Category Archives: my family

My mother had a dream about a month ago that was …

Posted on by
Reply

My mother had a dream about a month ago that was so vivid she can’t get it off her mind. She mentioned it again to me today. She called me especially to tell me about it the day she had it, and her telling of it was so vivid that I can’t get it off my mind either. But for a different reason.

My mother is 87 years old. She has now lived longer than both her parents and all three of her older siblings. (Her younger sister is not yet 80.) She is in good health, lucid, and has more energy than most people her age. Looking at her, you would never guess that she is as old as she is, and, though I know this won’t go on forever, I like to think she has a good chance of breaking 100.

But about a month ago my mother had this dream. In the dream, she came upon a lot of people she didn’t know who had all gathered for some sort of celebration. Everyone was very happy. Mom asked what the occasion was, and they said it was the opening of a Howard Luggage store. Howard Luggage is the store that her father (dead now) started and passed on to my mother’s brother Sidney (dead now). Uncle Sidney built it up and intended to pass it on to my cousin Marvin, who would have been about ten years my senior, but he died maybe forty years ago under tragic circumstances. My cousin Steve now runs the store.

In the dream, my mother was happy to find out that the celebration had to do with this store that has been in the family for so long. She decided to go inside.

She went through the doorway.

It was at about this point in the story that I started crying. Fortunately, we were talking on the telephone, so I didn’t have to upset my mother’s happy mood, but I cried through the entire rest of the tale. To me, going through that doorway sounded a lot like dying. I tried to be glad that she saw it as a happy event.

Inside the store, my mother related, “Guess who I saw?” I thought, “Your father,” but I said, “Who?” “Your cousin Marvin!” my mother announced happily, “and I went right up to him and hugged him. He told me he was doing really well and was very happy.” My mother was very moved by this dream because she had never dreamed of Marvin before, not close up like this. Not touching. My mom woke from the dream feeling that it was more vivid than life, and she felt very happy about it.

I think that she was beginning to explore the new terrain on the other side of dying by contacting the people who had gone on ahead. I can’t get it out of my mind that, in this one dream at least, she has crossed over the threshold.

I am sitting in an armchair reading a chapter on …

Posted on by
Reply

I am sitting in an armchair reading a chapter on the valuation of assets for federal estate and gift tax purposes–not the most gripping material. Gwenny the cat is sleeping on my lap. Her body heat along with the ambient heat level up here in my third-floor study on this 90+ degree day contributes to my overall drowsiness.

Into the quiet room a loud noise explodes. Not that loud, really; more like a definitive thud than an actual explosion. But it is sharp and sudden. It could have come from the attic–something falling or–being knocked over. Gwenny and I both startle, she (with her faster reflexes) a fraction of an instant before me. I am awake now. It wasn’t that frightening a noise. It could have been Elvie closing a door downstairs. I pet Gwenny with parental calmness to let her know all is well. Our animals, our children.

But with parental alertness, Gwenny isn’t taking any chances with our safety. She continues to watch the attic door–just in case.

The Week of Memorable Dreams

Posted on by
Reply

This must be the Week of Memorable Dreams.

First Adam had a mystical Jewish spiritual mysterious revelational knockout and then I woke up with half a poem (alas, the last half) all finished in my mind. Here is an approximation of the poem. I had to reconstruct the first half, and it’s not as good as the ending, but I think it does okay in setting the ending up the right way.

The sun, the stars, the planets call, and still all of them fly.
While trees’ leaves drop to earth in fall, their branches reach toward sky.
To all things God allows no rest, and so do thou and I.
I see the love that moves thy breast, the darkness in thine eye.

Everyone is different

Posted on by
Reply

This train of thought starts with a problem in financial portfolio performance analysis. The problem is in measuring performance volatility — the extent to which results may be expected to vary from year to year from the average performance (variance, in technical terms, or its square root, standard deviation).

I was at a conference yesterday and attended a presentation on evaluating portfolio managers. The presenter stated that mathematical analysts prefer to have as many years of data as possible when computing variance. Statisticians prefer to have 75 or 100 data points or more. Obviously an impossibility when measuring manager performance. But the longer the manager has been managing that portfolio, the more reliable the variance statistics will be.

And that’s when the thought struck me: How do we know, even if the manager has been managing this portfolio for a long time, that he’s the same person he was when he started? In fact, how do we ever know if a person is the same person they were some time ago?

In fact, maybe they’re not. There’s the (true) story of a portfolio manager who threw in the towel and headed off to New Mexico on a motorcycle. Maybe performance measurement is only a useful fiction.

Last night, while cleaning my desk and throwing out papers that were over a year old and no longer relevant as well as papers just as old that I enjoyed but whose enjoyment value no longer exceeded their clutter annoyance, I thought of Adam. How neat he always kept his room, periodically going through his books and music, giving away or selling those he no longer used. How much of his once-extensive Depeche Mode collection does he still own? How much Moody Blues or Leonard Cohen does he still listen to? How much of what he acquired in high school or middle school does he still have? Probably only a small fraction. He’s different now than he was then.

Maybe everyone is different. Maybe all that keeps up the illusion of sameness is some kind of personality inertia. Maybe it’s just that some of us are more nostalgic about the tangible and intangible mementos of earlier selves; and others are more clutter-intolerant.

Macbeth

Posted on by
3

It looks like the Boston St. John’s Alumni group is going to read Macbeth in March. This was the seminar leader’s choice, not mine, but I have to admit to a special personal fondness for Macbeth. It was the first book I remember reading. I was in kindergarten at the time and yearned for my mother to read that book to me because it had a picture of witches in it. We sat at the kitchen table together reading. It must have been winter – I remember that it was dark outside. Or maybe that was just the effect of the story. The reading was slow going as my mother had to explain words and phrases to me and often used a dictionary. In the course of persisting through Macbeth, I learned to read! You can imagine my reaction to “Dick and Jane” the following year in first grade. In fact, you can probably explain a lot about my personality because of this experience with Macbeth.

Ice, part 2

Posted on by
1

Few people in the Boston area (including commercial establishments) clear snow and ice from their sidewalks. I grew up in The South (well, Baltimore, but that is south of the Mason-Dixon line), where people were more considerate of one another in this way. Of course, snow was rarer there than it is here, so shoveling one’s sidewalk, in addition to being The Right Thing To Do, was considered to be an important emergency measure.

My father always hated Boston. He hated the very idea of Boston. In his image of Boston, the weather was cold and the people snobby. He had never been to Boston, and he never wanted to go. His idea of the kind of place he wanted to go was Tahiti. He compromised and moved to Florida. Unfortunately, both of his children ended up living in Boston. My father is buried under the mounds of snow but below the frostline in Lexington cemetery near Boston. I think he would be appalled if he knew.

When Dan and I were living in Cambridge, my father had a meeting in Boston in January. After the meeting was over, he came to visit us. The next morning, I asked him what he’d like to do. “I’d like to go to Harvard Square,” he said.

“But, Dad,” I objected, “it’s hard to park near Harvard Square. We’ll probably have to walk a couple of blocks. And it’s really cold out. Also, there’s a lot of snow and ice on the ground, so it won’t be a pleasant walk.”

He persisted. “That’s okay. I’d really like to go see Harvard Square. Maybe there’s some place there where we can go get a cup of coffee if it gets too cold.”

That sounded okay to me. So Dad and I piled into the car, and we were early enough (and this was long ago enough) that we got a reasonably good parking spot on Brattle Street only a block or two outside of the Square. When we got out of the car, it was cold. It had snowed earlier that week or the last, and the snow was still about a foot high and old enough that it had gotten grey and dirty. Most places had not shoveled their walks (an endearing Boston-area trait: Why shovel, when you’ll just have to do it again next week?) but the steady stream of foot traffic had beaten down a path along where the sidewalk lay buried. The path had turned to ice.

We slipped and slid into the Square across the ice and dirty snow, and found a place where we could have a nice cup of coffee. Then we slipped and slid back to the car and drove home again.

The next day I asked my Dad what he’d like to do. “Let’s go into Harvard Square again,” he enthused.

This seemed really wrong to me. This just wasn’t like him at all. But despite my objections, he insisted. Finally I said, “Dad. It’s dirty. It’s icy. It’s cold. I know you don’t like this kind of stuff. I just don’t get it. Why do you want to do this?”

His reply: “I want to make sure I get all the details absolutely right, because my friends back in Florida are never going to believe this when I tell them about it.”

I wonder where Adam is going to spend the night

Posted on by
6

Adam’s plane was scheduled to leave Boston at 4:19 and arrive in Philadelphia at 5:46, where he would board a plane to Seattle scheduled to depart at 6:15. His plane actually left the gate in Boston at 4:57 and is now estimated to arrive in Philadelphia about nine minutes after his plane to Seattle is estimated to have left.

Too much travel

Posted on by
Reply

It started with an odd coincidence of events. I had just finished transcribing into my kitchen calendar Dan’s schedule for the next couple of months, which involves an exceptional amount of business travel (even for him). We were unwinding with a couple of fresh-lime margaritas. And Dan was getting ready to grill the bluefish; we had bought enough for an additional person or two and then decided we’d rather not have company.

“You’ll have leftover bluefish,” he warned me solemnly. “You’ll have to remember to eat it while I’m gone.”

“I can hardly remember anything these days unless I write it down,” I moaned. My common complaint.

“Well, you’d better remember me.”

I love it when he says things like that. “Not likely,” I retorted. “You’re going to be gone too much.”

And the next thing you know, we were off and running. We could see it clearly….

“Hello,” asks the telephone caller, “Is Dan there?”

“Here?” I echo. “No way. He’s never here. Call American Airlines.”

“Hello, American Airlines? I’m looking for a Mr. Daniel Kenney.”

“Daniel Kenney? Yes, he’s booked on several of our flights this week. Just one moment, please, and we’ll connect you.”

Segue to an airplane somewhere over the North American continent. The telephone located in the back of the middle seat of a row in the middle of the plane starts to ring. Dan, in the aisle seat, says to the passenger next to him. “Could you please get that? If it’s my wife, tell her I’m not here. I’ve changed seats with someone at the back of the plane.”

I don’t know

Posted on by
Reply

I just don’t know. Why does all this emotional stuff pile up all at once?

I sure do love my family. I would do just about anything for them. One of the hardest things in life to learn is that what I can do for them is precious little. (Interesting phrase, that. Precious little. Maybe so.)

I sure would do a lot more for Margot, if I could. I worry tremendously about her black rages, about how very 2-years-old she is at those times. I fear for her sanity. I think it’s getting worse. Does it have to get worse before it can get better? Will it get better?

Am I just being overemotional? Even though I was not very close to Fred, death has a way of reaching out to people that little else does.

I was stuck in one of the worst traffic jams ever today. Newton Corner was backed up for blocks in all directions. Further backup heading up Galen St; Soldiers Field Road blocked off by police, forcing us through this mess a second time. Tried to avoid it by getting on the Mass Pike inbound, and it was backed up past West Newton because of the exit at Newton Corner, effectively forcing us through the mess a third time. Made Margot late for tennis. Only by 10 minutes, but maybe this was one of the reasons she lost it today the way she did.

I lost my pocketbook today – left it in a shopping cart in the parking lot of the Star Market in Brighton. Waited for Margot at tennis, drove home before I discovered it missing. Given the neighborhood, I figured it was gone forever. But the Star Market had it, and not only it but also the credit cards and drivers license inside, and not only these but also every dollar of cash. A small miracle: an honest person.

An ancient Tamil poem came in email today: Every town our home town.

It puts things in perspective.

Adam’s museum

Posted on by
1

Today, Dan and I went to see the movie “My Architect,” which is about the architect Louis Kahn. The film was made by his (illigitimate) son Nathaniel, who knew his father very little during his life, and twenty-five years after LK died, was trying to understand just who he really was. Despite some quibbles I have with it, the film is overall excellent and very moving. I recommend it.

But that’s not why I’m writing this journal entry.

As part of this project, Nathaniel visited every building that Kahn created. This includes the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. I’ve been to the Kimbell twice. When the movie first showed sweeping shots of the museum’s beautifully lit, timelessly elegant interior, it all came flooding back to me.

The Kimbell is a gem of a museum, not only because of its architecture and light, but also because it has a small but completely first-rate collection. To quote its Web site: “The Kimbell Art Museum’s holdings range in period from antiquity to the 20th century, including masterpieces by Duccio, Fra Angelico, Mantegna, Caravaggio, El Greco, La Tour, Rubens, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Houdon, Goya, David, Monet, Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, and Mondrian.” One or two of just about everything that any museum would give its eyeteeth to have. All displayed in perfect light, in uncrowded harmony.

The first time I visited the Kimbell, Adam was just two years old. Dan had gone off to live in Texas for several months to help in the start-up of his firm‘s then-new Dallas office, returning home only on (most) weekends. But this particular week, I had a conference to go to in Dallas myself, so I took Adam and went to live with Dan at his apartment on Turtle Creek. On this particular day we didn’t have to work, so we went to the museum.

I remember carrying two-year-old Adam through the galleries, and stopping to look at the pictures and sculptures. At each one, Adam wanted me to tell him its story. Not who painted it and when, but who is that woman in the picture, and where is she, and why is she there, and why is that man looking at her in that funny way, and what’s going to happen, and…

And so we stopped at various pictures and sculptures, and at each one I invented a story for Adam that would be as long as it needed to be so that I could really look at the object and that would incorporate elements that might draw his attention too to some of the significant aspects of the object. And so we spent a pleasant afternoon at our own pace, my two-year-old son and I, going through the Kimbell Art Museum.

Today, twenty-one-year-old Adam is working on a capstone project at Brown University. It is a hypertext Web site in which a group of people meet and go through a museum. They stop and look at various objects. The reader can click on the highlighted objects if he wishes, and can then read a story associated with the object.

Now I have to ask you: Do you think this could possibly be a coincidence?