Dear Everyone, I have been putting off writing about the events of last
week (if anyone noticed an absence of a letter). Barbara obviously had an outside effect on my
life, beyond giving birth to me. I’m
sure she encouraged my obsession with the printed page, but moreover, she kindled
a love of the natural world, up to taking a trip to Ecuador and Galapagos
Islands with me when I was in 7th grade (1971). I must admit that I still hadn’t read on the On the Origin of
Species even after a course on Evolution at Yale; I don’t think I
got around to it until the mid- 00’s (and I highly recommend it). It’s doubtful I would have been a bio major,
a research scientist, or a pathologist without her influence.
As you can see from my first paragraph, biography always
takes some aspect of autobiography, just as in Locard’s
exchange principle in forensic science, something Barbara would surely be
familiar with after the thousands of mysteries she must have read.
I don’t remember too much of my interactions with her before
high school, although I was terribly disappointed when she brought baby Vanessa
to show-and-tell instead of Callie Cat (who was living a semi-feral life
outdoors; this was before Callie lost a leg).
I recall her taking me to Fell’s clothing store (which no longer exists)
in downtown Highland Park once a year or so, an experience neither of us enjoyed,
likewise the Ravinia barbershop. There was also the more interesting Ravinia
shoe shop, which had a talking mynah bird, weird leather chairs that were
yellow and had an incised pattern. Barbara insisted on buying heavy leather shoes
like Stride Rites for years when all the other kids were wearing sneakers. I was a wanderer as a child, before putting
your kid on a leash was allowed, and I would constantly disappear. This led to my abandonment at a July 4th
parade - - luckily some other family (the Fishbeins?) found me and brought me
home.
Some memorable large
trips include San Francisco and Disneyland around 1969 with Jeff – I ran up and
down hills! Ate Chinese food! Rode a helicopter! Went on many rides (these were
the years you had to get ride tickets a la carte). I also ripped the skin off my palm just prior
the trip in the playground near the Ravinia train station, where she was
playing tennis, requiring a daily painful mercurochrome treatment, and was
stung by a wasp in my ear in San Francisco - - there is no such thing as an
unalloyed pleasure. I also went to
Disney World with Vanessa in 1974 (we stayed in the modern Contemporary
hotel that had the monorail stop in the atrium); I recall driving little mini
speedboats freely on a man-made lake - - Vanessa, being lighter, was much
speedier! And, the yearly ski trips,
first in Wisconsin and Michigan (we had lace-up boots), but eventually at Vail
or Snowmass, where we were joined by Mimi and Dorothy, a precursor to our
family reunion vacations. We did a lot
of jigsaw puzzles on these trips (as well as at home). As we got older we took more sophisticated
trips. I met Barbara and Roger in
England during the gap year I spent in France, where we toured the Cotswolds,
Oxford, and Stratford on Avon. Some
years later I joined them for a trip in the south of France where we visited
Arles, the Camargue, and I learned to like asparagus. We had so many large family trips: Mexico
(uncountable times), Costa Rica (twice!), Italy (twice!), Peru, Puerto Rico,
Jamaica, Florida, Colorado Springs, Tucson, etc.
We took birding trips as I got older - -Trinidad and Tobago,
and South Texas were real stand-outs, but trips to Naples with the Wares were
also great. Her job at the Field Museum allowed us to always get sneak peeks of
the exhibits, and behind-the-scenes experiences in the spooky research
areas. I made a giant paper clip chain
in Phil Hershkovitz’
office that took them years to untangle, and discovered a crazy book (Snouters)
in French that years later (I was in medical school!) I attempted to translate
(I eventually did score a copy in English). We did a lot of local and
semi-local bird-walks with the Wares, Lynne Carpenter, Melvin Traylor, and
Margo Merrick, including Starved Rock, the Quad Cities (lots of Bald Eagles),
and Horicon Marsh. Of course, there was
always the Skokie Lagoons, the Botanic Gardens, landfills south of Chicago, and
her own property. She continued to lead
weekly bird walks during migration season up to her last years. When she was
active at the Evanston North Shore Bird Club
(she was president 1971-72) we would go to meetings at the Evanston library
(often seeing nature films, or slides of someone’s recent trip), and then have
a treat at the Orrington.
Tennis was another of Barbara’s interests, one I was never
very fond of, although I tried in my high school years. I don’t know who her
regular partners were, but Patty Ware and maybe Marilyn Baugher were in this
mix. Still, there were many summer days where she was my ride back from my
afternoon diving practice in Wilmette (I had to take the train both ways in the
morning, and again in the afternoon - - I did a lot of walking). She also helped arrange a summer job for me
at the Highland Park Park District (it was a horrible job involving building
trail through secondary growth woods using hand tools).
She tried to interest us in classical music. We all had to learn how to play the piano as
well as another instrument (Oboe, trumpet, French horn, and trombone - -
Vanessa was lucky enough to be piano only). At one point of time we had two
pianos – an upright in the playroom (which has disappeared through architectural
machinations; it had a patterned rug we played hot lava on), and the grand
piano in the living room. Owen seems to be the only one who took music
seriously. I was able to pick tunes out
on the piano, so she decided I was talented. This started several years of her
driving me to the Northwestern music conservancy for lessons, until she found
Mrs. Frederickson just east of Kennedy school.
I played for six years, and I hated it.
I’m sure her efforts to force me to practice created some gray hairs,
and was probably the biggest area of contention between us when I was a child.
She spent many years trying to learn to play herself (good training in mental
concentration for me, because I would read in the living room while she or Owen
practiced). Another effort she made in
self-improvement was trying to learn Spanish.
She spent many years taking lessons, but I don’t think anything came of
it.
I remember many concerts at Ravinia and at Symphony Hall
where I was usually bored out of my mind.
We did see Arthur
Rubenstein give a concert near the end of his long career. She and Roger
took me to my first opera (Berg’s Wozzeck, surely too old for
me, but I enjoyed it). We also went to
the theater at Ravinia, and sometimes downtown; these were usually fun
experiences, but I don’t remember any distinctly. I recall the first movie I saw with her (probably
the first I ever saw) was Born
Free, I think the second was Mary Poppins, but she
did not take us to movies very often, like many activities outside of the home,
she expected us to perform them on our own.
She did not approve of us watching TV, and we had limited access in the
afternoon after school, plus some after dinner, as well as Saturday morning
cartoons (of course), and Sherlock Holmes movies on WGN on Sundays after Temple
Jeremiah. Since I had no homework to
speak of prior to Exeter, I had a lot of time for reading. She was always
interested in sporting events; however, and you could often find the TV turned
to tennis (primarily), football, hockey (in the 60s on Dad’s little black and
white TV in his study that was capable of receiving UHF).
She liked going to restaurants, and trying all sorts of
different foods - - sometimes the food on your plate - - but she was always
happy to share hers. She was a good
cook. I remember the cheesecakes she
would make for the New Years’ parties (that started out as musical recitals for
talented youngsters that eventually morphed into a college football
party). She made a mean chocolate torte,
frequent cookies of all sorts, and many other dishes. Particular foods were always served in
specific serving dishes. There were two
or three aluminum serving dishes that would hold vegetables, and a green
ceramic lidded dish that had Kraft dinner (macaroni and cheese). Roger would carve if we had meat. We often
had vegetables from her quarter acre garden (Owen was the only one willing to
weed it), as well as fruit from the small orchard. Andy and I once added pits
to the pitted cherries to increase our chances of getting a ‘lucky’ bite - - those
cherries stayed in the freezer waiting to be turned into pies a long time, as
that was a bumper crop year. All of her
kids learned to cook, and she allowed us to experiment in the kitchen. She didn’t sew much – a task given over to
her mother Mimi or Myrtle, and I don’t know if any of us learned to sew (I
certainly didn’t).
She loved animals unabashedly. We had many dogs (Hector, Pippi, Wolf (and
Tiger and Drummer), Whiskers, Toby, Daisy, Spot, Robbie. Pippi liked to wander around the neighborhood,
often causing semi-angry phone calls to the house. Whiskers liked to run off to Fink Park to
play with kids, and Toby just liked to run off and look back to see if you were
chasing him. We also had many parakeets,
gerbils, mice, tadpoles, goldfish, and probably other creatures. Not to mention the snakes that came down the
chimney. She was no fan of squirrels, rabbits or deer, and at one time she
planned to try to trap some woodland animals to dissect with me, luckily this
was not successful! If you could transpose My Family and
Other Animals from Corfu to north suburban Chicago, or maybe My Side of the
Mountain, you would have some idea of what living in our house sometimes
approached. Wild plant life was also
appreciated; we once transplanted a large patch of some native plant (blood root?) where it was
threatened by the condo development north of the house. She was no fan of the destruction the deer
were making of the understory in her woods, and she was quite happy to let a
bow hunter cull them illegally on her property.
As the years passed, Barbara’s direct influence on my life
lessened, as it should. We certainly had
divergent politics. I remember hearing
about Nixon’s resignation in her car (a Mercedes) as we parked at Ravinia for a
concert. I don’t know how upset she was
by Watergate and its aftermath, but she remained a staunch Republican. She told me that in her younger days she had
worked for the Democrats (in Chicago or Cook County), but when she saw the amount of
waste, graft and corruption, she switched parties. She was very concerned when
Cindy and I moved to Baltimore because of (primarily, it seemed), the number of
unwed mothers, but other crimes too. I
don’t think I ever told her that an aikido acquaintance of mine was arrested by
the FBI as a murdering gang leader and drug kingpin (he told people at the dojo
that he was a computer salesman). She and Roger rarely came out to visit us in
Baltimore or Pittsburgh. We did see more of Barbara and Roger after we moved
back to Chicago in 2003. Mostly at
holidays – Thanksgiving, Passover, July 4th, and birthday
dinners. We would make a point of birding
together each Mother’s Day.
On telephone calls we would discuss bird and other animal
sightings, interesting books, and stupid jokes.
She had a surprisingly bawdy sense of humor. She insisted on seeing every graduation,
recital, or other event in her grandchildren’s lives - - sometimes against the
wishes of those same grandchildren!
I am not capable of making a one word (or one sentence) summation of her. She was a tough-minded,
no-nonsense person who did not like waste, and knew the value of things. She had anxiety when travelling (surprising,
considering the amount she travelled - - perhaps it was experience speaking),
especially about getting to the air or train terminal early, that increased as
she got older, a trait I seem to have inherited. She had tremendous
intellectual curiosity, and an independent and adventurous spirit.
Back to my regularly scheduled letter - - I am not going to
add much to what Owen has already written about the events of the last couple
of weeks. I am glad that we managed to
get Barbara on that air ambulance; otherwise I think she would have died in
Florida. She looked awful on arrival
here, but she improved so much over her last few days (spare the penultimate
ones). Adequate pain relief was a
blessing, as well as having her all-important family and friends near.
Still, to put things in perspective, if possible, I had
three cases (that I remember) this week of young patients (read: younger than
me), two with metastatic gastric cancer, and one with a high grade brain
tumor. I am sure my experiences in the
medical field have helped me face Barbara’s end with some degree of equanimity.
Regardless of how you felt about Rabbi Moffic’s eulogy (his skipping over about
½ of the grandchildren), I liked his metaphor about the ships departing and
arriving. Barbara’s ship has come in
safely, and laden with descendants and memories.
Meanwhile, we have taken over the care and feeding of
Robbie. He is a docile, curious, sweet
little Westie. He has had only one
accident in the house; this most likely due to Cindy hoping he could wait until
she finished a task… he could not. He
doesn’t get around very fast, and he has a lot of trouble going down the steps
from our kitchen to the family room. At
least he can hear! Meeko is quite unsure about this interloper, and we had to
purchase a new elevated food and water set for her, because she refuses to drink
out of a shared water bowl with him. Robbie has a disturbing, frequent cough,
maybe from Westie
lung; at the moment he and I have created a cacophonic chorus of coughing,
as it appears I am among the last of the family (or at work) to have caught the
cold of 2018-19. It’s prevented me from
teaching at an aikido seminar this Sunday.
The boys went back to Denver and Pittsburgh yesterday, just
in advance of a bad storm (that was mostly south and west of Chicago). I will be seeing Lucas (and Jacob, Christine,
and Alison) in less than a month for the first of our two ski trips. Jasper allowed me to look at a research paper
he wrote about coumarin-6 (a fluorescent molecule), its emission spectrum on self-aggregation,
and its interaction with two anti-aggregating compounds (I know this is
over-simplified).
Love, H.
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