Antidepressant Exit's Paper Gift

White iris in our backyard

This month marks one year.

Last July, I saw the first article online discussing a possible link between long-term antidepressant use and dementia.  No legitimate, scientific proof of a link, mind you, since dementia's causes remain unproven.  However, I learned medically-based concern does now exist, not simply alarmist hype.  

And that was all it took:  I decided that if I could get off of antidepressants, I should. 

I didn't consult my primary care doctor.  I just did it.  I weaned myself off over July and August of last year, taking 50% of my dosage.  And then in September... taking none of my dosage at all.  The only side effect I noticed seemed to be increased dizziness, so I simply drank more water.  Some dizziness has remained, but it had already been a minor issue for several years anyway.

From what I've read, dizziness is both a side effect of antidepressants, and a side effect of going off antidepressants!

Eventually, I did tell my primary care doctor, and he didn't even bat an eye.  He didn't try to change my mind.  He's seen the research as well, he knows my family's history with dementia, and his own father had it.  He simply replied that if I ever wanted to get back on my prescriptions, or explore different ones, to let him know.

He knew something I didn't.  But I know it now, too:  One year later, I can say with certainty that I'm definitely not "cured" of my depression.  

Last spring, I'd grown skeptical regarding the effectiveness of my antidepressants, an assortment of which I'd been prescribed for nearly three decades.  That skepticism had initiated my online consultations with "Dr. Google" about antidepressant efficacy, which eventually resulted in seeing those articles plausibly linking them to dementia.  However, being off of them has shown me that, contrary to my doubts, they had indeed been helping after all. 

I'm not anti-antidepressants.  While I'd probably plateaued into a relatively balanced funk with my meds, I'm now noticeably less functional on some days than others.  So it's not like I'm recommending this process to anybody else.  Chronic clinical depression is a real thing, and prescription medications can be beneficial.  Even when they may not be as beneficial as one might like.

There have been a handful of days when I've almost caved and taken one of my antidepressants (I still have my unfinished doses on hand).  And I'm not saying I've stayed "strong" and resisted the "temptation", because I don't want to sound victorious.  If I ever have to return to them, it won't be a sign of failure.  True clinical depression is a complex problem, and I'm well aware the "chronic" part of my diagnosis means there are no easy or quick fixes, if any at all, with or without medications.

But I haven't taken any antidepressants in any dosage since the end of August, 2023.  Yet, anyway.  And it's been hard.

Indeed, I began this blog entry three months ago, knowing that even writing about it wouldn't be easy.

Nevertheless, the specter of dementia chills me to my core even more than depression does.  The experience my Mom and I had when we cared for my Dad during his journey through dementia was not the worst anybody has ever had, but it was bad enough for us.  Even now, eight years after his death, neither of us think we've fully recovered.

That's why I'm forcing myself to at least try and figure out how to survive my chronic clinical depression without antidepressants.  This is not what I wanted to be doing at this time of my life, but it's where I am anyway.  Not that I'm looking for pity, either, although this situation seems to fit the persistent unconventionality my entire life appears to represent! 

Sure, some folks insist mine is a fake illness, and even among those who acknowledge its reality, there remains a considerable taboo regarding its diagnosis and treatment.  And yes, like a lot of medical activity in our society, depression probably is one of the easiest to mis-diagnose or otherwise exploit.  

What we can't see is often difficult to identify or accept.

Which - ironically, of course - is one of the ways depression can get a grip on people like me!

The longer I've gone without any antidepressants, the changes that have taken place in my physiology and emotions have become ever more pronounced.  I'd previously blogged about my weight loss, for example, which apparently has stopped, as I've begun regaining a few pounds.  A couple of people actually think I look ill, so maybe reapplying some of what I'd lost isn't a bad thing, although I didn't get as skinny as I was in my NYC days, when my depression was first diagnosed.  

And something else has happened:  Going without antidepressants appears to have allowed my relentless anxiety - which never went away, but was only masked - to spawn IBS-C, sometimes called "nervous gut".  While it has required some major dietary changes in my life, and I sure miss all of my fried, fatty pleasures, I have to admit it is also forcing me to make healthier decisions about the food I am eating.  So it's not entirely disheartening.

Thankfully, too, I'm blessed with a long-time friend who has faithfully proven himself to be a remarkably resonant sounding board.  He's been the one encouraging me the strongest to get back into writing.  My pastor, with whom I've been meeting monthly, also says I should write more.  So while I'm not crafting prize-winning prose here, what you're reading is part of my therapy.

And yeah... about this blog.  Turns out, journeying without antidepressants has led to a pivotal realization for me:  When I started blogging 15 years ago, I unwittingly incorporated an unhelpful ethos of sociopolitical drama, which I apparently never processed in healthy ways.  It's gotten so I can't tolerate all of the rage and animosity so many of us try to absorb and/or exhibit in our instant, incessant, emotionally-fraught world.

Earlier this year, I began culling my relatively dormant catalog of essays that no longer represent how I want to interact with others, either online, or in-person.  Neither my close friend nor my pastor told me to do it, or even knew I was doing it until I told them.  While I used to have over 1,300 essays, I've whittled that number down by nearly 1,000, and I'm not done deleting yet.  It's just that deleting all those essays - each representing a considerable amount of work - is itself draining.  Why?  Well, for one thing, I can't believe I used to be so haughty and ungracious in my writing.

I may not have been wrong about facts, although obviously, I sometimes was.  Instead many times, I was wrong about the attitude with which I wrote about those facts.  It's easy for us to let angst govern our responses, but that is emotionalism, and if I'm an expert on anything, it's how dangerous emotionalism can be.

Emotions get tricky when it comes to disciplining ourselves in managing them responsibly for everyday life.  And time was, this would be the point at which I'd get quite religious in prescribing fixes and antidotes to such dilemmas... but now I realize I'm in no position to pontificate or proselytize.  I'm still a person of faith, but an increasingly humbled one.

Do you realize there's a difference between being humble, and being humbled?  I'm definitely not the former, but I am the latter.

One year ago, my objective was to see if I could avoid at least one possible route towards a possible future with dementia.  And yes, I'm aware of how much uncertainty exists in that one sentence!  I had no clue then how anything would unfold over the next twelve months, and I'm not yet able to confirm I made the right call.  Nobody knows for certain that any length of antidepressant use has a significant impact on developing dementia.  And if it does, nobody can assure me that stopping my antidepressants will make any significant difference.

Nevertheless, one year on, my experience with my dear Dad continues to tell me today's journey has merit.  But just like I did as one of his caregivers, I'm having to take today one at a time.

And yes, it is both as shallow and deep as it sounds.

Thank you for reading.

_____

PS - Still wondering about the "paper gift" part of this essay's title?  It comes from the traditional wedding anniversary gifting convention, which dictates paper as the first anniversary present.  Paper is usually made of woven material, symbolizing two people intertwining their individualities to create a new identifiable unit.  Paper also represents a blank opportunity upon which the happy couple has (hopefully) begun writing their new chapters together... with"opportunity" as a key theme.  (Hey, I needed something to lighten the mood!)

Hard Hat Work

Modeling my father's last company hard hat

My father grew up in Brooklyn, New York, during the 1930's and 40's.  

Although he wasn't Jewish, his childhood neighborhood borders one that mostly is.  And Dad's first paying job was dashing about both neighborhoods on winter weekend evenings, lighting fires in fireplaces, and making sure pilot lights in stoves and heating systems were burning.  He did this for practicing Orthodox Jewish neighbors whose religious customs prevented certain tasks on their Sabbaths.

For a kid, it was a decent gig, and he got paid both in cash and food, since Sabbath meals tend to be substantial with plenty to share.  It certainly was an unusual job, but then again, Dad's resume ended up being rather unconventional anyway.

While he attended Pratt Institute, Dad began working for Richmond Screw Anchor, a company founded in 1911 in Brooklyn that made and marketed proprietary components designed for large-scale concrete construction.

Did your eyes glaze over just now?  Well, throughout his career with Richmond, that's how a lot of people would respond when Dad told them what he did for a living!

His certainly never was a common job, or a glamorous one.  Basically, he sold steel contraptions that hold pieces of concrete together, or help reinforce other concrete structures.  For example, whenever you see a concrete wall with little holes spaced evenly across it, chances are, various types of steel anchors are in those holes, and they're helping to hold that wall together.

While it's unclear who actually invented the original screw anchor, Richmond owned its patents, and defended them vigorously in court for decades as other companies tried to copy it.

Dad became something of a walking encyclopedia of concrete construction.  Well, at least a "driving" encyclopedia... Richmond provided him a new company car every couple of years, and he usually had product samples in its trunk.  Those cars were never luxurious.  He started out with Fords, but eventually moved up to base-model Oldsmobiles.  Back in the day, that was one way to climb corporate ladders - by the type of company car they provided!

And hey:  Having a salesperson showing up at a job site driving a Cadillac or a Lincoln would have made customers think twice about the prices they were paying for all those screw anchors they were ordering.

Because, yes, being in the business of selling concrete construction components, Dad regularly visited active, gritty construction sites, first in the Northeast and New England, and then here in Texas and the Southwest.  He usually returned from his days on the road with mud splattered on those company cars.  It was another non-glamorous part of his non-glamorous job.

And on most construction sites, everyone who enters any work zone is required to wear basic protective equipment like a hard hat.

Dad's company provided him with a series of hard hats over the years, and the one I'm sporting in the photo above is the last one he had.  It's been hanging in a closet ever since his retirement, after traveling untold numbers of miles in his cars' trunks, rolling about among steel samples.

He didn't like wearing hard hats.  Or any hats, actually.  You see, Dad was a first-generation American Finn, with both of his parents being immigrants from Finland.  Finns tend to have skulls that are larger than average, and Dad's was no exception.  He never wore hats because most of them didn't fit.  Granted, most hard hats feature a sort of suspended strap system designed to elevate the hat's hard shell.  And those plastic straps - at least in newer models - are adjustable.

The hard hat itself is considered an American invention, although its idea was based on millennia of war helmet designs.  Early hard hats were made of leather covered in cured tar, then steamed canvas, then metal, and eventually various types of plastics.

A true hard hat - instead of just a helmet - features those suspension straps underneath a shell-like cover to increase the chances of protecting a wearer's brain from broad, harsh impacts.  They're not necessarily intended to provide significant protection against high-velocity projectiles like bullets, as modern hard hats are non-metallic so they can be used around electrical wires.  Those suspension straps were the critical invention, because they elevate the hard plastic off of one's skull, thereby partially diffusing, absorbing, and even re-directing a blow.  That's why in the photo above, the hard plastic appears to be floating just above my noggin.  If you see somebody wearing a plastic hat that is fitting snugly on their head, they either don't know how to wear it, or it's not really a hard hat.  It's a helmet.

The sad fact that my Dad would later develop dementia had nothing to do with whether or not he wore his hard hat on construction sites he'd visit.  Dad may have suffered a concussion or two during his life, but those would have been during his rough-and-tumble growing up years on Brooklyn's streets, not while working for Richmond.

Nevertheless, before he retired, worker safety - such as the type represented by hard hat use - did become a real thing for Dad.

One of his lifelong hobbies had been cameras.  As a teen, he and some friends would regularly prowl what had been dubbed "Radio Row" in Lower Manhattan, where the World Trade Center now sits.  Radio Row was a collection of legitimate and dubious shops spread over several blocks catering to amateur radio, camera, high-fidelity stereo, and early tech geeks.  One could purchase just about anything electronic there.  And Dad had become fascinated with cameras.

Even long after leaving New York City, Dad splurged on cameras, including a personal video camera, which instantly turned him into something of a videographer.  He even took his video camera with him on his road trips to customers and construction sites.

On one of those trips, no matter how much instruction he gave the on-site crew regarding his products they were using, or printed material he gave them to read, Dad saw they either didn't care, couldn't comprehend it, or didn't want to take the extra time to do things correctly and safely.  Before he left that job site for the day, Dad realized he should - and could! - legally protect himself and his employer, just in case.  He decided to document what the workers insisted on doing despite his instructions and warnings.  So he stood off to the side of the construction site and simply videotaped the workers doing all sorts of wrong things in full view of his camera.

Literally before he got home from that trip, Dad learned there had been a serious accident at the job site, with critical injuries to workers and damage to the site itself.  Executives at Dad's company were apoplectic, fearing a lawsuit, but that was before they learned Dad had taken a video!  Remember, this was back in the early days of such technological availability, and most people hadn't yet become savvy to its array of uses.  He told his employers that with his video camera, he had documented the crew's sloppiness and careless disregard for his training.  He provided the video to Richmond's lawyers, who watched it, told the company they had nothing to worry about, and remarked how clever of Dad to have thought of taking it.

Curiously enough, even though Dad used to love electronics and gadgets and spending entire Saturdays on Radio Row, one tech invention he loathed turned out to be the car phone.  Back when they were becoming a hot item for many early adopters, Richmond insisted on installing them in all of their sales managers' cars (yes, they were on a metal stand which was literally bolted onto a car's floorboard, near the gear-shifter, like a big, black vertical keyboard - complete with a loopy coiled cord).  And while some of his peers welcomed the chance to show off America's latest status symbol - especially with their employer paying for it! - Dad balked.

He thought car phones were an invasion of privacy.  Especially ones installed by one's employer!

"But you won't have to carry the right change, stop at roadside pay phones, buy phone cards, or manage long-distance phone accounts," Richmond told him.  "No more getting out in the pouring rain in a dodgy neighborhood (or the middle of noplace) to try and call from a phone you discover isn't working."

But Dad didn't want Richmond calling him and distracting him while he was driving.  He didn't want them badgering him for not returning their calls more promptly.  He preferred being the person in control of contacting the office, and not having the office expect him to be at their constant beck-and-call (pun intended), which is what he knew would happen with a car phone.  And sure enough, on that score, Dad was entirely correct, wasn't he?  Mobile phones may have "freed" callers to a certain extent, but mobile phones have also forever chained callers to other people elsewhere, whether we like it or not.

Of course, it didn't take long for Richmond to win out, and Dad begrudgingly used his car phones.  He got at least two before retiring, and I remember the first one was the size of an enormous brick, and almost as heavy!

These days, when I get into my car and toss my slim, light smartphone onto the passenger seat, I sometimes remember that behemoth Dad used to bump against with his right leg every time he tried to get into and out of his company car.

Too bad in addition to hard hats, Richmond didn't supply him with shin guards.

_____

Feliz and the Porcupine

Feliz and me in Sedgwick, Maine, circa 2002.
We're posing in front of a spruce sapling planted in memory of a cousin.

 

My father had an exceptionally high pain threshold.

His tolerance for physical pain exceeded that of most people's.  How did we know?  He once accidentally dropped a full-length beveled door mirror onto his left foot, and it wasn't until four or five days later, after it swelled so much he couldn't put on any kind of slipper or shoe, that Mom convinced him to go see a doctor.

His orthopedist was incredulous.  He called Mom into the exam room after getting Dad's X-rays back.  "Look at this" he marveled, showing Mom the slides.  "He should be in incredible pain, and unable to even limp on it like he's doing."  Dad, who was not yet retired and fully lucid, simply shrugged.  Apparently the only reason he limped was because his foot had swollen so much, no part of it was pliable.

So it shouldn't have come as any surprise that his dog, Feliz, seemed to have a high pain threshold as well.  And how did we figure that out?

On our last extended family trip to Maine, we stayed in the home of a cousin of Mom's, who was living elsewhere while caring for a sick friend.  Cousin Janet's house features a conventionally-sized rural Maine yard, plus a sprawling, lush lawn further back in her multi-acre property.  It is partially ringed by a thick forest, as well as high grasses from adjacent, unmowed pasturelands.  A neighbor with a commercial-grade lawnmower kept this part of those old pastures cut and trimmed for her.  And we got to enjoy it during our stay.

Feliz loved it too, because as a pure-bred collie, he had an innate herding instinct.  When the five grandkids were there, he could stand on the crown of that lawn's manicured hillock and see everybody who was walking or playing or chasing across its emerald expanse.  He didn't have to fret or bark - just stand sentinel and watch.

Beyond this grassy idyll snakes an old, abandoned cart path, deep into those woods thick with huge birches, maples, and pines.  I ventured down the path a couple of times, but its broad canopy of tree branches overhead creates something of a sanctuary for Maine's infamously ravenous summertime mosquitoes, so I mostly stayed where open breezes helped disperse airborne pests.

Dad, however, didn't seem to have the same problem with those mosquitoes, and neither did Feliz.  Every morning, they took a stroll along that wooded path, following its meanderings for quite a ways into the secluded habitat of deer, wild turkeys, black bears, and - as we eventually learned - porcupines.

During their walks, Dad kept Feliz on a leash precisely because he knew they weren't in any conventional suburban park.  Many of Maine's human-made forest paths, some dating back far longer than a century, have reverted to their original wild habitat, and Dad couldn't risk Feliz, with his inquisitive and protective canine instincts, charging any of the native population!

One bright and glorious afternoon, Dad, Mom and I returned to Cousin Janet's after one of our visits to Acadia National Park, on Mount Desert Island, an hour's drive away.  As usual, Feliz greeted us and let us know he was happy we were back.  As he sniffed around us (probably detecting that we'd been someplace interesting without him!), we each noticed things sticking out of his pronounced proboscis.  Collies have a long nose - we affectionately called his a "schnoz" - and wouldn't you know it, but there were about a half-dozen long needles sticking out of it!  But Feliz showed absolutely no signs of pain or discomfort, or even awareness of their existence.

Then Dad recalled earlier that morning, during their daily walk up into the forest, they'd seen a porcupine just off of the old cart path.  Dad had immediately turned around, pulling Feliz away from it with his collared leash, and had no clue that he'd let the dog get close enough to the porcupine for anything to have happened.  Feliz never yelped in any kind of surprise or pain.

Did you know that porcupines don't actually "shoot" their quills?  Whatever quills they release come from their tail, which they swing as a defensive weapon, like a prickly paddle.  So apparently, Feliz had managed to stick his long nose just close enough and just long enough to agitate the prickly rodent, who was able to smack that proboscis with its tail, leaving his barbed calling cards.  During the time we'd been away that day, those barbs had helped the quills embed their way further into Feliz's skin and cartilage.

Now, before you start feeling too sorry for Feliz, remember:  He was demonstrating absolutely no obvious pain!  He was his usual happy, slobbery self, glad we were all together again, eager for attention, but not at all interested in having us try to hold him still while we examined his face.  

He promptly slurped down a fresh bowl of water Dad got for him with no clear signs of any distress.  We three humans, however, were astounded and perplexed!  And getting a bit distressed, even though Feliz wasn't.  It was 5 pm, which was probably closing time for the only nearby vet we were aware of, 15 minutes away in Blue Hill.  But Dad called their office anyway, and sure, they could stay open.  They hadn't finished seeing all of their patients for the day anyway, and removing porcupine quills was something they did frequently.  The vet would later tell us he'd removed them not just out of every type of household pet and farmyard animal you can think of, but out of human beings as well! 

"It's all in the technique," he assured us.

But he also wanted to charge Dad about $1,000 to extract the six or so in Feliz's schnoz.  Dad responded with some sticker shock!  We understood quills are not easy to remove, and the procedure to do so usually is itself painful.  Indeed, the big pricetag involved anesthesia the vet wanted to use on Feliz, and included a potential overnight stay for the dog if he didn't manage the anesthesia's side effects well.  

Up until then, Feliz had otherwise been a surprisingly healthy dog, and Dad hadn't ever needed to spend that kind of money on his healthcare.  So finally, I brokered a deal between Dad and the vet:  How about the vet pull out one quill without anesthesia, and gauge Feliz's reaction?  If the procedure caused obvious pain, which would understandably compromise the vet's professional ethics, then anesthesia would be necessary before removing the rest.  However, if Feliz barely blanched, how about they just continue pulling out the others without anesthesia?

Dad agreed with that.  And the vet and his nurse, after having observed Feliz all this time and realizing he was displaying no obvious pain whatsoever, agreed too.  So Dad and I left the exam room and walked down a long hallway to the waiting room.  Blue Hill is a small village by Texas standards, but this veterinary clinic seemed quite large, giving testament to the area's agrarian population.  

As we walked, I think Dad was bracing himself for that $1,000 anesthesia bill.  But he needn't have.

I kid you not:  Before Dad and I got to the waiting room, we could hear that distinctive pitter-patter of Feliz's four paws bounding towards us across the tile flooring!  Sure enough, we both spun around, and there was Feliz, his sweet, trademark smile across his face, his dancing eyes, tongue dangling out of his mouth, and NOT ONE QUILL in his schnoz!

Behind him came the vet and his nurse, both of them grinning broadly.  The vet just laughed:  "We pulled out the first one, and he didn't even flinch!  So we both went to work on the others and the nurse swabbed it all with antibiotic ointment, and opened the door!"  And he scrambled away from them as quickly as he could.

Apparently, Feliz wasn't in physical pain, but he definitely didn't want us to leave him alone in that room with those strangers!

You see, our dear Feliz was a shelter dog Dad rescued from the city pound in Lancaster, just south of Dallas.  He was within a day from being euthanized because he'd been unclaimed, meaning he'd probably been there for a while.  Before being brought to the Lancaster pound, he'd been on the streets for an unknown period of time, abandoned, and apparently hit by a car, because his right hip didn't work very well; he always would favor it.  The shelter staff said he'd arrived with a tag on his collar listing an Austin address, which is about a three-hour drive away, but they couldn't locate anybody who knew him.  

Before we'd had him very long, we realized he had some issues with separation anxiety.  He hated it whenever we'd all leave the house at the same time - he had a remarkable ability to pout and make us feel guilty for leaving him completely alone!  And he'd usually go somewhat bonkers when we'd return - excited as each one of us got out of the car, through the garage, and into the house.  

During his time with us, Dad took him to two different vets in Texas.  Both of them figured his hip had been broken at one point, but each also independently advised no type of corrective surgery.  Yes, he limped, but it didn't seem to be from pain, but simply from the break growing back improperly, because he'd never received the proper care at the proper time.  Feliz had long since learned to accommodate that hip's dysfunctionality, and surgery now would cause him more distress than it was worth.

After learning the hip was not a serious issue, Dad took him for evening walks around our suburban neighborhood, and discovered that while he loved those walks, Feliz initially refused to pass any stormwater drains that are built into the curbs where we live.  We came to presume that since the canine sense of smell is far more powerful than ours, perhaps there were odors emanating from those drains that we humans couldn't detect, but that reminded him of smells from when he lived on the streets, or in shelters.  Thankfully, though, Feliz eventually learned that those drains were nothing to fear.  

We hadn't considered how leaving him with only a doctor and nurse in that exam room might potentially traumatize the poor thing.  I'm sure the smells and sounds of an animal care facility, whether in Texas or Maine, seemed horribly familiar and foreboding to a former shelter dog.

"Get done with whatever you're doing to my schnoz and let me outta here!" was the attitude both the vet and his nurse distinctly received from Feliz as they worked quickly to remove those quills.  And as soon as he was reunited with us in the lobby, which was at the end of that hallway, our poor happy dog literally relieved himself all over their floor.

"Don't worry," the receptionist laughed.  "We clean up worse than that many, many times each day!"

Once in Mom and Dad's minivan, riding back to Cousin Janet's, I more closely inspected Feliz's schnoz, and all I could see were about six small red dots where minuscule amounts of blood had clotted as the antibiotic ointment dried.

Amazing.  

Of course, it wasn't until later that we realized how cool it would have been to ask the vet for those quills as souvenirs.  And to my recollection, Dad never ventured back up that old cart path again.  These days, Cousin Janet tells us she has deer and wild turkey regularly meandering through her yard, crossing the road in front of her house, heading down to the shore - something that never used to be commonplace when the woods and fields around her were used for logging and farming.  She's even seen bears outside her windows, loping along, headed to the shore.

Hey - coastal Maine is so beautiful, one doesn't have to be a human to enjoy it!  Although actually, since many animals naturally like salt, the Atlantic Ocean obviously provides plenty of it for them.

So even though it was bad enough, maybe it's just as well the worst Feliz encountered was that porcupine.  

I'm thinking the only good encounters with bear claws are those of the glazed pastry variety!

_____

Trip Advised Her

Mom in the garden of Baghdad's Zia Hotel in 1957.
Just from her posture and facial expression, you can tell how hot it was for this girl from Maine!

Are you well-traveled?  

And by well-traveled, I'm thinking of people who do more than just travel a lot. 

Although I don't like to travel, I know most people do.  Some of them simply enjoy being able to brag about where they've been and what they've seen.  Others of them, however, truly consider the world to be their oyster, as the saying goes.  

These are people whose passports read like encyclopedias.  People for whom travel isn't a hobby, but a gateway to cultural exploration.  They seem to be at home no matter what country they're in.  They delight in the unassuming ways humanity, however diverse, tends to share common traits, like the happiness of a smile, or the satisfaction of a well-cooked meal. 

Like me, my mother is not well-traveled.  But she's traveled farther than I have.  Considering her sedentary, domestic lifestyle, one might be surprised to learn that Mom's past nevertheless includes one pretty incredible global trek.  It took place in the 1950's, long before international travel was as economically and logistically attainable as it is today.  And her destination was Baghdad, Iraq, of all places!  A city in a country that still remains resolutely removed from most touristy agendas.

She took an ocean liner over there, across the Atlantic and Mediterranean.  Their crossing was inordinately rough and many passengers became sick, but although it was her first and only trans-Atlantic voyage, Mom didn't.  They stopped in Barcelona, Spain, where Mom took a day trip into its mountainous countryside.  They also stayed in Beirut, Lebanon, for a couple of weeks.  She flew back via Frankfurt, Germany, and Paris, France.  She never went abroad again, except to Canada, and never even bothered to update her passport.  But as she recalls that adventurous spring and summer of 1957, she marvels at what she experienced as a poor country girl from coastal Maine.

After graduating from high school, Mom had gotten a job working as a nanny for the Howards*, a wealthy New York family with a country home on Blue Hill Bay.  That family's patriarch was an esteemed medical doctor who worked for the Rockefeller Foundation.  His job was to evaluate medical needs in emerging countries and help local governments establish best-practice protocols for their public health services.

You see, during the years following World War Two, America found itself as our planet's primary purveyor of beneficence.  Our country had not suffered the physical ravages of two successive wars in Europe or Asia, so we weren't spending our post-war economy literally rebuilding, either socially or physically.  And our industrial might had generated many philanthropists who wanted to extend economic advantages and humanitarian assistance around the globe.  For the Howard family, that meant living abroad for 20 years, in Brazil, Iran, Mexico, Iraq, Switzerland, and Colombia.

When they left Maine for the Middle East, the Howards had five children.  A sixth would come later.  Mom had been working almost a year for them, and was getting ready to go to college in the fall of 1957 when the Rockefeller Foundation intervened.  The Howards asked her to accompany them to Baghdad to maintain a semblance of continuity for the children, at least until Mom began her freshman collegiate term.  So she was abroad from March until August.

On the day they arrived in Baghdad, a fierce sand storm enveloped the city with insidious grit.  What a welcome, right?  She did the children's laundry every morning in a bathtub, hung the diapers (cloth, of course) and other clothing on the porch, and within half an hour, they were completely dry!  The Howards joined a British social club and an Iraqi country club so Mom could take the kids swimming often in their pools.  At one of the clubs, an employee discreetly approached Mom and quietly asked if she needed him to hire for her a nanny to help look after her children!  Mom wondered how old (or young) he must have thought she was to have five kids, with the eldest being 10 at the time.  

Until their family's rented house was ready, they stayed in Baghdad's legendary Zia Hotel.  The Zia was a grand old-world edifice with faded luxury and a verdant garden overlooking Iraq's prehistoric Tigris River.  In 1928, Agatha Christie stayed there and based one of her mystery novels in it, so that tells you something of the property's gravitas.  Mom thoroughly enjoyed her own stay at the Zia, and especially their kitchen's greengage plum compote, which is a stewed and sweetened Middle Eastern treat.

Aside from Iraq's heat and dust, the major readjustment Mom recalls was having to ignore the little lizards that would constantly be climbing the walls inside the Howard's rented house.  It was a fairly gracious abode, inside a walled compound, with a garden featuring trees, shrubs, and grass.  The Howards employed a cook, Sami, who was from India, and prepared mostly an American diet, including a delicious apple pie!  There was a cook's helper, a chauffeur, an older married houseboy named Hassan, and a dishwasher who Mom recalls didn't like using soap.  At least they didn't have to boil the water; it was safe to drink from the faucets.  Mrs. Howard shopped for fruits and vegetables at local bazaars, and Mom would wash, dry, and peel all of the fruit since, unlike vegetables, they would be eaten raw.

On the Fourth of July, the Howards were invited to Baghdad's American consulate for an Independence Day party.  Mom recalls seeing its American flag - the first one she'd seen since departing America in March - and almost bursting into tears.  She hadn't realized how much she missed something most of us take for granted.

As she prepared to enter college, Mom returned to America on a trip Dr. Howard had personally arranged and funded.  The airline was Lufthansa, and the first leg of her journey was from Baghdad to Frankfurt, where she was scheduled to stay overnight.  For that, she had to take a bus from the airport to the hotel, a ride for which clerks at Lufthansa tried to make her pay on the spot.  However, before she'd left Baghdad, Dr. Howard had made clear to Mom that she wouldn't have to pay for one single thing out of her own pocket.  And unlike Mom, he was wise to the ways of international travel, and he knew she was a prime target for scam artists.  So while Mom doesn't remember why Lufthansa said she had to pay, Dr. Howard's parting words rang in her ear, and she recited them to anybody who would listen:  "Dr. Howard said I didn't have to pay for anything."  

Even though nobody in Frankfurt had any clue who "Dr. Howard" was, or why he mattered!

And sure enough, Mom didn't end up paying anything extra.  Well, not in Frankfurt, anyway.  And actually, she did purchase something for which nobody had planned.  Although it was late summer, and she'd been born and raised in New England, Mom discovered she was literally freezing in Germany, after spending half the year in the Middle East!  The previous day, when she'd left Baghdad, it had been 120 degrees in the shade.  So before she went back to the airport the next morning, she found a shop with early opening hours, and purchased a tan, thick, wool cardigan sweater in an effort to warm up.  She remembers being so unnerved being on her own in a foreign country, she didn't dare cross any street to find a clothing store - she just walked around her hotel's block until she found one that was open!

Mom got to Paris just fine, but once again, Lufthansa clerks raised an obstacle.  They claimed she had to check something on her ticket, and even though there probably was a ticket office at the Paris airport, nobody told her that.  Instead, they instructed her that she had to leave the airport and go to a ticket office in the city.  Remember, Mom was hardly savvy about anything regarding international travel.  So she took a cab from the airport into Paris, and paid for it herself.  

What "Dr. Howard said" meant even less in Paris than it did in Frankfurt!

Mom's flight to the United States didn't leave until evening, so she had some free time.  And her unexpected detour placed her right in the middle of one of the world's most glamorous cities, which for anybody else would have been a wonderful diversion.  But not for Mom.  Anxious and probably reeling from some culture shock, she fell apart in the ticket office, confused over why she had to have her ticket checked, why she had to leave the airport, and not knowing how she'd find a city cab - with her limited high school French - to take her back to the airport. 

The Parisian clerk who processed Mom's ticket couldn't help but notice her distress.  She took pity on Mom and calmed her down.  Her shift was about to end, and she had an American boyfriend, a soldier posted in Paris as part of NATO (this was right before France began transitioning from that post-war military alliance).  He owned a car and the three of them could go back to the airport and take in some sights along the way. 

As you can imagine, Mom suddenly felt incredible relief!  And when she met the clerk's boyfriend, he was as accommodating and sympathetic to Mom's plight as his girlfriend was.  They went out and got something to eat, and the boyfriend indeed drove them around so Mom could see the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe.  Since by then it was dusk, and Mom was dazzled with all the city's glitter and lights, they probably took her by other tourist spots, but she was too overwhelmed to appreciate each one.

They got her back to the airport in plenty of time for Mom to make her flight.  The clerk even went into the terminal with her and made sure she encountered no other problems, accompanying Mom up until the final boarding gate.  While Mom was in college, the two of them became pen pals, as the clerk and her boyfriend eventually married, had children, and moved to the United States.  After that, they lost contact.

Years later, I was privileged to meet Dr. and Mrs. Howard in Maine.  They were both incredibly charming and still appreciative of Mom and how she'd contributed to their family.  Their remodeled and expanded farmhouse represented a miniature museum of their life abroad, filled with furniture and art collected from the various countries in which they'd lived.  As Mrs. Howard gave me a tour, I couldn't help but realize how much she seemed like a museum docent, pointing out various artifacts from their cross-cultural history.

The Howards obviously were more than just well-traveled.  Mrs. Howard was an accomplished artist and philanthropist in her own right who occasionally sent Mom postcard copies of paintings she'd created and donated for fundraisers across the world.  Most of their children ended up living abroad after they were grown, becoming a truly international family.  When Mrs. Howard passed away several years ago, her kids made sure Mom knew the funeral details.  Even they have fond memories of Mom, as she does of them.

Mom also remembers that Parisian clerk with considerable affection.  She and her boyfriend went above and beyond, graciously extending some global compassion to somebody whom other Lufthansa employees considered just another naive passenger.

Indeed, human kindness can literally go a long way, no matter our journey.

Nigerian Madonna, a watercolor by Mrs. Howard in 1987
benefiting UNICEF and a children's home in Nigeria

_____

* Out of respect for the family, Mom asked that I not use their real name.

Have a Seat

My father's desk chair for his little home office.
Mom got it for him in the 1970s from a mail-order company.
It arrived as a kit which Dad then assembled himself.

 

For eight hours every workday, many Americans sit in chairs.

And if those chairs aren't comfortable for them, those Americans tend to complain about it.

Sophisticated ergonomic chairs have become their own industry, since medical problems can be caused at least partially by poorly-designed chairs.  Supportive seating equipment is to the modern American office what hardhats are at construction sites, and goggles at welding shops.

I used to work for a major national healthcare company, at one of their regional distribution centers here in North Texas.  My boss, and his boss, were in charge of facility management.  We had a secure cold storage area, where at one time, the bulk of this country's flu vaccines were housed (talk about "cold" "storage"!).  This facility also featured a vast traditional warehouse, an intricately complex robotic storage/retrieval system from Germany that sorted a myriad of small drop-ship medical items, and two separate call centers on two floors.

The German robot broke down a lot.  A LOT.  Often, my boss and his boss could address its maladies, and there was a separate room full of computer servers just for that robot.  Whenever I'd see my boss's boss suddenly burst from her office and sprint to the robot's computer room, I knew we were down!  There were several times they had to call for emergency technology teams to fly here from Germany to fix it.  

The warehouse workers had multiple layers of protective rules from widely-adopted industry standards and government regulations that addressed most of their problems and safety concerns.  Even though we didn't have a union shop, all OSHA rules still applied, and they are many, and detailed.  The bulk of my job involved making sure we stayed in compliance with them.

Meanwhile, the call center workers in our building didn't have the same type of protocols regarding their comfort, health, or addressing whatever safety issues they encountered.

Issues like really uncomfortable chairs.

Long before I worked there, their office staff had been complaining about the chairs in which they sat.  As the company had grown over the years, combining employees from acquired companies, it had collected not just personnel, but all of the office equipment associated with those other firms.  You wouldn't think office chairs would factor significantly into the merger and acquisition activity that has taken place during America's healthcare industry consolidation, but they did.

Up in the second floor call center, which was the larger of the two in our building, very few people had the same style of chair in their otherwise uniform cubicles.  And none of those chairs were new.  Many of them featured all manner of amateurish ergonomic fixes, usually involving pillows from home and duct tape.  Not only did they look awful and unprofessional, they really didn't provide their occupants with the support they needed to sit for eight hours every day while they typed away on computer keyboards and handled one phone call after another.

Ultimately, it wasn't the aesthetics of those chairs that finally got to company managers.  It was the ever-increasing complaints from employees forced to tolerate the ergonomic dysfunctionality of those chairs.  I'm not sure about the raw data regarding non-ergonomic chairs and health problems, but for a healthcare company, things finally clicked:  Uncomfortable workers were not a good selling tool when those folks were on the phones with customers all day long.

So eventually, the decision was made to get rid of all the old call center chairs - every single one of them - and replace them with a standard ergonomic model for everyone.  Nothing fancier for supervisors, nothing piecemeal for one person to claim any disadvantage if they considered their new chair inferior to somebody else's.

I was not directly involved in selecting that new chair, but I heard it was quite a process in and of itself.  Management contracted with a third-party chair supplier who then brought on-site an assortment of models from various manufacturers for employees to evaluate.  I was told things upstairs became intense.  Apparently it was a combination of excitement over finally getting to participate in some progress, mingled with anxiety over this progress getting botched if an inferior chair was selected.  Whatever the emotion, there were plenty of them while folks registered their preferences.

And I get that.  My job involved a lot of walking in the cold storage area and warehouse, so my workdays weren't all spent in a chair.  And corporate America, no matter the industry, isn't known for robust employee engagement.  So being able to help create a significant solution to a real problem was no small thing.  The drama of that process was tiresome, but understandable.

But we hadn't seen anything yet.

A new chair was finally selected.  Dozens of them were ordered.  I think we were talking about 60 or 70 of them.  When the new chairs arrived, everyone's mood upstairs turned positively ebullient!

Meanwhile, my bosses and I had been discussing how we were going to dispose of 70 office chairs, all of them in various stages of dilapidation.  Considering the size and purpose of our facility, we certainly had huge dumpsters out back, but those were already being filled from our normal activities.  Would a local charity take them?  No, because even the needy shouldn't be expected to want what we'd already deemed uncomfortable and even unhealthy.  I can't remember how we'd decided to dispose of them, but suddenly, it didn't matter anyway.

You see, it was my task to get the old chairs out of the cubicles and make sure everybody got a nice new chair.  I remember going upstairs and being in a good mood, anticipating participating in something grand and fun with long-suffering co-workers.  What could go wrong?

I began with the cubicles that were currently unstaffed, pulling out the chairs and lining them up against a wall.

"What are you going to do with those?" one of the call center employees suspiciously snapped.

"Um, they're getting disposed of," I replied nonchalantly.  I thought nobody wanted these chairs.  People had been complaining about them for years.  It's why the company went through this huge process to buy new ones.

I was wrong.  

Instantly, a whole new maelstrom erupted.  "But I want to keep my chair!"  Over and over, co-workers began to chime in.  "I've sat in this chair for years!  It's like an old friend!  It's got character!"

Seriously.  People who one day before had professed loathing and disdain for their chairs were now strenuously protesting their removal.

I stopped, went downstairs, and told my bosses.  The three of us were incredulous.  And it didn't take long until managers from upstairs had been marshaled by their subordinates to insist we let people simply take their old chairs home with them.

Yes, they wanted the new chairs for their cubicles.  But they wanted their old chairs at home for their nostalgic value.

So I went back upstairs, and simply pulled out all of the old chairs so they lined the large room's walls.  Employees from the chair supplier then started dispersing new ones to each cubicle.  This furniture reshuffling took place while employees continuously juggled phone calls from customers.  They'd be taking their old chairs to their cars after their shift was over.

But not everything was over.  Out of the blue, a new cry emerged.

"Hey!  What about people on the first floor?  We want old chairs too!"

"Hey!  What about us administrative assistants in the executive offices down the hall?  Maybe we want old chairs too!"

I kid you not - suddenly junky old chairs were all the rage.

Literally.

My boss's boss had an MBA in facilities management, and she was as much in the thick of this as my boss and I were.  Other senior executives got dragged into it as well.  Before too long, we ran out of old chairs, so the disposal issue evaporated as a consideration.  We ended up giving away more chairs than the company had originally planned, and buying a few more new ones just to stop the chaos.

It all gave fresh relevance to the phrase, "No good deed ever goes unpunished."

_____

I Smell

 

One of this spring's heavily-scented blossoms on our backyard's enormous magnolia tree,
just as it was opening.

Do you smell?

I do.  I admit it.

And I'm not talking about our body odor.  I'm asking if your sense of smell helps color your world.

That's what my sense of smell does.  It reminds me of long-ago memories, whether they're pleasant or not.  My sense of smell tells me of changes in the weather.  And yes, at those times when I can smell my own body odor, it annoys me.

I used to purchase expensive cologne to help mask my B.O.  When I lived in New York City, I would take special trips up to Bloomingdale's on Third Avenue to purchase their then-exclusive line of Lauder Men cologne that for some reason, they sold only in the women's fragrance department.  I remember the clerks would acknowledge my savviness when as a man, I'd stride right up to the Lauder Women counter on Bloomies' fabled, gaudy main floor and ask to purchase their men's product! 

"Ahh!  You know your fragrances!" they'd invariably exclaim with approval, knowing "ordinary" customers had no idea to get a man's fragrance from a woman's counter.

I admit it made me feel kinda special, knowing I possessed an urbane fashion secret in New York City, of all places!  It really burst my bubble when eventually, I overheard somebody joke that they smelled of Lysol after I'd hugged them!

I remember marching myself immediately into the bathroom, taking my shirt off, and sniffing deeply into my armpits.  Sure enough, as a day wore on, that pricey Lauder fragrance would mingle with my body chemicals to turn what in the store smelled so sophisticated into merely eau de Lysol.  After that, I became even more deeply conscious of how other people receive my smell.

When it's humid here in north Texas, where the atmosphere generally stays quite arid, I can smell in the air distinct whiffs of a heavy, moist, musty aroma I smelled daily on my morning walks to the subway in Brooklyn, New York.

Early on those metropolitan mornings, I'd trot down three flights of stairs in our 90-year-old apartment building, which itself exuded nearly a century's worth of diverse residential odors.  I'd then burst from a cramped, stuffy vestibule into what passes for fresh air in Gotham.  I would immediately encounter increasing layers of must-tinged aromatics, walking across our building's private concrete courtyard, its pavement usually still glazed with a fine dew from a night only recently ended.  It was probably the most peaceful time of the day for our neighborhood, and its nuanced smells helped me imagine how that big, grand city was itself rolling out of bed and getting ready for whatever cacophony its denizens would be soon creating.

I can tell you I can't remember anything remarkable odor-wise about my walks back to that apartment during the evening rush!

And when I later lived in Manhattan, mostly all I ever smelled on my walks was exhaust from motor vehicles... and waste rotting in fetid garbage cans lining the sidewalks in my Kips Bay neighborhood.

Yesterday, I was getting my car serviced at a garage I've used for years.  Thankfully, although it is now old, my Honda doesn't break down often, meaning I rarely have to visit my mechanic.  They're located in a small town near my house which has a liberal smoking ordinance allowing for indoor smoking if certain mechanical ventilation standards are met.  And I could distinctly smell cigarette smoke in the well-air-conditioned waiting area.

There was no actual smoke, which told me the ventilation system was working well, and indeed, the place was absolutely FREEZING inside!  But there's no disguising cigarette smoke, especially these days, when so many places even in Texas prohibit indoor smoking.  For me and my nose, having such smoke-free ubiquity makes those instances when it exists even more noticeable.  So eventually, since it was a nice morning outside, I opted to retreat to a shaded bench on the opposite side of their front door.

And I realized how the odor inside my mechanic's place of business was bringing memories to my mind that I hadn't visited for a long time.  Helping grease those memories was my location:  That garage is just down the block from a restaurant where years ago, I worked as a host.  And the host stand was near the front door, which was also near... the restaurant's large bar.

Since this was located in the same municipality as my mechanic, the restaurant's bar also was specially-ventilated to welcome smokers.  Fortunately, the ventilation worked quite well, and I was never really bothered by the smoke itself.  But the odor was still there, especially in the woodwork, carpeting, and furniture.

Then I began to remember all of the various other smells more unique to that restaurant.  Foods obviously have odors, as do the different spices and seasonings in their recipes, which together create unique fragrances for everything from chips and dipping sauces to fajitas and varied beverage options.

After a six or eight-hour shift, I discovered, those smells tend to stay with a person.  I never liked leaving work smelling just exactly like greasy chips, melted cheese, and charred fajitas.  I've never had another job whose essence literally traveled with me, embedded in the fibers of my clothing.

My boss expected me to wear a dress shirt, dress pants, and necktie for every shift, which meant most of my dress clothes ended up smelling just like the restaurant's interior, no matter how often I washed the shirts or took my clothing to the dry cleaner's.  In fact, I'm convinced those dry cleaning chemicals actually served to sear the restaurants' odors into my clothing permanently.

When I eventually got another job, I threw out all the clothing I'd worn at the restaurant.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm mildly autistic, or on "the spectrum" describing that condition.  I've heard autistic people tend to have especially sensitive senses when it comes to smells and odors.  Like the memories of Brooklyn that automatically pop into my consciousness on heavy, humid Texas mornings.  

I have a good friend who shares my interest in cologne, and I'm not ashamed to admit that one afternoon, we actually found ourselves going from one shop to another at a posh Dallas mall sniffing tons of fragrances just for the fun of it.

An emerging category in the personal fragrance industry has become unisex fragrances, or smells that aren't designed for any particular gender.  While overall, the science of how personal fragrances get blended seems to depend more on marketing than biology, my friend and I both find the unisex confections far more pleasing than most fragrances marketed for a specific gender.  They're neither sweet nor musky, but far more complex, with aromas more evocative of ideas and places than emotions or sexuality.

Then, of course, there's that most elusive of all First-World fragrances:  the prized New Car Smell!  Actually, I've heard that some people can't stand the new car smell, but I've never, ever met one of those people.  I have friends who've recently purchased brand-new vehicles and while yes, their cars each have a distinctive, mechanical, synthetic aroma, both are surprisingly pleasant, as industrial aesthetics go.  I've heard that major automotive companies have actually researched the materials, fabrics, and fluids out of which motor vehicles are built, painted, lubricated, and detailed in a quest to determine the chemical recipe of a new car smell - and they haven't been able to do it.

Which, actually, protects the profits they generate whenever they sell brand-new vehicles, right?  No matter how accurately a spritz of bottled "New Car Smell" might smell, it's not like its pricetag could possibly match those dizzyingly-high numbers on dealer windowstickers.

But then too, whether in paper or coin, even money has a scent.

_____

Dad's Caged Dad?

(Note:  This essay was originally posted in 2017.  I have revised it to better depict the humanity of a relative I never knew.)

I have an undocumented immigrant in my family tree.

Well, at least one we know about.

He was Caucasian, which might surprise you.  He didn't breach any border crossing.  Nor did he pay any human traffickers thousands of dollars to get here.

Although... a form of human trafficking does factor into his story.

We're not completely sure of how he got to America.  But according to family lore, as far as my aunt Helena was concerned, what we think we know tends to make sense.  And the timing works.  We'll never know definitively, because our family's undocumented immigrant died in the 1950's.  As a naturalized United States citizen.  And an alcoholic.  

And because he was an alcoholic, he was not fondly remembered by his children.  Neither in the quantity of stories they recounted to us about him, which were few indeed.  Nor in the affectionate, poignant qualities relayed with what memories they did share.

My aunt, who died in 2016, and my Dad, who died in 2015, were his children.  So the undocumented immigrant was my paternal grandfather.  He died long before my own parents ever met.  And for years, Mom didn't know much about him either, because Dad, Helena, and their mother hardly ever talked about him.  

Early in their marriage, Dad did explain to Mom why he listened to so much classical music.  It was because the only decent memory he had of his father was intertwined with the genre.  As a toddler, Dad would sit in his father's lap while his father listened to classical music on the radio.  And sometimes, his father could be calmed during angst-saturated alcohol binges if he could hear it.  That meant the intricate strains of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms became a sort of soundtrack of serenity for their family.

Eventually, Dad told us about the evening he got home from work, as a college student back in Brooklyn, and opened the door to the apartment he shared with his family.  And there was his mother, and Helena, standing on the other side of a short, portly figure crumpled on the floor of their apartment's foyer.

It was my grandfather.  Dead.  My grandmother had arrived home first, and then shortly thereafter, my aunt.  And then Dad.  Dad closed the door, and the three of them stood, silently, looking down at the man whose drunken stupors had become legendary in their cloistered neighborhood of Finntown, in Brooklyn's Sunset Park.  

Dad recalled that his sister and mother and he were numbed by a mixture of relief and grief - but not grief that he was gone.  It was grief about how much the family had suffered, living with a hardened alcoholic all those years.

Finally, if only to break the heavy silence, Dad voiced a question devoid of emotion:  "Well, who do we call?  Will Halversen's take the body away?"

Halversen's was a long-time Norwegian funeral home on Sunset Park's 8th Avenue.  But I'm not even sure there was a funeral.  A cousin in Finland recently found an old, grainy photo of somebody who looks like my grandfather in a casket with flowers displayed nearby.  But no notation anywhere as to the photo's subject matter.  It's possible that my widowed grandmother mailed the photo to our Finnish family as a formality, or maybe the photo is of somebody else entirely.

We do know he's buried in Brooklyn's historic Green-Wood cemetery, in an underground 3-level vault (even Gotham's graves are high-density).  But the other two levels of his grave remain unused.  My grandmother and aunt bought the set, but couldn't bear to be interred along with him.  They're buried elsewhere in Green-Wood.

My grandfather was born in Finland, in a sliver of that Nordic country invaded by Russia in the Winter War of 1939, about two decades after his "immigration" to America.  My Mom has several silver spoons with which my grandfather's sister was able to escape as their family's home in Viipuri faced imminent danger from the invasion.  The town of Viipuri, still in Russian hands, is today called Vyborg.

As a young man, my grandfather set off from Viipuri as a sailor, or seaman, or deckhand, working on trans-Atlantic steamships and freighters.  We have records of him attending the venerable Seamen's Church Institute in Lower Manhattan, along the docks that used to spike outwards from the Financial District.  At the Seamen's Church, dating back into the 1800s, worship services and socioeconomic programs were geared to maritime workers from around the world, coming ashore in odd shifts, at the mercy of an industry rife with corruption, and achingly lonely from months-long stints at sea.

And this is where some unsubstantiated world history enters his story.  The following narrative comes from Helena's recollections of something her father told the family at some point.  I didn't ever hear mention of it until after I was grown, and only from her.  I can't remember my father ever broaching this topic.  So while its provenance lacks proofs, it does answer some questions, even though - and even because - it's quite unsettling.

According to Helena's version of her father's account, his last working sea voyage was a freshly-loaded freighter from the Caribbean headed towards Europe.  Oddly enough, the seamen had been strictly instructed to stay away from a locked portion of the ship's hold, below deck.  Which, of course, was like telling a bunch of teenagers not to do something.  Before too long, my grandfather and some of his shipmates had broken into that forbidden part of the ship.  And what they saw deeply distressed my grandfather.

There, in the locked part of the hold, were men.  

Black men, in shackles.  Caged, as it were.

From factual evidence regarding a new mailing address he established for himself in New York, we believe this happened sometime around 1913, which initially made me dubious.  Slavery was still a thing, that long after America's Civil War?

Apparently, an illicit fragment of it was, since it was a topic of grave concern for the League of Nations during the 1920's.  Somehow, somebody apparently arranged for these men to be smuggled aboard without the crew's knowledge, and ostensibly in Europe, they were going to be off-loaded, and probably shipped to yet another destination.

We don't know more details about that discovery today, but back then, my grandfather knew exactly what was going on.  And he wanted to be no part of it.  Absolutely not.

The ship's next port of call was New York City, with which my grandfather was somewhat familiar from previous visits.  He likely knew there was a vibrant Finnish community in Brooklyn, and that he could become culturally absorbed there without attracting much attention.  So when they docked in New York, my grandfather simply jumped ship - literally - forfeiting his pay in the process.  And he walked away from those caged human beings, off of the pier, out onto the streets of New York, never to work on ships again.

My father took this photo of his father - the older man at left, and again in the mirror, top right -
in their Sunset Park apartment in the late 1950's, not long before his death.
It's one of the few known photos of my grandfather.
Nobody can remember who the other two men are.

Eventually, after he'd married and become a father, my grandfather obtained his United States citizenship, but we don't know how that evolved, either.

The young woman who would become my grandmother, who arrived from Finland years later, spent her first night here on Ellis Island because her American sponsor didn't show up to claim her.  That was one of the legal ways people got into our country back then - by having a sponsor in America vouch for you.  Officials on Ellis Island herded those migrants whose sponsors hadn't claimed them into a large cage with iron bars for the night.  My grandmother could hardly sleep, what with the utter lack of privacy, and worrying about what might happen to her.  The next morning, she made sure she was at the front of that cage.  In my mind's eye, I imagine her cage was probably larger than the cage my grandfather saw on that ship, but the possible irony seems eerie, right?  Both of my paternal grandparents, arriving in different ways, had cages feature prominently in their coming-to-America stories!  

Eventually, a sternly-dressed woman strode into Ellis Island's fabled immigration hall, having just gotten off of the visitor's boat from Manhattan.  She walked right up to my grandmother, and asked her in perfect Finnish if she wanted to get off that island.

"Of course I do," my spunky grandmother eagerly replied.

"Well then, just follow my lead," the anonymous woman ordered.  She turned to an immigration clerk, and said she'd come to claim my grandmother, and had a job immediately for her in Manhattan.

"Is this true?" the dispassionate clerk managed in broken Finnish.

"Of course it is!" my grandmother retorted, completely unaware of what that job was.

My grandmother Laitinen's first US employer
lived in this townhouse, 60 W. 11th Street
in Greenwich Village. I took this photo in 1986.
Historians call it "the 1843* Samuel Cooke
House", built by Andrew Lockwood and first
occupied by a ship captain named Samuel Bourne.
Lockwood was one of the developers of 11th Street,
which at the time was at the city's northern reaches.
The property's first auspicious owner had been
Cooke, who was rector at New York's famed
St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church.
Other owners would later rent it out
to various occupants, so we don't know who my
grandmother's celebrity employer was.
More recent owners have included the son
of the late publisher Malcomb Forbes.
(*The historical plaque affixed to the
home's façade says it was built in 1842)

The two woman left the hall and got on the next boat to Manhattan as soon as possible.  And that night, my grandmother found herself working as a maid at a glittering party at a Greenwich Village townhouse that was rented at the time by a well-known silent movie producer.

As they say, "only in New York," right?

At some point, obviously, my grandparents met, got married, and had children.  My grandfather never seems to have held down a steady job, and eventually came to be known mostly for his prodigious drinking, and for writing a somewhat regular column in the local Finnish newspaper, New Yorkin Uutiset.  He wrote pieces about current events, philosophy, and life on the sea under the pen name "X Seaman," since that's what he was.  Years later, Helena learned that the prestigious New York Public Library had some of his articles on file as part of their cultural heritage archives. 

After my aunt's death, Mom eventually found among her effects a personal journal of her father's.  It was a stunning discovery, because my father and Helena certainly never, ever publicly acknowledged its existence.  In it are pages and pages of hand-written notes, pontifications, aspirations, prose from classical literature, quotes from famous historical figures, Bible verses and prayers - some in Finnish, some in surprisingly good English, and all by hand.  He drew utopian cityscapes and landscapes, and much of the lettering is in elaborate script.  The artwork at the top of this essay is an example.

From some of the dates he provided, his work appears to have started during those long ocean voyages, but they continued well into his New York City life.  He penned deeply eloquent prayers of dedication after the births of both of his children.  They reflect what must have been an aching sort of love for them, tinged perhaps with formidable intimidation by the responsibilities of being their father.  

The poignancy Mom and I definitely never heard in their recollections of him echoed to us from the journaling he crafted in their honor.  She and I came to the conclusion that they likely never knew he had that journal while he was alive, and after he died, none of them ever wanted to look inside it.  That Helena kept it all the rest of her life strikes us as mysterious.  What also remains mysterious is why he left the maritime life for good.  No specific mention is ever made - at least in English - of his transition from ships to Sunset Park.

A family friend who knew my grandfather in Brooklyn's old Finntown has suggested that one of the reasons for his drinking - despite Finns being notorious for their alcohol consumption - might have stemmed from his atrocious discovery on that trans-Atlantic ship.  As a Finn, back in the days when Finland was virtually 100% Caucasian, my grandfather would have barely known about slavery, and to him it likely would have been something that horrible people had done back in another time and place.  Not on board a ship he was working!

So for all the agony my grandfather gave his family through his drinking, maybe there was an explanation, if not an excuse.  His probable distress over unwittingly witnessing the horror of human slavery may have ended up putting him in another cage of alcohol abuse.  Even though we can't know for certain, I completely see the plausibility of such a scenario because I know from personal experience:  We humans sometimes handle stress in a variety of unhealthy ways.  

Life often is unfair.  Sometimes egregiously so.  Both in what happens to us, and how we respond.  It's not the most comforting epitaph, of course, but maybe my grandfather's story exemplifies that fact.  And maybe also serves as a cautionary tale.

After all, the epitaphs for you and me haven't yet been written!

Subway Robin Hood

 

My father as a Brooklyn teenager

Was your father ever in a street gang?

Growing up in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood, my Dad's childhood was never one of affluence.  His mother worked multiple housecleaning jobs while his father was, um, rarely gainfully employed.  None of their neighbors nor friends were wealthy by any economic measure.  And yes, in such neighborhoods, at least in big cities like New York, street gangs have historically been an unavoidable part of life.

Not that Dad was ever a member of a street gang.  At least, not in the "West Side Story" sense of the term.  But he did "run" with a regular "pack" of other guys his age... and I mean, they RAN.  They raced each other around the park, the beach, and down sidewalks.  They played stickball in the street, sprinting with gusto from base to base between parked cars and fire hydrants.  They ran up and down the stairs inside apartment buildings when it was raining outside.  A lot of it was noisy and gritty, but virtually none of it was criminal or harmful.

Most of the time, anyway.

There was one day down in fabled Coney Island, when a friend of Dad's was fooling around with a broken glass bottle, and tossed it to him when Dad wasn't ready for it.  Not that anybody can ever be "ready" to catch a broken glass bottle, but kids goof off with all sorts of potentially dangerous objects without a thought to logic.  And some random ideas that, for the briefest of moments, may seem fun or winsome can in the next brief moment become neither.

This was one of those random ideas that should not have been exploited.  As the broken glass bottle, all jagged edges and surprisingly heavy, crested in the air, its trajectory turned to just the right angle.  It met my surprised father's forearm as he reached up instinctively to try and catch it before realizing what it was.  And yes, there was a lot of blood.  Everywhere.  And this didn't happen in front of their apartment building, or down in the avenue, but in Coney Island!  Miles away from home by subway.  

For the rest of his life, Dad sported a sizable scar on his left forearm from that harrowing day.

After I graduated from college and was working back in New York City, I learned from my aunt Helena, Dad's sister, that he'd had - of all things - a NICKNAME!  Yes, a bona-fide, urban gangster-esque nickname bestowed upon him by his neighborhood pals.  Remember, in the culture of the street, even if you're not part of a vicious criminal element, you don't really ever get to pick your own nickname.  The other kids give you your nickname, whether you like it or not.  And Dad didn't like his.  

It was... "Zeke".  

Actually, as nicknames go, "Zeke" isn't that bad, is it?  But like I said, it was my aunt who told me Dad had a nickname, not Dad.  He hadn't ever said anything about it as my brother and I were growing up.  So during my next phone call with Dad, I asked him about Zeke, and while he wasn't upset about his sister spilling the beans, I never could get him to elaborate about it.

You see, his street years were so far removed from the suburban, corporate lifestyle into which he'd matured that reliving memories from those days made him uncomfortable.  Those memories of growing up as a first-generation American, with an alcoholic father, were undoubtedly painful for him.  He went into the Army after high school not so much out of patriotic duty, but to try and put some literal and emotional mileage between his new adult self and his childhood self.

I never met my paternal grandfather.  To this day, we know precious little about him.  We know he did manage to eke out something of a journalistic reputation writing for one of the local Brooklyn newspapers catering to the city's Finnish immigrant community, which was clustered around Sunset Park.  We've heard that some of his articles are today part of the New York Public Library archives featuring collections from the city's vast, diverse legacy of culture-specific journalism.  

Indeed, before the Internet and social media, printed newspapers were a key source of language-specific information for the many cultures and niche diasporas populating the city's ever-evolving immigrant communities.  Brooklyn's Finntown is considered to have been the largest group of Finnish immigrants in America.  Nevertheless, while my Dad had a number of Finnish friends during his youth, Brooklyn's spectacularly broad cultural milieu meant he also had Italian, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Irish, and Jewish friends. 

But getting back to newspapers.  As America's long-time journalism epicenter, New York City boasts a robust history with the medium, at one time having 15 dailies.  Back then, as throngs of office professionals and blue collar laborers descended into the subways to go home every weeknight, most of them would purchase the latest evening edition of their favorite newspaper to learn what had happened while they'd been at work.

Remember, they didn't have their personal social media accounts to visit during spare moments in their day!  Oh, how did they cope?

Along with several of his neighborhood pals, my father attended Manhattan's High School of Aviation Trades, which is now located in Queens.  In those days, aviation was still an emerging industry, and while Dad never went any further with an aviation career, he was pleased to see my brother do so.

Attending the Aviation Trades High School meant Dad and his friends were riding the subway to and from school every weekday, during both rush hours, like so many other commuters.  

If I had been an urban teen, riding the subway to and from school like he did, I'd like to imagine myself using that time to study.  My father, however, apparently preferred to use his subway commutes more for fun with his friends.

Well, "fun" as defined by unchaperoned adolescent juveniles, anyway.

Once, after I'd moved back to Texas from New York, in a rare - I mean, RARE - moment of fond recollection, he launched into a dinner-table story of the times during their commute home from school when he and his fellow classmates would literally snatch newspapers from the clutches of unsuspecting subway riders.  

Yes, you read that correctly.

Back then, you see, the subways weren't air-conditioned, meaning that for much of the year, to circulate air, each subway car had windows that would be open.  They featured larger openings than the windows on today's trains, and were double-hung.  That meant they didn't have today's narrow partial-fold design, which likely was invented to thwart activities like what my father pranked years ago.

As a subway train would be pulling into its next station, it would be slowing down while passing by rows and rows of people standing in tight rush-hour formation up along the edge of the platform.  And nearly all of those people would be holding an evening newspaper they'd just purchased.  Meaning each newspaper was completely hiding their face as they scanned headlines, using up every spare moment before the subway's doors opened for them to enter.

Dad even paused in mid-recollection to check with me:  "You know from living in New York, we fold our newspapers in halves length-wise, because when you're in the subway, space is at a premium."  I nodded in agreement.  It was a luxury for New Yorkers to be able to open up a fully-unfolded newspaper at home, where other people wouldn't be pressing against you in the crowded confines of a public bus or train.

Well, my quiet, honorable father and his high school friends would use that opportunity, riding inside their moving subway car, to lean through open windows facing the platform, reach out, and literally grab newspapers from the hands of passengers waiting on the platform!  Because the papers were folded as I've described to you, they fit nicely back through the subway's windows!

The kids would then bring the paper into the subway car, unfold it, and yell out gleefully, "OK, I've got the Times here - who wants it?"

Or, "I've got the Herald-Tribune, or the Daily News" or whatever... and somebody in the car who didn't already have a paper would call out, "I'll take it", and my father and his friends would give the paper to that person.  Even the ethnic or foreign-language newspapers - usually somebody would take them.  Hey - they hadn't had to pay for it.  Because the papers would be folded up, Dad and his friends usually couldn't tell which brand each was until after they'd hauled it back into the subway car.

At the next station, they'd repeat their exploits, and again at the next.  To be as adept as they were with their prank, they obviously honed their skills during more than one subway ride.  However, I don't know what happened as the train would eventually become populated by people who'd had their newspapers snatched at prior stations.

As he described his exploits, my father was genuinely giggling - he hardly ever giggled! - at the recollection.  But then he caught sight of my mother at the other side of the dining table, and she was horrified!  Here he was, her kind and moral and loving husband, telling us about how he enthusiastically stole somebody else's property and gave it to yet another person on the subway!

He was the Robin Hood of subway newspaper readers!

I'm laughing out loud even as I type this recollection - both at the story Dad was telling, and the abruptness with which he cut it short after Mom started protesting!

Of course, it would be easy to cite an ethical argument against what he did.  And I can guarantee you this:  If my brother or I had EVER done anything similar to what our father professed to have done on the subway, Dad himself would have been furious with us.

Oh, that Zeke.  He must have been a handful.

_____