this has been going on for years.
4.5 miles on the treadmill.
Henry Adler died last year. I guess the family waited until Thanksgiving to unveil the tombstone, because that's when the whole family would be together. Tombstones, like burial places, are for the living, not the dead.
The extended clan, plus Traverse City friends and members of the local congregation came out to the cemetary. Darin's father and his siblings Lil and Bob had put together a short service that included the Mourner's Kaddish. I stepped aside and let someone who could actually read the Kaddish get a better look at the words.
Everybody started crying when Steve removed the paper covering the headstone. Steve explained the symbol of the Star of David made out of barbed wire, with one corner broken open: it means survivor of the Holocaust. Survivor of a society that wanted to kill him for no particular reason than his heritage. I always squeeze Darin's hand a little harder when I think about that.
We did what any respectable mourning family, Jewish or Irish, does--we came back to the house and ate.
I discussed Amazon.com with a guy who doesn't like them--he said his warning program Guard Dog alerted him that Amazon was looking for his credit card numbers on his disk. I said I'd never heard of such a thing, and he couldn't really explain it, but evidently Barnesandnoble.com had not given him any such problems.
After a while a group of the kids went out to the Sleeping Bear Dunes (that was their cover story, at any rate). Darin went with them; I didn't. I headed back to the hotel to exercise. Everyone kept asking me if I was running near the lake. I said, No, I'm kind of underdressed for that (in 40F weather). I went down to the hotel gym and ran on the treadmill. I kept upping the speed and felt pretty good. 4.5 miles took me about 45 minutes (strangely, I run much slower on the treadmill than on the streets, if either the treadmill or my measurement of my local running path is to be believed).
I went back to the room and slept for 2 hours.
I walked back to the house and read The Psychic Mafia by Lamar Keene. It's the true story of how Lamar Keene made his living (and quite a good living too) bilking people working as a medium and running seances. I bought it because I wrote a story about someone very like this, and I was astounded--or not--to see how many of the details I had thought up on my own appeared in Keene's book. Either we both have the same ghostwriter or I'm more in touch with the scam artist mentality than I care to think.
I find stories like Keene's fascinating because there's the natural inclination to say, Gosh, his victims were so stupid. But the will to believe is so universal and so ingrained that it's hard to say, That couldn't happen to me. But then I did call an astrologer a few months ago and I want to believe that everything he said is true. And when I get depressed or feel overwhelmed I think about walking over to the Psychic Eye bookshop to get a Tarot reading, just to get that metaphysical hug that says, "Not only is everything okay, but everything's going to be great."
The trick is to give yourself that hug and not get it from other sources, particularly sources interested in getting more money from you.
After finishing The Psychic Mafia, I played on my computer some and then wandered into one of the upstairs bedrooms, where Lil was lying down. I got really cold--the window was open to provide fresh, and freshly chilled, night air--so I wrapped myself in a handy bedspread and lay down with her. We talked for about an hour, until dinner was ready.
One of the amazing things I've found about Darin's family is that they talk about stuff. In my family everything's treated like a deep, dark secret--and we're talking about events like, "Diane got a B." (I learned very early on not to talk about my report cards at all. Imagine how well I did on the subject of, say, boys.) And Darin's family are really amazing about treating everyone like a member of the family, whether or not they are or not.
Lil and I talked about divorce, which has been a subject of much discussion recently--Darin's brother Scott and his wife Lauren are getting divorced, after only 2 years of marriage. And Lil's son Mark and his wife Tracie, who got married a month after Darin and I did, got divorced about a year ago. We talked about Lil's marriage to Dan, which caused problems at the time--Lil, Henry and Ilse's only daughter, got married in a Catholic church. Which only struck her and Dan later as being less caring about her parents's sensibilities than perhaps they might have been.
And we talked how these get-togethers every Thanksgiving started--as a way to keep the family together without heavy religious overtones: the Christians know it's not Christmas, the Jews know it's not Hanukkah, but it satisfies the holiday get-together spirit. I am amazed at how well the 6 "kids" of Darin's generation get along together and enjoy spending time together. This was a conscious decision on the family's part, probably in reaction to the Holocaust, but maybe just because they're a tight group. I can't even name my cousins, let alone recognize them should I run over them in the crosswalk.
Dinner was called, so we got up and went to pig out some more.
Prime rib, baked potatoes, whipped cream horseradish, a very yummy salad, more squash.
Digging out dessert was left as an exercise to the determined.
After dinner we played two more rounds of Trivial Pursuit. I wasn't on either winning team this time.
You know why not? Because I kept saying the right answer...and then deferring to someone else's answer. I don't know why I don't have any confidence that I know the right answer, since I seem to get feedback often enough that I do, in fact, know the answer. You'd think I'd had enough experiences in my life to teach me that I am a smart person who has a clue, but I have no self-confidence.
Needless to say, I got more irritated, but not any more confident, as the evening went on.
Bob's continual repetition of the dreaded syllable "Duh!" did not help matters any.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com