in the beginning

 

 

I began to think about the beginning.

 

The birth.

 

The facts.

 

Born in Winsted, Connecticut, on Saturday, December 5, 1964 (Leap Year), sometime after midnight during the worst ice storm on record.

 

My father stayed home with my three siblings, and they cooked hot dogs in the fireplace for dinner because the power was out.

 

I was named by my doctor.

 

Not the pediatrician who delivered me, our family doctor.

 

Because after three children, who has the time or energy to name a fourth child?

 

Not my parents.

 

"I've always liked the name Philip," Dr. Levy suggested to my mother, who agreed.

 

He and his wife became my brother's and sister's godparents.

 

My family is Jewish, so I was circumcised by a Rabbi and given a Hebrew name, Pinsach Pasach.

 

Who could forget a name like that?

 

I looked up "Pinsach."

 

It rhymes with tintock, but the meaning of the word is unknown.

 

"Pasach" was the son of Japhlet, a descendant of Asher.

 

That's about all I know about my Hebrew name.

 

Believe me, it's enough.

 

It's not like it's useful or anything.

 

 

 

I've always been confused by my name because, according to the New Testament, Philip was one of Jesus's Twelve Apostles. 

 

And yet, we're Jewish.

 

So, I have a Christian first name, a Hebrew middle name (Paul), and a Jewish (eastern Ashkenazi) last name (Gaber).

 

This is where I usually say, "No wonder I'm so fucked-up."

 

But I'm not going to say that this time because it's easy, and it's stupid, and it's shallow, and it's corny, and I'm bigger than that.

 

I recalled the stories I was told about life before I was born.

 

My parents, Natalie and Joe, met in Boston in college.

 

She is at Emerson College, and he is at Babson College.

 

He was nineteen, and she was twenty.

 

My father's sister (Evelyn) was friends with my mother and set them up on a blind date.

 

Love ensued, and they got married.

 

My father dreamed of entering Filene's Basement executive training program, but his father, Morris, had other plans.

 

He wanted my father to move back to Winsted to help him with his dry-cleaning store, which had been in the family for a generation.

 

Although he never admitted it to me, he must have agonized over the decision. My grandfather probably laid a real extra-strength Jewish guilt trip on him, and my father probably felt a heavy-duty obligation to take over the family business. What other choice did he have?

 

So, my father and mother returned to Winsted, where they moved in with his parents, fraternal grandparents, maternal grandfather, two sisters, and their husbands.    

 

Yeah, it was like that for a while.

 

My mother was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, the only child of a Jewish father and a WASP mother who claimed her ancestors came over on the Mayflower and settled in Simsbury, Connecticut.

 

As a child, she enjoyed ballet and drawing.

 

Her father, Nathan (or "Nate,") whom she adored, owned one of the country's first Bell and Howell 8 mm movie cameras.

 

Throughout his life, Nate probably shot over a million feet of film, three hundred thousand of which consisted of my mother, from early to middle childhood, walking out the front door in various outfits and costumes.

 

She looked like a little dark-haired, half-Jewish Shirley Temple.

 

Her childhood had been lonely, and she vowed that when she got married and was ready to start a family, she'd have more than one kid.    

 

My mother's relationship with her mother was a lot like my relationship status on Facebook…

 

Complicated.

 

Even though Marian had married one of the Chosen People, she pleaded with her daughter to choose somebody who shared a different covenant with God.

 

Whether this was because of her prejudice or the prejudice she and Nathan experienced as a result of being in a mixed marriage and living in a small, predominantly Catholic and Methodist western Pennsylvania town, no one ever really knew.

 

It wasn't like she would broadcast it or anything.

 

Knowing my grandmother, if she did express any ambivalence toward my father, it was likely done in a very passive-aggressive way, especially if she was "tight."    

 

In those days, people didn't get drunk. They got tight.

 

My mother always hated going out to dinner with Marian because she knew she would drink too much, raise her voice, and eventually say something embarrassing.   

 

On the plus side, my grandmother spent time with me whenever my mother and I visited.

 

We'd play "Hearts", "Old Maid" and "Fish".

 

I always had a bike to ride.

 

We'd even toss a ball around now and then.

 

But it never lasted.

 

She became winded quickly, and I knew she was struggling because she blew the air out of her mouth by puffing out her cheeks and told me she had to sit down.

 

I don't think Nate was a drinker.

 

By all accounts, he was a quiet, gentle man.

 

A staunch Republican.

 

He owned a furniture shop.

 

When I was a toddler, he'd bounce me on his knee.

 

I'd put my tiny little hands on his cheeks and touch the stubble on his jaw with my fingers. 

 

I liked the way it felt.

 

It intrigued me.

 

He had a big smile.

 

Always smelled of aftershave.

 

He had a nice leather toiletry bag where he kept his shaving kit.

 

The mug with the shaving soap in it.

 

The shaving brush.

 

The heavy-duty double-edge safety razor.

 

The chrome talc powder shaker.

 

As he grew older, he developed hearing loss and heart disease, wore a hearing aid, and was put on a strict diet.

 

The joke was he would turn off the hearing aid whenever Marian was around.

 

Honestly, I never knew much about the man.

 

I would like to know if he ever weighed in on my parents' marriage, was a member of Temple Beth El, appreciated art or music, or what his favorite TV show was.

 

I know he and my parents argued often about politics.

 

They were Dems; he was a Repub.

 

It was the 60s and 70s.

 

And because Nate was half deaf, my father always had to raise his voice so Nate could hear him.

 

Naturally, Nate thought my father was yelling at him, so Nate yelled back.  

 

Eventually, my father had to say, "Nate, Nate!  I'm not mad at you. I'm not yelling at you!  You just can't hear me."

 

And then there were my father's parents.

 

Leah and Morris.

 

Again, what the hell do you really know about your grandparents?

 

Especially if you're my age and didn't grow up having a meaningful interpersonal relationship with them?

 

What do you really know about them?

 

Other than your father telling you his mother was a lousy cook and his father always talked s**t about his children?

 

Mind you, he never said anything directly to the child he was talking s**t about.

 

He'd tell one child what a f**k-up the other child was.

 

And vice-versa.

 

Although I have a soft spot in my heart for Murry, as my grandmother used to call him.

 

One time, when I was in third grade, I skipped an entire week of school and didn't even get in trouble.

 

I was caught when the school secretary, who was friends with my parents, called to check on me.

 

"Philip hasn't been in school all week.  Is he OK?"

 

Shortly after that, Leah and Murry popped over for a visit.

 

My father told him the story.

 

I am trying to remember if he said anything, but he did reach into his pocket and toss me a silver dollar.

 

That's right.

 

Pissed my brother off.

 

"He gets a silver dollar for skipping school?!"

 

That's what I got, son.

 

Not that I came out of that experience thinking a person could be rewarded for bad behavior.

 

I've always wondered if Murry gave me that silver dollar because he thought what I did was cute.

 

Apparently, Murry had very little patience for my father's lack of mechanical aptitude.

 

He always yelled at him whenever he tried to help him fix something.

 

Hmm.

 

Murry must have passed that gene onto my father because he always yelled at me for my lack of mechanical aptitude.

 

This was especially true whenever I tried to help him fix most of the lawnmowers we owned, which seemed to be continuously in need of repair.  

 

"Don't touch that!" my father would say.  "Nooo, don't do that!"  "Phillips head, that's a flathead! I need a Phillips head!"  "Watch it, watch it!"  "Don't force it, easy!"  "No, no, no!"

 

He really instilled a lot of confidence in me.

 

No wonder I hated shop class so much.

 

Anyway, I don't really have many stories to tell about Leah and Murry or Marion and Nate, so I'll just leave you with that for now.