She Did It Her Way: Remembering My Grandmother

Grandma At 97
PHOTO CREDIT: Tammy Paolino

Firstly I want to thank you for taking the time to remember my grandmother with us today. She did love a gathering and some of her happiest moments were the birthday parties that we staged in her honor, especially in recent years.

It’s hard to imagine having had ninety-seven birthdays. For most of them, someone probably started the familiar chorus of Stolat! Stolat! Niech żyje, żyje nam.... ​May you live a hundred years. And she must have taken them seriously, because she came pretty darn close.

I feel very grateful to be a white-bearded old man myself--and though she couldn’t see too well by the end she never missed an opportunity to tell me to shave it off--before I had to say goodbye.

I lived in her house on two separate occasions, once when I was a toddler, and one of my earliest memories is eating Froot Loops with my cousin Diane in the apartment upstairs, an apartment that would later be my first home of my own. And in between we were always welcome at her table for ​pierogi​ or deep fried calzones or pot roast, or whatever was on the menu.

She wore many hats over the years: softball player, school lunch lady, master gardener. I remember countless trips to the mall in her series of Oldsmobiles, with a pack of Kools and a bingo stamp in permanent residence in the center console, and the pine tree hanging from the rear view mirror.

One of the main things she helped instill in me is a love of music. A progression of three parlor organs, each one grander and more complicated than the last, held a place of honor in the living room, and--though she never quite mastered what all the buttons did--playing, and the sheer fact that she could--​ brought her endless joy. The soundtrack of those years includes many a halting rendition of “Moonglow” or “Mack the Knife” or “Spanish Eyes”. Over the years there were a number of songs, from Sinatra, or Bobby Vinton, or Susan Boyle, or Clay Aiken, that she took on as a personal anthem for a season or longer. She encouraged me to stick with playing beyond childhood lessons and i know she was proud of my amateurish efforts even if they weren’t exactly her style.

After we lost my grandfather 21 years ago, Jessie was on her own for the first time in her life. Like her mother, she was determined to maintain that independence for as long as she could, and she did, for a long time. As she gradually had to concede her autonomy and allow others to care for her, we filled the time and tried to distract her by sharing memories and getting her to talk about happier times.

One of my favorite stories was the time the family towed the camper down to Disney World. Grandma wisely elected to fly down and meet us rather than endure three days in Grandpa’s suburban with six other people. On the day she was supposed to arrive, it was discovered that--true to form--everybody thought someone ​else​ knew her flight information. In those pre-cell-phone days there was no easy way to find each other, and somehow grandma--in a strange city, without a solid idea exactly where we were--got herself to the campground and came marching up to us, suitcase in hand, madder than a hornet.

She didn’t think it was too funny at the time, but It was an example of the resourcefulness her immigrant, depression-surviving parents must have instilled in her as she navigated growing up in Greenpoint, returning to her native Bloomfield as a young bride and mother, and then to Little Falls as the eventual matriarch of an ever-growing family. She got such a proud gleam in her eyes when she recited how many grandchildren and great-grandchildren she had. While in some ways she was definitely a product of her generation, she was also surprisingly progressive at times, and gracefully accepted the changes and chances of this life, and the direction each of ours took. We... you... were her life’s work, and she would be not-so-secretly pleased to see you all here.

Though she wasn’t quite around physically for those hundred years, she’ll live on a lot longer than that in our memories and stories, a lady who truly did it ​her​ way.

Where the Day Takes You

BARNABAS THE APOSTLE

Recently I returned to San Francisco after a long absence.  It was my third time in the city, the first being an idyllic sojourn at the Fairmont on Nob Hill at age 14, when my mom and I accompanied my dad on a business trip. I remember being told with great politeness that the man who played the piano in the cocktail bar was very particular about who else touched it, and then being presented with another instrument (Steinway grand, natch!) in a disused conference room with the invitation to enjoy it for the rest of my stay.

My second visit was in 1991 with my then-roommate Glenn.  In our early 20s, we were traveling on a budget and relied on the Hotel/Motel Red Book  for our choice of accommodations sight-unseen in those pre-Trip Advisor days.

Our first hotel looked as if it survived the Great Fire of 1906, but just barely.  If there was an actual fire, other guests on the floor were instructed by a large sticker to break the painted-over glass in the door to our room to access the fire escape.  We decided to leave before one of them decided to try.

Our next place of residence, the Leland, was -- unknown to us until we had arrived -- not exactly a tourist hotspot either. Most of its guests were either more permanent, or just there for an hour or so.  We stuck it out for our few remaining days in town, but the Fairmont it was not, and I was not surprised to learn that it suffered a major fire a few years later, displacing 60 people who called it home.

Polk Street was at that time in its last throes as a former gay mecca that pre-dated the Castro.  By the 1990s, in a city decimated by AIDS, the once-vibrant scene was pretty downbeat. We were largely surrounded by sex workers and those whom they attracted, as well as many young people who were -- as the Brits say -- "living rough" on the streets of the Tenderloin.  Both were surprisingly engaging and we had a number of exchanges, some humorous, some heartbreaking.  At a luncheonette, for example, I learned that you could eat three-quarters of a meal before pretending to find glass in it and walking out in a manufactured huff.

Everybody had a story: Going to be an actor, going back to school, just here 'til I turn 18. They accepted our presence without question; thrown -- if anything -- by the fact that we were neither buying nor selling, and really only interested in conversation. By and large, they took it in stride.  I -- on the other hand -- had my world rocked. I grew up in the woods in what I now understand to be a life of great privilege compared to how most of the world lives.  We understood such things as poverty mainly in the abstract: we knew that it was important to care for those who had less than you, but we rarely encountered the kind of gritty reality in which my friend and I found ourselves.

The following year saw the release of Where the Day Takes You, a film portraying the lives of a group of young people on the streets of Los Angeles.  It marked the feature debut of Will Smith (as a double amputee, no less), but also featured such names as Dermot Mulroney, Ricki Lake, Kyle McLaughlan and David Arquette which would later become household words.  Their daily routines of trying to score food, money, drugs, a place to sleep, were starkly similar to what we witnessed first hand in the Tenderloin, and both have haunted me ever since. Below is a montage of scenes from the film, set to "Precious Pain" one of several songs by Melissa Etheridge that appear in the soundtrack.

"Empty and cold, but it keeps me alive
I gave it my soul, so that I could survive

Keeping me safe in these chains, precious pain"

- MELISSA ETHERIDGE

There are approximately half a million homeless young people in the United States, with just 4,000 shelter beds designated for this age group.  Depending on whom you ask, between 20-40% of them identify as LGBT (compared to 10% of the general population).  These young people are twice as likely as their straight/cisgender peers to have experienced sexual victimization (60% vs 30%) and seven times more likely to experience sexual violence, and most have either been thrown out of their homes or fled for their own safety.  A crushing 62% of them commit suicide.*  In the movie, Lil-J, portrayed by Balthazar Getty, resists and then ultimately resorts to sex work, only to be traumatized by a flashback of being molested by an uncle.  Young people who experience gender variance are at particular risk, frequently being denied access to shelters or encountering violence.

Signs at San Francisco Shine 2009
PHOTO CREDIT: LarryBobSF flickr.com/larrybob
Some Rights Reserved
Used under Creative Commons License.

In a country that views the homeless as "a problem" and will spend money to install spikes in the sidewalk so they can't find a place to rest instead of offering them food, shelter or counseling, runaway/throwaway LGBT youth and young adults are near the bottom of an already-low pile.  Struggling young mothers and their children garner much of the limited sympathy the public can muster.

Fortunately, at least in some places, this unique need is being met in specific and appropriate ways:

• The Church of St. Luke in the Fields is located just off Christopher Street in New York's West Village, where many young people (a large number of them either homeless or housing-insecure) gather every weekend.  The congregation responded by creating an event each Saturday night known simply as "the church" which provides a meal, programming, and access to counselors and doctors.  The church would like to expand the mission to a 24/7 drop-in center but is meeting stiff resistance from some of its neighbors.  
• Another youth center which intentionally engages LGBT youth (although not exclusively) is The Door, which provides a host of counseling, education, and social opportunities in a positive, affirming environment.
• The Hetrick-Martin Institute, which helped open the Harvey Milk High School in 1985 as a place of refuge for LGBT students to learn in safety, recently added an after-school drop-in center in Newark.
• In addition, the Ali Forney Center operates a network of shelters and temporary residences, while providing access to health care and counseling. Residents are encouraged to continue their education and secure employment, with the goal of preparing them for an independent and stable future.  Their "get help" page lists resources in many other states.  Several of their facilities were badly damaged during Hurricane Sandy. 

Contributions and other support for all of these projects are always welcomed, and -- in some cases -- sorely needed.

I am mystified and saddened that parents could reject their own offspring on the basis of something as innate as attractional orientation or gender identity, but -- given what our society prioritizes and glorifies -- I suppose I shouldn't be.  In a place where a person can say gays deserve death by stoning and still get elected to statewide office, there are clearly people who agree.  It is equally sad, but unsurprising, that there appears to be a strong correlation between identification as "strongly religious" and rejecting your kids.

In the years since I last visited, the Tenderloin has -- like Times Square -- been sanitized and gentrified.  The coffee shop where we conversed with those young survivors is now part of a trendy chain, and there was scarce evidence of the area's former population.  However, they're still around. A recent article estimated there are 1,000 teens and young adults squatting in abandoned buildings, couch-surfing, or camping in the city's parks.  The Homeless Youth Alliance focuses its efforts on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, and acknowledges that the city has long been a mecca for young people seeking an escape.

I will go to bed tonight in a house my great-grandfather built, doubly grateful for a family who has accepted me as I am.  I pray for those who are not so fortunate.

NOTE: Statistics from a 2009 survey by the National Coalition for the Homeless

Those Madcap Nuns

Many of us, even those with little or no direct experience, are amused by the notion of nuns behaving badly.  The idea that religious sisters, whom we associate with placid, regimented lives, might get up to all sorts of mischief has been a popular theme in entertainment for generations. From Julie Andrews' Maria and Sally Fields' airborne Sister Bertrille to the gaggle under the stern eye of Maggie Smith in Sister Act, we identify with the idea that these disciplined figures might have a frivolous or even wild side bubbling under the surface. A line of greeting cards and calendars featuring the habit-clad doing everything from riding motorcycles to skeet shooting pokes gentle fun at this concept. Listening to some rather timid hymnody in church, I couldn't help but wish that Whoopie Goldberg's Sister Mary Clarence would appear and encourage us to start singing so God might actually hear us. Even the feisty Sophia Petrillo gave religious life a go, but found difficulty adjusting to the point where the Mother Superior told her, "I'm going to go pray now. I won't tell you what I'll be praying for, as it would hurt your feelings."  These are just a few of the dramatizations portraying nuns, in varying degrees of accuracy.

In fact, there are orders who shun all or most of the world's distractions, and being forced to partake of them can be extremely traumatic when one feels called to do live in seclusion. In 1988, while I was involved in a Catholic youth organization called Antioch, we learned that four Carmelite nuns at the cloistered convent nearby barricaded themselves for nine months in the infirmary in an attempt to shield themselves from what they viewed as an imposed modernization or diluting of their "rule of life". The changes, including eating candy, watching videos and leaving the facility for walks around the parking lot, were contrary to what the sisters and novitiates saw as their calling.  The prioress and her supporters contested that these things were not new to the house, and it was a question of alliance to her predecessor and resistance to her authority vs. the acts themselves. As with most conflicts, I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between.

 A community of brothers in Vermont, the Carthusians at the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration, live almost completely as hermits in solitary confinement.  Each brother has a small apartment with a workshop, walled garden, and indoor space to eat and pray.  Food and other necessities are received through a "turn", a pass-through of sorts that does not require interaction with the person delivering them. These brothers gather only for communal prayer and one weekly meal, eaten in silence, and they leave the monastery only a few times each year for a group walk in their wooded surroundings.  Annual visits from their families are their only contact with the outside world.

Most religious, of course, live and work among -- and more or less like -- the rest of us, vows notwithstanding. I attended high school under the Sisters of Mercy and Brothers of the Sacred Heart, but by that time the ruler-wielding tyrants of my parent's generation were reduced to folklore (thank you, DYFS!) so my impression of those in religious life was generally a positive one. I mostly stayed on their good side, with the exception of the morning my friend Staci ran up to the school bus one morning with a made-up "emergency" that was in reality the desire to have me join her for a few minutes of new-found freedom, thanks to her newly-acquired driver's license.  Needless to say the bus driver (who was also our science teacher and the wrestling coach... our school was so small, the jocks had to moonlight as drama geeks!) dutifully reported said "emergency" to Sister Pat.  When we arrived a few minutes later (coffee and bagels in hand, such grownups!) she was waiting for us at the door, wearing an expression right out of the Book of Revelations.  Generally though, she was a benevolent and fair leader, and an interview when she left a few years after my graduation revealed she had survived a difficult childhood, losing both parents at a young age.

My strongest association with a religious community, however, has been with the brothers at Weston Priory, a Benedictine monastery and working farm in the woods of Vermont (more on that next week!) that my family has been visiting for most of my life.  My sister and I agree that the Priory would be our post-apocalypse "go-to place" assuming we could fight our way past the zombies on the New York Thruway.  If anybody would know how to deal with whatever was coming next with zenlike grace, it would be the Weston brothers.

After moving to the Episcopal Church for other reasons, I discovered that religious orders exist for us as well, albeit on a smaller scale, like everything else.  In our area is the mother house of the (Augustinian) Community of John the Baptist, and up the Hudson a bit is Holy Cross Monastery, a Benedictine community.  Both host retreats and invite visitors to their historic grounds.

All of this means that I was, as were many, very disheartened by the idea that the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the office of what used to be known as the Inquisition, and most recently led by the current Pope) this past week portrayed the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which oversees some 57,000 American nuns, as an unruly gang of Pied Pipers who are leading the unwitting Catholic faithful away from its doctrines, particularly on its favorite subjects of late, abortion and homosexuality. It wasn't so much that the sisters were making statements contrary to church doctrine; but they were not using their influence with the people they serve to echo the party line about the dangers of same-sex marriage and the scourge of free condoms.  It called elements of Sr. Laurie Brink's 2007 address to that body a "serious source of scandal." in that it suggested sisters might find a spiritual calling "beyond the church" or even possibly "beyond Christianity."  The Congregation announced that Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle had been appointed to give the Conference a thorough going-over and knock them back into line. 

The reaction was, predictably, swift and overwhelmingly on the side of the sisters. The Rev. James Martin, who writes for America, says, "More often than not, it is women religious who precede the men in working with the poor, in giving voice to the powerless and in dying on the fields of martyrdom. It is the women who do, do, do, and have done so with little recognition and historically even less pay, and all in a church where women's voices are often unheard, ignored or denied."  Martin started  a Twitter hashtag #WhatSistersMeanToMe, which has taken off with a life of its own.  In her Washington Post blog, Melinda Henneberger says "The Vatican, of course, knows a lot about scandal — to the point that the nuns are the only morally uncompromised leaders poor Holy Mother Church has left."  Sr. Joan Chittister, a well-known writer who once led the group facing the charges, said that a reformation from outside threatened the unique relationships sisters have with the people they serve, and that the questions this work causes them to ask must be answered if the church is to remain vibrant, relevant and respected.   "When you set out to reform that kind of witness, remember when it's over who doomed the church to another 400 years of darkness. It won't be the people of the church who did it."

From my perspective, the nuns are the only participants in this quarrel who are dealing in reality at the moment.  A person discovering an unplanned pregnancy or attraction to the same sex is less likely to be shunned by secular culture today than thirty years ago, so if the response is anything other than empathy and compassion, he or she is more likely to just walk away  and seek help elsewhere.   The sad reality is that Americans are abandoning organized religion in droves, in part because they are no longer afraid of what the church or society will do to them if they don't follow its rules.  While the mainline Protestant denominations and reform Judaism are responding (admittedly in fits and starts) by wrestling with these issues and trying to put them into context, the Vatican and the U.S. Council of Bishops seem to be stepping backwards and snuffing out any room for conversation.  Comparing gay activists to Nazis or the KKK and other extremist rhetoric from the pulpit will not draw the disaffected back into the fold; it will only cause them to tune the church out.  Withdrawing from social services ministries to avoid complying with laws requiring equal treatment of everyone won't get the laws rescinded, it will just punish those who benefited from those worthwhile ministries. Unfortunately for us moderates, the increasing ranks of the unchurched seem to make little distinction between one group of Christians and another. In the end, we get lumped together as an anachronism from a another time, amusing at best and destructive at worst, and we all stand to lose. 

It remains to be seen what the sisters will do. As described above, a calling is not something a person walks away from easily. This is not the first time a religious order has run afoul of the Vatican, and the response hasn't always exactly been timid. Sr. Sandra Schneiders, who teaches at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California responded to a similar 2009 inquiry, "We can receive them, politely and kindly, for what they are, uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house. When people ask questions they shouldn’t ask, the questions should be answered accordingly."

If all else fails, they can always steal  Archbishop Sartain's carburetor.

Down to the Sea

MARY THE VIRGIN - MOTHER OF CHRIST

Uncle Ziggy and Aunt Bertha aboard ship

My love of ships dates back to 1974.  That summer, my grandfather's sister and her husband departed New York on the S/S France, flagship of the storied Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, known simply on these shores as the French Line, on their way to spend the summer in Europe.  Retirees who never had children, they lived simply most of the year, but my uncle Ziggy was never one to scrimp when it came to food or travel, and they took some spectacular vacations for working-class people of the time. 

By the time I arrived on the scene, the jet age was in full swing and airlines had already won over most of the passenger traffic between the United States and Europe.  Ironically since the majority of leisure travelers were American, the United States Lines was one of the first to go.  The S/S United States, not yet 20 years in service, was laid up in 1969 and -- though still around -- has yet to carry another passenger.  One by one, the state-run steamship companies of Germany, Holland, Italy, Greece and France would give up the fight, and - in fact - the mighty France was abruptly withdrawn from service during my aunt and uncle's vacation.  But they were old-school, and -- rather than spend seven hours in an airplane seat -- they returned to the States aboard the last holdout, Cunard's Queen Elizabeth 2.  That ship continued to offer regular transatlantic crossings (interspersed with cruises to other places) until 2004, when she was replaced on the route by the much larger Queen Mary 2.  My dad and I were aboard when that fantastic vessel finished a stormy crossing and arrived in New York for the first time, to a hero's welcome.  But that's another blog entry.

CGT poster advertising the France

Getting back to 1974, if the days of the transatlantic liner were waning, there is no evidence of it in my memory of that afternoon.  In those carefree days, steamship lines welcomed the family and friends of departing travelers aboard the ships on sailing day.  As had always been the tradition, all that was required was a token donation to a seafarers' charity.  It was good P.R., because --  at least in my case -- that short visit left me with a desire to pack up and go on my own ocean voyage, one that would not be fulfilled for another 25 years but which is only stoked, rather than quenched, by every day spent aboard ship.


I actually remember very few details of the ship itself. Oddly enough, one thing that stuck in my head was the placement of the bathtub faucets, on the middle of the long wall vs. at one end.

One story which I can't recall personally but is is stuck in the family lore relates to this or another such bon voyage party.  My uncle had several brothers, and -- like him -- each of them was "a real character" as my paternal grandmother would say.  Apparently one of these uncles had earned quite a reputation aboard ship.  A cabin steward saw him with our entourage and brusquely inquired, "Are you on this trip?"  Upon learning he was headed back down the gangway shortly, the steward rolled his eyes and sighed, "Thank god!  I still remember you from the last time!"

Carnival Victory berthed in San Juan

Hopefully my own reputation is better.  As I write this, a Certain Party and I, along with his entire immediate family and a friend of his mom, are somewhere in the Windward Islands aboard the M/S Serenade of the Seas, part of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line.  This is my eighth ocean voyage (tenth if you count overnight ferry crossings), a fact that is hardly remarkable given the prolific cruisers and crossers of my acquaintance.  But no sooner did we arrive at the terminal in San Juan when I felt the same rush that came over me on Pier 88 in New York all those summers ago, a feeling that built as we explored our compact cabin, met the steward, verified our dinner table assignment, and underwent all the little rituals that mark the beginning of seagoing travel, culminating with our after-dark departure past the brilliantly lit Victory (even Carnival ships look pretty at night).  I could get used to this.

No vampires here!

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Clare of Assisi - Nun (1253)

Last night I met some friends at The Garlic Rose, a restaurant in Madison, N.J. whose nickname is "The Rose City".  As the name suggests, the lowly bulb figures rather heavily in the menu.  While this seemed somewhat off-putting at first to those of us who did not grow up believing everybody's kitchen smelled like that, I'm here to tell you that there's nothing to be afraid of.  When cooked whole, garlic cloves do not overpower whatever they are in, and in fact can be eaten as-is or spread on bread, as the hosts are glad to demonstrate to the squeamish by providing a few roasted bulbs for free when you first sit down.  

Our entrees ranged from three-cheese ravioli to roasted chicken.  Nothing you'd call "diet food" but everything was wonderful.  I was glad to have friends who are as adventurous about food as I am.  

Then we got to dessert.  Among the more routine offerings, they naturally (?) have... garlic ice cream.  This isn't my first encounter with strange flavors of that all-American confection: for years, Gerenser's in downtown New Hope, PA, had hundreds of flavors including African Violet. I never was brave enough to try that one, and I have heard they don't offer nearly as many choices as they used to.

This night, too, was not to become an expansion of my confectionery repertoire.   We voted to head to Cafe Beethoven in nearby Chatham, N.J. only to discover that they stopped serving at 9 p.m., and thus ended up at the (sorry, guys) vastly disappointing local Carvel.  I mean, it's still ice cream; even if it's not great, it's still pretty good.

But next time I'm holding out for the garlic.