Me, Modigliani, and the Fitzi-Continis Plus Tulips on Park Avenue

2019-04-29T23:52:32Z

Then there was the moment my lunch companion Kimberly—a real find as my beloved friend Marybeth would say—inserted “I’m Jewish” into the middle of a heated conversation about Broadway musicals.

Like I wouldn’t immediately recognize a member of the tribe!

Was it my imagination, or was she observing me for a reaction out of the corner of her eye?

“I’m Jewish, too,” I said.

She looked astonished. “With a last name like DiLucchio?”

“Me, Modigliani, and the Fitzi-Continis,” I said. It’s a line I use a lot although strictly speaking, I have nothing in common with Modigliani and the Fitzi-Continis. I’m not really an Italian Jew. I inherit my tribal membership from my mother who was a nice German-Polish Jewish girl from Brooklyn in between bouts of insanity.

(Sometimes I amuse myself on long plane rides by spinning an alternative family tree for the amusement of whoever’s sitting next to me. I’m Sephardic! The family emigrated from Morocco to Syracusa some time in the 16th century. And then my father and my mother immigrated to the States just in time to avoid being turned into soap. That’s what whoever gets for starting a conversation and not leaving me to read in peace.)

“I guess with a name like ‘Smith,’ I really shouldn’t talk,” said Kimberly. “We changed it for obvious reasons. Both sets of grandparents emigrated from Russia.”

We talked a bit about synagogues. There’s a cool synagogue in Woodstock and another cool one in Kingston. There are no cool synagogues within easy driving distance on this side of the river, which is probably a good thing. If there was a cool synagogue here, I’d feel guilty about not going to services more often.

###

I thought of this conversation a couple of days later when I read about the San Diego synagogue shooting. Only one person dead, so the 24/7 news cycle had a hard time justifying the use of the word “massacre.”

The shooting took place on the last day of Passover. Six months to the day after the Tree of Life attack in Pittsburgh.

The shooter was gunning for the rabbi. The carnage might have been a lot worse except for two things: First, a woman interposed herself between the shooter and the reb. Her name was Lori Kaye—no relation to Danny! But obviously another Jew whose forbearers thought protective mimicry might be a handy survival tool.

As you can see, they were wrong.

And then the shooter’s rifle jammed. The rabbi called it a miracle.

We’d all like to think when that moment arrives and those armed madmen are coming for us—just as we’ve always known they’d come for us because for Jews of a certain generation, the image of the camps is a kind of racial memory—we’d have the presence of mind to step in front of the gun. To shield others more worthy. Gallantry is always a slap in the face of oppressors. In fact, many of us are perpetually on the prowl for a martyrdom that’s worthy of us.

I’ve never been on the receiving end of firepower, so it’s impossible to predict how I would react. I’d like to think I’d interpose my own body if the gunman were aiming at either of my two sons.

Maybe I’d try to shield a handful of close friends.

But a rabbi? Never.

Incidents like this, oddly, do make me more sympathetic to Israel’s hardline political excesses. Fuck compromise. They’re gonna hate us one way or the other. We might as well have them hate us and get what we want.

###

My other adventure was a spur-of-the-moment trip into the City at the behest of L.

L was born with severe scoliosis, which for one reason or another, her parents did nothing to correct when she was young.

Consequently, she is as twisted as a hobgoblin in a fairytale.

For the most part, L ignores her scoliosis. Which is a pretty sane attitude to have toward a chronic disabling condition.

The deal with chronic disabling conditions is that generally, other people do not want to hear about them—unless they are professionals who can make $$$ off them or people who have chronic disabling conditions of their own, in which case they’re merely waiting for a break in your complaints to launch into a monologue about their own.

L is a pretty sunny person generally, and over time, as I’ve gotten to know her better, I’ve come to understand that many of her more annoying quirks can be traced back to coping mechanisms she developed to deal with her disability. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all have annoying quirks, and they can generally be traced back to something.)

In recent months, though, L’s scoliosis has gotten a lot worse. To the point where it’s threatening to compromise her quality of life.

What to do?

At 80, she’s a bad candidate for spinal surgery. Even if spinal surgery had a better success rate.

Then her chiropractor told her about this thing called soft bracing.

And I offered to go with her to her appointment.

First she said, No. Because she’s very independent and snaps at people who offer her assistance she wishes she did not need.

“Well, you know, most people don’t remember half the stuff their doctors tell them,” I said. “The whole process of going to the doctor can be so overwhelming. I’ve acted as a medical liaison for lots of people.” Translation: Ordinary people take me with them to doctors’ visits all the time so it doesn’t mean you’re a cripple.

So, she agreed.

But then she said No again.

And then she said Yes again.

When she said No again, I was in no mood to argue with her about it.

And it was pretty annoying when on Thursday night she asked me, “What are you doing tomorrow…?”

What I was doing was work: A couple of clients had dropped assignments on me with nonnegotiable deadlines that all fell “tomorrow.” I was up till 2am pounding them all out.

And then up at 6am to make the train. L had a 10am appointment. I figured it would take us 45 minutes to get from Grand Central Station to Park Avenue in the upper 80s. That’s actually the same amount of time it would have taken me to walk. But L cannot walk—which is one of the reasons we were going to this doctor’s appointment.

It actually took us an hour and a half to get to the doctor’s office. Since Trump’s election, midtown Manhattan has been a horror show because of the security detail around Trump Tower. And then there was a funeral service for a vet who’d been killed in Afghanistan; half the northbound and southbound boulevards above Grand Central were closed to traffic.

(We were needed to say goodbye somehow, lifeinroseland observed afterwards. Which was an excellent way to look at it.)

The appointment itself was interesting because I got to look at L’s X-rays and learn about the soft brace itself, which is a pretty nifty device. I doubt, though, that it will do very much for L; she’s long past the point where her spine might be amenable to correction. It might keep her condition from deteriorating even further, the operative word there being “might.” The curvature in her spine is seriously impinging on her left lung cavity, squashing that left lung, which I imagine makes it very difficult to breathe with any kind of exertion.

There’s a set of exercises that go along with the soft brace. Schroth exercises, they’re called. One of the things that happens with scoliosis is that since you’re so off-balance, some of your muscles hypertrophy while others begin to atrophy. Schroth exercises are designed to regenerate atrophied muscles. While the soft brace is supporting you in a straight position, you can begin to use those muscles again.

I’m glad I went with L. I did the nurse thing. Told the doctor when I saw that she was tired and needed a break, initiated discharge planning, took multiple videos and photos of the rather complicated process involved in putting on and taking off the soft brace, which I then uploaded for L onto a private YouTube channel. Each soft brace is customized to the specific curvature of each individual’s spine, so the procedure varies widely from patient to patient.

Also, I doubt that L would even have known how to catch a cab without me.

I was happy to do it. Although practically hallucinatory with exhaustion by the end of the day.

It was tulip time on Park Avenue! Every median between East 54th and East 86thth planted with enormous orange tulips! Thousands of them:

comments

Mallory's Camera

Me, Modigliani, and the Fitzi-Continis Plus Tulips on Park Avenue