I DID IT MY WAY

MISS RHEINGOLD: The name Rheingold in German means PURE GOLD. It is a clean sounding word combination-----inferring the best.

While the last white Rhino was wiped out of existence, in fact the very same week, so were all but four of my upper teeth! Were these items equally sad to lose? I should venture to say "no", but yet cannot.

I think there is a connection between these two events and the gold, but am not sure I can explain it to everyone's satisfaction!

Losing a part of one's body is traumatic, especially if the replacement does not give even a false sense of security!

Now, for the theme of this week: I DID IT MY WAY---all of you are sure to recall this song made famous by Frank Sinatra. What you may not be sure of is that it had been an equally famous and beloved song in France first. The title there; COMME D'HABITUDE  (As Usual), lyrics by CLOCLO---who died an early, untimely death by electrocution just after stepping out of the shower! I cannot say why I wanted to link these events together, but feel the irony may explain itself!

I have not lived any part of my life "comme d'habitude"; I have indisputably lived it my way.

So I am responsible in large part for losing my teeth after having smoked for 45 years. The gums tire of the activity and the teeth can lose their hold! My 21st non-smoking anniversary comes up this April 8th.I am thrilled to think I will be here to celebrate it!

 I have not felt the sudden pangs of electrocution in the literal sense, but the pangs of very weak or very wrong decisions have left part of me burned. When the clamps came down on those teeth that had served me faithfully for so many years, and I cried bitterly while squeezing the hand of the dental assistant who offered it to me, I heard  and felt the wild crack as a small hammer chiseled away. Finally, there were several harsh blows inside of my upper mouth, and I realized there was no "my way" to implement.

I was asked to look at some pretty slow moving pictures on a nearby screen. I did not choose to do that. Instead, I focused on two amateur paintings of a large yellow fish I suspected were executed by the dentist, a 40ish serious looking, but gentle woman. The fish on the canvas was jumping out of the water, high into the art.

A part of my life flashed before me as she held the mirror before me, and I saw there are some things we decide about that really have not got options. They sort of move along on their own!

The aftermath has hit me hard. There is pain, anxiety, and regret-----there are could haves, should haves, and the like which we have all experienced in different degrees. The options are madly expensive implants which would be foolish squandering at the age I have reached.

Life is about a series of gains and losses for sure---no dispute. They become muddled when one or the other takes front row! Was this experience a loss or a gain? A tossup?

Today, I am virtually thrilled to be alive another day. I will miss my teeth and the freedom they allowed me to enjoy smiling and eating! Here's a tribute to them.

For the friends who helped me with the cost, I am powerfully grateful. Age brings wisdom, yes, if we let it. We must rely on ourselves, however, once the wisdom teeth are extracted! Is this "PURE GOLD"? I am not sure.

Better to lose teeth rather than one's temper--or one's friends, so many of whom have departed these last years.

Love to you all, Miss Rheingold--- (-pure gold)

GROW UP & GROW DOWN!

This is a time to recognize that everyone has different manners of relating to time and to different celebrations.

When as a small child I waited for my mother to come home from work, the excitement was unleashed with nothing stifled. When my birthday was recognized, it was a giant and happy affair!

Growing up had importance since with it came more freedom and more time to investigate oneself on one's own terms.

We learned about new things expected of us along with the newfound freedom. New body size meant new clothes, new shoes, and new independence.

Christmas was unavoidable as was mention of Passover. The latter is very soon to be celebrated among the Jews pretty much everywhere. A big trip was to be undertaken, leaving Egypt for lands unknown. These were my ancestors, eh?

My husband and I arrived here largely because we were no longer allowed to live in Greece. The EU was very strict about allowing only Europeans to remain in their cherished land. There had been promised exile, hitherto, which we had placed our hope for. My desire to learn Modern Greek and my husband's desire to teach art at an American Institute on the island of Paros. Once we knew we had to leave our chosen prospects, I knew it was time to grow down.

Arriving in Israel, a country whose origin I questioned, was the beginning of finding an answer to growing down:

the means to begin to accept life's finality. I adopted all religious customs, beliefs and traditions of the Jewish religion.

I had lived on a kibbutz in 1962, and learned basic Hebrew. I never appreciated the sound of it, after French and Italian had been implanted in my brain! What I did appreciate about Hebrew was the word formation formed from simple consonant roots of two, three, or four letters. The composition of the language was imposing upon my linguistic brain!

I knew that my dream of obtaining permanent foreign status in Europe was a faded dream.

I knew that the language I was destined to hear was not one I loved to speak. I also knew that being Jewish would afford me free medical care and free burial when the time came.

I also know the time was slowing down, and at the same time speeding up. One begins, I think, to look at the new status of being older after age 60.I call this “growing down”.

What I discovered, unexpectedly, as the time moved on, was that growing down can be the best period of one’s life! The level of honesty expressed is more acceptable, as is the desire to be more honest! The appreciation of those who remain in one’s life, the taste of cheese and bread and soup! Growing down does speed up the awareness of the end of days, however,

Whatever and whomever I have loved is loved even more so. Everything I do is tainted with the possibility that it will be the last time!

ALAS! It has been suggested by my husband that I change my Blog name to Mrs.Rheinberg!

I, however, wish to maintain the name that recalls the famous beer----and cover girls of the 40’s and 50’s!

MISS RHEINGOLD---signing off

FLYING HIGH!! HOW HIGH?

Sometimes we don’t outgrow our ideas or sentiments. They last. Years back almost thirty years ago, I included a poem I wrote then into one of my books. (See below)

I also wrote several monologues for an English speaking drama group I led and directed. I am including one here. It recalled the suicide of my great grandmother.

MOLLY HERSHKOWITZ---- (82 years old)

To be played by an 80 year old plus, with a slight Yiddish accent:

Lying here, in my grave, I don’t have to worry and wonder who will take me in.

I am happy to be away from all the troubles. I don’t have to worry about being quiet and out of the way. Alright, the apartment was small. Hearing her husband shouting about how he wanted to see me stay with one of the step sisters-----how he needed more room----Nu? For what he needed so much room?

I used to light the Shabbos candles with my daughter. I don’t think she still does that after what I did. She only lit them because of me. She didn’t care about it any more.

She made good chicken soup with matzoh balls, but she always burned the bottom of the little diamond shaped cookies she baked for Friday nights. The stepsisters had big houses and big cars and fur coats on Long Island. We lived in a plain twp bedroom apartment in the Bronx.

So for Chana, my daughter, and my son Abbie, I  got married to a widower who had four daughters. We all come to America together---then my second husband dies too.

Nu, I was so afraid that I would have no place to live that I made up my mind to get out of the way. It was late morning, a sunny day, and I opened the front window of the living room and jumped out from the fourth floor.

I often wonder how everyone turned out. Did they talk a lot about me? Do they miss me? Were they mad at me for what I did? How do they explain it to the neighbors? Who showed up at my funeral?

Now, that I am that very age, I wonder if the world around me ---well, what will it be like? What will my absence recall? What will have been my message?

To conclude, the poem I mentioned above:

DON’T LIKE TO SEE LEAVES FALLING FROM THE TREES

I will rush away when my turn is up.

I’ll find untrodden corners and hide in the angles.

Someone I knew and spoke to last year is gone.

I knew her like my hands are known to me.

Bepiggled dumb earth to swallow up your dancers!

I wonder is there a far side and a near side to heaven?

Why can’t we choose our travel companions

So as to pack together and make ready the journey,

And send postcards along the way?

These are mere reflections----swiftly chosen this afternoon----why?

I am not sure.

Bidding you to read, MISS RHEINGOLD

Life is a Bungee Jump

Life is a BUNGEE jump! It goes up and propels you, which is what you want, but then it scares you once you are sent back down! YEAH. 

 

There are all sorts of meditation practices (my husband & I do one daily for half an hour), but they cannot dispose, it seems, of the really heavy blows. This past Friday, early afternoon, I googled obituaries looking for a very close friend of 52 years.

I knew he had passed away in all of my conscious mind, but my heart had to see it verified. It occurred suddenly January 6^th, a very short time after he informed me by email, not our usual vehicle of communication, about the discovery of cancer growth in one lung and a kidney.

We had been very regular correspondents of real mailed letters for all of the years my husband & I have been out of America for over twenty years. We last saw him while visiting New York in the year 2003.We had the warm privilege of staying with him and his wife Ellen on more than one occasion on visits to NYC. Losing a true friend is much like losing a part of your own life, a part that I, at least, will continue to attempt to recapture for the rest of my life. There remains a persistent refusal to accept the final absence as though a battery in a bedside alarm clock has failed you, suddenly, after counting on it for so long.

Danny’s death was sudden, although would not have been had his disease had some time to progress---radiation and the like, as he had written he expected to experience.

He will always be “Danny” to me, although Dan had been adopted a very many years ago. Danny Icolari: there has been only one and no other.

I would like to invite you to summon the memory of the last two or three friends whom you have lost. Close your eyes, remember a particular expression (without photographs) of their faces and particular expression: a smile, perhaps, or a laugh.

Death is perhaps simpler than life; you land with a bounce and sink into a dark unknown cavern, never to be seen again. 

Religion has tried with desperate energy and enforcement to soften the blow by creating all sorts of new horizons above (and below!): promises of reunions, re-creation of new lives to be lived here as well as beyond.

New Proclamation! There is life, and there is death. There is today and tomorrow, and then oblivion ( a great little book by Josephine Hart, OBLIVION) No need to falsify and prolong in fantasy. 

Life is usually long enough to do and eat great things, to explore, implore, love wildly, make fumbling awkward decisions to set back progress, shop, travel, patronize favorite haunts(cafes have done it for me), and most importantly to make wonderful, intelligent, loving, humorous friends.

Danny Icolari was one of these. Gracias Danny!