One Wake Evokes Six Flashbacks

As of this writing, we have no confirmed news of plans for Michael Jackson’s burial. According to pieces in Digital Spy and the Huffington Post, his brothers still hope he can be buried at Neverland Ranch. Despite earlier reports that his mother was dead set against the idea, the piece in Digital Spy says she might relent if Michael’s children were given ownership of the ranch. The piece in the Huff Post says it’s a terrible indignity for Michael not to be given the closure of cremation or a final resting place, and I agree.

Last week I went to a wake for the wife of a dear friend. As we walked to the car, I mentioned to Dennis that I hadn’t seen the open casket I’d observed at the handful of other wakes I’d attended in my adult life. He told me the decedent had been cremated, and when I looked skeptical, he said he was surprised that I hadn’t seen a container of ashes when we first walked in.

Decisions about the final disposition of a loved one’s remains are deeply personal. Still I couldn’t help thinking of my Aunt France’s outrage that my Aunt Belle had had Uncle Morris cremated after he choked to death on a piece of steak at a nursing home. Aunt Frances worked until well into her 80’s as a legal secretary for a personal injury lawyer, and for all I know the cremation scotched her plans for a coroner’s inquest.

The fact that my family is Jewish, and Jewish custom and religious beliefs discourage cremation play into my aversion to cremation. I asked Dennis if loved ones actually view a cremation, and he rolled his eyes. When I asked him how a family knows the body was actually cremated, he told me in his most lawyerly way that reputable mortuaries have been doing the work for years, and besides, they're subject to inspections.

Admittedly a burial precludes the concept of having one’s ashes scattered in some area special to the decedent, whether that be off the coast of a cherished vacation resort, along a favorite hiking trail, or closer to home on the Charles River. But burial calls to mind six video clips unique to the Wolinsky/Sashin family:

(1) The year I was five, we lived in “Kew Garden Hills,” the fantasy of a developer who probably thought that living in a place called Flushing, Queens would be lacking in appeal. On crisp autumn days when the sun was shining, my mother would take my brother and me for walks through Mount Hebron Cemetery – just off the Horace Harding Expressway. She may have shown us the grave of Grandpa’s brother, Uncle Al, a guy who reportedly squandered the money his hard-working immigrants parents had given him for post secondary education in pool halls.

(2) Shoveling earth on a casket after it’s lowered into the ground is a time-honored Jewish ritual. At my father-in-law’s burial, all of us shoveled in appropriately dignified attire. Except for Cousin Harriet’s husband, Howard, who had the audacity to shovel in a Hawaiian shirt. My first husband, Jerry, thought that Howard should have had the decency to stand back, given what he was wearing.

(3) Before the Jewish high holy days, both my mother and mother-in-law would speak of the obligation to visit a loved one’s grave in the same way one might talk of needing to get to the supermarket before running out of food or the dry cleaners before it closes. Not a particularly welcome task, but something that needs to be scheduled. Once, when I wanted to ingratiate myself to my mother-in-law and tweak Jerry at the same time, I proposed that we go “visit” Grandma and Pa. When we got to the cemetery, I took black and white pics with my trusty Olympus OM-1, and I think my mother-in-law was genuinely touched.

(4) Daphne may not remember this, but on one of our trips to Paris when she was a little girl, we toured Pere Lachaise cemetery, a magnificent park and also the final resting place of music celebs ranging from Edith Piaf to Maria Callas to Jim Morrison. Not to mention notable political and literary figures. For me the real poignancy was seeing tinted photos on the tombstones of those who had died before their time.

(5) The staff at Sharon Memorial Park had set up folding chairs for Jerry’s burial in January 1990. Burial scenes in movies and TV usually show mourners standing – sometimes with golf umbrellas documenting that the angels are shedding tears for the decedent. The cold, grey day precluded umbrellas, but I told the rabbi we would be standing too.

(6) After last week’s discussion with Dennis, I followed up by telling him I think it’s important for family members to be able to visit a grave. My mother used to make a big deal of taking gardening shears along to prune the pachysandra she’d planted on her father’s grave. I think it was her way of expressing her love for a parent.

The truth is that it’s been years since Dennis, Daphne or I have visited the graves of loved ones. Still, it’s comforting to be able to visualize where they are, and to know they are close at hand.

Loss of One Store Sparks Six Observations

(photo courtesy of BostonHerald.com)

Please don’t think me a frumpy dresser if I tell you that the closing of the Talbots at 25 School Street in Boston’s Downtown Crossing hit me like a bolt from out of the blue. A bit of context. . . When last Thursday promised warm temperatures and sunny skies, I left home in a slinky, black sleeveless Misook knit dress and buttery soft, black leather Taryn Rose slides. By the time lunchtime rolled around, and I stepped outside to meet a friend for lunch at a Beacon Hill eatery, the temperatures had plummeted, the skies were darkening, and I was shivering.

The minute lunch was over, I bolted down Beacon Street in search of an inexpensive sweater, something I could hang on the back of my office door. Not a fashion statement, mind you. Just something to throw on if the air-conditioning in my office was working a little too well, or if I’d misjudged the weather.

I thought Talbots might have a heavy cotton cardigan, preferably one without a nautical, floral or holiday theme. But I never got to experience the disappointment of walking out of the store without yet another piece of black clothing that any self-respecting New York transplant would consider a wardrobe staple.

The display windows were papered over in white. When I pulled on the heavy red door with brass knocker, it refused to yield. In a state of shock, I had a brief conversation with a well-tanned, middle-aged blonde passerby who told me she had begun working in town just a few months ago. Each conceding that Talbots was hardly the last word in fashion, we both expressed dismay that this old standby was gone.

As a woman with an active lifestyle favoring practical clothing, I headed over to City Sports on Bromfield Street. Perhaps I could find a black, spandex running jacket. The saleswoman came up with something even better, a charcoal grey, loose-fitting, ultra lightweight, North Face polar fleece jacket with a full-length zipper and black piping. Unlike the cardigan I was unable to get at Talbot’s, this could be tossed in the washing machine. No dry-cleaning or hand-washing and then drying flat for days and days, with numerous towel changes.

Six random observations sparked by the closing of the Talbots at 25 School Street:

(1) What ever became of the very stylish African-American sales woman who told me she’d come to that Talbots after working at Neiman Marcus? She showed me how to wear Capri pants – always with one’s shirt un-tucked. The little weekend outfits she put together for me at least five years ago still look great. She was too talented to be working at Talbots, and I would like to think she left for a better paying job.

(2) It always amused me that this particular Talbots always had a uniformed security guard posted near the door. With the store’s most expensive item well under $400 – and that’s a conservative estimate – I can’t imagine the threat of shop-lifting or inventory shrinkage justifying his salary.

(3) Talbots struck me as a landing pad for displaced homemakers with limited skills. Wrapping hundreds or even thousands of Christmas presents year after year in a failing marriage provided them with the experience to fold apparel in tissue paper and then place the items in the store’s trademark red box. My heart goes out to these women now scrambling for another job in a discouraging economy.

(4) The chain’s own web site equates the Talbots brand with “stylish classics” such as “the perfect blazer, pearls and flats.” Who wears a blazer these days except women trying to camouflage a bit butt? The only pearls I wear are the Mikimoto’s my darling Dennis gave me for Hanukkah several years ago, although he and I both admit we'd be pressed to distinguish between real and fake pearls. I confess to wearing flats, regardless of the occasion, but I usually get them at Footstock in Wellesley.

(5) The last time I actually bought anything at Talbots was in March. Having returned from visiting Daphne and Etan in Florida, I had two new Armani pants suits from the Orlando Premium Outlet Mall. I was pleasantly surprised to find cotton and spandex v-neck tops at Talbots that I hoped would work with the suits. The tops, which I’d purchased in several different colors, were inexpensive enough to keep even when I realized they were too casual for the suits.

(6) The best thing I ever bought at Talbots was an ankle length, light-weight, royal blue rubber raincoat with snaps and a black corduroy collar. It was 1987, and Daphne’s dad and I were headed to visit her at Camp Robindel on Lake Winnipesaukee. I thought I’d look like a stiff if I showed up in a beige trench coat, and knew I could find something more suitable at the old standby on School Street. I still get compliments on the coat, which is perfect for the torrential downpours we’ve had in 2009.

Post Vacation Blues

Earlier this month I sat in the lobby of the Parker House Hotel in Boston, waiting for a colleague to meet me for lunch. It was one of several days of uncomfortably cool temperatures and soaking, wind-driven rains.

So I felt sorry for the many out-of-towners I saw shivering in tank tops, shorts and walking sandals, the type of attire that distinguishes tourists headed for the Freedom Trail. When my colleague showed up, we laughed about our initial al fresco dining plans -- lobster rolls at the Ragged Claw, a place with picnic tables overlooking Boston Harbor.

We also discussed upcoming plans each of us had made for beach vacations, hers at the Rhode Island coast the final week of July, and mine in Cape May for seven days starting on July 14. I told her I’d been too superstitious to start any vacation on the 13th day of the month, fearing it might doom Dennis and me to a week of solid rain.

By the time this entry is posted, Dennis and I will be back at work. Not that I’m not necessarily looking forward to the 370 mile drive back to Boston that will start at 5:30 a.m. – and all because I need to get home in time to get ready for work the next day. Our indecently early start will also shield me from the pain of encountering people at the hotel entrance whose vacations are just beginning.

The powers that be have been kind to me. Today is day seven of sunshine and warm temperatures at Cape May. I’ve gotten more sun on my face and body than would be recommended under American Cancer Society guidelines. Aside from peeling ear lobes, I feel great.

My calves are tight. That may be related to my walking on soft sand to and from the hotel beach shack -- where the most taxing thing I’ve done is wait in line to put in my order for beach chairs, towels, and umbrella. Along the way I’ve finished reading Monica Holloway’s page-turner of a memoir, Driving with Dead People, one of two books my daughter, Daphne and her husband, Etan – also in Cape May for five out of the seven days -- gave me for my birthday.

My friend, Linda, was very thoughtful about sending me information about options for exploring the arts as well as an Audubon nature preserve in Cape May. But at the risk of sounding horribly self-indulgent, I make no apology for straying from the beach only for meals, and for some lovely family get-togethers at the home of Etan’s Aunt Vicky and Uncle Joel.

There was a time in my life when winding down a vacation included not a wrap-up blog post, but shopping for school clothes. Yet the temperatures are way too warm to be shopping for cabled, crew neck sweaters and authentic tartan kilts from Scotland – even if I still wore that sort of stuff. Besides, the two-month vacations I once enjoyed have gone the way of Bass Weejun tassel loafers.

Now seems an odd time to be nailing down Thanksgiving plans. But with a daughter and son-in-law based in Orlando, it’s hard to say goodbye without knowing that another get-together is in the works. As the consumer tech columnist for The Orlando Sentinel, Etan will be working on Black Friday, the day when some shoppers camp outside all night, just to be at the head of the line when stores open, and others enjoy pushing and shoving each other for the last flat screen TV at whatever low, low price has been advertised.

Dennis and I said we will come to Orlando for Thanksgiving, and Don and Janice, Etan’s parents, said they too would try to come. I doubt we will do anything more strenuous than visit, eat, sunbathe, swim and explore the Premium Outlet Mall. Planning for Orlando will help me get over this vacation being over.

Four Episodes Not Shown on Cheaters

Cape May, New Jersey. Where have I been the last nine years? The auditory cue saying that professional investigators could help if you suspect your spouse or lover of cheating was what caught my attention. It was somewhere between 8 and 9 a.m. as I waited for Dennis to finish showering so we could head over to Bill’s Pancake House for breakfast. Understand that relative to what I’m about to report, my husband and I lead blissfully mundane lives, including vacationing in the wedding capital of the Jersey shore.

I thought Dennis had the television in our hotel room tuned in to some Philadelphia news program. Apparently not, because what flashed on screen was a scene of a very obese woman clad in slacks going out to meet her equally obese lover, a guy with white shoulder length hair and a cowboy hat. He presented her with flowers and a necklace, and then they went their separate ways before meeting up at a hotel, presumably for a romantic rendezvous.

A few minutes later, the show presents footage of a tearful husband confronted with the evidence of his wife cheating on him with the man he recognizes to be her ex-husband. When I told Daphne that I’d seen this sordid version of Candid Camera broadcast from Philadelphia, she rolled her eyes, explaining that Cheaters is a nationally syndicated television reality show that’s now in its 9th year.

Once in a while she and Etan, who live in Orlando, watch Cheaters for the type of amusement that I suspect derives from feeling superior to people who come across as life’s losers. Were we to identify with the people on the show, I suspect this would be painful rather than funny.

The advertisements associated with the snippet I saw seemed designed to appeal to people in generally desperate straits. One featured a personal injury lawyer warning prospective clients that just because an attorney has spent lots of money on an enormous Yellow Page ad is no proof that he’s competent. Of course the lawyer on screen made no mention that his 30 seconds of on air time costs a lot more than any print ad.

There was also an ad offering to advance money to plaintiffs with personal injury suits pending. No mention was made of the fact that such services charge interest rates just a hair under usurious.

The show’s website, www.cheaters.com, features a process serving service, and ironically an online dating service. The latter demonstrates a fundamental truth, that despite the pain of betrayal, people are willing to try again.

Still I couldn’t help thinking of real tales of betrayal and infidelity, real in the sense that they involved people I knew:

(1) During the years that we summered in Lake Mahopac, New York, I had a best friend named Claudia. Her dad was a dentist with a Manhattan office and her mom divided her time between traveling to Europe and shopping at Saks. It wasn’t until we were in our teens, and her dad asked my dad to represent him in his divorce that I learned her mom was having an affair with “Uncle” Al, a very rich family friend and dental patient of her father.

(2) The year Daphne entered first grade, I went to pick her up from a play date at the home of another little girl. The girl’s father came to the door, giggling uproariously about the tickling game he said the three had been playing. Especially put off by his comment that my daughter would have to stay over because he couldn’t find one of her shoes, I ushered Daphne out very quickly. The next time we saw the classmate, she reported that her mom had a boyfriend and had taken an apartment closer to work.

(3) Just a few years after losing my first husband, I became friends with a periodontist at my gym who ultimately introduced me to Dennis. While waiting for the gym to open, my friend had me meet his wife, a woman I found friendly, funny, and attractive.

During the course of our many 45-minute workouts on Concept II rowing ergometers, he told me he thought his wife was cheating on him. The real reason for her trips to Israel -- purportedly to visit their children studying abroad – was an affair she was having with a guy who lived there. Ironically, when my friend moved out, began divorce proceedings, and started dating a woman he’d known for years, his soon-to-be ex-wife told me she felt betrayed.

(4) Everybody has a story. During the years before meeting Dennis, I took ballroom dance lessons at virtually every studio in the Greater Boston area. I always wondered about a tall, platinum blonde in her sixties named Ellie. Seemingly well-heeled, she initially told me she and her ex-husband had “grown apart.”

As we got to know each other, she said that when she suspected he was cheating on her, she hired a private investigator. Much to her dismay but not her surprise, she said that his Rolls Royce kept turning up at the home of another woman.

Either cool and calculating or just a loving mother, she said she waited until her kids were older before disrupting a lifestyle that included having her own Rolls Royce, living in a home with a pool and sending the kids to private school.

Do you know of any episodes that didn’t make it on to Cheaters?

Three Birthday Celebrations to Remember

Cape May. The place is enshrouded in fog, and I like the feel of the wind on my face. At 6:10 a.m. I’ve got the piazza at Congress Hall to myself, and other than screeching seagulls and the roar of the surf, it’s blissfully quiet. What more could I ask for my birthday?

Daughter Daphne and her husband, Etan, will be flying in from Orlando later this morning. Tonight they will join Dennis and me for a dinner celebration at the Ebbitt Room. It was sweet of her to ask me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said an iTunes gift card would be nice.

It seems like the only way I can download Abraham, Martin and John is to purchase an entire Dion album – along with Donna the Prima Donna and other songs I’m not sure I need. For $10, it has always seemed like an extravagance, but I’ll probably get it with my gift card.

With a summer birthday and a mom unwilling to move the celebration ahead to coincide with the school year, I missed being able to celebrate with classmates. The offer of a Halloween party instead didn’t cut it, because who gets presents at Halloween?

Still I’ve had some great birthday celebrations, three of which are especially memorable:

(1) Belle Harbor, New York 1958. We were in a rented summer home in a lovely enclave of Rockaway Beach. I knew no one other than the kids I met playing on the sidewalk in front of the house. Still I aspired to have a party just like a 13-year-old named Joanne Chappy. Her parents were divorced, and I envied the fact that she lived at the beach all year long with her grandmother in the house behind us.

Joanne’s friends danced to Rockin Robin, a hit single recorded by a guy named Bobby Day, as well as the tunes of Richie Valens, Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. The party lasted way past my bedtime, but I enjoyed listening to the music with my nose pressed against the screen of my bedroom window.

My own party was in the afternoon. Although I can’t recall any dancing, I was thrilled to get a miniature stiff cardboard case in which to carry my vinyl 45’s – along with the Rockin Robbin single. I was also delighted to get what seemed like a six-month supply of bubble bath and cheap cologne.

(2) Lake Mahopac, New York 1964. Summers at Lake Mahopac were deliciously unstructured. I spent my days hanging out on a small private beach down a steep hill from the house, often doing nothing more taxing than swimming out to the wood raft where I would work on my tan. My brother and I also did a lot of water-skiing, despite Dad’s setting a limit of one tank of gas for the speedboat per day.

Mom and Dad agreed to host an evening birthday party in the back yard of the summer home that by then Grandma and Grandpa had owned for four years. We had pizza, birthday cake, and ice cream. I think the only thing Mom did to embarrass me was bring out the Pin the Tail on the Donkey set.

That was the year I got the best loot ever. The vinyl 45’s had given way to entire albums. Warren Feldman gave me the Beach Boys’s All Summer Long, and Stevie Alter gave me the Beatles’ Something New, Something New. I got two pieces of costume jewelry, both pins my mom ended up wearing -- a porcelain pumpkin and a gold leaf with a pearl.

(3) Brookline, MA 1991. This was a lonely time in my life, but also a period of forced personal growth. My first husband had died roughly 18 months earlier, Daphne was off at overnight camp, and Dennis was not to come into my life for four more years. Although sweet, compassionate colleagues had come to the rescue the previous year, it was now time for me to prove to myself that I could create my own birthday celebration.

Having just begun taking ballroom dance lessons, I hauled myself off to a beautiful, mahogany-paneled ballroom with lots of mirrors. I had no dance partner, but my sense of the culture told me it was acceptable for unattached women to ask unattached men to dance. Besides, it was time to get some practice with partners other than the teacher at the Arthur Murray studio.

This was the first of many Thursdays dancing to big band sounds at a place called Veronique. The bandleader once told me he admired my ability to come week after week, and and ask men I didn't know for a dance. I never told him the experience was providing me with more self-confidence than I'd ever had.

Nine Random Observations Re: Summer

“The first month of climatological summer was not very summer-like in the Northeast. Eleven of the twelve states in the region posted below-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation in June.” – Northeast Regional Climate Center

Dennis and I are scheduled to leave for a week in Cape May in a couple of days, and the extended 10 day forecast ranges from partly cloudy to mostly cloudy to isolated T-storms. The most promising day offers a 20 per cent chance of rain.

Isn’t life all about perspective? So from that vantage point, I offer nine random observations about summer:

1) Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey -- where I spent summers from birth through age six in a white, two-story “log cabin” on Lake Shore Drive -- now has a Facebook page. Comments -- written by people who seem to have lived year round in this little hamlet outside New York City -- suggest the area today has the largest concentration of nail salons and pizzerias anywhere.

2) By age three, I lived to swim in Lake Hiawatha, a mucky artificial lake I heard was later filled in to make way for a swim club. Very unhappy the day Mom sent me to my room for behavior she found objectionable, I removed the screen from my first floor bedroom window and climbed out. Much to my dismay, this yielded additional home confinement time.

3) The best part of the “beach” at Lake Hiawatha was the refreshment stand. Mom preferred that my older brother and I get ice cream, believing it had some nutritional value. Usually I begged her for a root-beer flavored popsicle. We saved the sticks and tried to build a little house with it.

4) The same summer as my home confinement episode, there was a JonBenét Ramsey style beauty contest for little girls on the “beach.” I felt crushed when I realized my competitors were all wearing frilly party dresses with Mary Jane party shoes, just the type of attire I didn't own -- because Mom considered such stuff frivolous. I was the only one wearing a swimsuit and bare feet, meriting not even a certificate of participation.

5) Hurricanes have a way of disrupting summer vacations. Hurricane Edna struck not long after Labor Day of 1954, causing loss of power and major flooding in Lake Hiawatha. I thought it was cool to see neighbors on inner tubes and inflatable boats floating down the streets, but Mom feared this could be a good way to catch polio. When Hurricane Hazel followed, Grandma and Grandpa decided to sell the “log cabin.”

6) Getting to Broad Channel Day Camp -- where I spent four weeks in the summer of 1960 -- involved a bus ride through the Howard Beach section of Queens. These days I associate Howard Beach with two things: the notorious racial incident in 1986 that made headline news, which itself gave rise to Chris Rock’s hilariously funny routine that has him standing on Howard Beach Boulevard, proposing that it be renamed Tupac Shakur Boulevard.

7) The jigsaw puzzles and paint by numbers sets – house gifts from weekend guests Grandma would invite to the house she and Grandpa later bought at Lake Mahopac, New York – came in boxes that looked really appealing. Rainy day activities by default, they proved exercises in frustration for a kid who struggled to read maps and had less than perfect eye-hand coordination.

8) Stocking up on too much sunscreen may have jinxed that week in August 2004 when Dennis and I spent the bulk of the time on the lawn of a hotel in Olgonquit, Maine looking out over the Marginal Way -- swathed in sweat suits, ever hopeful that the sun would come out but inevitably disappointed. I ate lobster rolls with French fries for lunches and dinners, accompanied by hot fudge brownie sundaes, but did very little swimming or sunbathing.

9) One of my best mini-vacations ever included spending a long, mother-daughter bonding weekend with Daphne at The Sanderling in the Outer Banks. She'd been hesitant about leaving New York to accept a job at The Daily Press in Newport News, and I tried to make it seem more appealing with an offer that when summer came, she and I would meet at The Sanderling. The weather was perfect, as was the beach offering wild surf and water enough for bathing. We capped off each day at the beach with homemade cookies and ice tea.

What are observations about your own summer vacation experiences? I'd love to hear about them -- the "days at the beach" as well as the vacations that proved disappointing.

Five Observations About Nurse Jackie

Earlier this month, just as I was about to cancel my cable television package, I searched for and found Nurse Jackie. After watching the freebie teaser offered by Showtime, I found it irritating that despite my paying $109.19 per month, I would be denied the opportunity to watch future episodes of a series featuring Edie Falco, one of my favorite actors. I liked her when she played Carmela Soprano, and I like her even more in this new role casting her as a skilled professional.

On first impression, it seemed that Comcast would provide me with HBO or Showtime, but not both. Though I haven’t bought into Hung, HBO’s new series about a high school athletic coach moonlighting as a male prostitute, I was hesitant about relinquishing the ability to watch old episodes of a much better HBO series, The Wire, on demand.

Comcast sales people are good, and the woman listened carefully to the fact that I kept coming back to wanting to watch Nurse Jackie. By the end of our conversation, the woman in sales sold me on signing a two year contract for a new cable package offering two things: $25.90 off my monthly bill, and the ability to add Showtime.

Having seen just the first four episodes of Nurse Jackie – I recorded the fifth one on Tivo for viewing this evening – I’d like to share just five observations about both the series and the character of Nurse Jackie, a/k/a Jackie Peyton:

1) I can’t get the music from the first episode of Nurse Jackie out of my head, and knew it sounded familiar. A visit to YouTube confirmed it’s actually the theme song Dory and Andre Previn wrote for the 1967 movie, Valley of the Dolls, to be sung by Dionne Warwick. The lyrics, “Gotta get off, gonna get/Off of this merry-go-round” refer to a woman trying to recapture her pride and self-confidence.

2) Like the starlets and showgirls depicted in Valley of the Dolls -- based on Jacqueline Susann’s 1966 novel, Nurse Jackie has a serious substance abuse problem. She’s addicted to prescription painkillers, including Vicodin and Oxycontin. Knowing that in real life substance abuse can result in flawed judgment and loss of one’s professional license, I fear for her well-being.

3) Nurse Jackie cheats on her husband with Eddie, the hospital pharmacist who plies her with pills. I find this troubling -- her back pain notwithstanding -- but cut her some slack because she seems to love her husband. Since I don’t want to think of her as someone who uses other people, I want to believe that she cares about the pharmacist, but more as friend/supplier than lover. At the same time, I wonder whether an upcoming episode will contain a visit by federal regulators checking to see how well the hospital is doing in tracking controlled substances.

4) Nurse Jackie’s most likeable quality is that she’s committed to providing competent, compassionate care for her patients, and treats them with respect. Not afraid to stand up to a mean-spirited hospital administrator, she ensures that an elderly cardiac patient who wants no further care is able to live his last few hours in dignity, as his wife feeds him chicken soup.

5) Nurse Jackie, the loving mother of two little girls, also has a feisty side. When she learns the “john” leaving a prostitute with enough slash wounds to require 287 stitches and 10 pints of blood has been admitted to the emergency room too, she makes a quick decision about his missing ear. Realizing it’s the same ear handed to when the prostitute was admitted, she flushes it down the toilet. But Nurse Jackie takes this action only after learning that he will escape prosecution because he’s got diplomatic immunity.

What are your observations about Nurse Jackie – the television series, the characters, or Edie Falco?

Jackson Heights "Landmarks" Lost and Found

Dear Mom:

I tried to call you last week, but I guess you and Dad were out. Even if you hadn’t swapped the apartment in Greenwich Village for a cottage in that retirement community in North Carolina nearly a decade ago, I doubt you would have wanted to accompany Daphne, her husband, Etan, and me to Jackson Heights. Fortunately they were game to see where I’d lived from birth through age five, and then from age six through eight.

You’d probably prefer that I remember the years in Forest Hills, after Grandma and Grandpa helped you and Dad buy a house in a neighborhood with better schools. Not the cramped apartment we had at 77-10 34th Avenue or the even more cramped apartment we had on 81st Street.

I called you because I wanted to get the address for the place on 81st Street. I peered into many buildings, all of which had fire escapes out front and looked pretty run down. But I couldn’t identify the one that was ours. All I remember is that it was on the same street as the public library, and that while it was being built I would look at the construction pit and ask if Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel were doing the work.

In any event, I thought I’d give you a report on three Jackson Heights “landmarks” that still exist:

1) Public library on 81st Street. There you introduced me to a Swedish author, Maj Lindman, whose books I loved listening to you read aloud. The characters in the two different series -- Snipp Snapp and Snurr (triplet boys) and Flicka Ricka and Dicka (triplet girls) -- seemed to have it all. Blond and Nordic, and wearing identical outfits, they were living the good life: swimming, ice-skating, sledding, or baking cakes.

2) Buster Brown Shoe Store. It’s now called Casa De Buster Brown in recognition of the large Hispanic population. That’s where Dad got me dark red shoes called “sandals.” It now seems weird to call a closed toe shoe a sandal just because it’s got a few perforations and a T-strap. The store also sold elegant looking Capezio pumps with paper thin soles that I would have preferred. On the other hand, the “sandals” were preferable to shoes with laces.

3) P.S. 69Q. The school now has a security guard stationed in the lobby. Still in a lot of ways, the place looks more vibrant than when I was there for grades 1 through 3. I saw mothers carrying sheet cakes into the building, probably for the last day of school, and I also saw safety warnings in lots of different languages, along with posters for different types of dance classes. Yes, I understand that Dr. Jaffe, the principal, was in poor health during my years there, and that monitoring of non-performing teachers was non-existent. It doesn't matter that he was the father of Rona Jaffe, the best-selling author of trashy novels.

In the interest of symmetry, I’ll also point out three “landmarks” that are gone forever:

1) Dragonseed Chinese restaurant on 37th Avenue and 74th Street. One day when school got out at 12 Noon for a “clerical holiday,” you took Arthur and me out to lunch. Always a timid eater, I wasn’t sure I’d like something so exotic. You started me with wonton soup, spare ribs, and almond cookies, and I was hooked.

2) The Toddle House. It’s only recently that I learned that Toddle House was a chain of restaurants with a shameful segregation era past including a separate chain for Blacks. Once in a while you took me there for a hamburger and French fries. Selman, my Turkish classmate whose father worked at the U.N., ate there more often. The times you went to see your Viennese analyst in “the city” and gave me money for lunch, I told you I’d go there. The truth is that after buying a slice of pizza in a store that’s now a cappuccino bar, I spent the rest of the money on candy and sugary mentholated cough drops.

3) Woolworth’s. When I wanted a dog you took me there to buy a turtle. I was actually quite pleased with the plastic turtle bowl, which had a ramp, a fake palm tree, and colorful gravel. Arthur and I bought you our first joint Hanukkah gift at this five and dime store. I think you were so pleased that your son and his little sister were able to agree on anything that you actually wore the green plastic beads with matching necklace.

Unanswered Prayers

This sounds completely irrational. But I’m still haunted by Rabbi Emily’s refusal to indulge my request. It was twenty years ago this summer that my first husband, Jerry, was diagnosed with a B-cell lymphoma. Not a particularly observant Jew -- yet more superstitious than I’d care to admit -- I overcame any inhibitions about sounding foolish and asked her if she would change Jerry’s name.

American Jews often have two names, the one on their birth certificate and also the Hebrew name they are given at birth. So changing just the Hebrew name seemed like a simple request. No legal ramifications involved. And even if the act might not help, what harm could it do?

Judaism became my port in a storm. According to family lore, my father would have died of a ruptured appendix at age two – were it not for his aunt running to the closest shul and getting the rabbi to change his name.

Though I never knew the rationale behind that action, Rabbi Emily knew all about it: “Of course. So you can fool the Angel of Death. Now does that make sense to you? That’s not real faith.”

I allowed her to divert me with the offer of a special prayer for Jerry – to be said by the handful of people showing up for Saturday morning services in August at a reform synagogue. I was there and I prayed. It now occurs to me that aside from a few really observant people, other congregants were probably there because they too were facing a crisis of one sort or another.

Though I wish I could say that week is now a blur, I still see it in high definition and hear it in stereophonic audio. Jerry had not been feeling well that weekend, and on Monday morning I became alarmed at his jaundiced appearance, and insisted on accompanying him to the Mass General.

The recorded message greeting me on my return from work Tuesday evening still puts knots in my stomach, and elicits tremors. “I’m at the Mass General. They just found a mass the size of a grapefruit inside me.”

It was a time before cell phones, and whatever calls I made to the hospital were greeted with recorded messages about offices being closed for the day or human beings who knew nothing about the whereabouts of my husband. Underscoring my feelings of terror and impotence, I bit into my knuckles hard enough to draw blood.

Jerry walked through the door in his brown and white seersucker suit, button-down shirt, Liberty tie, and wingtips -- his standard uniform for seeing patients in his psychiatry practice. I’d seen the tears in his eyes when his dog had died, and also at his father’s funeral, but I’d never witnessed him breaking down.

Sitting in the velvet, swiveling barrel chairs at the far end of our living room, we both sobbed as Jerry told me what his doctors suspected. Relieved that Daphne still had a week or so left of overnight camp, I also dreaded the prospect of telling her that our happy, carefree lives had suddenly been transformed into a very bad dream.

When I called Rabbi Emily later that week, it was because Jerry wanted her to see her. He’d been admitted for an aggressive course of chemotherapy, and hoped she would visit him at the Mass General. Despite it being 10 p.m. when I called, she could not have been kinder or more gracious, saying she would be there in the morning.

She brought him a modern translation of the Old Testament, and they talked about the Book of Job. Her inscription was full of optimism, hoping the Torah would sustain and guide him in his journey from weakness to strength, from pain to healing, and from sickness to health.

Less than five months later, when she officiated over his funeral, Rabbi Emily made a point of saying that in addition to being an MIT trained scientist and a physician, Jerry Sashin had been a man of faith. Though it’s a cliché of funerals for clergy people to make claims about the faith of the deceased, I think what she said was true.

Rabbi Emily told me he asked her to pray with him. But as far as I know, Jerry never asked that his name be changed.