It was her widespread, unrestrained, and contagious smile that I see when I think of her. Her expressive hand gestures seemed like separate limbs from her straight, head-held-high posture. Frankness, unpreparedness, and ebullience made her the embodiment of who I wish I were.
I was on the phone with a friend when the news alert filled the screen, and a photo of her signature smile.
โ Oh my God!โ
โWhat?โ he asked.
In a voice trembling with shock, I replied, โDiane Keaton died.โ
โ Whoa, how old was she?โ
โ Seventy-nine. She was the only contemporary actress I related to. I watched Baby Boom last week, so Keaton. It was like watching me if I had the same experiences. โ
โ She was great in The Godfather, not a lot of people would agree with that, but thatโs my opinion.โ
โ I never thought of that. I watch it once a year. She was in an interview years ago, and the host asked,โ Why didnโt you ever get married?โ
With her arms opening like a double door, she exclaimed, โ No one ever asked me!โ
Her last post on Instagram is worth reading.โ
And in the same weekend, I think of this. We canโt feel another personโs sickness, or what itโs like to sing if we donโt sing, or fly like a pilot unless we’ve been one. We cannot imagine what it is like to be a hostage of Hamas.
I wandered about yesterday, in the gym, the veranda, and the lobby, and later, had appetizers in the restaurant. Two flat screens, football, the rest couples except the man next to me. I couldnโt help but notice that he was three inches from me at the bar. A shrimp cocktail showed up, he ate voraciously, then a steak and a large flat potato sort of tortilla, a side of vegetables, and he ate enthusiastically, then a lobster plate, with more vegetables, and he ate, and then dessert. I left before it arrived, so I wouldnโt swipe it from him.ย
I wanted to say to someone, “The hostages are coming home!” ย I didnโt. Diane Keaton would have!She lived with squamous cell cancer or many years. That explains the hats and turtlenecks.
Part Two. Solana Beach Morrocan Bungalow 2003.Maurice was 84
Maurice married the love of his life on December 25, 1941. They married in December because Maurice had saved one thousand dollars and made one hundred dollars a month. Agnes, his girlfriend in Grant, Iowa, is the woman who led Maurice out to Rancho Santa Fe, California, from his home in Grant. She and her father worked for Ronald McDonald, a prestigious resident in the ranch. She was responsible for housekeeping and cooking, and her father was the chauffeur.
Agnes and Maurice went to the US Grant Hotel for dinner and stayed at the Paris Inn on Kettner Avenue in San Diego. The following day Agnes went off to work. Maurice stayed in the little guest house she occupied on the McDonald property. Two days later Maurice received his draft notice. On December 31, he left his new bride and reported for duty in Escondido. He had one short visit before he left for overseas. Then, the next time he would see her, he would be changed.
Buna
One summer evening, I was sitting on Mauriceโs front porch. Sometimes, we would sit out till after eight oโclock at night talking about different parts of Mauriceโs life. Maurice is really busy in the summer; he tends to his garden of fruits and vegetables, he delivers furniture for all the Cedros merchants, and he helps his friends. He never seems tired, he likes to sit on the porch, have a beer, and tell stories. I used to like it when my father told me stories, but they were unlike Maurice’s. There didn’t seem to be anything he
couldnโt talk about. Once he said, ” You can ask me anything you want.โ
โMaurice, how old were you when you were drafted?โ
โWell, I was thirty-one years old in 1941 when the war broke out. I had to leave my wife, which bothered me, but I wanted to go overseas and fight for my country. There were so many nice soldiers, the best people in the world. I recall two boys from Chicago that were only eighteen years old, they lied to get in the service, and they were the best soldiers you ever saw- they werenโt afraid of anything.โ
โWhere did they send you after you left San Diego?โ
โWell, first, I went to Camp Roberts for thirteen weeks of training, but I got out in nine weeks. Then they sent me to Fort Ord to get my gear, rifles, and clothes. We left San Francisco on April 21, 1942. We got into Adelaide, Australia, after twenty-one days at sea.” Maurice paused like he had to catch his breath. I watched his face, thinking he may want to stop.
โYou remember so much… Do you mind talking about it?โ I asked.
โNo, I don’t mind; it changed my life, everything about it.โ
โWhere did they send you after that?โ
โWe trained for a while in Adelaide; the people in Australia were so happy to see us. I remember they met us at the beach with tea and cookies. The enemy soldiers were getting close. We went up the coast to New Guinea and into Port Moresby; we got there on Thanksgiving Day 1942. As soon as we got off the ship, the bombs hit us; it was the hundredth raid that night. The next morning we were supposed to get to the Stanley
Mountain range, we were in such a hurry. The Japanese soldiers built cement pillboxes and the army wanted us there. So we got in this plane, and they flew us there. Twenty-one at a time. When I got to the island of Buna, there were dead soldiers scattered all over the beach. We lost men so fast. Then, on Christmas Day of 1942, General McArthur ordered us to advance, regardless of the cost of lives. My division was one of the first to stop the Japanese army, the 32nd Division. After we were immobilized and a lot of our men killed, they sent in the 41st Division to take over.โ
Maurice’s memory was like listening to a documentary, and this was the first time a Veteran confided in me. They didn’t get supplies at first; they had to wait till everything was shipped to Europe. They got what was left over, which wasn’t much. He ate cocoanut bark for two weeks and had no water.
โI can remember so well the first Japanese soldier I saw. He was sneaking through the jungle, only thirty feet off. I donโt know if I shot him, but he dropped. I donโt like to think I killed anyone, and it bothers me to this day that I had to kill. The Japanese were good soldiers; they had better ammunition than us. We fought all day, and we always ran out of ammunition before they did. Iโll never forget Christmas Day of 1942. We went into a trench to get ahead; the fellow ahead of me was cut wide open, and the guy behind was shot. I just lay there on the ground. If you moved you’d be shot. It was so bad; I lay there all day and night. โ
โDid you think you were going to die?โ
โI didnโt let myself think that. I promised God that if I ever got out alive I’d never complain about anything in my life again. Nothingโฆ nothing could be worse than that day.”
โYou kept the promise, didnโt you?โ I asked.
โYes, I have.โ
โAnd thatโs why the war changed your life?โ I said.
โThatโs right. Every day is a beautiful day after you’ve lived through war, at least for me,” he said.
Excerpt from manuscript. All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced without the author’s prior written permission.
The sky is shy today, she wants rain and snow but she hesitates, as the climate is over thirty. But outdoors isnโt of concern these last sixty days. I never felt more Jewish than now, a reclamation of my upbringing, that I was too rebellious to take seriously, now it is a cancerous disease, antisemitism.I asked my friend who grew up in Istanbul in a surrounding of Jewish Armenians. Why do people hate Jews?.
” They are jealous, most Jewish people are educated, and learn at a young age to develop ambition, to make a better life.”
” That’s it? Jealousy?”
” I think so.”
Armen has been the best believer for me in twenty years. If I didn’t have her confidence, I’d have flattened over the last five years. Everyone needs a friend like that, she presses my buttons, sometimes I say stop, then she says I’m sorry, and we go on.
My first experience with Anti-Semitism was at twenty years old. I was working for a Bank in Beverly Hills in the loan department. One day my supervisor gathered us around and told a joke. I cannot remember it exactly, I do remember that he compared Pizza in the oven to Jews in the Holocaust gas chambers. I told my father. He ordered me to call the President of Gibraltar S & L and repeat the comment. The president was Jewish. I did so. I was assigned a new supervisor.
Under Jewish law, a child is not recognized if the mother is not Jewish. That’s my case, my mother was Catholic and my father was Jewish. When they married in 1949, my father insisted that he raise their children Jewish, he was raised in an Orthodox family, binding him to that history and culture. My mother agreed, she had been excommunicated from her Church becasue she married a Jewish man. Interpersonal punisment exist because of religious differences.
My youngest memory of Jewish education was our Friday night Shabbot diners, with my Mother’s participation, Saturday morning I was dressed up and my father took us to Sinai Temple in Westwood. Twice a week I attened Hebrew school, and learned as best I could to speak and read Hebrew. On Jewish Holidays, my father orchestrated elaborate dedication to Hanukah, Rosh Hashana, Yum Kippur and Passover. These rituals were not nuances, or obligatory gestures, my father was passionate about his faith, and the teachings of the Torah.
After his passing, I did not join a temple, or practice the everday prayers, except on the High Holidays. I did this on my own as my partner was not Jewish. This year on Yum Kippur I joined the New York Synagogue virtual service.
On October 7th, all of what my father had passed on to me about Israel and Jewish morality, exploded. I’ have never felt so Jewish in my life. I was reminded of a day in Junior High when a classmate scornfully said to me,” You are not Jewish because your mother was not! “
When I told my father, he said, ‘ I don’t care if you are a quarter, a half or a whole, you’re Jewish, and don’t forget that.’
Several days after watching the videos of the beheadings, rapes, stabbing and shots, I was sitting in my sunroom, and heard the children next door; screeching, shouting, and crying. As a woman who did not have children, the raucous always bothered me, not today. I loved to hear the children, safe, outdoors, and being as they should, our pleasuure.
I looked at the list.ย The list looks back at me; trivial, trite, redundant, so I turn on the news.ย The sky has taken the bail, the air is earnest spring, clouds and impending rain like a suspense novel you just started reading.
The list is still in front of me. Call the bank for the fourth time this week. Their new and highly improved website refuses to give me access. Find the copy of the passport application I just submitted.ย Next, pack up winter clothes and replace them with spring-summer. ย This obligation irritated me until late afternoon, and then in one swift harmonious leap, I packed up the winter clothes and removed them from my eyesight.ย Then, I heard a breeze, a solid applicable one that needed to blow through the winter staleness. I opened all the doors and windows that I can open, and let the house breathe. I’ve been quarantined since a week ago Saturday with Covid. ย It was not as agonizing as I’d imagined. Two days of annoying muscle and nerve pain, and flopping over four or five times a day to sleep. Today, I will use my energy to cross off the mindless tasks.
Next on the list, are estimates on the spring cleanup of five hundred or more dead stalks, leaves, bushes, etc to make Follies ready for spring.ย Internal conversation goes like this, I should do it myself, save the hundreds they will charge, but where do I empty all the leaves? The village has rules about placing leaves on the street. Too physical, back to the list.
Submissions for publication, are the most tedious and necessary acts if you are a writer. Nope, not in the mood for that. So I took a drive along a country road, with the top down, and listened to Joe Bataan, a waist-twisting Salsa boogaloo disco singer.ย I turned around after fifteen minutes, even Joe cannot spring my spirit to life.
My relationship with the world is not dependent on what happens to me. It is with Ukraine.ย My heartbeat is in slow motion as I watch the latest news feed from Zelensky. He is holding a press conference this Saturday. It lasted two hours or more. As the camera scanned the packed room of reporters; expressions rooted in awe, admiration, eagerness, and razor-sharp comprehension I thought, they resemble a child’s face the first time a book is read aloud.ย Within the hour’s conference, a news blip surfaced. Blinken and Austin will meet with Zelensky in Kyiv on Sunday. My suspicion is they were watching.
As I sat down to dinner, I thought of the announcement earlier that day, “One loaf of bread fed forty people in a bomb shelter. How do we live within the torture, death, and starvation? How do we get up and laugh or enjoy an outing? For me, I have not found a way.
We can pay to go into space, text unlimitedly to avoid, a phone call, we can avoid meeting because we have too many social media replyโs waiting. We can upload, download, delete and save in a second. We can install security alarms, and electronic remotes to open and close our appliances, and electricity. We can drive a car without hands-on, we can buy a private plane, an armored car, bodyguards, and we can remain anonymous by creating a false identityโฆ What we are not doing is improving our behavior, our own personal evolution as humans. Our civility is most recently televised as the Chris Rock, Will Smith slap. Iโm sixty-eight and have watched the Oscars, so I remember what they gave the audience- humble sweet, amusing award-winner speeches, not a political coma, or reprisal for a joke. If Chris did not know the sensitivity of Jada for suffering from alopecia, ( and she is gorgeous with or without). After the slap Chris said something like, this will be the most-watched television show. WHAT? Is that all there is to our humanity; attention, vanity, and ratings?
As time grabs our life without us evening knowing it, one day we may wake up and say, I donโt have that much time left, what should I do? If you are single without children then the options are galactic, unless you live in Ukraine. The war bleeds in my veins, sometimes I feel nausea from the videos, and other times enraged that this was not prevented. The best news of the day is that Russia is expelled from the Human Rights Council. Pause, just today? I am half-Ukrainian. My father, grandfather etc, were Ukrainians. I’ve always thought and said I am half Russian, as noted on Dad’s papers. But I am not Russian, excuse my blind spot.
The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. Ayn Rand.
The latest poll on our opinion about NUCLEAR WAR revealed that seventy-five percent of us are worried about NUCLEAR WAR.
April 1, 2022 Day 34
Listening to the news on and off today to collate my life with Ukraine. My tasks and routines are dismissed or performed fecklessly. Just now at four-thirty pm, a splash of the sun touched down to give me a moment to sit on the porch and let the warmth saturate through my gloves and coat.
Iโm looking at the magnificent great great grandfather spruce tree across the street. A ballet wind fan is blowing the branches as if they are in toe shoes. Nature granulates humanity. We donโt live for thousands of years like rocks, rivers, oceans, mountains, waterfalls, and trees. Then I think of the Ukrainians, they will survive. I watched three hours of news today. The longevity and persistence of nature emulates the Ukrainian heart and spirit. My dice, cards, everything is on their winning this war.
“I’ve asked myself again and again whether it wouldn’t have been better if we hadn’t gone into hiding; if we were dead now and didn’t have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven’t yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for…everything.”
July 6, 1944, From the Diary of Ann Frank
“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”
I am not comparing the Holocaust to Putinโs genocide, what I am comparing is humanity,. Itโs evil and itโs virtue.
A non-profit Humanitarian Relief Aid Van bringing medicine, food, water, and clothing was pulled over by The Russian Army. Fifteen volunteers were removed and brought into custody. The news reported the destination, punishment, and length of stay are unknown. Imagineโฆ. I cannot because I’m fearful when I get on a plane. This is one that was reported. People from all over the world, literally, have abandoned their own lives, families, and work to fill the emptiness, starvation, pain, and fear in Ukraine. One of these valiants is a Doctor, and he left his practice in the Midwest to save patients in Ukraine. A fairly new organization, SAVEOURALLIES. ORG, was contacted about a journalist who suffered extensive injuries was rescued by this organization and returned to the USA for treatment. He is recovering. We will hear his story when he is ready to speak.
One-quarter of the forty million that escaped Ukrain are now homeless. Today the government announced we will accept one hundred thousand refugees. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? We accept over two hundred thousand refugee immigrants a month from all over the world at the southern border, how does that figure on the side of fair?
Another puzzling decision by the government was in taking Iran off the terrorist list. I havenโt heard any reporter asking that question at a Press House briefing, Iโm waiting for an explanation.
The Mayor of Kyiv, an ex-pro boxer is on the street of his city, surveying the damage. His face is wide, with dominant features that remind me of a face made in clay, hardened, seriously angry without the visible expression, said โ Act now.” And to paraphrase, as the camera shifts to the burning buildings behind him, and the grounds of rubble, he says this, “You can see on your television whatโs happening. We need help.”
In Russia, over ten thousand peaceful, young protestors were forcibly taken into custody after the soldiers shot rifles within several feet of the crowd as they scattered running in all directions. They know the consequences; jail time, fines, interrogation, but they donโt know the details and I imagine each prisoner is penalized in different ways.
The spokesperson for Putin said this on camera, โ If there is a threat to our country we will use nuclear war.โ Stalin starved four million people, Hitler tortured till death six million Jews and thousands of sympathetic accomplices.
Today the official statement from the White House declared Putin had committed war crimes, but ” IT’S UNDER INVESTIGATION, IT’S AN ONGOING PROCESS AND, WE ARE COLLECTING THE EVIDENCE.” Okay,ย shoot me if I’m wrong. We need more than a thousand innocent people:ย children, mothers’ fathers’, grandparents, buried in dirt pits because the funeral homes are completely full,ย that doesn’t count as evidence?ย
The latest poll on the USA population opinion revealed that seventy-five percent of us are worried about NUCLEAR WAR.
ADVENTURERS IN SINGLE LIVINGNESS 