I REMEMBER MOTHER

Another in a series of coming-of-age stories.

I remember Mother as the only female in a house full of men—my father and his three sons. Even our dogs and cats were all male.

I remember Mother and the clubs she belonged to. The Book Club. The Flower Club. Her Kappa Kappa Gamma college sorority club.  

I remember Mother for all her volunteer work. The Church.  The Library. The Hospital. Serving as an Air Raid Warden during the War.

I remember Mother for teaching me how to Charleston long after the Charleston was dead. When the occasion would arise (around once a year) it would make up for my total clumsiness on the dance floor.

I remember Mother for introducing me to classical music. From the time I was 12 she took me to all the Thursday concerts with George Szell at Severance Hall—originally because my Father refused to go but later because I wanted to.

I remember Mother for the mustard plasters she used to slap on the chests of my brothers and me when we had bad colds. They were hot as blazes but they always seemed to work.

I remember Mother for constantly asking me and my brothers privileged questions about who we were dating—but seldom getting any answers.

I remember Mother for giving far more than she received. 

I remember Mother.

DREAMS

Following the move to Brentwood, we were almost through unpacking the stuff hidden away in our garage storage area when Rita discovered a box that had forced us into holding our breath during its 10 years of concealment.

Inside was a treasure trove for both of us. Family photos behind glass in walnut frames. Newspaper articles heralding Rita’s doings helping run John Wanamaker in Philadelphia. Tom’s advertising career—the ups and downs from Madison Avenue to Locust Street and Bala Cynwyd.

And my high school football photo.

There I was, the cocky Number 48. With the nose broken three times. And a head full of exploits during my three years at Cleveland Heights High School. Playing fullback on offense and linebacker on defense. Playing nine different positions in one game.

Was I good? Not really. My biggest play—one that landed me on the front page of the Sunday Plain Dealer my senior year—was tackling Lorain High School’s  legendary quarterback Vic Janowicz, a star who would go on to twice become all-American at Ohio State. The problem was that Vic was crossing the goal line with the winning touchdown.

But the photo inspired me to think about dreams. We all have them. And as writers we use them to dramatize our carefully crafted scenes and predicaments. Dreams can get us in and out of trouble. They can make things very real. The battlefields of literature are littered with dreams.

But what about our own dreams?  I dream regularly of going back to Heights High School and trying out for the football team. I almost always make it but find myself facing guys who could be my grandchildren. I’ve also had a couple of dreams where I’ve been invited to the Cleveland Browns mini-camp for tryouts. They were actually very nice to me.

And then, of course, we have the legendary dreams about the final exam being tomorrow and we have yet to study for it. The textbooks sit there, unopened. I’m facing the teacher or professor tomorrow and I’m trying to come up with excuses for failing to attend a single class.

It’s inescapable. The dreams we have as writers connect with us in real life. And it’s one more reason I’ve moved that photo of Number 48 to a prominent place on my office bookshelf.

WELCOME TO BRENTWOOD

When our friends heard Rita and I were moving to the Brentwood district of Los Angeles the jokes began. We didn’t have to be reminded Brentwood was the home of O.J. Simpson and the controversial trial that took place nearly 20 years ago. It had been mentioned in my novel THE MOUNTING STORM—until a bright-eyed agent made me replace it with something less controversial.

            

But Brentwood doesn’t need any apologies. Brentwood is home. Brentwood is beautiful. Brentwood is fun. And after 10 years of living next door in Santa Monica, Brentwood is where two Philadelphians are going to enjoy the Southern California experience to its fullest.

           

We don’t have the Third Street Promenade where every kid in the world wants to drag his parents and grandparents and spend the day shopping, eating, and going to the latest Harry Potter flick. Brentwood is on a smaller scale. But we do have a farmer’s market, a Whole Foods, a Ralph’s, a delightful library, and a dozen terrific coffee shops, including the Café Literati, where laptops are busy and photos of writers, living and dead, line the walls.

           

So we’re saying goodbye to the television footage of that white Ford Bronco shooting down the 411 freeway on its way to Mexico and being chased by a dozen police cruisers. Tom and Rita are here. And determined to enjoy every delightful corner of the new Brentwood.       

"SEPTEMBER MORN"--AND THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION

(The first in a series of coming-of-age stories.)

Getting settled in our new digs in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles has meant a lot of soul-searching for Rita and me.  For example: where to hang that framed lithograph of the French painting made famous in a celebrated 1916 Chicago court case. 

This September Morn, not to be confused with the Neil Diamond album or the upcoming movie thriller, shows a naked French maiden preparing to take a dip in a cold Swiss lake.

When my grandfather tried sneaking it onto the wall of his Ohio farmhouse my grandmother would have nothing to do with it. It remained in a closet for 50 years.

Novelists today are fortunate. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the obscenity rules stifling authors were revoked (along with the introduction of The Pill) and the atmosphere changed. We take it all for granted now as we seek to top the sex scene in our previous novel.

 Of course, parents don’t just worry now. They agonize about how far their sons and daughters went after Saturday night’s high school prom. But I guess that’s the price we pay for the new freedom.

As for September Morn, it is proudly hanging next to my computer desk as I write this. And I am sure my Grandfather is smiling as he looks down admiring every delicious curve.

MY SHORT LIFE AS AN ARTIST

“Do you want to save your painting?” Rita asked last Saturday, after we’d ransacked the basement storage areas in preparation for the move from Santa Monica to Brentwood.

“What painting?” I asked, wondering what the joke was.

“The ‘masterpiece’ you saved in Philadelphia. You threw the others out.”

My memory cells jumped to life. Arriving in Philadelphia as a writer some thirty years ago I had a sudden urge to paint. It came when I visited the annual art show in Rittenhouse Square with the idea of buying something but couldn’t even come close to finding it. Then and there I decided I could paint a better canvas than anything I’d seen—and would prove it in my spare time.

Once a week for six weeks, fighting the April winds, I brought home a five by six foot canvas the art supply store had stretched for me. I bought gesso by the gallon.  I am sure many of those small tubes of oil paint are still lying around my one-room bachelor pad on Locust Street.

The paintings that resulted moved with me to breathing room in the Spruce Street floor-through, then on to my fancy duplex walk-up on Delancey Place. They eventually found the perfect setting lining a full story of stairs leading to a penthouse in Alden Park.  And it was there in the middle of a September night that my career as an artist soared to a height I could never have foreseen—someone pried the downstairs door open and stole one of my paintings.

When it came time to move to Santa Monica and begin my career in earnest as a novelist, only one painting survived.  But the subject of serial killers hiding in art galleries and a Monet stolen by evil Nazis along with a gallery owner whose beauty men would die for would blossom in my novels.

And, yes, I’m taking that ‘masterpiece’ with me to Brentwood. But please avoid questions about what school of art I practiced. Just remember that someone stole one of my paintings—how many of you artists out there can say that?

ROOTS

Sometimes it takes a jolt to make you realize how important it is to have that root in the ground that provides security about life—especially if your career is filled with the kind of insecurity that comes with being a novelist.  

A jolt like being evicted by your landlord.

“I’m completely renovating all the apartments,” his letter said. “So I’m giving all of you exactly five weeks to get the Hell out,” was the vein in which it continued, though in more lawyerly words that we later found were absolutely illegal when it came to the five weeks. (Eight weeks is mandatory under California law.) On everything else his fingers were gripped tight around our throats.

So after a month of looking Rita and I are moving from our beloved Santa Monica to Brentwood. It’s the distance of a whole mile and a half. A seven-minute drive. But with the emotional toll it took we might as well have been moving to Bangkok.

I’m sure I will come to love Brentwood and its sophistication as much or more than Santa Monica and its proximity to the ocean and its Third Street Promenade, so handy for turning visiting children and grandchildren loose for a whole afternoon.

But the agony of feeling rootless for three long, miserable, frightening weeks made me realize how important that root in the ground is—having a comfortable place to live that you can call your own.

Sure it makes for terrific storytelling—being forced from the castle or kicked out of the house by the evil stepfather or sent to prison for stealing a loaf of bread or simply being forced to relocate across the country or around the world and finding yourself without a proper roof over your head.

As for me, I need that roof above and that root below.