On a recent Saturday morning, I felt the slight touch of a hand on my face. It was Jackson, our seven-year-old grandson, with a big smile on his cheery face. He softly announced that Grandma was making pancakes and asked me if I was coming. How could I refuse? I rolled out of bed, gave him a hug, and told him I loved him.
In the last few months, getting myself out of bed has become more of a chore. Since I started immunotherapy, I’ve had to deal with some troubling side effects—swollen hands and fingers, achy knees, legs, and shoulders. And most prominently, increased fatigue.
I’m slowing down. I still walk for about half an hour daily, but it’s slower and with a cane to steady my gait. Instead of trekking two full urban blocks here in Arlington, Virginia, I stop at the bench by the local park to catch my breath.
For most of my adult life, I’ve exercised regularly. I played tennis, rode a bike, and swam. But sadly, there are no sports in my current life. Sometimes, in my dreams, I’m on a tennis court again, but only “in my dreams.” My wife, Michele, and I used to have a reasonably active social life in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We joined a monthly cinephiles group to discuss new films. We’d be at the local “art house” regularly, followed by Chinese food, pasta, or pulled pork. We’d also attend theater performances, visit museums, root for the UNC women’s basketball team, and try to get tickets for the men’s basketball games.
Michele and I moved from Chapel Hill to Washington, DC, in 2017 to be closer to our small family—son Mike, his wife, Sarah, and seven-year-old Jackson, our first and only grandchild. So why are we so reluctant to go out now? COVID-19 provided the major reason; my compromised immune system explains our cautiousness. Dr. Siegel, my oncologist, in response to my question, merely answered, “I don’t want you to get COVID.” That warning has stayed with me and guided my choices.
In DC, we’ve been to a few outdoor restaurants and once to the Kennedy Center performance of Hamilton. Since the center required all audience members to wear masks, we felt relieved. In fact, we held hands and felt like two high school students on their first date without supervision.
In 2020, after a few years of renting an apartment in a brand-new high-rise building in Navy Yard, Michele and I started to explore continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) in and around DC. When I mentioned this possibility to our son, Michael, he had a strong response. He and Sarah did not want us in a new community setting just as COVID-19 rates were rising. He called the next day with an unexpected proposal—he and Sarah wanted to live with us in a new house. They had been thinking of selling their Navy Yard apartment and using the proceeds to purchase a new home.
I suddenly remembered a similar situation I faced, perhaps 40 years earlier. At that time, I was completing a PhD sociology thesis, living in an apartment in Princeton, and exploring an appointment at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. I was having a meal with my parents when my dad started lauding the desirability of many small Hudson River towns located in northern New Jersey.
He was a good salesman, and for the next hour or so, he tried to convince me of the advantages of living outside of Manhattan. He cited the safety of suburbs, lower crime rates, great views of Manhattan, and the easy commute to New Brunswick (he assumed Rutgers would hire me). Then he got to the economics of the proposed move—the rents in Manhattan were increasing and becoming exorbitant, while the prices of houses in places like Hoboken and Weehawken were low. Yes, the structures needed renovation, but the cost of upgrading was much lower on the Jersey side. The houses were bigger and had blooming gardens.
Then he played the ace card—“You know your mother would love to become a grandmother.” I’d have my own floor in the house, and when I married, there would be plenty of space for my wife and any children. He did not mention the fact that he, too, wanted grandchildren, but I already knew that.
My problem was that I was not really interested in living with my parents again at that stage of my life. I was dating and still happily single. Years of counseling had helped me to realize that I needed to be more independent of my parents. I loved them, but my participation in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in the 1960s and 1970s strained my relationship with my dad, who preferred “law and order” and supported President Nixon’s war in Southeast Asia. As a graduate student, I became more aware of politics, and when I marched on DC with thousands of other protestors, all of whom were gassed by the DC police, my father had little sympathy. He believed it was all a Communist plot to subvert the USA. He urged me to keep focusing on my thesis, complete the PhD, and find a good appointment at a university on the East Coast.
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I believe that what Dad really wanted was to recreate his happy pre-Nazi childhood here in the United States. He was the youngest of four children, adored and spoiled by his mother, and pampered by two sisters. The Stein-Marcus family lived in Kolín, a city northwest of Prague, with a large and active Jewish community. By the time of the German occupation in 1939, Dad’s mother, Sofie, had nine siblings, almost all married with children. Close contact with and support from family members were expected and welcome. Family communication and socializing happened often, but during the Holocaust, family conversations increasingly focused on whether to flee or remain in Bohemia-Moravia.
Tom Stoppard’s latest biographical play, Leopoldstadt, documents the anxiety and uncertainty experienced by so many Jewish families. A few of my Jewish relatives fled Prague for New York, London, Chicago, and Palestine. Tragically, most decided to stay in Prague, hoping “things would not be so bad” and that they could survive.
Although Dad survived Theresienstadt, after the Holocaust he was unable to reclaim his bentwood furniture company. It was confiscated by the Nazis and, in 1948, it was nationalized by the Communist government. The harassment by the local police, including several unannounced searches of his Prague apartment, led to his rejection of anything Communist or even Socialist. He came to the States at age 50, a grateful but also a bitter man.
“What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” The poet Robert Hayden asks that of himself and the reader. He asks, What do we know about love? Does he imply that what we learn is a lifelong process? What we observe and experience at one point may not seem to be love. Or we may not see or experience such love. We may experience loneliness and austerity as lack of care by a parent, even though it was meant as love? Then—days, months, perhaps years later, we may realize, as does the poet, that the parent’s lifetime care and gifts were provided in love.
I came to appreciate my father and understood how his decision making was so fully constrained by the antisemitism of an occupying army. He struggled with the overwhelming caution expressed by his parents, three older siblings, and his in-laws, which derailed any forceful action. I learned of my father’s efforts to escape Prague for Switzerland. He was able to deposit some moderate funds in a Swiss bank but lacked the required paperwork necessary to cross the border. It was overwhelming. By the time my parents were ready to move, it was too late—the borders were closed. Escape was virtually impossible. By the end of the Holocaust in 1945, my dad was the only surviving member of the prewar Stein-Marcus family of nine.
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