Of Pilgrims and Blockheads

A piece of advice from a little boy with whom I felt an extraordinary kinship when I was a little boy.  Perhaps it was the fact that we each had a large, oversized head. Perhaps it was the fact that we each had difficulty fitting into the world around us.  Charlie Brown was a blockhead. I was epileptic.  

I do not know if being a blockhead ever helped him cut to the front of the hot lunch line on pizza day in grammar school. I do know that having a grand mal seizure sure helped me do it. Considering that I did it while attending St. Paul’s School in Princeton in the early 1970s, I am thankful that I only got pizza and not an exorcism.  

However, wherever, and with whomever you spend this Thanksgiving, enjoy it, make it count, and give thanks…

…for everything.  Happy Thanksgiving.  

-AK 

A Birthday Toast to the Queen of the World

 

Happy Birthday, Shmoop! 

The Broken Mold

 

In a lifetime of being a Springsteen fan, I have had the great good fortune of enjoying too many incredible Springsteen concert moments to count.  Yet, notwithstanding my inability to recount them all, I have no difficulty identifying the single most incredible one.  Yesterday marked its sixteenth anniversary.  

Yesterday, tragically, the 19th of October took on a second, much sadder significance.  My brother-in-law, Russ, died.  To steal a line from “Braveheart”, for slightly less than five years he had fought like a warrior poet against the insidious, relentless, and merciless killer that is ALS.  His fight ended yesterday morning with his warrior poet queen, my sister Kara, beside him.  He was just 67 years old.  Less than one month ago they celebrated their 37th anniversary.  

But for Russ, I never would have met Max Weinberg.  Someone Russ knew had two extra tickets for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s penultimate performance at the Philadelphia Spectrum. A day or two before the show, Russ called me and invited me to join him.  As it turned out, the invitation included a meet-and-greet with Mighty Max, with whom we spent time before AND after the show.  

As luck would have it, most of the people on this junket were not very big Springsteen fans.  Since Russ and I both are diehard fans, to minimize the likelihood of us getting throat punched for mocking the others and their principally inane questions, we parked ourselves in the back row of the group so our eye rolls and forehead slaps remained unseen by them.  Max, a pro’s pro, made eye contact with us, acknowledging what we were doing while earnestly answering every question - regardless of its inanity. 

Each of us got a few minutes to spend time with Mighty Max and to privately speak to him.  He had a drumhead for each of us, which he autographed.  At my request, he signed mine to Rob.  It is displayed in a beautiful frame in Rob’s home.  When I look at it, it makes me think of that night and of Russ, without whom it would not have been possible. 

Kara and Russ moved to Florida roughly six years ago, after their youngest son, Jordan, graduated from high school.  It was not terribly long after they had relocated that Russ, who was in the type of shape a personal trainer would kill to use as the “after” photo in their advertisements, received the diagnosis of ALS.  

That extraordinary October night sixteen years ago was not the last Springsteen concert Russ and I enjoyed together.  Labor Day Weekend 2023, Rob and I joined Russ and my nephew Randy at Met Life Stadium for the first of three shows.  On more than one occasion during that concert, I looked hard to my right and at Russ, whose body was already shutting down around him, but whose head still moved in rhythm to the music.  He looked happy.  I smiled then looking at him. I smile now at the memory. 

You ran one helluva race, my brother.  It has been my privilege and my pleasure that you and I have been family for more than forty years.  As good a man as I have ever known, which is significant inasmuch as Kara is an equally excellent human.  They were - and shall forever be - complementary pieces who completed each other. 

He shall be missed forever and remembered for at least that long.  The world was made better by the time he spent in it.  Blessed are those who shared any of that time with him. 

-AK 

Marking Time in a New York Minute

It was forty-four years ago today.  My father died on this day in 1981.  

In a New York minute, everything changed. 

On my most recent birthday, earlier this year, I finally attained an age that my father failed to live long enough to reach.  I was fourteen when Dad died.  He was fifty-seven.  He was an old fifty-seven. When he died, I suddenly became an old fourteen. 

Anyone who lost a parent while you, yourself, were still a child can easily identify the line of demarcation denoting the moment at which your childhood ended.  Once childhood ends, it ends forever.  Much like P.T. Barnum's "great egress", once you have passed through that portal, re-entry is impossible.  And so it was, not simply for me, but also for Jill and for Kara. Dad died right before the end of the school year in which I was in 8th grade and Jill was in 10th grade. Kara? Dad died less than two weeks prior to her high school graduation.  

In the final year of my father's life, he and I had an exceptionally contentious relationship. We spoke to one another only when necessary and more often than not circled one another like dogs in a cage.  For years, one of my favorite films has been Field of Dreams.  Among my favorite scenes is the one in which Kevin Costner confides to James Earl Jones that he had left home for good shortly after telling his father he could never respect a man whose hero was a crook, referring to "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, an allegation he knew was untrue but one that he never had the chance to take back, because his father died before he could.  I know from personal experience what an awful feeling that is with which to live.

It took me a long time - far longer than it should have - to forgive my father for the life he lived or, better said, the prism of a fourteen-year-old boy through which I viewed his life.  I am embarrassed to admit I had no understanding of what caused him to go through his day-to-day as he did, until my own life forced me to walk a mile in his shoes.   

Forty-four years. In the abstract, it seems to be a long time.  In reality, it is just a New York minute, echoing forever. 

-AK 

  

 

Be Bold

Today’s nickel’s worth of wisdom courtesy of the late, great Maya Angelou, who died on this day in 2014.

-AK   

Does Three of a Kind Beat a Paradox?

 

Today's nickel's worth of wisdom...

Be careful out there.