother, I spent hours calling government offices, and begging and pleading with overworked, underappreciated civil servants for information and guidance of just how to ensure that in order to keep her safe, fed and clean in her home of 50 years, my mom would not risk poverty or destitution or that her needs would not cannibalize the meager time and resources of either of her daughters.

And each and every civil servant would whisper or murmur or even outright say "the current administration, your president, the laws changed.." and then after all those hours of calls, and a multitude of paperwork and doctor notes, and visit after visit after visit of assessments from social services and medicaid nurses and caseworkers, we were denied services.

I stood before a mirror in a battered office bathroom and spit my disallegiance - I am no longer an American. I am no longer an American. This is no longer my country. I am no longer an American.

I once wrote that when it came to our mother, my sister and I made pitbulls look like pussy. We did get our mother benefits not only because we ferociously fought back, but because those overworked, underappreciated civil servants and caseworkers also whispered ways of correctly answering questions engineered to guarantee rejection.

Sorrow and despair and a familiar hopelessness became a gray soul. I forgot what colors of possibilities looked liked.

And then something happened... never expected always hoped for... like true love when it appears after loss and heartbreak ... the terror of Tuesday night unfolded into a miracle and suddenly I wanted to wave my American Flag and sing the National Anthem.

... Gave Proof Through The Night That Our Flag Was Still There

"YES WE CAN!" they shouted as they crossed the street
"YES WE DID!" the others roared back.

Shona Tova, Shona Tova, a voting day for all of us, Shona Tova

I get there at 6:45. J, the neighbor, had brought his dog Wallace at 6:20. "It was packed then." We meet, him coming out, me going in.

"It's the electrical college that's going to decide," says the lady in front when the van parks with an Obama poster in its window. "That's what has to be change. Makes me sick." I'm not sure but there are whiffs of booze somewhere.

"Which line are you on?"
"I think that's just the information line."
"This line is for 66."
"Please do not get on that line unless you talk to me."
"I'm 66."
"They change the boundaries every year. Please do not get on that line unless you... have you talked to me?"
"Why didn't you tell us that outside?"
"This is outside. Miss, Miss. The Asian lady..."
"I'm not Asian..."

The old man, barely sighted, cane in hand, resetting the booth as each of us steps into it. "I wish I could tell people who to vote for," after the young suited man sticks his head out of the booth saying "um I have a question?"

It is my turn and I step into the old familiar booth. A new year, a new year, a new year, each click of a tiny lever in this battered old spaceship to democracy. A new year, a new year, a new year... God Bless America I whisper and pull the lever to vote.

Sunday Memories - The Bureau of the Bubble Gum

If we were sick we stayed at home in bed, drinking tea and eating toast. But then there were these shots we had to get, so there was no avoiding visiting Dr. G.'s office, which was on Lewis Street. Ground Floor of the building my parents had lived in when they began making a family, up the street from PS 110 where we went to school, across the street from Kozy Corner where I coveted the too expensive comic books.

The unbearableness of being stuck with thick heavy needles was only mitigated by a small bowl on his desk of Bazooka Bubble Gum.

Oh for two little girls whose parents had refused them sweets and candies and sodas and cakes except once a week at Gramma's house, that bowl was the holy grail we could claim by journeying through the hell of vaccinations.

The grasp around that small rectangle, the smell of something precious when pulling back the paper, the literary merits of the cartoon, the repeating of the joke on the bottom, the many methods of the first bite, either breaking it along the middle line, or popping all of it into the mouth or nibbling the edges or...

Doctor visits only happened once or twice a year and that gum had to last just a little bit longer than one day. So for as long as we could stand it my sister and I were allowed to stick our gum on the side of our bureaus and each day after school we would get to have that piece of bubble gum once again.

Within days or maybe even a week, the gum would become untenable. And so the wait for the next shot would begin.

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 was already living across the hall from Florence the day we moved in in 1961. He never spoke to us kids and us kids never spoke to him but we knew to be respectful and silent as he came and went.

Later when Florence got sick, I bumped into him more.  We started giving each other a slight nod at some point, but mostly it was still the Lower East Side gaze we all do from the corner of our eye, letting the person know “I-see-you-I-still-don’t-talk-to-you."

I was spending yet another sunny day unburying Florence’s life from all the papers she kept.  Hit a wall, took a break, got 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 to the lobby door.  He pointed to a newly-posted death notice.

And then, for the first time, after not a word in fifty years - not a single word - we talked.

“Hannah’s brother?” he asked.

No it was Shia on the third floor who died.

“How old?”

Well, Shia had to be late 70's because he and his wife were younger than my parents.

"70's? That's young. I'm 91."

And after fifty years, and after our very first words, I finally got to meet Hyman.

He takes care of himself. Sure, his nephew out on Long Island keeps an eye on him. And sure, 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 asked?

”Yeah. I got captured in France. Was a POW in Germany.  Stalag 11B." After the war, all the guys would get together.  He doesn’t go to the reunions anymore. "Most of these guys have checked out,” he said.

I reached down to help him get his cart up the five scattered steps to the lobby door - the same steps we needed two maintenance guys to get Florence in and out of the building.

"Nah. I got a system. I'm still pretty strong!" and before I knew it, he had bump-bump-bumped the big cart up each step.

The blond mommy and her little blond boy, dressed like Robin Hood, were coming out of the building. When I was growing up I could count on three fingers all the blond people in the neighborhood. Now it's normal.

Seeing the kid, Hyman lit 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 pulled out a $1 bill (25 cents in my day) and stuffed it in the little boy's hand. "Here! For Halloween!"

The mommy turned to her boy “What do you say?"

"Thank you!" Robin Hood answered promptly and he and Hyman grinned at each other before the kid and the mommy headed out to Sherwood Forest or maybe the Avenue A bus.

Hyman turned back to me.  "I'm going on a cruise."

The nephew out on Long Island taking you some place warm? I asked.

“Nah.” A mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Guess where?!  Europe! I'm flying into Rome and then taking a cruise all over Europe. Athens."

With your nephew? I asked.

"No. By myself."

I looked so shocked he got this big grin and I saw the young soldier who got grit and guts and verve and survived a POW camp.

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

Both of us waiting for the old elevator, the day whirled around me with light and sun and crisp air and coffee and old newspapers and piles of paper and death notices and scattered steps and little boys in Robin Hood outfits and dollar bills appearing out of nowhere and a person’s life I had lived next to for years and years and years and finally met.

The elevator arrived.  The old doors took their usual time to open.

"Gotta do this. This trip is my last hurrah. Then I'll go quietly,” Hyman said.  And with that, he bump-bump-bumped his big laundry cart into the elevator.

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. Visiting a ramshackle house with a long picnic table booming with food, almost much to drink and smart minds to enjoy, I found myself unexpectedly 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 relief of finding another who understood.

Years ago, the Sparrow’s mother fell ill. The Sparrow picked up the reins of care and began the sometimes slow and often much too fast changing of places - the daughter becoming the mother and the mother becoming the daughter.

Soon taking a shower at the place the mother lived in was no longer an option.  The tub was insurmountable, the shower stall too small.

One day the mother and the Sparrow got invited to a home which had a shower stall big enough to accommodate the mother's walker.

The sponge baths had been O.K., but to have a real shower…could the Sparrow give her a shower? the mother asked.

Can you imagine having to ask your child to bathe you?
Can you imagine washing your mother’s vagina and anus?

The Sparrow said of course.  Of course she would.   It was then she realized this shower would require her to be in the stall with her mother. That was an intimacy they had never before shared.

It wasn't that they didn't like each other or love each other. They did very much so. But it wasn’t that kind of warmth and physical affection so often seen on Leave it to Beaver or The Partridge Family.  Or even Star Trek.

So the Sparrow packed a swimsuit so she could get in the shower with her mom.

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

There is that moment with an ailing or elderly parent where their sudden nakedness fills your eyes and goes beyond skin and breasts and and scrotum and tufts of hair in quiet places. That is the moment you are never to be their child again.

And so it was with the Sparrow.  The privilege of being a daughter now lived in rounded shoulders, paper-thin fragile skin, a hand full of tremors and very tired eyes. All that was left was the greater need to be clean and a desperation to not be humiliated in the process -a  clinging to hope that, in such nakedness, some dignity might still clothe the soul...

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

She slipped the suit off,  and with both of them now naked, she began to gently soap up her mom.  And as she did, they both started to laugh and weep and laugh and weep and laugh until there was no difference between what poured from the shower head and what poured from their hearts.

***
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 the nearby beach towns of Jersey or from Coney Island or maybe even Seneca Falls are not her voice raging with life and insistence on the work of expression.

Nor are they her hand that last year of life seeking and yearning for someone to hold it.

These boxes are not even her gorgeous explosive silver and white hair that to the very end kept 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 Penny at 2:13 am. Something is more wrong than the usual wrong.

I scramble for clothes….no, not that tee-shirt! I like that one.  I’ll always remember I wore it this night.

I throw on a shirt I hate.

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

Does running fast through an empty courtyard in the middle of the night - past the fountain I sat by, down the same stone walkway I played on as a child - does running fast slow down bad things?

Two years of opening Florence’s front door to a constantly changing, always different "normal" - from a woman who could walk to the supermarket on her own - to this moment, a fragile sparrow held together by ancient skin struggling to breathe, her only seeing eye already traveling to other places.

When I ask her “can I take you to the doctor” the sound "no" shoot out, not from parched lips unable to close for fear of suffocation, but from a gut clinging to home.

So I sing the sutras.  She sips some water.

There is still too much distress, I tell Penny.  Penny is silent.  She knows she can’t say anything.  It’s not her job, it never was.

I pull out the the wishes made ten years ago. What decision can I live with, what decision can I not, old papers, words scratched out, other neatly typed….I read them again….what decision can I live with, what decision can I not? 

Penny listens, tilts her head, raises her eyebrows, nods, listens, tilts her head, raises her eyebrows, nods...

It is near 3am. Doctor Russia calls back immediately. He assures me if it is another flare-up then the hospital can treat it. He assures me if it is the end I can get her home.  He assures me I can refuse intubations. He assures me.

It's win-win I say to Penny. I’m calling 911.

I turn back and murmur to Florence “you are in so much distress I want to take you to the doctor I promise you I'll bring you home I promise you I'll bring you back home I promise you I promise…

“O.K.” whispered back - her trust in me, her trust she raised me not to lie.

EMT appear suddenly.  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. The neighbors below must know something is happening. SHE orders everyone around.

Suddenly Florence, my mother, my mother is suddenly 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 says the form we didn't fill out means THEY get to do everything.

When I hear my mother cry out I snap "no more" or "stop that" or something that attempts to get back my mother back to me.  One of THEM steps in front of me and keeps me from stopping THEM.

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 for the first time in months.

SHE tries to put me in the second ambulance.

"No! I'm riding with my mother."

HE points to the front seat - I can only ride shotgun, not in the back holding my mother’s hand.

SHE says, "Stop taking pictures please."

"I'm not taking any of you, just my mother."

SHE says, ”It's breaking HIPAA patient confidentiality."

"She's my mother. I am her HIPAA person."

SHE says, “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."

HE grins. My camera malfunctions.

I hear a siren from a distance and then realize it is ours.

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..."

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

"Mom, she’s 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 your mother 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?"

"My mother will wait. She's going to wait until my sister 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..."

"Mom! She’s is here!"

"Hi Mom."

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 my sister 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.

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

When the Red Shoes Lost Their Color

It doesn't matter, after deciding somewhere deep inside to never stand on her own two feet again, that Florence hasn’t walked in months.  We kept all her shoes.

Maybe, just maybe one day, after all the massages and physical therapy and coaxing, just maybe a breeze will come through the window cracked open just a tiny bit, dance around her and remind her of the outside wonderfulness she used to stride through.

And maybe, just maybe she’ll put her shoes on again and return to her own two feet.

Florence used to say denial wasn't to be sniffed at.

Sunday Memories and Secrets: I Want To Hold Your Hand

This is the last secret a man told me in a car.

It was the early 1990s when New York was still New York City and I still belonged here.

Unless it was life saving - like going to work to pay the rent - I had stopped leaving my apartment.

Every morning a desire to die would slammed into me and leave me unable to pull on the latex body suit of chirpy-supportive-sister-sledge-we're-all-family-let-me-support-you-with-your-dreams-girl bullshit personality I had worn for quite some time. I knew I had been me at my birth, before I became what everyone needed. But I didn't have a clue how to get back to her. So I lived in that bleak despair. Every day. Every night. Very little relief. Not even eating helped.

Then a friend's husband started leaving messages and sending letters and then leaving more messages. He was giving her a surprise birthday party at their suburban mansion. She was turning some big age like forty and no expense would be spared. He would even arrange for a car service because I just had to be there.

And he was right. I did have to be there. This woman had saved my life many years ago. Not by pulling me out of some ocean or taking a bullet for me. She had just made sure I got taught to protect myself. I owed her my life and I owed her my presence and that meant leaving my house.

It was the first time in a long time I was around people and I not only got through the night without a psychotic break, I even gave a warm birthday toast. Something about licking stamps and making a siddach.

True to his word, the husband had hired a car service to take a bunch of us back into the city. A gaggle of self-important women filled the back of the car. So I took shot-gun. I listened to conversations that seemed vapid and cruel and clanging and wondered if leaving my house had been worth it. One by one the driver dropped them off in neighborhoods I would never be able to afford to live in.

To be polite, or to counteract the unpleasantness of the other passengers, I asked the driver if he enjoyed driving for a living.

He answered that driving his own taxi in the town he lived in allowed him to always know what size shoe his kid wore. I probably exclaimed something like wow or brave or huh.

And then he said, "Well, I died once. And when I came back I decided to change things."

He had been working security at one of the fanciest hotels in mid-town. There was a jewelry store in the basement promenade. One day in the afternoon an alarm sounded. Someone was robbing the jewelry store. He raced down to the promenade and ran smack into the robber who then shot him point blank.

At that moment he looked down and saw his body and the frantic efforts to save him. Then he saw the corridor and the light.

He rushed towards it because it felt really good and he could hear all his relatives on the other side of the light and he couldn't wait to see them, his favorite aunt, his grandmother, her grandmother, his entire family from the beginning of time. But just as he was about to go through they all said, "No." It wasn't his time. He had to go back. He'd see them again when it was right.

That was the moment his heart began to beat again and EMS shouted many things and he was rushed off to the hospital.

By this time, we were parked at the corner hydrant by my building. I suddenly had this great hope that if I took his hand, touched him, somehow his life would pour into mine and I'd be able to return to the land of the living.

The second I thought that he said, "I don't know why I told you that story. I rarely tell anyone. When I do, they always want to touch me."

I sat on my hands.

For the first time since I fell apart I thought about what, if anything I might have to offer another person that was uniquely mine to give, but wouldn't kill me if I gave it.

He started talking about his wife's brother. The brother had just died. In those days it was still called the "gay cancer" and rumors ran rampant - you could catch it from toilet seats or using the same plate or standing next to...

No one but the driver's wife and and the driver had been willing to love and care for the brother as he got sicker and sicker. Now the lover of the brother was sick.

The driver spoke heartbreak and he spoke alone and he spoke my days in and out. The journey through despair. I knew what I had to give and I knew giving it would begin my life again.

I reached over and offered my hand.

And What Did My Sister Do On Her Birthday!

An actual exchange:

Me: how's your birthday week going?

Her: I have to read through material from 2 cemeteries and decide with [our father] which he should sign up for.

Me: Nothing says happy birthday like helping Dad pick a place to be dead in.

Secret Passages

The hope was that there was some place to hide - either from sudden Nazis or one's family. Both reasons brokered the same search. Where could I quickly disappear into if threatened? What would offer a fast way out to freedom? Where was the magic door to a happier and more magical world?

Perhaps it was too many fairy tale books from the Seward Park Library or the real life Anne Franks living in our neighborhood that infused my gullible heart, but it took many years into adulthood to not seek another road out.

Sunday Memories and Secrets: Baby You Can Drive My Car

One day in my late thirties I decided to learn to drive. Again. For the third time in 25 years.

As with most developmental issues I was several decades behind the majority of Americans. I blamed it on the MTA and student loans. However, at some point your injury is your injury no matter whose fault it is and the fact I couldn't drive a car was no one's fault but my own. All other attempts to capture a license hadn't got well but this time I was highly motivated.

Love being the most powerful fuel with which one takes risks, there was of course a man involved. I had a fantasy of picking him up from the airport in a car after one of his movie shoots or trips home to Puerto Rico. Somehow if this little movie in my head came to fruition our relationship would be cemented in adult forever after. In the haze of hindsight, I see now I understood that he was about to leave me and that I would need to drive away from that life under my own steam.

Still, with great hope, I walked into the driving school that had always been on 10th Street for as long as I had always been on 2nd Avenue. There were a couple of instructors but the one I got was the owner. He somehow taught me to drive forward, turn left, turn right and understand red and green without vehicle murder. And as most people do when tootling around in a moving vehicle we got to talking. Life, liberty, love. Married, he had a daughter he was worried about. She wasn't growing.

Finally my $278.63 learn-to-drive packet was depleted and it was time to take the test (a story all on its own). I drove us both out through tunnels to the hills of Staten Island for the test. Somehow, still not quite getting parallel parking and managing to negotiate a sudden suburban setting surrounded by my city's skyline, I finished the route and was given my license.

The owner/teacher drove us back to the city. Our relationship was over. I wouldn't have to see him again and the little bubble inside his beat-up datsun would be no longer filled with our wonderings and hopes and dreams and questions.

Perhaps it was the intimacy within a moving vehicle or perhaps it was the knowing I was forever leaving and never to be seen again, or perhaps it's just the combination of both that engender men to confess something never before confessed. Sissy says it's the perfect storm - with their visceral attachment to cars, they don't have to look at you while they're talking - they get to do this manly thing at the same time they're doing this girly thing of breaking open a heart exhausted from carrying a secret no one knew was there.

We were suddenly hurtling down a very fast highway in rush hour traffic in I think Brooklyn when out of the blue he reached over to the glove compartment and pulled out a photo.

There he was in the same parka he was wearing now. A tall blond woman stood next to him. He loved her. He loved her like he never loved anyone. They were together for years and years and years. They traveled and skied and loved and redecorated and ate well and were and then one day he came home and she was packing up. She said to him, "It's over."

The owner/teacher turned to me and said, "I had to go teach a five hour safety course after she told me that. I had to park the car and go into my school and teach."

Still driving very fast, he put the picture back in the glove compartment and began talking about his daughter. She wasn't growing.

A couple of months later I walked down 10th street. The school was gone. The store front was for rent. Shortly after that, the man I was with left me.

A Visit to the Hospital: Part Two

All I Need is the Air that I Breathe and to Love You

It's 10:30 at night.

Something is wrong.

Even after they give her medicine from a mask that comes pouring out into her face, Florence can't stop coughing it hurts it hurts and afterwards she is too wiped out to even breathe she begs me make it better make it better I keep wetting paper towels beg her to keep the mask with all the medicine pouring out into her face she keeps taking the mask off it hurts it hurts she can't breathe it's wiping her out make it better make it better I keep wetting paper towels beg her to keep the mask with all the medicine pouring out into her face she keeps taking off the mask off it hurts it hurts make it better....

Finally at 11:30 at night it is better.



Finally at 11:30 at night it's better...

Maria!
Say it loud and there's music playing,
Say it soft and it's almost like praying.


Maria is all of teeny tiny.

SShe lives near Florence - Delancey and Essex or maybe that's where she shops, the Essex Street Market.  It’s hard to tell.  My rudimentary Spanish picks up about half of what she says.  The nurse assistant waves it off saying oh she blabs a lot so don't worry if you don't catch it all.

But this night I come in and she starts talking too fast even after I beg in Spanish "Dispacio, porfavor, dispacio”.  Because this doesn’t feel like blabbing.  This feels important and I need to understand.

The other roommate - the 95 year-old  - sharp as a tack, used to live on Suffolk and Houston but now is in Brooklyn near Coney Island because her son has a house - she translates what I miss, not because she understands Spanish, but because she saw what happened.

Florence hadn't been eating for days. Nothing tasted good, everything made her cough, she didn't feel like it. The nurses or the assistant nurses tried to coax a few things down and the other day I got her to gum a piece of chicken or a piece of carrot before she spit it out.  I tried the Ensure but it made her cough.  I just couldn't insist.  So mostly the food trays stayed untouched.

This particular night had been extra busy.  I am not sure why.  Maybe more beds got filled or dinners were arriving all at once and the healthy people in charge of the unhealthy people suddenly had their hands full.  Whatever the reason, there just wasn't enough hands to go around or enough time to make sure everyone got fed. So no one was around to coax Florence to take a second bite or another sip.

Maria got up out of bed, went over to Florence and fed her.



If dreams there be....

In her later years, whenever Florence said goodbye to anyone she’d give a jaunty wave and sing out, “See you in my dreams!”



This is the picture I take after getting a message that Florence is being sent home once she is assessed for palliative care.