Getting Back on the Blogwagon

But first, just a brief entry.

Chris and I were on the subway and I saw a crinkled-up New York Post hiding underneath one of the seats. I could make out the back page that said something like "Red Sox are Floundering." My heart raced and I could feel my stress level increase. Another September is here and I need to avert my eyes from gazing into sports bars as I walk down the streets of New York City. Anyhow, we got off the train in Brooklyn and were walking home when we overheard a man behind us. He was talking to his date about "those Red Sox fans."

"I don't understand them. They're still a game and half ahead and they act like they've already lost."

I looked up at Chris as we crossed the street, raised my eyebrows, and imagined the blissful existence of a baseball fan who has never routed for the Red Sox...who has never been tortured in the Autumn season.

History Repeats for Another Family

This article appeared in the Boston Herald today. Ed (or Eddie, as I call him) is my uncle & godfather.

Service and sacrifice
Family of firefighters mourns lost brother
By Peter Gelzinis
Friday, September 7, 2007

Lt. Ed Gottwald was 11 years old when he first took part in the heartbreaking majesty of a fallen firefighter’s funeral. The hero being carried to his rest that day 27 years ago [this is actually incorrect...supposed to read '37 years ago'] was Ed’s father, Boston Fire Lt. George J. Gottwald.

Yesterday morning, Ed Gottwald walked behind Engine 30, a fire truck that had made the poetic transformation into a funeral bier. It cradled the flag-draped coffin of his friend, Firefighter Paul J. Cahill.

Pipers from departments all over the East Coast led Cahill’s casket past the sea of dress blue uniforms on Centre Street and through a West Roxbury rotary - Lt. George J. Gottwald Circle.

As Ed Gottwald slowly marched into the spot memorializing his father’s valor, his heart most certainly swelled with equal parts of pride and sadness. Yet, there was no one who could understand the symmetry of being the son of a fallen jake and helping to carry a brother firefighter’s casket into Holy Name Church better than him. His family’s sacrifice reaches back to the 1898 line-of-duty death of his great-grandfather, another George Gottwald, for whom his fallen father was named.

The thousands and thousands of ordinary heroes who stood at attention for more than a dozen blocks yesterday usually don’t waste much time pondering the more spiritual aspects of a job that is actually a calling, something deeply rooted in the blood. That kind of reflection is saved for scenes like the one that unfolded in West Roxbury yesterday . . . and will be duplicated today in Dorchester with services for Firefigher Warren Payne, the man who perished beside Paul Cahill last week.

It is within the panorama of these magnificent fanfares for common men that the basic notion of public service is redefined by sacrifice.
Paul Cahill was lovingly remembered as a good and kind man who adored his family, loved to fish and could do things with a steak that would make Wolfgang Puck jealous. But what separated this modest, self-effacing man from the rest of us is that he went to work at the firehouse each day knowing that it could cost him his life. That kind of unvarnished courage and devotion are not part of most job descriptions.
“When people are having the worst day of their lives,” said Ed Kelly, president of Boston Firefighters Local 718, “we show up and try to make things better. And sometimes, it costs us our lives.”

Capt. Steven Keough walked down Centre Street yesterday, out ahead of the engine company he commands. He held the helmet of a brother he lost a week ago when a routine kitchen fire went horribly bad. Keough was among those who were rushed to the hospital in the aftermath of a disaster that unfolded two blocks away from the firehouse.

What he chose to remember from the altar yesterday - and will carry with him for the rest of his life - was the echo of jokes, the sounds of laughter, the dinner table conversation, the proud accounts of his children’s exploits . . . and above all, the understanding that in Paul Cahill, Engine 30 had a guy who would be there with you, and for you, in the midst of whatever hell you happened to stumble upon.

Only a tiny handful of the men and women who flooded Centre Street yesterday knew Paul Cahill well enough to have tasted one of his gourmet beef dishes. But then again, they all knew him. What binds them to each other is a kind of pedestrian, blue-collar courage the outside world really doesn’t understand, until a city is humbled by the drone of the pipers and the sight of fire apparatus as it rolls slowly and silently through the neighborhood, carrying the remains of a public servant who gave us . . . his life.

Yes, we will take notice for a little while; we will be grateful and then get on with our lives. But the thousands who stood shoulder-to-shoulder outside Holy Name Church were linked to Paul Cahill by blood, much in the same way that Lt. Ed Gottwald is linked to the father and great-grandfather who willingly surrendered their lives answering the bell.

Dessert

Ordered Chinese food last night.
This was my fortune inside my cookie:
"Today, your mouth might be moving but no one is listening."
That was a nice way to end my meal.

As a Matter of Fact, it's a Five-Leaf Clover

All I want to do in Prospect Park is relax. It’s August 18, about 75 degrees, not humid. Picture perfect. A day when everyone else seems to be able to relax on the freshly cut lawn. But when I lay down my sheet, I catch a glimpse of dozens of bees hovering atop the blades of grass. All kinds of bees – honey bees, yellow jackets, hornets, bees the size of hummingbirds. I resent them all for ruining my time at the park. I had to get up, finally, and move to a bench where I am now writing this. The bench is not safe territory, though. But the bees congregating here are mostly honey bees, those bees who Chris says “don’t sting.” I’m not sure if I believe him, but it is helping convince me to stay put. A woman just bent down and stuck her hand in the grass, right next to all the bees, just to see if there was a four-leaf clover. She didn’t find one, but tells her friend that she actually already has a five-leaf clover. They pass me by and continue on their walk:

“Are you serious—a five-leaf clover?”

“Yes. It was one of the first clovers I ever found.”

I don’t really understand what this means since within a five foot radius of my bench, there has to be close to a million clovers. How does one distinguish a “found” clover? Is it one that is picked? It’s a strange concept to me and I am skeptical that one of the “first clovers” this woman ever picker was a five-leaf clover. Don’t we first search for four-leaf clovers when we are about three feet tall? I never found a four-leaf clover so I would be insanely jealous of a fellow five year old picking a five-leaf clover upon her first trot across a clover-filled lawn. So, I’m a five-leaf clover virgin: jealous, hungry, and bitter.

During my yogatoday (www.yogatoday.com) class this afternoon, I spit up a hunk of mucus so big that I had trouble catching my breath as it lodged half-way between my throat and my mouth. “Is there such a place?” you ask. Yes and I discovered it today. Anyhow, with all the upward and downward dogs, I was expecting the dislodged mucus. I could feel the bubble crackling rumble after each inhale and knew by the end of the class that the sputum would make its entrance (or exit). I have a doctor’s appointment on September 12^th and I wonder if this mysterious “bronchitis” (diagnosed by two different doctors) will turn into tuberculosis or cancer by then. It will be my first appointment with my official Primary Care Physician with my new health insurance.

In choosing my PCP, I asked my landlord if she had a doctor that she recommended. As a matter of fact, she did. She even had a list of runners-up and OB/GYN candidates. I was legitimately excited about having full-on health insurance and about getting a doctor who came recommended. So, I called the doctor’s office to make my first appointment and as a matter of fact, she happens to be on maternity leave through November. She (her voicemail) suggests that I contact Dr. B____’s office (one of the runners-up from my landlord). So, I do. As a matter of fact, this doctor is also on maternity leave. I ask the receptionist if she can recommend another doctor and she says “no.” Click. End of phone conversation. So, I decide to ask a fellow dancer who has the same health plan about her doctor. She gives me her name and look up the info on the health insurance website. Voila, she’s listed. Her office is at Columbus Circle, but I figure if she comes recommended by a dancer, then the trip will be worth it. [Dancers are hypochondriacs: so in tune with physical sensations and overall system functioning that a leg cramp is a definite sign of a blood clot. Vice versa: the seven year clicking in the hip that causes severe limping and an awkward catapult out of bed each morning is ignored. Later to be discovered that is severe arthritis and a reason for hip replacement at age 40.] I call the 800 number on the back of my insurance card and ask them to change my PCP. As a matter of fact, Dr. I___ “doesn’t take your plan,” I am informed.

“Well, that’s funny because Elise is on my plan and she is her doctor.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am.”

“Thanks for your help. I’ll call back.”

Back to square one. I am living in Brooklyn with thousands of doctors within a five mile radius but some of these physicians are listed as “Eligible” under Board Certification on the website instead of “Certified.” To be fair, I don’t know the difference, but decide that “Certified” is probably best. I am at a loss. Do I close my eyes, slide my finger across the page and randomly choose whoever my finger lands on? I decide to do a PCP search within a three mile radius of my zip code. I discover a doctor right around the corner: a woman, a Family Physician. I google her name and locate her personal website. It’s fantastic: she looks friendly, posing with her children, telling readers that she wanted to start her own private practice so that she could get to know her patients better and give them better care and attention. Perfect! I’m psyched. I call back the insurance company and tell them I would like to change my PCP to Dr. C_____.

“Hmmmm. I seem to be getting blocked with my request.”

“OK. What does that mean?

“Well, I can put in a request and they will get back to you within five business days.”

“Ok. Sounds good.”

I hang up and decide that I will contact the doctor directly. I notice that on the appointment page on her website there is a posting from October 2006 that states she is not accepting new patients. Since it is August 2007, I decide that I will push my luck. I send her an email asking if there is any chance of getting an appointment with her. She responds the next day saying that she doesn’t expect being able to see new patients for “at least a few years.” I think google has changed everything. Dozens of other people just like me probably did the same google search, had the same thought process and decided that she had to be their doctor (just a year before I did). In her email, she recommends another doctor. I do yet another google search and find an obituary for this new doctor. Not a good sign. But after some more google research and a return to the insurance website, I see that the recommended doctor is alive and well in Brooklyn. Same name as the deceased, just 40 years younger. I call the insurance company, change my doctor, call my new doctor and make my first appointment.

Finding my new doctor was like finding that four-leaf clover.

It was that simple.

I’ll just be dry-heaving mucus onto my rug for the next three weeks.

TORNADO IN BROOKLYN!

It’s 5:30am and the flicker of a strobe light wakes me up. It takes me a few seconds to realize that the strobe light is actually lightning striking so rapidly outside the window that it seems someone is operating an “On/Off” switch. The sounds of thunder make it seem that we are below a bustling bowling alley. I sit up in bed with a full bladder and am irrationally frightened of walking to the bathroom, thinking that this basement apartment will be struck by lightning and go up in flames. Somehow the bed seems safer than the floor. “The car is the safest place to be during a thunderstorm,” my mom used to tell us as she drove down to the lake during stormy summer days and we would sit to watch the violent upheaval of the waves. A half hour passes and the storm begins to grow quiet, I visit the bathroom and return to bed in one piece and I fall back asleep.

Waking up a few hours later, I turn on the television to see FoxNews “TORNADO HITS BROOKLYN.” The news coverage continues to inform me that all New York City subway lines are not running, there are trees strewn across cars, and that it will be 95 degrees today. Chris pumps up his bike tires, I gather together my laptop and headphones and we leave the apartment together: Chris to Manhattan, Erin to the air-conditioned coffee shop down the block. As I walk into the café, I see that all the Brooklynites who decided to stay away from the subway have chosen to come to my coffee shop/office to do work. This makes me frustrated, watching the novice tele-commuters scream into their cell phones while gesticulating wildy with their other hand. The cell phones are turned up to the highest ring, with Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” blasting away in one corner and Bob Marley’s “Jammin’” playing along with a synchronized vibration on the table of an absent owner (presumably in the bathroom). The more experienced independent workers take their phone calls outside, put their cell phones on vibrate, and bop in their seats to the late 70s folk music once in awhile. The Stranded Subway Brooklynites who can’t cross the East River today are not impressed with the musical choices as they talk on their cell phones, plugging their free ear with their finger, “I can’t hear you above this soft rock!”

Evidently, the people-watching today is going to provide me with a plethora of distractions.

My favorite conversation is one between a woman and a man, both about my age. They are discussing her job as an anti-bias educator who teaches public school teachers and his career transition in the real estate market (something about him threatening a law suit so the firm let him go with a severance package of $10,000). Luckily, it is mindless work that I am catching up on today so I am completely dedicated to eavesdropping on their conversation.

The woman is attractive, average height, with dark, curly hair which she eventually pulls back into a loose pony tail. She is dressed in dark colors and projects her voice aggressively. In particular while the man is discussing his latest career disaster she goes, what I call, all “Bitchy-Concerned.” Bitchy-Concerned is prevalent among pretentious urban women, and it is not limited to New Yorkers. When an empowered woman is in the company of a friend who she feels is not making the most of himself (or herself), who is having a difficult time, who is not as successful as she is and has the potential to be an embarrassment, the Bitchy-Concerned feign a motherly, yet aggressive attention: wide-eyed, exasperated. They believe they are the sole individuals who can defend a less successful friend’s honor. They would like this action to be interpreted as a gracious, empathetic gesture but in reality it stems from a fear of being friends with someone less ambitious. She definitely seems Manhattan (as opposed to Brooklyn).

My first impression is to indicate that the woman is white and the man is black. But, since their conversation revolves around race issues and anti-bias education, I am now aware that she does not “identify with the white privileged race because [she] is Jewish.” She makes her point to her black male friend that she feels discriminated against “often.” She also talks about her recent stay in Los Angeles where she had been for three months and about the nice subway system there and how no white people ride it…but she did…she rode it “all the time.” Several minutes later, as he is trying to grasp a better understanding of her time there, she off-handedly remarks that she “rode the subway five or six times while I was there.” Indeed, she “rode it all the time”:

3 months divided by 5 times = NOT “ALL THE TIME”

She discusses race issues (police relations with the community, teen pregnancy, educating teachers) with her friend and he mostly says “yeah” and “no way.” She is “outraged” by discrimination and prejudice and fifteen minutes later says, “I wonder if there are Republicans here.” Oh, the irony.

The last thing I find out from her is that she will be attending a Doctoral Program at a prestigious university where she will be a research assistant for a “world-renown” professor. Of course, she is going to this prestigious university because she “didn’t want to go to Harvard or Stanford.”

I sit in my seat and look around to see if anyone else is listening to this conversation. I can’t find any eye contact, but I see one guy rubbing his forehead as he stares at the barista and I recollect another woman seceding her throne next to the conversation to drink her iced coffee in the less ironic 95 degree weather in the café garden.

The “TORNADO” in Brooklyn had thrown me into the orbit of an amazing conversation away from which I could not tear myself. I wonder if people are at all self-aware. I also wonder if I will be forced to get my doctorate in order to cancel out the idiocy of the people who are congregating my world.

The Card Table in Heaven

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
God Bless Mummy, Daddy,…..

When I was young, I used to say this prayer every night in my bed. Thanks to Catholic schooling, I was convinced that I would die before I woke and I wanted to be sure and use my heavenly power to bless the dearest people in my life. I would ramble right through my immediate family, assuming God knew that much. Then I would branch out into the family tree: my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my grandparents. Evidence (http://www.geni.com/tree/index/619036) suggests that getting through those generations was no small feat. Once I was done with the living, in a half-slumber, I would imagine my deceased grandfather and two uncles sitting at a table, in the cloud-filled heavens. Quite literally, I would be looking right up at them as if from underneath the cloud on which they were perched. I imagined them in uniform: my grandfather in a fireman’s outfit, my uncle in his army fatigues, and my other uncle in a t-shirt and bell-bottom jeans. They appeared at the table at the respective ages of their deaths: 44, 18, and 15. It strikes me that I thought of them each night (always in uniform, always playing cards), but their deaths had an impact on my father and I was aware of that impact at a very young age.

During the holidays when we would visit my grandmother’s house, after a long night of festivities, inevitably I would find myself daydreaming at the hallway desk which sits right by the front door. Sitting on my mother’s lap in the living room, listening to her voice through her chest engage in that boring adult conversation, I would suck my thumb and stare through the doorway at the desk. The desk was pristine; I would venture to say that it was dusted each day. Atop it were two framed photos: one of my uncle George and one of my uncle Tommy. The photos were black and white and displayed clean-cut, happy teenagers. I would listen to the grown-up conversations while I stared at the photos and think about how those boys were the brothers of people in that very room. It was strange to me that my relatives did not talk about George and Tommy, their banishment to the hallway desk seemed eerie and strange to me. My uncles seemed so young and vibrant and I craved to meet them, to hear more about them, but stories did not come until much later in my teens, when my dad began talking about them and Vietnam.

My uncle George was born on January 27, 1948 and my father was born on January 9, 1949. They were Irish twins, born within a year of each other. From stories and photos, I gather that they were best friends…or at least my father’s best friend was George. In the 1980s, one of my fellow ballet student’s mother realized that I was George’s niece and that Freddy was my father. She talked about how George was a bit more extroverted and Freddy seemed to genuinely look up to him. This outside validation of a non-family member mentioning (and remembering fondly) George was momentous for me because he had started to become three-dimensional. Before that moment, I had only known that he was my dad’s big brother who was killed in Vietnam.

In 1968, George was killed in Vietnam after rushing to his medic’s aid during an ambush in An My. When my grandparents were notified of his MIA status (it was not until several days later that George’s platoon was able to return to the field and retrieve his body), my father enlisted in the US Army. Superior officers in the Army discouraged him to go to Vietnam, as the family had already lost one son, but my father (although quiet and seemingly meek) is not persuaded. He had every intention to go to Vietnam. His motivation may have been different than what I perceive, but I imagine his desire stemmed from wanting to see what his brother witnessed, to see where he died, to see why he died. He arrived in Vietnam with the Army in early 1969, after a training period in the states.

When I was little, the extent of my father’s Vietnam stories was limited. On a rural stretch of road during our two-hour drive to New Hampshire for summer vacation, he would turn off the headlights of the car and tell us, “This is what Vietnam looked like.” He said it was tranquil and the jungle was lit by the moon and that you could see a cigarette burning at the end of someone’s mouth from a mile away. Now that I am older, and he is too, I hear more stories about his time there and am shocked that 37 years later he is just beginning to locate fellow soldiers from his platoon. I would have needed them immediately upon return.

I suppose his exceptional return to the US has something to do with that. In March 1970, an officer from the US Army approached my dad (somewhere in the middle of Vietnam) from a nearby helicopter to tell him that his “Pappy died.” My dad assumed he was joking and told him it was in poor taste. Over the course of my life, my dad has showed this physical interaction a few times and it’s always the measly, yet adequately masculine, pat on the shoulder that gets me. So, at that moment, my dad climbed aboard the helicopter in his fatigues. He left behind his weapons.

He flew from Saigon to San Francisco just like that: in his fatigues. He had no money, no other belongings, had not showered, still caked in dirt from the battlefields of Vietnam. In San Francisco, he was confused about his connecting flight to Boston: there wasn’t one. I guess it was not popular to be flying soldiers for free across that country that year. He approached various airline counters and they gave him the same story. The Red Cross finally came through, and loaned him the money to fly to his father’s funeral. Yes, loaned. He paid it back.

Once at Logan Airport in Boston, he was taken by taxicab to his family home where there was a freshly laundered suit and note for him to join his mother and seven siblings down at the funeral. I know he changed into the suit. I’m not sure if he showered.

The next few years are not yet clear to me and they are probably not very clear to him. I do know that he and my mother attended war protests. Photos are evidence of long hair, mustache, occasional partying, and fishing in the Charles River with friends from Roslindale. In 1974, uncle Tommy made his exit to the card table in heaven.

In the early morning hours one night during the summer, the phone rang at the family home in Roslindale. Tommy left a party and had been driving at 15, underage and without a license, in New Hampshire and the police were trying to pull him over. He lost control of the car and his female passenger died along with him. My dad has said that the phone ringing at 2am was all he needed to hear. He drove up to New Hampshire and identified his body. The next day, he went to the impound lot to gather Tommy’ belongings and present were the “regulars” who scrounge through demolished cars to see if anyone left behind money or valuables. They were pointing into the car Tommy had been driving, shrieking and amazed at the blood and hair that were stuck to the driver’s side visor. As anyone in my father’s position would have done, he lost it. I don’t know the whole story, only his which is that he “yelled at the kid.” I imagine that the kid who was ogling got some blood and hair knocked out of him.

I had a blast of panic last winter when my dad called me on my cell phone at 7:30 in the morning. I ignored the first call, as I assumed it was my mom wanting to say something like “good morning”, but after the back-to-back calls decided I should pick up. On the other end was my dad telling me, in his voice that he uses to talk about the Bruins, “Danny’s been in a car accident. He broke his back. We think he’s okay. He went through the sunroof on 93 North. I need to get in touch with Kirsten because Danny was working on something for her.” It was just another crisis drill for my dad, who seemed most concerned about a reservation confirmation for my sister’s business, but it was whole new territory for me. Chris and I had recently been watching the series Big Love and I think its opening sequence influenced my imagination. Immediately, I saw our family as a circle, holding hands and I saw Danny letting go and dropping out of the formation. It was frightening to me that we would have to re-shape into something else and I could feel each of us reaching toward him, urging him to come back. I thought about my dad’s family and how many times their circle has had to take new shape, how some of them still are urging George, George, and Tommy to come back.

Needless to say, Danny is fine. He’s better than probably anyone who has had his injury. On the bus ride up to New Hampshire to visit him in the hospital, I thought about those pictures of George and Tommy on the desk in my grandmother’s hallway and imagined placing Danny in a similar frame. I thought about how the conversations about him would grow silent. And then I realized quickly that my family is not my dad’s family.

No Go to Nevada

I considered adding subtitles, but some of the humor would be lost.
Just click rewind if you miss something.
"Good Morning."