One More Song For Me

Today was a jingle-jangle morning.

I was hitting the halfway point in my early morning elliptical routine when Roger McGuinn’s 12-string guitar led me into the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man.” I pumped up the volume, and soon I was nine years old again, and it was the summer of 1965.

My mother and I were sitting in a diner on the corner of Argyle and Broadway when those same chiming notes came over the restaurant’s speakers. It was a little before the lunchtime rush, so the place was nearly empty. Not Nighthawks empty, but there were only a few customers at the tables or counter. Soft rain spattered against the plate-glass windows.

Mom and I had just been visiting my grandmother. Mama, as I called her, was then in her mid-seventies. She had fled Nazi-controlled Austria with my mother and grandfather. They had built comfortable lives in Chicago, settling first in Hyde Park, then moving north in the 1950s.

In 1963, Mama and Papa moved to a senior living building populated mostly by German immigrants. They were among its handful of Austrians.

Papa passed away within months of the move, and Mama was assigned a new roommate. Mama lived with Mrs. Palmer for ten years—ten years in which they never once addressed each other by their first names. Prussian formality, I assume!

Mom visited Mama twice a week. At least once a month, I would join her. The ride on the El to the Argyle “A” stop took barely fifteen minutes from our Rogers Park neighborhood. Once there, we would help tidy up, do some hand laundry, and politely ask Mrs. Palmer how she was doing before she hustled out of the room.

We didn’t often go to a restaurant after our visits. I don’t recall whether this was a special day or whether we were simply taking a few minutes out of the rain before walking back to the El stop. But there we were, my mother and I, splitting a piece of sesame seed cake before returning to the bustle of the train.

I think that was the first time I heard “Mr. Tambourine Man.” I was just forming my taste in music, and the song stuck. I didn’t realize then that it was also my introduction to Bob Dylan.

Nothing remarkable happened that morning. But more than sixty years later, a few chiming notes brought me back to that table, with rain against the windows, sesame seed cake on a plate, and my mother beside me.

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play one more song for me.

Barb Tells It Better

On paper, I am the storyteller of the family. But in real life, my tales tend to be short and to the point, while Barb can mesmerize an audience, weaving a story she has honed to perfection. Here is Barb’s latest not-so-tall tale. Not surprisingly, I am the straight man.

“It was about 2 a.m. when the alarm went off,” Barb begins.

“I was disoriented and felt around the nightstand for my glasses. Once I found them, I looked for Les, but he wasn’t in bed. I staggered to the alarm pad and saw that the family room sliding patio door was the cause of the alarm. I used our code to turn it off.

“Calling for Les, I made my way to the offending door. I remembered that a serviceman had used it that morning. We had probably forgotten to lock it, but that didn’t explain why it had opened a little and set off the alarm.

“I knew the police would show up, so I went to the front door to wait for them. And still no Les.

“After about a minute, I saw flashlights coming up the walk and two policemen appeared.

“‘We’re sorry, ma’am, but we got a call that there was an alarm going off. It turns out it was for the house next door, but we came to your house by mistake a few minutes ago. While checking all your doors, I think we set off your alarm.’

“‘OK, that explains the alarm. But I have a bigger problem. My husband is missing.’”

At this point in telling her story, Barb is beginning to grin, a twinkle coming to her eye. It is the officer’s next words that send her—and her audience—into hysterics.

“Looking over my shoulder, the policeman says, ‘You mean the man in the green underpants standing behind you?’”

As the laughter engulfs Barb’s audience, I explain that I had trouble sleeping that night and had gone into the guest bedroom so I wouldn’t wake Barb, only to appear when the police were at the door

“And he didn’t hear the alarm! No wonder his doctor says he needs to get the wax out of his ears.”

And that is the difference between the two storytellers in our family. I’ll write this one down and you’ll smile. Hear Barb tell it, and you’ll be laughing until tears run down your face—and my underpants will be getting greener with every telling.

Sorry! Hasbro. You Can’t Change That Rule!

Barb and I were absorbed in an intense game of Sorry! with Captain Comeback and Superheroine Girl, our 5- and 8-year-old grandchildren, when I made the discovery.

The game set we were using was the third or fourth set our family has gone through since we first started playing the board game with our children more than 35 years ago. We have spent countless rainy days, afternoons, and evenings chasing each other’s colorful pegs around the board.

Playing Sorry! has helped first our kids and then our grandkids learn counting and strategy. They have also learned how not to have a fit when a sibling or cousin flips over a dreaded Sorry card and sends their peg back to Start. And most importantly, they have learned patience, as turn after turn goes by without drawing the 1 or 2 card that allows one of their markers to leave Start and begin the trek toward home.

By the age of 5, any family member knows the rules backwards and forwards. We have made a few minor changes as the years have gone by, but waiting for that 1 or 2 card has been the requirement that anchors the game. So I was amazed when, casually reading the latest set of instructions, I discovered that a player can now start moving a peg after drawing any number card. This is heresy!

I suppose Hasbro has updated the rules to fit with modern times and limited attention spans. I am sure the new rules speed up the game and keep everyone more actively involved. But to my family, this change is as absurd and unnecessary as, well, I don’t know, automatically putting a runner on second base in the 10th inning of a baseball game.

Sorry!, like baseball, is not meant to be played at a TikTok pace. It needs to build slowly, with plenty of time for Captain Comebacks and Superheroine Girls to rebound and claim the lead.

And that is how we will play it in our house, for every generation that comes our way.

I Owe Someone a Note

I’m listening to The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. I’m only partway through, so don’t worry. This isn’t a review, and there will be no spoilers.

One sentence made me stop and hit rewind.

“He was finding confidence behind the veil of ink on the page.”

That’s a beautiful line. It also made me realize how much of my life I’ve spent communicating through the written word.

One summer in high school, I came home from overnight camp corresponding with about fifteen girls. Long-distance phone calls weren’t an option. Fifteen nightly phone calls would have bankrupted my parents.

To keep eall the letters straight, I created a chart on a piece of cardboard. Down the left side were the girls’ names. Across the top were columns for the date each letter arrived and the date I mailed my reply. My personal correspondence log. Looking back, it may have been a little obsessive. At the time, it felt perfectly reasonable.

The cardboard disappeared years ago, which is probably for the best. Otherwise, one of my grandchildren might someday uncover it and conclude that Baba had been far more popular in high school than he actually was.

Letter writing eventually gave way to pathology reports, emails, newsletters, and blog posts. The audience has changed. The pleasure hasn’t. I still enjoy staring at a blank screen or a piece of paper, chasing an idea around until it finally behaves.

A few months ago, I found myself buying a box of correspondence cards on Amazon. Not birthday cards. Not sympathy cards. Just simple white correspondence cards with a gray border for thank-you notes and the occasional handwritten letter. The kind of stationery that practically insists you mind your manners.

In this era of texts, emails, Facebook posts, and emojis, buying stationery felt almost rebellious. But the cards are on my desk now, and every so often one finds its way into an envelope.

It turns out I never stopped being a correspondent. So excuse me, I owe someone a note.

Down for the Count

A leg cramp, a labradoodle, and an unexpected view of the world

As I compose this blog entry in my mind, I am lying on the laundry room floor, staring at the ceiling. Another leg cramp has brought me down, but unlike the one that brought so much levity to a room full of canasta-playing women, this one struck while I was alone, bending to move laundry from the washing machine into the dryer.

Barb, usually my savior in these situations, is away for most of the afternoon enjoying a “day of beauty.” With no one here to massage my leg, I know I’ll remain on this floor until the tightness eases enough for me to bend my knee and pull myself upright.

Cooper the labradoodle is scratching at the laundry room door. I keep it closed when I’m in here; otherwise a sock or T-shirt will be in his mouth before I can slam the washing machine shut. And if the dryer door is open, he’ll immediately claim a dryer ball, his favorite prize. Even if I let him in, there isn’t much he could do to help me, and I’d rather avoid having my face licked while immobilized on the floor.

Lying here gives me an unusual vantage point. I can see the dead bugs lining the glass dome of the overhead light fixture. Cleaning that just moved onto my to-do list, though I doubt I’ll feel much like climbing ladders today. I’ve always thought I did a good job cleaning the dryer’s lint trap, but from down here I can see a layer of lint collecting along the bottom edge of the dryer door. At least that’s something I can clean without getting up.

With my bottom on the floor and time on my hands, I dig my phone out of my pocket. I rarely listen to audiobooks at home, saving them for car rides and Cooper walks, but this seems like the appropriate time and place for my latest thriller. I rest the phone on my stomach and, without earbuds, turn up the volume enough for the hero’s murder investigation to echo through the laundry room.

Even with the novel going through my head, I wonder what caused today’s spasm. Was it yesterday’s first round of golf of the season? The stops and starts of eight games of pickleball this morning? Dehydration? Or did I simply twist the wrong way moving laundry from one machine to the other?

The pain is easing now. I can begin to flex. I’ll let Cooper in, press the start button on the dryer, and go on with my day.

All is well…until the next time.

For Its Inventor, The Game of Life is over.

The Game of Life-the box top I remember.

Pink and blue pegs in a tiny plastic car. A pathway that took you to college and a job. A spinner that made a great, whirring, sound but needed it frequently oiling. Stock and insurance certificates. And $100,000 bills with Art Linkletter’s picture on it. It was all in The Game of Life.

I grew up in the mid-’60s playing Life with my family. It was faster-paced than Monopoly, less cerebral than Scrabble or Chess, and harder to cheat at than Go to the Head of the Class (yes, I memorized all the questions). And it was fun, twirling the spinner and hoping for the career with the highest salary. You could wind up a millionaire, or you could wind up in the poorhouse.

By the time we were raising our kids, Life had fallen well down the list of treats on family game night, far below our favorite, Sorry. Still, our first thought for the theme at Laury’s Bat Mitzvah was to base the celebration on Life. Only when the party designer couldn’t grasp the concept did we switch to an Animal Kingdom idea.

This morning I learned that Reuben Klamer, the man who invented The Game of Life, passed away on September 14th. He was 99 years old–almost making it to that ultimate life marker of a century.

It feels like another little bit of my childhood is seeping away. As the sole survivor of my first nuclear family, I have no one to share that time of my life with. There is no one who remembers the nightly dinner table (always starting with Campbell’s Soup, always including dreadful canned vegetables); who remembers the Sunday night’s watching What’s My Line (me peaking around my bedroom door into the living room); who remembers the weekly walk down Morse Avenue to Ashkenaz for kreplach soup, a toasted bagel, and a Coke.

So you see Mr. Klamer, the end of your days has made me nostalgic and a bit sad. I don’t know how you lived your life, but I know your Life was part of a wonderful time in mine. Wherever you are now, your spinning wheel will never stop whirring for me.

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