It's been a month since my sister died, so I thought I should write a post about her. We were the only children of Martin Wendell (né Wenglinsky) and Deborah Polk Wendell, raised in suburban Baltimore by New York parents. I was the handsome, calm, smart one. Robin was the fat, bratty, unintellectual one. In fact, we both reacted to the same stimuli in different ways. Our parents, in my opinion, lost interest in us early on, perhaps because of tensions in their marriage. Our father wanted more children; our mother wanted to go to work and make money. Child rearing was left to my mother, who taught school, then went out at night to take classes to finish her B.A. degree, which she had abandoned at 19 after three years at Brooklyn College, to marry our father and move to Baltimore. The result was that neither parent had time for us. My reaction was to withdraw into my own world, hang out with friends and explore Baltimore on my bicycle. Robin's reaction was to do whatever it took to get our parents' attention, even if it meant misbehaving. One day, when she was about seven, Robin, my father and I were standing in the kitchen, near the window that faced the street, when Robin took a banana and started to walk outside. My father called after her "Don't drop the peel in the street." She walked out to the street, looked back to make sure we were watching, then threw the peel in the gutter.
Robin's school problem was that she had terrible vision. It took her first grade teacher to notice that she put her face right on a book to be able to read it. Once, when we were grown, she went looking for our report cards at our parents' home. She said she was as good a student as I was. It turned that our grades were similar, but we were surprised, good kids that we both thought we were, that we both had "N" for needs improvement in conduct over several years. There's a stereotype about "TKs," teacher's kids, that they are brats, and I guess we both were.
Our neighborhood was zoned for Woodlawn High School, farther away than the closest Baltimore County high school, Milford Mill, and with a much smaller population of Jewish students. Pikesville High was an even newer school, and as an employee of Baltimore County Schools, our mother offered to arrange to switch us to one of the other schools. I told her that I couldn't go to Pikesville, because they wouldn't let me buy the expensive clothes needed for that nouveau riche crowd, overwhelming Jewish, and Milford Mill was in a stodgy old brick building from 1949. Woodlawn was more modern looking, all blue tile and glass. Our Mom switched Robin to Milford Mill, which was more academic, and more Jewish. I think she had also noticed that Robin was attracted to pretty blond boys, and wanted to put her in an environment away from that. She didn't notice that I also liked pretty blond boys. By this time, Robin looked beautiful and was popular.
I joined a fraternity in college, ZBT, and Robin went out with some of the brothers, and fixed up her friends also. There were some she liked, but she complained that most of them were immature and whiny. One of her friends married a guy from the fraternity, but I don't think they stayed married.
I went to Johns Hopkins, and expressed to my parents my dissatisfaction with the school. So, although Robin was accepted to Washington University in St. Louis, they made her go to the University of Maryland in College Park. She lived in a co-ed dorm freshman year, where she met her first real boyfriend, a Jewish guy from Silver Spring. It was a good match, but it didn't work out. Robin was always very competent, but also demanding about how things should be, and I think that's why some of her relationships didn't work out.
After freshman year, she lived with two other women in an apartment near campus. She didn't want to come back to Baltimore in the summer, and took waitress jobs around College Park. One summer, a fraternity rented out rooms for the summer, and she lived there. That's where she met Jim Olson, but I don't think they hit off right away.
I wanted to teach high school, but my mother and her father, a high school teacher, made it clear I was not to go into that field. Robin was interested in science and health issues, but our parents pushed her to teach, so she could "be home to make dinner for her husband." I don't think she ever made dinner for her husband. She got a degree in education and possibly biology, and although she applied to Montgomery and Prince Georges Counties, she was only offered a job in Prince Georges, where she made her career. My parents wanted her to move back to Baltimore, where my mother could get her hired in Baltimore County schools. Robin didn't want that.
Robin moved to Greenbelt after college, and she remained in that town, which she loved, for the rest of her life. She taught science and health in junior and senior high schools in Prince Georges County for several decades, and after retiring, substituted in elementary schools.
I'm going to skip the long story about how Robin and Jim Olson got back together. They did, and she brought him home to my parents. He showed up at their house with blond hair down to his waist, wearing a dashiki. My parents were scandalized, especially since he was living with his parents and planning a career as a jazz musician. When they were married, by the cantor in a Reform synagogue at the wedding venue, not at the temple, our father threatened to sue The Baltimore Jewish Times because they didn't want to publish the wedding announcement. Jim offered to convert to Judaism. He said "One superstition is as good as any other." Robin said "If you would do it to please my mother, don't bother." There was always some tension between Jim and my parents and between Robin and Jim's parents. This dissipated with the birth of their son, Evan, in 1991.
At their marriage, Robin and Jim agreed not to have children. Robin changed her mind after several years. I was living in Miami, and started attending a Reconstructionist synagogue. Robin noticed that the synagogue in Greenbelt was Reconstuctionist also, and she went a few times. She met women who had smart, cute, adorable kids, and changed her mind about being childless. She told me it took three years for her to convince Jim, and another three to get pregnant. Our grandmother, Irma Polk, died in January, 1990, and Robin felt that Irma pulled strings from the next world to get Robin pregnant.
Evan had eyes like my father's, was much smarter than all of us, even as a toddler, and was blond and, relative to my family, tall and athletic. He always had a lot of friends, and he's still close with friends from pre-school.
Jim Olson was a brilliant musician, could read anything from James Joyce to Thomas Pynchon and tell you exactly what it meant. Despite growing up in the Washington area, he couldn't find his way around the block in a car, let alone to jobs downtown in Washington. He was also a prodigious drinker and drug user. Robin eventually asked him to leave their house. I believe she still loved him. He moved in with a woman after some time, but when he died two years ago, after getting clean, he had not changed his will or filed for divorce.
Robin came to my wedding to Joe Hample, at the time a student rabbi, in Los Angeles in 2008, with her friend Cathy. She was a hit at the party and visited us in Los Angeles, and later, in Morgantown, West Virginia, about a four-hour drive from Greenbelt. Early on, Joe found her off-putting, loud and bossy, and they didn't get along. But after a while, they discovered they were both well-matched cutthroat Scrabble players, and would play together.
Robin took charge of her temple sisterhood, fixing people up with projects that needed to be done, arranging food platters for families in mourning, sending cards to people when someone made a gift to the temple in their honor or in memory of a loved one. She also sent out notices for the Greenbelt Golden Age Club, and as COVID vaccines became available, she notified the Golden Age people where to go and when to get them.
Robin had spinal problems from a car accident when she was in college, and she also gained a lot of weight after her marriage. It became difficult for her to sit in a car for long distances, although she could drive to the public pool in Greenbelt and swim laps. She couldn't walk the stairs in her house the last few years, and had a ramp built to the back porch, where she could pull herself up two steps to get in the house.
She was an expert at Scrabble and Mahjong, and during the pandemic years, she played Mahjong online with people from Tree of Life, our temple here in Morgantown. The temple ladies would fill me in on what she was doing, and she would also tell me what the congregants were up to.
Joe and I were with her over Christmas. She took us out to a Jewish-style deli in Fulton, north of her in the next county, and then to Nordstrom Rack, where she offered to buy us clothes. I picked out two shirts and a sweater for myself. I think she picked out a shirt for Joe. She thought he didn't dress appropriately for a rabbi, and a few years ago, she picked out two suits for him, with shirts and ties to match. He wears them for weddings, funerals and b'nei mitzvah.
Robin texted me Friday, March 1, to say she was having stomach pain and dry heaves. She said "I hope I don't die from this." I assured her she wouldn't. She called me Sunday morning and I called her back at 7:30. She said "I thought you forgot me." She said she was better Saturday, but worse Sunday. Her doctor prescribed some medication, which made her condition worse. Her friend Susie came over with Pedialyte and crackers, but she couldn't eat. Susie texted me too late Sunday, when my phone was off, to tell me that Robin called 911 and went to the hospital in an ambulance. Evan flew in Monday and I came Tuesday, arriving at 3 P.M. By then she was on life support with no chance of recovery.
Evan, competent like his mother, made arrangements with the rabbi for the funeral and burial on Sunday, a long time away by Jewish standards. Joe came in Wednesday and Evan's wife Kellie came from their home in Colorado. Joe and I bought food at Greenbelt's Co-Op Grocery, where members have a number. When Robin's name came up at the cash register, we introduced ourselves to the cashier and told him that Robin had died. He had known her all his life, he told us. I got a haircut at the downtown barber shop, and the barber was sad about the news. She had three books out of the library, and I returned them. The young man at the desk told me he knew she had died. The last book she was reading, on her bed with a bookmark, was Janet Evanovich's latest Stephanie Plum mystery, Dirty Thirty. She almost finished it. For someone who had difficulty reading as a child, she read lots of books. I started reading more during the Pandemic, but most of the time, when I asked her about a book, she had already read it. She also had most of the streaming services, and saw all the important movies. We watched "Oppenheimer" and "Maestro" in her living room when we were there in December.
The day of the funeral, March 10, was cold with high winds. People turned out from the congregation, the Golden Age Club, and from Greenbelt generally. The funeral was more than twenty miles away from the cemetery, and in a Chicago-like wind, we buried Robin. The golden agers, mostly not Jewish, came out in the difficult weather and participated, putting their canes and walkers aside so they could place their shovelful of dirt in the grave, per Jewish custom. I was touched by that.
We observed shiva, the Jewish mourning custom, for only three evenings in Greenbelt, then one in Morgantown after we came back. Evan's friends, some going back, to preschool, all came to her house.
Some of my friends, Mike from elementary school, Lenny from junior high and Seema, my "high-school sweetheart" as she likes to say, and the one most likely to have been my wife in an alternate universe, all came to Robin's. I college roommate Chris came to the funeral and to the cemetery. I was moved that these people came for me and for Robin.
Robin was a force of nature, a ballabusta, a mench. When people asked who would notify the sisterhood and the Golden Age Club about the funeral, everyone said "That's Robin's job." Her loss is a huge one for Greenbelt, and for me, it's devastating. She was the only one I could talk to about growing up with our parents, and if I needed advice, she was there for me to talk to. Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet. Blessed is the Holy Judge. May her memory be a blessing.
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