"My First Valentine's Day"

I have published this before, a long time ago.  But new readers have arrived.  And besides, I like it.  

I hope you do too.  Okay, here we go.

I had just turned seven when our First Grade teacher, Miss Platt mentioned Valentine’s Day.  In a few days, she told us, there would be a time set aside in class when anyone who wanted to could exchange valentines cards with their classmates.  And maybe slip one to Miss Platt, who was beautiful, at least to a First Grader’s eyes.  Which were the only eyes I had at the time.

The Valentine’s Day announcement created a buzz of excitement in our classroom.  So much, in fact, that Miss Platt was forced to slam her yardstick down on her desk, returning us to our First Grade study of the alphabet.  Every day, we’d learn a different letter, which meant if you missed a day, as I once did, you’d have trouble printing your entire name until the Review Period, which would take place after we’d finished learning “z.”  Because of my absence, on the day they taught the letter “r”, there was a time there when I was writing my name, Eal Pomeantz.

I need to backtrack for a minute.  The entire Saint Valentine’s Day experience was completely alien to our educational environment.  From Nursery School till Elementary School graduation, I attended the Toronto Hebrew Day School, a religio-centric institution where we studied Hebrew subjects half a day, and an English curriculum the other half. 

This was a hardcore Orthodox operation.  I once got a month’s detention for slipping off-campus and partaking of a non-kosher hamburger.  A number of my classmates went on to become ritual slaughterers, while others served as rabbis who oversaw the ritual slaughterers.  It was not a place where you heard a lot about Saints.

Regardless of the incongruity, Miss Platt said we’d have Valentine’s Day.  Maybe she was a rebel, or maybe she was a romantic.  All I knew was Miss Platt stirred up parts of a seven year-old boy that were not scheduled to arrive until later.

The recess talk was all about valentines.  Who was giving, who was getting, and who’d be left out.  As far as I could tell, the distribution would be limited; friends would exchange cards with friends, two or three valentines at the most.  Being First Grade, the boy-girl component was not be a substantial factor, the exception being the irresistible Miss Platt.

To say that I saw an opportunity suggests there was calculation involved.  There wasn’t.  I just spoke before I thought.  And the words that emerged were these:

“I’m giving everyone a valentine.” 

Mouths dropped.  Everyone?  Even the boy who had “accidents” in class and had to be hurried to the principal’s office to exchange his sodden pants for the telltale corduroy replacements?

“Everyone.”

The word spread like wildfire.  I couldn’t back down if I wanted to.  I was “On Record”:

“Everyone’s getting a valentine.”

When I decided to write this, I searched my memory for the rationale behind this magnanimous overreach.  And I came up with this. 

Six weeks earlier, my father had died.  Kidney failure, resulting from childhood rheumatic fever.  After the required seven-day absence for the shiva period, I returned to school, where I got sympathetic looks from some classmates, while others avoided me, fearful of contracting “Dead Dad” disease. 

The bold or more curious ones approached, asking, “Did your father die?”  I had to look them the in the eye and say, “Yes.”  Except I didn’t look them in the eye.  My eyes focused directly at the floor.  The Shame Place. 

As political consultants would say, I needed to retool my image.  I needed a different kind of attention, and Fate, via Miss Platt’s announcement, had led me to the answer.

“Everyone’s getting a valentine.”

I bought an inexpensive book filled with valentines.  Two or three to a page, each bordered by perforated edges; you pressed the edges and the valentine popped out.  On the back of each valentine were two dotted lines, one above the other.  The top line was the “To”…line, the line below was the “From.” 

I started writing out the cards, twenty-one in all, one for every student in my class.

“To Zvi from Earl.”

“To Arye from Earl.”

The book contained a variety of valentines – a boy with a puppy, a girl with a basket of flowers, though all included bright, red hearts.  I made little effort to match the cards to their recipients.  This wasn’t a personal thing.  It was about getting attention.

The next day, I walked into class, a large paper bag held proudly in my grasp.  I could sense the excitement.  Feeling all eyes on me but acting like they weren’t, I “casually” took my seat, sliding the bag under my desk and folding my hands. 

Awaiting My Moment.

Miss Platt tried to teach as if nothing was different.  But it was Valentine’s Day and everything was different.  My classmates struggled to attract my attention, seeking confirmation that they wouldn’t be left out.

“Am I getting one?” mouthed the kid with glasses who couldn’t catch.

I threw him a confirmational wink.

“Am I getting one?” gestured the girl with the sizable birthmark on her cheek.

I smiled in the affirmative.

“Am I getting one?” mimed the kid with no friends.

I nodded a reassuring “Yes.”

Somehow, these surreptitious exchanges caught Miss Platt’s attention.  And she knew where to direct her rebuke.

“Earl!  We have work to do.  Valentines come later.”

Normally, I do not take rebuke graciously.  There is usually blushing involved.  But today was a playful day.  Rather than apologize to Miss Platt for my transgression, I quipped,

“I’ve got one for you too.”

The class laughed.  It’s easy to get laughs when you’ve got a bagful of valentines.

Finally, it was time.  Miss Platt told us to put our books away.  We could now exchange valentines.  Kids got up and moved around the room, trading valentines with their friends.  It took about a minute. 

Then it was my turn.

Reaching under my desk, I retrieved my paper bag, stood up, and climbed casually onto my chair.  Everyone gathered around me.  Including Miss Platt.

My Moment had arrived.  Smiling beneficently, as I imagined Saint Valentine might have, I reached deep into my bag for the first the many valentines yet to come, and brought out…

…a chicken bone.

That was strange, I thought, and maybe said.  I quickly returned to the bag, emerging this time with…

…a banana peel.

I heard grumbling.  What’s going on?  I was wondering the same thing.  My third dip into the bag crystallized the situation precisely, as my hand emerged cradling…

…egg shells.  Still sticky.

Oh, my.

Oh, my.

Mistakenly, I had left my bag of valentines at home, and I had come to school with a bagful of garbage.

I don’t remember crying or running out of the room, though I recall wanting to do both.  Then, suddenly, this amazing thing happened.

Sure, some kids turned away, disappointed.  Mine was the only valentine they were certain of, and I had thuddingly let them down.  But the majority, reading the agony in my face, rose gallantly to my support.

“Don’t feel bad,” comforted one.

“I’ll still be your friend,” reassured another.

“We like you.”  That was kind of a group response.

Smiles of support pervaded the classroom.  Though I’d pay the price in humiliation and shame, I was, surprisingly, receiving exactly what I’d been looking for – the good kind of attention.  On some level, I knew their acceptance wasn’t just about the valentines that never arrived.  It was also about my Dadless.  They wanted me to know it was okay.

The healing began, due to little Jews and Valentine’s Day. 

A very powerful combination.

"His Wimpiness Knows No Bounds"

As I get older, I appear to be getting wimpier.

When I believed, in that context, that I had already hit the bottom of the barrel.

I have written before about my inordinately low threshold for tolerating disturbing movies.  I have mentioned watching The Godfather (1972) and, knowing where the upsetting parts are (having previously read the book), retreating into the lobby every time the “build-up” music intoned, “Here comes another one!”  Being a movie critic on a local Canadian TV program at the time, this liability caused me considerable trouble reviewing the entirety of the picture.  Though I was surprisingly articulate about the rotating hot dogs at the concession stand.

I have also mentioned, earlier in my life, badgering my older brother into taking me to the newly released 3-D horror sensation The House of Wax, (the 1953 version), only to pull an abrupt one-eighty when we got there, refusing, despite arguments and threats, to set foot into the theater.  I remained outside for two hours until my brother finally emerged to shuttle me home.  (I at least partially blame my brother for this debacle.  On the bus ride to the theater, he and his buddies got me so worked up about how scary it was going to be, it precipitated a preemptive panic attack.)

Indian pictures scared me, especially when the drums stopped, because everyone knows, “When the drums stop, they attack!”  Murder mysteries were also out.  The film directors employed this strategy of keeping the screen darkly lit (for some reason, not an oxymoron), requiring moviegoers to focus more closely on the events that I, in particular, did not want to see.  War pictures…come on, you form an attachment to some platoon member, and they shoot him in the head. 

In those days, I was unable to attend anything where they wore uniforms unless those uniforms were inhabited by Martin and Lewis or Abbott and Costello.  Or Donald O’Connor (and his hilarious talking mule.)  (“In those days.”  Like I have ever seen Saving Private Ryan.)

As the years went by, as a result of loosening standards concerning content acceptability, advancing technology allowing moviemakers to depict violence more graphically on the screen, as well a financial imperative to go progressively “further” with each film, for me, more and more movies became less and less acceptable.  This past year, as I have mentioned, was an exception.  Numerous Oscar contenders are almost entirely “jolt-free.”  But in the past…

There Will Be Blood speaks for itself.  No Country For Old Men – I wondered “Why not?” and did not bother to find out.

But it’s not just disturbing entertainments I unilaterally steer clear of.  There are parts of real life I assiduously avoid as well.  (And I am not talking about the dentist, though I easily could be, and probably will at some future date.) 

What I am currently giving a total pass to is the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Not because I fear a repeat of the “Munich Massacre” of 1972.  (Though, with its precarious locale, there have been rumblings in that direction.)  My apprehensions are nowhere close to that reasonable.  Generally, the only blood drawn at the Olympics is the competitors’ accidentally pricking their fingers while exchanging commemorative pins.

The thing is, my areas of avoidance have expanded beyond the apprehension of violence to a desire to avoid upsetting situations as a whole. 

This aversion to emotional intensity has reared its head – and I have written about it in the past – at the Summer Olympics as well.  I do not discriminate because it’s snow.  The only difference is that at the Summer Olympics, my reservations are assuaged by the opportunity of watching the participants competing in considerably less clothing.  (“Look ashamed!”  “I am thoroughly ashamed.”)

I cannot for a second watch figure skating.  What if they fall doing a “Triple Axel”, or even a quadruple attempting to achieve “Gold” with their audacious virtuosity, but instead achieving ignominious failure, the dashing of their lifetime’s aspirations, and severe ice chips up the wazoo.  

I cannot, or more accurately I can no longer because I believe I once could – handle that level of generated emotion.  (It was agonizing, but I watched.  And now I can’t.) 

I harken back to recollections of the “horse jumping” at the Summer Olympics, which I can also not tolerate, because of that reverberating clanking sound heard when the horse does not make it cleanly over the jump, its hind-leg hoofs knocking the stick heartbreakingly to the ground.  It is simply too much.  All that effort.  All that expectation.  How horribly devastated they must feel – the rider and the horse. 

And for some reason, I identify.

As bizarre as I always was in this regard, things seem to be getting worse.  Back then, I would look away from the intense moments at the Olympics.  Now, I refuse to even tune in.  (And it’s not just the participants.  Announcer Bob Costas had to bow out because of an eye injury.  The guy’s been waiting for this for four years!)

Explanations are elusive, at least the definitive ones.  I can make up an exclamation, and if it’s persuasive enough, I can convince myself it’s “Case closed.”  But sometimes, that’s just me, wanting to put the issue to bed and proceed on to something else I will probably get wrong.  The following is my provisional rationale for why I appear to have become wimpier.

Heart surgery. 

I recall, a week or so before I went in for my valve repair, deciding to distract myself with a visit to the latest edition of Cirque Du Soleil.  I had attended a number of their earlier offerings, and had thoroughly enjoyed myself.

This time, however, it was different.

On that pre-surgical occasion, the acts of enthralling derring-do surprisingly derringly-didn’t.  Instead, their risk-taking “Feats of Wonder” upset me so much, it took all I had to keep me from bolting out of the Big Top.

There is a mortality issue involved.  And that’s as best as I can explain it.

What I know is, due to who I’ve become, and the effect that certain external stimuli have on me,

I have watched my last “Ice Dancing.”

Though I can still – just barely – watch curling.

"Back To School"

As a fun fundraising activity, Anna’s alma mater Sarah Lawrence College stages what it calls a “Faculty on the Road” event, in which an appropriately-sized house is volunteered and former SLC students and their families gather together to hear one of the school’s resident professors deliver a lecture on some aspect of the discipline in which they specialize.

The alerting flyer announced that this year, an English professor would be speaking on the topic:  “Time in Fiction and the Art of Alice Munro.”  Dr. M and I both really like Alice Munro, so we immediately signed up. 

Jumping past the food table, which, since I had recently returned from a Fitness Spa gave every confection the look of an individualized pile of refined sugar, we were directed to a room full of rows of none too comfortable folding chairs, the professor began her talk, and it immediately felt like school.

The moment the lecture began, it appeared everyone regressed back to their academic earlier selves.  There was:

The meticulous notes-taker, the “Teacher’s Pet” nodder-in-constant-agreement-with- the-lecturer, there was the Class “Funny Man” (possibly me), the forgivable slacker (“I’ve been reading the story while you’ve been talking about it, or half of it at least.”), the hyper-confident know-it-all peppering their definitivenesses with multiple “obviouslies”, the contrarian iconoclast (possibly me again; you can be two things on this list) and the cowering majority, making themselves small and praying not to be called upon in class.

School was definitely in!

For those who are unfamiliar with her, Alice Munro is a hugely respected, Canadian Nobel Prize Laureate who specializes in short story writing, focusing on the areas and characters of her particular locale.  We once listened to a book-on-tape of her stories during a trip to San Francisco, and the six-hour-and-ten-minute drive flew by, despite the cognitive dissonance of Canada in our ears and California out the window.   

The short story selected for the lecture entitled Train, however, was not to my liking.  The narrative, a series of massive, apparently unmotivated, life-altering jumps by the protagonist – he ran into a woman whom he stayed with for years, then he abruptly dumped her and started managing an apartment building he’d inadvertently walked past, then he abruptly left there and moved someplace completely different – seemed jarringly disjointed, leaving me unable to decipher what exactly the author was trying to say. 

After the lecture concluded, the subsequent “Questions and Comments” covered numerous comments and concerns, including the observation that the characters in Munro’s story seemed inordinately distant and sexually repressed, and the questioner wondered why that was.

There was a momentary silence, broken when someone in the audience offered,

“It’s Canada.”

I got a solid laugh with that one.  Though I felt some regret earning it at my Home and Native Land’s expense.  Americans laugh too easily at Canada.  The way Canadians laugh – or at least used to laugh – too easily at Newfoundland. 

The second-to-the-last question was mine, now in “Contrarian Iconoclast” mode.  It went almost exactly like this:

“If this writer were a nobody instead of a Nobel Prize Winner, would it be possible to see this story as arbitrary?”

The professor pressed me on “arbitrary.”

“Random events,” I replied.

The professor responded that she did not believe the story was arbitrary, because it worked as a satisfying, coherent piece of writing.

I did not believe it did.  But then I went home and that night, my mind, thinking entirely on its own, delivered an epiphany:

The professor was right.

What I cherish most about Alice Munro is that she had made it her life’s work to chronicle the distinctive essence of the Canadian persona.  And nobody else did that.  I realize there are exceptions – the two Margarets, Laurence and Atwood – but the majority of the Canadian writers I knew all wrote about whales.

(I love Mordecai Richler, but the only thing truly Canadian about his characters is that they try to act like Americans but they’re not good at it.)

The protagonist of Train, whom I originally viewed as haphazardly jumping around, turned out to be a person who, on every occasion in the story, was relocating himself to avoid the discomfort a confrontational “scene.”

Upon further examination, the unwillingness to face the uncomfortable music turns out to be the prevailing undertone in Train.  In one revelatory sequence, opening up – and, being Canadian, doing so only because, after surgery, she is in the throes of post-anesthesial delirium – a woman confides to the protagonist that once when she was young, her father spied on her, standing naked in the bathroom, and on the evening after that happened, the father was run over by a train.

The connection appeared obvious.  Though there was a perfunctory “I’m Sorry” –  “That’s okay” exchange between the two of them, the story’s message was that, as opposed to working through the transgression to an ameliorating resolution, a Canadian father would rather put himself in front of a barreling locomotive.

And the daughter forgave him!

“It seems to me just now I have got a real understanding of it and that it was nobody’s fault.  It was the fault of human sex in a tragic situation.  Me growing up there and Mother the way she was {an invalid} and Daddy, naturally, the way he would be.  Not my fault not his fault.”

Can you imagine Americans taking it like that? 

Americans would sign up immediately for “Family Counseling”, where, after an appropriate “healing process”, they would emerge stronger and more cohesive than ever, feeling almost grateful that the terrible incident had occurred, since it had, as a consequence, brought this now deeply loving family closer together.

Canadians?  Not their way.  No “touchy-feely” shenanigans for them.  They would rather step in front of a moving train. 

(Or hop a train, the piece’s now clearly accurate title.)

“It’s Canada” was a joke.

But it is also the genius of the story.

Thank you, Alice Munro, for showing the world – and Canadians themselves – who we are.

It may not be pretty,

But it’s us. 

"Memories Of A Mexican Retreat"

To others, it’s a Fitness Spa.  To me, it’s a revivifying haven for napping, bathing, lounging in a hammock, pampering treatments and communing with strangers, none of whom, happily, have heard any of my stories.

One day, arriving at the Oaktree Pavilion to practice the piano, I ran into a professional (classically trained) pianist, about to brush up for a performance (as part of a musical trio) that evening.  I, of course, deferred to her requirements, agreeing to return when she had finished.

An hour or so later, when I sat down to practice after she had departed, the piano apparently thought it was still her, and I played better than I had ever played in my life.  Fifteen or so minutes later, however, the piano caught on, and I was back to playing like me.  But for those fifteen minutes… boy, was I something!

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On the third day, a woman announced that the following morning, she was going to meet a new challenge by moving up to a more rigorous hike.  What I noticed to that point was that, as far as rigorosity in hikes was concerned, “challenging” had been dropping back to meet me. 

I just stayed in one place, and the same hikes, as compared to previous visits, were just harder.  Ah, the “up side” of the inexorable passage of time:

“Don’t bother switching to the “Mountain Hike”, Venerable Sir.  At your age, the flat to rolling “Quail Hike” that you’ve been handling for years will have you huffing and puffing like a steam engine.”

And so it did.  I stood still, and “challenging” slipped back. 

On Friday morning, however, which is the last full day of our week-long cycle, something miraculous happened.  By that final morning, some visitors have decided to skip the hike and remain in bed.  Others, as mentioned, had advanced to more challenging hikes, and still others had departed at 6:10 A.M. for the culinarily- enhanced “Breakfast Hike” (two-and-a-half miles for a chocolate muffin.) 

These cumulated absences left the seven A.M. “moderate hike” contingent drastically depleted.  And, more importantly, it had transferred the bulk of the more physically adept to loftier assignments.

As a result…

To my utter surprise and exultation…

I found myself

Walking

At the head of the hike! 

Me!  The unquestionable Leader of the Pack!  Marching along up front, with the Spa-Employee leader!  

When was the last time I led all hikers triumphantly down the trail?  I don’t know, like maybe twenty years ago. 

And now, magically, (albeit primarily due to attrition)

I’m back!

Strike up “Oh Canada.”  I am ready to receive the “Gold!”

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Let’s be honest about it.  A blog is just a small step up from talking to yourself. 

I spend most of my time in my head.  But at this place, I mean, every dinner when you arrive, you are seated at one of the tables for eight whose complement of diners has not yet been completed.  This allows the possibility of encountering seven new strangers every evening.

And they get to encounter me! 

I hope I didn’t jabber, but I probably did.  I could barely control myself.  It’s like a guy on a fast let loose at an “All-you-can-eat” buffet!

I was in pontificatory heaven!  I got to explain the deficiencies of the “Separation of Powers” form of government to Canadians, and they actually listened!  I got to discourse at length on how television comedy has changed, and nobody looked at their watch, or said “Gotta run; I’ve got a “Zumba” class in five minutes!”  Well, some did, but they actually had one.

Also, and equally felicitously, while people got to meet me – and hopefully enjoy the experience – I, in turn, got to meet them. 

A random and very partial sampling:

I met a guy named Steve who’d been a White House staffer during the Carter Administration.  I met a guy working for a company making generic drugs, replacing the high-priced drugs whose patents had run out.  I met a woman who ran a clothing company that employed two thousand people in China.

I met three sisters with roots in Northern Ontario (Canada.)  I met two Carolyns and one Carol Ann.  I met a woman named Nancy, who had a daughter named Nancy. 

I met a lady architect from San Francisco who had just spent two months living in Marrakesh.  I met a woman who lived in Hawaii, who designed the interiors of houses around the world.  I met a firecracker who produced commercials for Taco Bell.

I met a smart and sensitive writer and multiple-goat owner from Vermont.  I met a Southern stunner from Tennessee who shoots squirrels in her backyard, and who, when she inexplicably one morning found a pile of poop in her living room, considered calling the police to report a “B. M. and E.” 

And I met a huge-hearted delight from Up North staying an unprecedented four weeks who surprised me with an individualized place-card for the Closing Dinner, and who, after I gave her a piece of my birthday cake, reciprocated by giving me a piece of (someone else’s) birthday cake (that she’d received) the following evening.  (I was trying to lose weight, but not wanting to be ungracious, I ate it anyway.  Are you buying that?)

I met these people and many more. 

And they met an aging Jewish gentleman.

Hangin’ out.

And hangin’ on.

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Afterword:  As often mentioned at this location, arrayed along the crest of Mount Cuchuma – listed among the twelve sacred mountains in the world – is an invisible Mariachi band that plays exclusively for me.  They regaled me with multiple, specially-written numbers on my birthday, and serenaded me when I left with the spirited, now traditional,

“We’re very glad you came, Mr. Pomerantz

We’re very glad you came, Mr. Pomerantz

We’re very glad you came, Mr. Pomerantz

And please come back again.”

 

(My departing send-off included only two members of the band.  I asked where the rest of them were, and was informed that they were currently off, playing a wedding.)

I know it sounds egotistical to claim that I have my own personal invisible Mariachi band, but, as they explained to me in a song, it turns out that I don’t.  The reality is this:

“We play for everyone

But you’re the only one who hears

So we’ll sing our songs for you

If you’ll buy us all some beers…”

The band, it turns out, is available to all and sundry. 

All you have to do is listen.