I love you as much as you can stand…. More Love Letters
Did they ever think they would be parents and great-grandparents? A photo of Pauline and Milton in 1938
Since I started blogging, the post that has received the most amount of views is my post Hey … vs. The Love Letter. It has received over 4,000 views and that’s without being freshly pressed — when a blogger’s post is hand-picked by the WordPress editors and prominently displayed on the website’s front portal.
Now, I don’t know if people read all the way through my post, but it goes to show that there are those out there that still believe in love letters and the power of the written word for the sake of romance. In spite of advances in technology.
In this post, written in January during National Letter Writing Week, I pondered if my generation, the Gen Xers, will indeed be the last that will pen physical, hand-written love notes, or even letters in general. Call me old-fashioned with my fears. I don’t like the notion of how texting is replacing plain talking, or how e-book readers are replacing paper books. But fearing new technologies is nothing new. Even the invention of the printing press brought on apprehension. In fact, a character in Victor Hugo’s proclaimed medieval novel Notre Dame de Paris states that the invention of the printing press would kill architecture, the way humans communicate. I wish that Victor would have stuck around long enough to see the works of Frank Lloyd Wright or Frank Gehry.
But here’s where I back up my point that sometimes old-fashioned ways, like letter writing, can’t be replaced:
Last summer, at a prolonged stay at my parent’s house, I got, well, bored. So, I started snooping through the closet in my brother’s old room (sorry, bro!). In an accordion filing folder, I found some very old letters. Letters with two separate penmanship: one so flowery it should be regarded as an art form, the other, more masculine and primitive.
Love letters. Between my grandparents. Way before they were great-grandparents or even parents.
I don’t think that two people were more madly and crazy in love than my grandparents. Or fought as much as my grandparents. I mean fights that involved throwing a can of corn across the room or driving away from a family dinner all the way back to Brooklyn fights. But they still flirted with each other all the way into their 80’s.
But even into their 80’s, they still flirted with each other. At family gatherings, my grandfather would take me around, point to my grandmother, and whisper to me “Hey, aint she cute? Ain’t she sweet? She’s all mine.”
My grandparents had two anniversaries. One,was when they eloped in September 1939. They actually ran away in the middle of the night, headed upstate New York, and found a justice of the peace to marry them. An asthmatic one at that. I remember my grandmother recounting the ceremony, mimicking how the justice wheezed between reciting the vows. That was the anniversary my grandfather recognized.
Afterwords, none of my great-grandparents approved to this elopement. And I think the way it went was that my grandparents were not allowed to cohabit until they had a proper Jewish wedding, which happened three months later. That’s the anniversary my grandmother recognized.
So, in these letters, I found one from my grandfather, Milton, that I think contained my grandfather’s plot to take my grandmother, Pauline, away to get hitched.
Dated August 29, 1938 my grandfather writes
I received your second letter this morning after I sent my fourth. I got my days changed to Sunday and Monday off. (Grandpa worked night shifts for the New York Daily News). That goes into effect this Tuesday. Find our all the arrangements for Saturday, September 7, so that we don’t get mixed up. Try and come in early enough to get to the shower (?) about 9:30 but don’t forget to allow some sleep as I’ll be working Saturday morning. Will they be surprised?! Boy, oh Boy!
Some talk about my grandmother being away somewhere…. I don’t understand that part, but then….
I found lipstick on my blue tie that I wore Saturday nite but I won’t make any attempt to clean it……I’ll see you Saturday night and then all day Sunday and Monday and don’t go kick me home early….
and …after a bit of more plotting and even some sqabbling about my grandmother “putting on airs” the last time they met…
“You don’t know what a funny, but a lost feeling I get when I see a couple on the street or a couple kissing or a fellow saying I got a date. Nobody loves me except you. ….I love you alone, Milton.”
Then, I find a letter from my grandmother, not dated. But even back then, and they must have been in their late teens, my grandmother was nudging my grandpa about his health:
“I won’t see you on the nights you can’t manage to get your eight or nine (NINE??) hours of sleep each day. Your also going to watch your diet closely. Believe you me!”
And on the letters and their love went, for 67 years. By the way, My grandfather, a second generation photo engraver for the New York Daily News, was in fact a victim of new technology. In 1982, he was given a buy-out package along with the other photo engravers at the New York Daily News.
His job was being replaced by something called…. the laser printer.
And Here’s To You, Mrs. Robin
The first time Mrs. Robin and I met, I don’t know who was more startled.
I had just gotten home from grocery shopping and was walking from the driveway to the front door when WOOSH! Out flew a Robin from the front Hedge. She didn’t fly far. She just stayed on our lawn, watching me patiently as I unpacked my groceries.
Now, we have an old Tudor with these long, boring hedges that border our front windows. They are very dated looking and for years, I have wanted to get rid of them to plan a more updated landscape.
Now, I wouldn’t dream of getting rid of them.
Because, day after day, Mrs. Robin and I kept giving each other our startled greetings right at that same spot. The same flutter of her wings. The same patient vigil as I cleared out of her way and went inside the house for good.
I knew it was too much to be a coincidence. She must have built a nest there. And after days of searching, I finally spotted her handiwork: a perfectly small, matted circular nest, tucked into the thickest part of the bush,right at shoulder height.
And, it afforded me this view:
checking on the Robin's nest is as tempting as checking blog stats
Robin’s egg blue. Is there not a more beautiful color?
Now, as tempting as it is to check, I know birds might abandon their nests if disturbed too much. But at our last check, the baby chick has started to open its mouth! And, as far as Mrs. Robin, she stays very still when we come near. Only her eye is visible from her nest, but I think she understands that we are not a threat.
Congratulations on your baby, Mrs. Robin. Feel free to raid my garden for a never ending supply of bugs and worms for feeding time.
A backlog of blogs
Okay.
So, so much for Post-a-day.
These days, I’m lucky if I can post-a-month.
But I have so many ideas to write about but working, parenting, track, baseball and concert season are getting in the way. So is that chocolate milk that my son just spilled on the kitchen floor.
So, before I have to be in two directions at once, here are some topics I have been meaning to blog about. You pick what I should tackle first:
- More Love Letters: This time, the ones I found between my grandparents before they were married.
- The Robin who made a nest in our front shrub.
- The African Burial Ground in downtown Manhattan
- Transitions from childhood to teen-dom
- What we saw at Ground Zero
Gotta go and watch my youngest play ball!
Like a Walk in Highland Park
every year, the entrance bed of the park is filled with pansies
It’s been a cold dark week. The news nationally, while triumphant, stirred up a lot of questions and decade-old images. What is closure anyway?
Locally, a hate crime has been committed in our town. Our high schoolers are wrestling with the news that this action was allegedly committed by someone they consider a close friend.
But, yesterday the sun finally came out. May is nature’s reward to Rochesterians for sticking it out through the long winter.
So, to forget it all, I took a walk in Rochester’s Highland Park. This park is known for its vast lilac collection – one of the nation’s largest. And with it, Rochester hosts one of its most popular festivals.
So, before the crowds, and the vendors selling fry bread and fried artichokes and – fried everything arrive. I took a walk in Highland Park and snapped the following photographs:
the earliest lilacs are just starting to bloombut the trees along the path were burstinga field of daffodilsI walked past a grove of magnoliasuntil I reached the reservoir and enjoyed this view
Under the Purim Moon in Israel – 2008
It was just St. Patrick’s Day in America this week. I couldn’t help but notice all the people decked out in green, so publicly and outwardly showing their Irish pride. People were wearing the green and donning shamrocks in schools and restaurants and supermarkets.
Strangely enough, this visible expression of pride in one’s ethnic identity reminded me of the revelry and costumes of the people of Israel as they celebrate Purim. Purim is a story of kings, queens, and villans. A holiday of reversals. A holiday of masks, costumes, and feasting. And like St. Patrick’s Day, there is some drinking involved too!
In America, Jewish holiday celebrations take place mainly inside synagogues and Jewish community centers. But in Israel, the planet’s only country with a Jewish majority, all Jewish holidays spill onto the streets and shops. And Purim in Israel is one big nationwide party. A party celebrating a victory over wickedness that could hold true today. There was a wicked man in Persia back then that we defeated. There is a wicked man in modern-day Persia, or Iran now. Both of these men pledged to destroy the Jewish people. One wicked man defeated. Many more to go.
What could have been a day of great sadness for the Jews turned out to be a day of great joy. And, we are commanded to be joyous, intoxicated even, on Purim. So drunk in fact, that on Purim in Israel there are special parades called Ad Lo Yada, meaning in English, “That you Shouldn’t know,” meaning on Purim you should be so happy (drunk) you should not be able to distinguish between Mordechi or Haman (boooooo!). Friend or Foe.
Last night I looked up and saw the Supermoon. While this moon was indeed one of the fullest full moons I had ever seen, it did not surprise me that there was a full moon. Purim, always falls under a full moon in March. Or, more precisely, the 15 of the Hebrew month of Adar.
As I gazed at this body of luminescence, I took a deep sigh and reminisced about where I saw it three years ago. 
This was the moon I saw hovering over Jerusalem’s Yemin Moshe neighborhood. Okay, from my amateur photo, it was not as big as the supermoon, but it was special all the same.
I thought about all I saw and ate and felt when I was in Israel. I thought about the people who opened their homes and families to me who hardly knew me. I thought about waving the American flag in a Purim Parade and listening to the cheers from the people along the route. I thought about the traffic jam I got caught in. The reason for the traffic jam? Israelis were clogging the streets because they were delivering baskets of Purim food to their neighbors. That’s the kind of country Israel is – one big family.
Then, I caught a bit of CNN’s Piers Morgan’s interview with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During commercial breaks, the same old images were shown to the world of Israel: The Kotel, The Dome of the Rock.
Excuse me, Piers, but you were in Israel during PURIM!
Are these tired images all you really can show about Israel? Must Israel always be covered with conflict in the backdrop? If you got out on the streets of Tel Aviv or Modi’in or Jerusalem, if you could do one sidebar story, you would have wandered the streets and been treated to the following faces:
Halvah for sale for the Purim Feast
my friend's brother, decked out for Purim, celebrating with a feast at his home
teen girls dressing up and having fun in Tel Aviv
mom and kids wait for bus outside of old city, Jerusalem
Will showing these images make Israelis seem just too normal, too human for media coverage? Would it portray Israel too much for what Israelis are, a people who love to live, who love to celebrate?
Until the media in America show photos like this of Israel, I’ll just have to share my own. And I’ll be taking more. Because we just booked our next trip for this December. Even though it is the first day of spring, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I can’t wait until the winter.
The Picture that Always Makes me Laugh
This gallery contains 1 photo.
I guess I love this picture because it is so in the moment. It is not the ideal photo of what you would think of as the perfect family outing to the Statue of Liberty. It is perfect, though , because it captures the reality of the chaos of daily life with three kids:
Fall Leaves: Rake Many, Turn a Few into a Turkey
By now, in Western New York, the fall foliage has long reached its peak of yellows and reds.
Now, when I look up at the massive sugar maples in my neighborhood (the ones that are covered with snow in my homepage picture), sadly the branches are mostly bare. The only color they will be covered with over the next four months or so, is white.
Wherever you are living now, I bet you are thinking: how to get rid of all the leaves? Rake them? Mulch them? Sick the leaf blower on them?
But before you rake, blow, or mow every last leaf away and before the snows fall, admire the carpets of red and yellow that lie at your feet.
Then, save a few of nature’s castoffs for craft supplies that can last the whole winter through. Here’s how:
- First, find a preschooler to help you with this task. They are low to the ground and can teach you how to appreciate the simple, beautiful perfection that is found in one leaf that is the color of fire.
- Then, show that preschooler a telephone book. Theirs will probably the last generation that will actually come in contact with one of these volumes of bound, thin yellow paper volumes. None of them I bet ever had a parent use them as a makeshift booster seat or a stepstool. Show them that these yellow or white clunky books were once used by people to look up numbers for plumbers or dog groomers but now come in handy for pressing leaves.
- Next take a few of your leafy treasures and pat them dry with a paper towel, and place them between the pages of the book.
- While the leaves are drying and pressing, read to them a wonderful book like Leaf Man, by Lois Ehlert to get inspiration as to what to do with all those pressed leaves.
Our preschool class used leaves to represent the feathers of turkeys in our thanksgiving cards, like this:
Fall leaves are abundant - and free - and make for great crafts like this turkey
Send me your comments and pictures about what you made with your leaves.
About Me
Kreativ Blogger
Versatile Blogger Award
Stacy Gittleman 