I missed Father's Day. Again. Like last year, I booked a trip to LA only to discover it coincided with the day my family was supposed to honor my fatherhood. And just like last year everyone was happy to celebrate my family contributions this weekend instead. These yearly sojourns to Southern California are meant to keep connected to family and friends. Our mundane moments are communicated pretty well through email and periodic phone calls. These trips reveal more subtle changes: walking with a walker after a Thailand accident, no longer dying her hair, the desperate need for a dentist, and the...
From his vantage point: sewing Jean-Dominique Bauby's eye shut after his stroke. Still from the film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Today is my mother's birthday: more accurately, the 87th anniversary of her birth. She died in 1971 just days before her fiftieth birthday. Eleven years before she was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor: acoustic neuroma, Clinically speaking, this tumor is "a non-cancerous growth that arises from the 8th or vestibulo-cochlear nerve." But the effects of her illness and treatment were as toxic as any chemotherapy would have been. At 11 I was too young to be included in the discussions of her disease, prognosis, and treatment. Invasive and targeted, today my memories of her illness are still as imbedded in my brain as her tumor was in hers.
Yesterday, while the rest of the family was out on holiday errands I decided to force myself to watch the Netflix movie that had been sitting next to the TV for months. Next in our queue was The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. While I couldn't remember the film's exact synopsis I knew it had something to do with a man locked in his body, unable to respond to the world around him. This certainly wasn't on my list of comedic films I'd gravitated to recently, hence its longevity on our TV shelf. And as the plot unfolded I was totally unprepared for the striking similarities to my mother's illness the film would convey. I was shocked at how raw my feelings and emotions were 48 years after the fact. And I was glad I was alone.
Unearthing High Quality Threads
One of my father's early buying sprees: two sport coats for under $40, size 44L. Click image for a larger view.
Happy Father's Day! Wait, you didn't get the memo? I was out of town last weekend so here at Chez Gates we're celebrating Father's Day today. Last week I went "home" --back to Los Angeles for the opening of a photo show I'm in at the Huntington Library. And, as luck would have it, I had an unscheduled chance to reconnect with my father.
My sojourns back to L.A. are always frenetic and filled with mixed emotions. Too much family history. Arranging meetups with relatives and friends while driving the severely clogged freeways is exhausting. As always I'd pay a visit to my parents' graves (sadly, my family reunions are slowly moving from my relatives' homes to Mt. Sinai Memorial Park). But this time I had one day all to myself so I scheduled in some culture. Starting with a small show of George Hurrell photographs at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica, I then made a beeline down Wilshire Boulevard to the L.A. County Museum of Art to see their new Broad Contemporary Art Museum. The eight and a half miles from start to finish took an hour. There is no "immediately there" there in LA these days. But it didn't matter. I had no appointments to keep or so I thought.
As I drove through Beverly Hills I passed South Beverly Drive and without warning I thought of my father. South Beverly Drive: my father used to buy his suits at a men's shop on this street. What was its name? Malibu Clothes, that was it. As a youngster my father dragged me with him on his periodic trips to buy his suits (you can imagine how exciting it was to tag along with dad to a stuffy store to buy clothes). He bought me my first sport coat at Malibu for my cousin's bar mitzvah in the late 50s. But what was so intriguing back then was the gatekeeper at the store's entrance. They sold wholesale decades before outlets and you had to be referred in order to get in. There was always an old man sitting at a counter waiting to get your name. It was my first brush with exclusivity. To a seven year old it was like a secret club.
Now I was trying to unearth this flashback. I continued on my drive towards the museum but the memory gnawed at me. And when I noticed a free curbside-parking slot I pulled over to google the store. Could it still be there? If something lasts twenty years in L.A. it's ancient. Yes! According the Web page Malibu Clothes had been in existence for 65 years! I called to make sure this was it. "Is this the store where you have to be referred in order to get in?" I asked. "Yes" came the answer. "My father used to buy me suits there. Do you think you'd still have our names on file?" "Oh, we keep all records," came the reply. I turned around.
When I entered the second floor store my vision of the place returned with total clarity. This was definitely it. There was the small counter where you gave your name and as I looked up I had confidence they would be able to find records of our familial visits. Before me stood the largest rotating card file cabinet I'd ever seen. Thousands upon thousands of 3x5 cards with clients' names were filed away. I told them who I was but they couldn't find any record. Perhaps it was under my father's name. Suddenly I remembered the last time I was in there.
Fairly Odd Parents-Past / 01.10.2007
A Veteran of Secrets
[raw]
Gene Gates in the 103rd "Cactus" Division during WW II
[/raw]My father, like many in his generation, didn't talk much about his past. And, as much as that past fascinated me (as a petulant young man in the 1960s and 1970s I was used to demanding answers), I learned not to ask. My father was good at keeping his secrets. But there were exceptions, small gems that surfaced now and then without announcement or demand.
In 1994 my father came to visit me and my new wife at our new home on the outskirts of DC. It was a special event because he didn't like to travel alone (his wife, my stepmother, chose to stay at home). This man who was so solitary in his thoughts had a hard time being alone with them. In fact, it was the only time he would visit us.
In the last few days the Republicans have decided that they're going to win. Everything they're reading says they're going to win...
Artistic Tendencies, Fairly Odd Parents-Past, Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 15.10.2006
Cursively Speaking
When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters. Margaret Webb PresslerThe Washington Post I have always enjoyed writing. By writing I mean making marks on paper. Sample of my handwriting from my high school biology notebook. Classmates said I wrote "like a girl." Click image for larger version. I have detailed memories of learning cursive in the fourth grade. I wanted handwriting just like my classmate Robin Hoenig. She had the best penmanship in the class. And...
With little provocation, The Wanderlust wisks me away to polluted but exotic places. As I walked out of my office building the other day I was suddenly hit by a faintly sweet and very nostalgic odor. What was that? Instantly I was transported to a mild and endearing part of my childhood. I stopped and tried to retrieve the memory of that smell. Just as suddenly I began to laugh. Of course! A hot and humid day, the air was a tinge of moist brown. It was smog, that ozone groundcover that reunited me with my past. Growing up...
Fairly Odd Parents-Past / 28.05.2006
The Perennial Good Boy
I had always been a very good boy. I've been doing some spring cleaning. My home office is a mess. And after hours of sorting, filing, and tossing my desk is now pristine again. But much still needs to be done before this job is complete. On the floor lay boxes my wife has filled over the years with my "stuff." There is so much stuff it's hard not to be overwhelmed. The first box seems to be laden with things from the 2003 period of my life. You know how it is. Every night you come home and empty your...
Funeral celebrants are part of a persistent move toward therapy and management to handle issues that used to be the realm of religious faith. Dennis MartinAssociate Professor of Historical TheologyLoyola University Chicago When Cliff died unexpectedly at 39 I went to his funeral. I wasn't looking forward to it. He was young and left a wife and an eight-year-old daughter. It was shocking and I faced my own mortality. Funerals are for the living I've been told: a way for us to come to terms with our loved one's death. Cliff's death, however, would be particular hard to accept. When someone in their...
Fairly Odd Parents-Past, News Outta My Control / 26.03.2005
On Death and Waiting
Despite Terry Schiavo's parents' efforts to keep her alive and despite Congress' deplorable actions, we wait. Waiting for a loved one to die is a time full of anticipation. Waiting for them to pass --no euphemism can adequately describe that feeling. It's so personal and so intimate, which makes the government circus surrounding Ms. Schiavo's end-of-life so sad. I remember another waiting. • • • My Mother and Me in the Late 1960s In 1960 when I was eleven my mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It was benign but the operation to remove it changed our lives forever. A once vibrant and beautiful...