More about moi

This is my father's high school graduation photo.  Some say I look like him.  I say I used to but now I don't look like either parent.  My father used to say "To be a king is not worth it".  He thought he was being clever but as we know from Mel Brooks "It's good to be king".  I think my father had rather low expectations of life, and he lived up to that, at times.  He was a salesman and had the temperament of one.  Funny and yet a quiet man most of the time.  His brother. My uncle Chuck, is far more quiet and his father was the quietest of them all.  I am a little quiet or rather on the shy side myself.  I had rather low expectations of myself as well but my aunt Martha pulled me kicking and screaming to the head of the class.  I received scholarships for college and went to graduate school.   Without trying to sound full of conceit I am sometimes embarrassed by intellect.  I am a smart ass and that I got from my dad.

Below is a photo of , from front to back, Dorothy, aunt Betty, aunt Martha, aunt Sally and my mother.  This is from the backyard of the home in Detroit.  My mother was, before the ravages of alcoholism, a beautiful woman.  The photo was taken by my grandfather Sol, who was buried two days before I was born.  I am guessing by the photo that the aunties had come over on a Friday night for Sabbath dinner, a practice that continued well into my teens.  I lived for those Fridays when the aunts and uncles would come over and we would eat in the formal dining room and talk and laugh long after the meal was over.  When I was very young my aunt Sally used to put me to bed on Fridays  and would consistently fall asleep before I did.  That much I recall.

Those Fridays were my sanctuary.  I didn't have to deal with my rather indifferent mother and her drinking and was content to be surrounded by the aunties and uncles.  Aunt Martha use to look at my school work for the past week and give me ever so much encouragement to do better.  And finally I did when I hit high school and suddenly it all mattered and made sense.  Honors courses, advance placement tests, National Honors Society, the whole nine yards.  All because of aunt Martha's prodding.  My mother's drinking put such a wedge between us that even today, twenty years after her early death, I feel no love lost.  I miss my dad.  I miss my Fridays with the family.  I miss having a real family now.  Holidays are the hardest, especially since my made up family fell apart with the death of my friend Jerry.  What are holidays but difficult reminders of a life gone by.  And in a hundred years will that even matter.

I shall continue use to document my life and maybe find some insights along the way.