Prologue

Don’t ask me why I still remember such a trivial incident, something that happened some twenty years ago, but here it is…

It must have been on a Friday, because I was heading home from work mid-day, walking the one block on W. 40 St. between the subway station and Port Authority. And there were two guys duking it out in the middle of the street. Not going at it, as in a bar room brawl with fists flying. More shuffling than scuffling, a lot of dancing and prancing, with every once in a while, one of the guys attempting to land a punch. One of the combatants was a good ten years older than the other, and it was obvious he was running out of steam.

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You mean you put everyone in a big machine and smush them around until they’re all mixed up?

Well, not exactly.

Try explaining to an eight-year-old what a blended family is. Probably better off giving an example, as in: Liel is Gil’s daughter from his first marriage, and one day this young lady was explaining to her cousin that she now has two mothers. No, said the cousin– a year older and hence much smarter – you have a mother and a step-mother. But she’s a nice stepmother; she’s not a mean stepmother. That’s what Natania became when she married Gil, the nice kind. And by extension, Barbara and I became blended grandparents – the nice kind. As my wife puts it, we’re related by love, not blood.

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You have an appointment at the clinic at Ein Kerem in the morning and a wedding to go to that same evening? That should keep you on your toes. Well, yeah. The appointment at the urology clinic had been scheduled in the distant past (meaning months and months ago), and we were going to show up, come hell or high water. The wedding? Miri-tal and Michael were getting married on Aug. 7 at Lago, the meat restaurant at the Puddle at the new entrance to our fair city. That got scheduled much more recently. The moral of the story? It’s easier to schedule a wedding here in The Land than to book an appointment with your favorite medical specialist.

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‘Maybe you should be glad your body parts don’t connect to wi-fi?  Our wi-fi only works when it wants to…Feel better!!!!’

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Dr. Alon Schwartz: No, it’s not urgent. You can put off surgery for twenty years. Me: I’m not sure I’ve got another twenty years.

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Wishing that all your internals get sorted soonest, although I fear you, like xxx and, I suspect, myself, may not be able to keep your appointments this week. Shortly after posting my article about the Oy Vey Club, I began receiving a series of ‘oy vey’ responses from fans near and far. And then I received the message above from a friend who lives below – down the hill from where we are. He was simply reminding me of the unpleasant possibility that things might get worse before they got better. Well, all we can do is try.

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Every so often, I get an email from the World Trade Center Health Registry, asking me to fill out their latest on-line survey on the health and well-being of people who were around and at least peripherally involved with 9/11, and if I don’t respond in some reasonable time frame, I’ll get a reminder and then another reminder, until to get them off my back, I take the ten or fifteen minutes needed to fill out their survey.  Are they doing anything useful with the information they collect or is this just one more boondoggle, I have no idea. But I figure that some of us who were there but weren’t damaged emotionally or physically should be included in their sample, so their results won’t be too skewed. But when they ask about my personal assessment about the quality of my health, I have to stop and pause. Compared to what? A whole bunch of people I hang out with are members in good standing of the Oy Vey Club, meaning that they are legitimately entitled to kvetch about what has happened to their bodies over the decades that have gone by since they were spry and in their prime. Compared to them, I’ve been in reasonably good shape, still able to hightail it to catch a bus when the occasion warrants. So when I got another survey last week, I checked off the box saying I’m doing more than OK. But all good things must come to an end. My application is ‘in the mail’ for membership the Oy Vey Club, this honorary association of men and women who have climbed to the top of the hill and are having trouble making it back down. Details to follow.

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If you’re on to a good thing…

It was just before Yom Haatzmaut in 2008, the first year we were here, and we were acutely aware that we were out of the loop – to use an expression that would befuddle most Israelis. Imagine if you were stuck in Teaneck on July 4^th and you and the missus were sitting in your kitchen by your lonesome whipping up a package of Wacky Mac on the stovetop. That would be equivalent of being here in the Land among a nation of hard core barbecuers with no grill, nothing to grill on it, and no one to share your viands with. Thank God for Jeff and June, who had a place to go and enough room in the car to take us (probably including Natania) with them for us to celebrate our first Yom Haaztmaut here in our adopted homeland.

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We keep talking about it; why don’t we go already? I’m available next week Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Pick a day.

 Ezra had come over for our usual Shabbat morning kiddush several weeks before Pesach (it may have even been before Purim; I can’t remember back that far) and mentioned that their daughter Jordana and her boyfriend Matan had just visited the Whiskey Bar in the Sarona complex in Tel Aviv. They had a super-special time, and we (meaning Ezra and I) should go too. As he explained, you can go for a tasting of different whiskies and have a meal. Now when Ezra talks about ‘having a meal,’ he has in mind the carnivorous kind of eating. But these days, meat restaurants usually have offerings for those of us who eschew moo, so I wasn’t worried about going hungry. The issue was finding a date when we were both available, and that was the hard part. One of us needed to take the bull by the horns and say, let’s go already. Or else we’d never get there.

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