Sixty-Nine and Six Weeks

It's been a strange week. Joe and I were in Memphis Wednesday to Sunday over Thanksgiving with his family. I wasn't feeling all that great, but I had no fever when we left Morgantown, so I figured it was no big deal. We flew via Pittsburgh and Atlanta. It's an eighty-five mile drive from our house to Pittsburgh airport. The weather was cold but clear, and traffic along that route is manageable. The plane rides were excruciating because my ears felt clogged, and all four landings were painful. I've been to Memphis many times with Joe, and I enjoy his family. We don't have political arguments with the relatives; all of us are on the same page.

I broke lots of rules in Memphis. I ate fried chicken, pie, pizza and ice cream. I shopped in the outlet mall in Mississippi, just outside Memphis. I try to avoid Mississippi. And it was Saturday, when I don't shop. I bought things at stores I don't like for political reasons. I like all the clothes I bought.

It was my intent to go to the gym Monday, the day after we got home, but instead I detoured to the walk-in clinic nearby. The doctor there said I had an ear infection common to children and prescribed an antibiotic. He said I would feel a lot better by Tuesday, but should take the rest of the day off. I did that, only I never felt really better. Maybe a little.

I'm on Morgantown's City Council, and we met at five Tuesday to interview applicants for city boards and commissions. It was cold out and had snowed overnight. The regular meeting started at seven, with several presentations, including one from our Municipal Utility Board, the water and sewer people, unhappy about a proposal to change things at the agency. I tuned out some of the discussion. We could have thrown out the proposal right then, but it was tabled. At eleven. Then we had speakers from the public. We left at 11:30. I was not feeling well, and it had snowed again. I went to bed as soon as I got home and stayed  in all day Wednesday.

The weather was better Thursday and I ran a few errands out of the house. I had my last lesson with an ADD coach. I like him, and he helped me, but his solutions to organizational problems are complex and I need everything to be as simple as possible. My default mode is closer to catatonic than hyperactive, and complexity, especially involving apps, confuses me. Still, he made me see how to list things that must get done, and set a time to stop doing the off-the-wall stuff that I find really interesting, in my case involving lists of cities, or pop music albums.

Joe had asked me to come with him Friday to a funeral for an elderly gentleman, an old-fashioned  haberdasher by trade, who had passed away at ninety-three in a nursing home. We hadn't seen the sun in a few days, and it was chilly and damp out. I felt I knew the man after I heard Joe's eulogy. A son-in-law also spoke about how the deceased man had years ago found him a suit in another store that was just right for him. He wore that suit to the funeral. I had noticed that it was a nice suit, somewhat out of style but not horribly so. We went to lunch with the family at a tattooed granddaughter's house, which took us about an hour to find. We got home late afternoon and still had services that night at our temple.

I again stayed in bed most of Saturday, feeling weak more than anything, still with no fever. I walked for a half hour in a cool drizzle. I'm always afraid to not exercise. My heart is weak, and I fear it will stop if I don't use it. Joe and I went out at five to a memorial for Jarred Parrot, who was involved politically in town, running a successful campaign for an outsider candidate for the state legislature. Jarred was hospitalized just before Election Day and diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, at thirty-seven. He died the Monday before Thanksgiving. I knew him, and would have attended the funeral, but it was Friday, when we were in Memphis. This was an informal gathering of friends at a restaurant. People were invited to speak about Jarred, but few did. I don't think most people knew him well. He stayed in the political background. I didn't get a chance to greet everyone, although I know most of them. We left to  dine at another restaurant, and were home early.

 I ate too much (again) at dinner. Joe left half his enormous meal. I had to eat all of mine. The weather had warmed up some, and our cat, Tappuz, wanted to go out. We couldn't convince her to come in when we went to bed. I got up to go the bathroom at three, and by then she was waiting at the door. I brought her to our bedroom and hoped she would sleep with us, but she was awake, and wanted to play. Eventually, she jumped off the bed. I couldn't get back to sleep. Although it was cool in the room, I was sweating, probably dehydrated and overstuffed, awake because I drank iced tea at eight at the restaurant.

Saturday was also World AIDS Day, and we learned of the death of George H.W. Bush, the former president. Some praised him as a President who knew what he was doing and was faithful to his wife. Obama was all that, too, but of course, he's still alive and he's, well, Black. The counter narrative was that Bush deliberately ignored the AIDS crisis, refused to allocate money for research, and allowed anti-gay Evangelical Christians to take over much of the Republican Party.

My take-away from World AIDS Day is more personal. It's about my friends who perished: Scott Stamford, Rue Starr, Hal Wakker, Fred Shuldiner, Art Horowitz, Avram Chill, and David Fyffe. There were others who put me off when I suggested we date, hurting my feelings, until I found out a month or two later that they had died. I was in a performance art group in Santa Monica in the early 90s, and several young men in the group died. I was taken back to those times, and the heartlessness of the Republican Party, despite the kindly faces and the jokes, especially Ronald Reagan and both Bushes. I know of no one my age who is still alive and HIV+. Everyone I knew who was infected has died.

Today, Sunday December 2,  was warm and sunny. I slept late after being up much of the night. I got to the grocery store, and walked in the warm sunshine. We had to be at temple early for the five P.M. Chanukah Party, so I didn't nap, like I usually do.

Today I am sixty-nine years and six weeks old. That is, to the day, the age my father was when he died. I've been obsessing about this for a long time. I have most of the same ailments my father had, particularly a damaged and failing heart. What's different for me is the advance of medical technology. When I had a heart attack in 2003, a surgeon inserted a camera into my veins and found the blockage that caused the heart attack, placing a spring in the clogged artery to reopen it. In 2015, the cardiologist I see here in Morgantown, unhappy with my swollen ankles and some poor test results, sent me to the hospital, where three more stents went in. My father didn't have that technology.

I can still walk up steps, ride a bike, dance, drive long distances, not without a certain degree of fatigue, but I think no more than average men my age. I can't delude myself into thinking I am anywhere other than the last stage of my life, however long that may be. Rabbi Joe, my spouse, who is seven years younger than I am, asks me where we should retire to in five or ten years. I'm being realistic, not morbid, when I suggest he may have to do that with his next husband.

The Chanukah party tonight was great. I felt energized and I won the 50-50 raffle. I ate a lot of forbidden (diet-wise) foods. It took my mind off my father, my friend Jarred, my friends who died from AIDS, George H.W. Bush, and my still somewhat clogged ears.

Time to move on to the rest of my life.

Thanksgiving, Memphis, 2016

There is a new, semi-secret group on Facebook called "Pantsuit Nation." It's mostly women and mostly Hillary Clinton supporters. A Morgantown friend from California, who moved back to California last summer, added me to the group. There is also a West Virginia chapter. Most of the posts are from people who have been victims of hate crimes and discriminatory behavior. Often, posters ran out of a family Thanksgiving dinner because of something awful a parent or sibling said to them. It might have been a racial comment, or a refusal to accept the poster's same-gender spouse.

Joe and I are lucky, or perhaps blessed. I have one cousin who, from what I hear, is a big Republican. That cousin hasn't spoken to me since my mother's death nearly fourteen years ago. Just as well. Neither Joe nor I have political issues with our closest family members. We are always treated respectfully. We are all distraught about the 2016 Presidential election.

It was my sister's turn to have us for Thanksgiving this year, but there were complications, both for her and for us. Joe wanted to attend his family's grand Thanksgiving dinner in Memphis. We drove 210 miles to Greenbelt, Maryland Sunday and had a pre-Thanksgiving meal with my sister, her son and his fiancée. My nephew then went off to his girl's parents in Ohio, and, as a bonus, they left their sweet dog with my sister, where I was able to spend time with him.

We scored a non-stop flight from Baltimore to Memphis Tuesday, stayed at a suburban motel (with one free night), and rented a car. Although we asked for the cheapest, smallest car available, we left the lot in a gorgeous cherry-red 2017 Dodge Challenger with a hemi engine. I became fond of the car.

Joe's aunt and uncle and sister in Memphis have been great to me since I met them nine years ago, in what I see now as a ritual, bringing your new significant other for the family's inspection. Joe and his late mother were the oldest in his family, and I am older than Joe, so the "old" aunt and uncle are not much older than  I am. We were nineteen family members at Thanksgiving.

A cousin's husband is an executive with the Memphis Grizzlies, so we spent Friday at a basketball game. We ate at many restaurants, mostly on Joe's uncle's dime. We saw a few movies, including "Loving" about an interracial couple arrested for being in love. We noted the connection to our non-traditional marriage.

Finally, we attended a rally against hate, held in a once-abandoned church, where Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in 1968, just before he was murdered. It's a beautiful place, almost literally falling down, a reminder of history and the passage of time. There were religious leaders of all stripes, including the rabbi from Memphis' Reform synagogue. There were speakers from immigrant communities, an LGBT center, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. Memphis is a multi-cultural, largely African-American city in an overwhelmingly conservative state. People are frightened by the rhetoric of the incoming administration, the backward-looking picks for cabinet posts, and the liberty now felt by racists, homophobes and neo-Nazis to speak out. Older African-Americans have been through this before, The spiritual presence of Dr. King was there in that former church to give us all hope. I attended a Rally For Change here in Morgantown Wednesday night after we got back. That rally was more about enacting specific political change here.

I loved being in Memphis. In addition to Joe's extended family. I found the people outgoing and friendly. I felt more "at home" in Memphis and in Greenbelt, in Prince George's County, Maryland, where my sister lives, than I do in Morgantown.

Our congregation here in Morgantown is still lovely, and although the county voted majority for the Republican presidential candidate, there is a core of people of good will, who are willing to fight the hateful troglodytes who have come out of the woodwork since the election. Joe and I will live here for the forseeable future, and be activists for equality.We have no other choice.

We have already attended two meetings (today is Sunday, December 4) in the five days since we returned from Thanksgiving. The meeting Wednesday was political, the one today was an interfaith council. Things are in the works here.

We'll be off to New York for an extended visit at the end of the year. New York is another spiritual home for us.

With Joe on Beale Street

Brister Library at The University of Memphis

Singing along with the Hamples at Thanksgiving

Shelby County Courthouse

Joe and his sister at the pedestrian crossing of the Mississippi River, next to an old railroad bridge

Shelby Farms Park, east of Memphis

Rabbi Micah Greenstein speaking at the interfaith event in Memphis

Boyce-Gregg House, now The Community Resource Center

We are looking cool with our boss 2017 Hemi-powered Dodge Challenger

Thanksgiving 2015

We're back from Thanksgiving in Memphis. Joe's aunt (his late mother's sister) puts on a feast every year. Aunt "Nadly" as she is known, and Uncle Jimmy have two daughters, Molly in Memphis, Katie in Austin, Texas. Each daughter has a husband and a son and daughter. Aunt Nadly's two granddaughters are now sixteen; the boys are fourteen. Joe's sister Martha lives in Memphis; Joe's brother Henry often comes from rural southern Louisiana.

There is a cousin of Joe's mother and Aunt Nadly, known as"Anty," who comes from Buffalo, where the family started out. She has a married son and daughter. The daughter has two young sons; the son married last June and has a new baby daughter. Joe co-officiated at their wedding. Anty has two younger sisters. One is Marny, living in Humboldt County, California, who we saw often when we lived in Crescent City. She has a married son, Sascha, in Portland. We attended Sascha's wedding in Portland in 2012, a month after our move to Morgantown. Joe officiated. Anty's other sister, Annie, lives in Boston.

There is a tradition of people bringing their new "significant other" to Thanksgiving. I was that person in 2007. One year, Sascha came with his then-girlfriend Sara. This year, Molly's sixteen-year-old daughter brought her boyfriend. He is handsome and smart and put up with the silly games and the singing of old obscure songs. She seemed serious about him. He seemed too young to be in a serious relationship.

In my family, there is no older generation. Of this whole crew, I am closest in age to Joe, but closer in age to the old folks than to Joe's siblings and cousins. There is a fiction that everything is the same every year, but it's not. Most obviously, the children have gone from six and eight to fourteen and sixteen. As teens, the kids seemed less happy to be with family than they were as children.

We flew this year on Wednesday and Sunday, and while everything went surprisingly smoothly, this was physically hard for me. We arrived home by car from Pittsburgh airport at 1:45 A.M. We ate  unhealthy amounts of salt, sugar and fat, despite a relatively healthy menu on Thanksgiving Day.

My maternal grandparents, Nanny and Poppy to us, made Thanksgiving in New York just about every year. We got together with our Long Island cousins. My grandparents cut us off when I was eighteen and a freshman in college and they were seventy. They sold their New York house, and moved to a small apartment near Miami.

I don't remember details about those Thanksgivings, I only retain a warm glow thinking of my grandparents at this time of year. This year Thanksgiving was November 26, my Nanny's birthday. She would have been 118 this year. My parents, aunts and uncles are all gone, too. I have to rely on Joe's family for an older generation. I'm friendly with my cousins on my mother's side, but we don't routinely get together. I never see my father's family any more.

Next year, we will probably go to my sister Robin for Thanksgiving. She gets together with her son Evan and his girlfriend Kelli and a close friend of hers and her kids, one of whom has known Evan since preschool. Robin always laments when we go to Memphis that she and I are not together and with other family members.

This year, more than others, I felt the passage of time at Thanksgiving. I hope Joe's family can stay together, more than mine has, and that we'll be able to travel to Memphis again to be with them.

Joe, Martha and Henry sing out at Thanksgiving in Memphis