Late Night Family Fun in the Pouring Rain - Poem: Poem for my father

On the occasion of my 24-yo niece Jade's wedding, the Oregon contingent of our family came in. We met at my sister Donna's flood-prone condo in Hatboro, PA.


I showed my Comcast 5-minute interview and Amy, seated on the arm of the couch, wondered if my face was puffy from my prednisone. No, I said, I'm just overweight. But I did notice the way it looked.

The Serenity Prayer: what we can change and what we can't.

Her son Alex and his girlfriend Melissa will be moving to Philly - the Fairmount section - by the art museum and the new Barnes Museum and Gardens which I can not wait to see. Opening in August.

Sister Ellen and me sitting on the red leather sextional.

It was thundering outside and then the droves of rain arrived.

Amy's husband Rich Pomper is a therapist in OR. Oh? You mean, they have problems there too? What they don't have is a plethora of jobs which is why Alex is moving to Philly.

My niece Nikki drove in with son Quinn from Clarksboro, NJ.

Quinn spent literally the whole evening 'blowing up' people on his iPhone. He'd take our pic and then 'blow us up.' What can u expect from the most violent nation on earth?

Here's Nikki's oldest son Tyler who works at Walgreen's.

Nikki on left, beautiful Natalie Pomper in center, and Ellen in rain gear ready to leave in the pouring rain.


"Someone left the cake out in the rain."

Nikki welcomes her sister Melissa to the party. Melissa and husband Rich arrived from - horrors! - Amityville, Long Island.

The whole tenor of the party will now change b/c we're gonna watch HOME MOVIES!

We have about 12 discs. Altho I did the captions on them, I only watched one disc.

Click to enlarge.

Here's my late brother David on a family outing to Ringing Rocks in Bucks County. The movies show me taking fotos w my Polaroid.

I keep some old Polaroids in my old wooden recipe box I took when I worked at Maryknoll Missioners in Ossining, NY:

Here's Lynn, whose daughter Jade is getting married today.

It's extremely difficult to take fotos from a moving TV screen.

Hi Dad! He's holding up a couple of Polaroids.

When we show these movies, I constantly talk to everyone who's on screen, sorta like a Home Movie Rendition of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

There's Papa! Donna howled when she saw her ex in the movies. His grandchildren call him Papa. He's from Ecuador. Our family took outstanding day trips, this one to the Phila Museum of Art. This sculpture is by Louise Bourgeois I think, but don't quote me.

Here's Papa - Herman Cartagena - with his first daughter, Melissa Cartagena. They're at the legendary Now and Then Shop which my dad owned.

Can u smell the patchouli oil?

I had our movie reels and videos put on DVDs at a shop in the Justa Farm Shopping Center, Huntingdon Valley, It cost a fortune but I wanted these films preserved for posterity.

The owner put era-music in the background. Great job Joel!

Aunt Marion and Aunt Ethel were modeling their mink stoles while Dad took movies.

Donna grabbed her own beautiful stole and began modeling it.

Where'd you get that? asked her grandson Tyler.

I prostituted for it, she joked.

Without warning, the movies change years quickly and you've gotta get your bearings.

Here's Dad's 50th birthday party, catered at my mom's current house in Huntingdon Valley, PA.

His old friends from Majestic Specialties, Inc. came in for the celebration, little knowing that in nine short years my dad would be dead of lung cancer which meta'd to his brain.

Coincidentally my new audio book is called Emperor of All Maladies, a biography of cancer.

 Alan Schonberg and Uncle Marvin sitting in the living room.

Gene Hexter who would die in his late 40s of painful prostate cancer. No excuse anymore to be in pain.

Hi Dad, a pleasure sitting next to you at your party. An array of old photographs is on the wall behind him.

Dig this! My then husband Millard Grove Deming, sitting next to the beautiful Connie Shaw. Connie died a couple years ago of some type of cancer. She refused to see a doctor about symptoms so there was no helping her.

She and husband Morty were extremely talented. They invented board games which we used to play and tried to get them patented.

Here's Connie's hip hubby Morty. He changed his name from "Shesol" to Shaw so no one would know he's Jewish nose.

Here's the caterer under the dining room lights, unless.... it's a spaceship come to take him away to an alien land.

Another shot of Connie Shaw. She was devastated when my dad died. I wrote her a long letter after his death and she kept it in her purse for years thereafter.

Father and daughter. I had long hair once like the rest of my sisters.

Here's my cousin Mark Greenwold at our house at:

One Loretta Court
Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632

I goggled it and it's worth over $1 million today.

You can see one of Mark's paintings here.

Mark just retired from SUNY Albany and now lives in Manhattan near his friend Chuck Close, who, after having an aneurysm that paralyzed him from the elbows down, was grateful to be able to still paint.

This is me in our Englewood Cliffdwelling in my Kelita dress, an offshoot of Majestic. Thanks, Donna, for reminding me of this.

When I goggled it, here's what I found to my shock.   Scroll way down. My guess is that Goggle is photographing every single newspaper.

Visiting Uncle Donny is his New Jersey apartment. Don died years ago of esoph. cancer. He's survived by wife Mary and three kids. Here are awfully adorable David Begis and Cooper, who works at Frito-Lay I can't stop eating em in Dallas, TX.

Our Loretta Court House. The Hexters and their two girls Debbie and Karen.

POEM FOR MY FATHER

Dedicated to Harold J. Greenwold, b. May 4, 1921, d. July 13, 1980

Part I -Tell me your secret, says the solicitor

My father was a master at saying no.

When they called him up for a drawing for a free home in the Poconos

if only he’d accede to some ridiculous demand of theirs,

a survey, perhaps, or attending a matinee in an auditorium down in Philly….

but let us stop here and remember him before the phone rang,

it was October, but the red leaves bore no beauty,

he was wandering around the house,

a man at home during the day,

in his bathrobe, wearing men’s slippers that I never cared for,

they were so un-hip, they sloshed over the floor making silly noises,

not the way I cared for his handkerchiefs anyway,

giant handkerchiefs that, when he was at work,

I’d fish from the second drawer in allergy season,

or borrow from the same drawer a pair of his long black stretch socks.

I took the liberty of using his razor also when I took a shower

and shaved my legs in the master bathroom.

He raised fierce hell about the razor thing.

I always promised never to do it again, but always did,

and tried to wipe away the little hairs as best I could,

but in some mysterious fashion he always found them.

There must have been little hairs stuck to the blade.

They were always better razors than mine,

real Gillettes with those double bladed edges – swords -

they talked about on commercials, not el cheapos like mine.

We were in the family room, like two lost golden retrievers,

Dad and I, not my favorite room, dark wood paneling that looked fake,

a stone fireplace I couldn’t reconcile with the rest of the house,

I never liked my parents’ taste in houses, though I’ve always lived there,

always read my books there, but my father and I found ourselves this day

down in the family room, there was a red phone hanging on the wall.

And I was accompanying him on his journey around the house,

looking at the things he loved,

the carpets that came all the way from China,

the unabridged dictionary that stood on the desk from B. Altman.

You could even, if you wanted to, look out the patio door

and see the leaves on the trees outside. I hated them.

My father’s body looked smaller in his robe.

He hadn’t shaved in days and the stubble was coming in like a dark forest.

We were right there at the foot of the stairs where the red phone hung on the wall.

Mom was big on fashion and color accents,

Its long cord curling in stylish little perm’d curls,

Rapunzel hair, falling nearly to the floor.

It rang.

He had nothing to do all day but pick up the phone,

it was like a miracle that it rang and gave him something to do,

this is my father, you must remember,

who played ping pong as if it were the World Series,

Hitting the ball with his brother Marv, his arm cocked in battle.

You could hear that ball, goddamit, the syncopation of that

hollow little plastic thing wherever you were in the house,

even if you were upstairs in the pink bathroom, you could hear it,

that da-dum, da-dum, like Pygmy drumbeats.

So he got the phone as if it had come to save his life,

he answered it and held the red receiver to his ear.

I was never able to appreciate the charm he held over women,

or why he read that charismatic bullshit he subscribed to –

Marcus Cerullo! - that was just the way he was,

and I could vaguely hear the female voice on the other end,

you can always tell it’s a female because it’s higher up,

and then, he was very kind and waited until she was done,

he had time, and waited until she was done,

and said in that calm voice that made him famous, even to this day,

“I just got out of the hospital with a brain tumor and have six months to live,

what would I want with a house in the Poconos?”

II. Think only of the arbor vitae

It’s like I’m walking through cobwebs, he said at the start.

Like there’s cobwebs and I’m pushing my way through them.

When it happened, all this and sundry up to the hospital bed in the family room

and that bedstand that swings out in front of you when you eat

and then rolled away when you’re done.

I thought, My God, is this how I will remember my father?

Yellow and immovable and needing to be fed and hearing him slurp,

bald, of course, like they always are after radiation,

and the box-like commode next to the bed waiting for his next bowel movement.

And those godawful vegetable drinks my mother made for him,

believing until the last moment they would save him,

them and their orange bubbles and pieces of carrots

that weren’t pulverized entirely.

I wondered what it felt like to lie next to a man who was dying slowly next to you,

rotting on the inside, the smell of him not your father’s anymore,

the look of him certainly gone, oh I tried to memorize what it felt like

being with him, it was impossible, but if truth be told,

he stopped being my father early in the game.

I hated going in. I had to read the newspaper to him.

That was my job. He appointed me.

I had to do it every day for six months while his head grew massive with disease.

Can you imagine what that does to a girl to see her father like that,

we used to play catch in the front yard when he’d come home from work.

He’d go in for supper and then I’d wait for him on the front lawn,

there were some arbor vitae growing near the porch,

and he’d pitch high balls to me.

Pitch…that’s entirely the wrong word.

He’d throw a ball underhand into the sky, as high as it could fly.

And the neighbors would come out of their houses to feel the warm summer breeze,

and he’d say, Watch Ruthie catch the high flies!

He’d throw the ball up and I’d look high into the sky,

and could never find where it went.

I wondered, how could it disappear so quickly,

and then in the middle of my puzzlement, there it was!

Sailing down with terrible speed, getting larger and larger,

time going faster and faster, while I’d circle around the grass in silent ecstasy,

choose my place to stand, and expect its imminently perfect arrival.