Monday, February 19, 2018

Your Presence Is Requested


In the early years of his diary, beginning at age sixteen, from 1933 to 1937, my father castigates himself for his paralyzing shyness.  “At my present stage meeting people, especially girls, it is a bit embarrassing due to my lack of conversation. Can’t seem to conquer that shyness – yet I would very much like to.”


The loneliness speaks to his one reader, his older daughter, who wishes to put her arms around this downhearted adolescent and tell him it will get better. Forlorn in July 1936, he writes, “During these summer evenings with the stars out – I often get more lonely than I would care to say.”

Days there is the family business.  Evenings, he studies accounting at City College. This teen-age son of Yiddish-speaking immigrants wants an answer to the question: What is wrong with me?  Like a Talmud scholar, he searches for guidance in books. Volumes in psychology are mentioned, Karl Menninger’s The Human Mind, then Albert Adler’s The Neurotic Constitution.   He even goes so far as to outline the entire five hundred pages of Menninger’s text. What does he find there? An analysis of the human condition, that as children we feel inferior and vulnerable and that some of us never outgrow it.   Scarcely a comfort or a guide.  “I read and read and I know practically all about psychoses and phobias and yet I am powerless in my own case – where it is most important.”

Then he tries a behavioral approach, though behavioral theorists were not part of his private studies. He prescribes himself a tonic.  “I believe the first thing I should do is join some clubs – mostly social. I don’t know how to start. But I’ll inquire and look around and maybe I’ll pick up something.

The Young Men’s Hebrew Association on East 92nd Street appears the obvious destination.  He kept his expectations low,  “The first few times I’ll probably be a deadly bore – But after they get used to me…”
         
         The 3rd Avenue Elevated would have taken him there, more than 100 city streets from home. He must have been apprehensive. The YMHA was and is an imposing art deco ziggurat that dominates its corner.  My father arrived at the entry, two massive institutional doors and then, “It looked like a hotel, so I departed.” 

While his daughter reading the diary seventy-five years later, wants to scream, “Daddy, go in!”
         
         Another year passes. He is asked to join a fraternity at the college. Someone asking seems to be the key.  But, “it is a big expense.”

A semester later he has saved the money. First he attends a smoker and reports that he had “a very nice time.” Then there is a varsity show rehearsal and he discovers he is “getting imbued with college spirit.” 

My father has cheered up.  He is on his way. “Sports and books and school are occupying most of my time.”

Another year and he is off to Florida with some fraternity fellows on Spring break. The next year, a best friend appears, Georgie Strassberg, another son of impoverished immigrant parents, on his way up. They play handball in the evenings and on Sundays at that very same, formerly forbidding 92nd Street Y.

             Fast forward to the late nineteen-nineties when my seventy-eight year old father Max Abramowitz, long-time supporter of the Jewish Center of Jackson Heights, father of three, grandfather of seven, has been sidelined by a weak heart. 

“Walk,” his doctor says. But he doesn’t. “Walking is the best thing. Max, choose life.” But he doesn’t

Long months pass as he sits on one end of the living room couch in front of the television. When we, the three grown children, visit he is usually watching re-runs of The Wonder Years or Golden Girls.  This passivity is driving our mother into a simmering resentment, an unusual attitude for her.  She wants the return of her capable partner. We have rarely seen them at odds.

           Our nagging increases, “Daddy, do something. Take a walk. Go to the morning minyan.*  They need people at the morning minyan,” we insist. But he won’t.

Then it transpires, the ordinary social miracle that happened once before:  Somebody from the Jewish Center of Jackson Heights telephones to request he attend. There is a need.  Will he come?  And as our great ancestor Abraham replied to God, so my father answers, “Here I am.” 
     
The morning minyan is near enough to what the doctor ordered.  To get there it’s a half mile walk every Monday, Thursday and Sunday morning.   He must be up and out early.  Sometimes one of the minyan-aires as they call themselves, stops by the house and they stroll over together.  My father has rescued his life once again.  

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*The morning minyan referred to here is the ten men ritually required three times a week to correctly and fully complete the week-day service.







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