BROTHERLY LOVE
Since my brother rarely reads this column, this is one story that he may never know. It is how about a 7th grader stood up for him, got pummeled and carries a life lesson to this very day about 80 years later. The story starts in the boys group bathroom at St. John’s Villa Academy, our first boarding school. Fellow student Felix Lozada, whom I despise even now, was bullying other students. When I entered the bathroom that Saturday morning, he was focused on my brother. I immediately jumped between and engaged in a furious fist fight. At some point my pajama draw string became loose, and I showed Felix my palm as I reached down to tighten the tie. At that point, Felix chose to extricate himself from a losing situation with three hard punches to my unprotected face. With that he fled the bathroom and locked me in so I couldn’t follow. As I later made excuses about my swollen face, I chafed that what Felix had done was unfair. It was then that I realized that “being fair” was not a reasonable expectation in human relations. I never gave up in my personal commitment to fairness, but now I was living, and still am, in an unfair place. Could be that my heightened sense of fairness was the seed of my interest in journalism. Certainly it makes me particularly sensitive to bullying, especially among people or nations.
THE TONGUE WAGGERS
Since my wife, Olga, always reads this column, she will be learning about the following for the first time. When we moved permanently to our very pleasant condo villa (Myrtle Trace) in Venice, Florida, there was a level of community socializing that was unfamiliar to us. And we joined in as faithful attendees to the Thursday night cocktail hour around the clubhouse pool. That went on for quite a while until some of the other women began to drop hints to Olga that she was foolish to always be getting my food and drink. This Olga generously did out of consideration for my morbid obesity and difficulty walking. When I learned about this, I felt the atmosphere was turning toxic, so I stopped being the prime mover for attending. This pleased Olga, as I later learned, because she was facing more than indifference among the blabberers to her Russian background. That marked the moment when I decided that the time had come for us to move to Russia so Olga could be close to her family and reconnect to her native culture. I knew that we would never again live in a home so well positioned and so perfect for my creeping disabilities. We planned the transition to Moscow perfectly and all was going as expected until international events introduced a new set of problems. The adage holds, that fate does not smile on plans too loudly made.
THINNER THAN WATER
When my half sister revealed herself to me for the first time, I was totally shocked. I never realized that my father had had children by his first marriage. She was quite a bit older than me and I’ve written previously about my decision not to pursue the relationship. My brother came to the same conclusion. In reflecting on our past, I think we both realized that there was nothing magical about a blood connection. Sometimes family members make close family-like relationships with special friends who can become closer than actual family. I always have and still feel a special kinship with my second wife’s daughter, Jennifer. Even though circumstances and distances keep us apart, when we meet we can sit over a cup of coffee and practically pick up the thread of a previous conversation, which will always be on-going and life-long. My extended virtual family actually goes back to my childhood, only one of whom is still living - Arthur Jurgrau, who is a builder and electrical contractor in New York Metro. The Jurgraus, Helen and Danny, were substitute parents right up through college due to my mother’s retail work schedule. It was because of Arthur that my real brother became known as the “other brother.” My life throughout has been dotted by people who were as close as family - by that I mean an actual affection which enabled me to work with them in total trust. From my professional past I carry forward two such relationships that are freely full of mutual respect: John Caputo, a retired Gonzaga professor, who worked with me on my summer academic programs in Italy, and George Miller, a former student and now journalism professor at Temple, who shares with me an unvarnished commitment to journalism education. Also in that category is Kevin Atticks, former student and faculty at Loyola, now towering figure in the wine industry. Even in late life such relationships can develop; for me it happened recently with Adrian Blissfield, a former student now with a Ph.D. in psychology, whose deep Viber discussions between California and Russia keep my brain functioning at a high level. There is a longer list but my purpose here was to give a few examples. As for my blood family, they are in and out of my life, but I retain a reservoir of love that can be tapped into when needed. Neither distance nor silence make the heart grow fonder, and therein lies the danger.
INVISIBLE IDENTITIES
Who am I, really? That is an irrational question easily answered by a Google search or a look into my wallet. Maybe the changing face in the mirror that greets me every morning fuels my self doubts. How did a good-looking college dude transition to the unshaven, bald, quasi-toothless slob that now passes for me? You’re older schmuck! No, I am the product of bad decisions. It’s harder to look past my fading blue eyes into the soul searching for an answer. Maybe I am full of genetic predictors. But recent searches into public records and genealogy web sites show me records dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, boat manifests, census addresses, obituaries, and many names that one could use to reconstruct the family tree. At no point in my search did the thrill of connectedness occur, nor was the impulse to dig deeper strong enough to merit an annual membership in a genealogy web site. I could go back to Italy to one of the ancestral towns and find someone with a few identifiable physical family traits and I know the excitement that would generate - cousins from America! But I’d feel guilty in not being able to emotionally reciprocate. I must admit that I can never understand the joy adopted adults feel on finally meeting their “real mamma.” It’s not like they were long-lost, implying a bank of shared memories. I just feel that true familyhood is the sum of our experiences together, and not the thickness of our blood, or the DNA extracted in a tube. But more than anything - the frequency and quality of those experiences. That’s why the obligatory holiday call or the Hallmark sentiments don’t mean so much to me, incoming or outgoing.