Uncle Lloyd -or- How I Met The Funky Drummer

A couple weeks ago, M and I drove north to Madison to visit my aunt Mary and uncle Lloyd. My uncle had just started dialysis treatments, and we hadn't seen either of them in about six years so I figured a visit was overdue. I didn't know my uncles when I was growing up; my family lived in Switzerland when I was small, my uncles lived in Maine and Wisconsin, and neither of them ever visited us. The only childhood memory I have of either of them was the year my uncle Stuart sent us a huge package of American candy for the holidays. I was overwhelmed - while there was no shortage of chocolate where we lived, I had never seen such a cache of sugary bliss: candy corn, Tootsie Rolls, Razzles, Pop Rocks... it made quite an impression on me, and the irony that my uncle Stuart was a dentist never dawned on me. The night after my mother told me we'd be moving back to America I had a dream about all the candy that I would find upon our return; I wasn't disappointed.

Dad still lives in Switzerland, and he visits me from time to time. Not long after I moved to Chicago he visited me and we took an Amtrak train up to Milwaukee - halfway between Chicago and Madison, to meet Lloyd and Mary for lunch. On the train ride dad read a copy of the Wall Street Journal, folding it in thirds when he was done and holding it out into the aisle with an outstretched hand to the passengers seated across the aisle. The two men seated across from us were in mid conversation when one of them noticed dad's unsolicited offering. "This is for you," he said, "I'm finished with it." Amazingly, they accepted his gift. The train driver made periodic announcements, telling us about points of interest along the way. Dad found this unbearably funny, he laughed loudly and repeated the announcements as they were being made.

Dad only has one volume on his laugh - loud. It starts with an outburst, an uncontrollable exhale of air, and quickly devolves into a full body, rhythmic shaking with an accompanying noise that's similar to a saw moving back and forth on a 2 x 4, while his eyes grow wide and glisten with manic hilarity. It's a snakebite that has no antidote; once dad starts laughing you just have to let it run its course. I can't tell you how many times I've missed movie dialogue because of dad's laughing, and while I'd like to say that I inherited none of this, every once in a while something tickles my funny bone so hard that I find myself laughing until I literally weep. Dad's laugh attracted the attention of the woman seated in front of us, and she turned around so that her knees were on the back of her seat and her hands on the headrest. She was traveling alone and looked to be somewhere in her sixties, but carried herself like a seven-year old. "You sound like fun," she said to dad. I could barely handle the embarrassment of being in public with the challenging sixty-year old that I happened to be related to, let alone one who was just along for the ride. I gave her what must have been my deadliest stare ever because we made eye contact and she promptly turned around in her seat and stayed put for the remainder of the journey.

In Milwaukee we had lunch with Lloyd and Mary at a brauhaus, and during the course of our conversation dad asked Lloyd how his diabetes was going. This was the first I'd ever heard of it. "There's diabetes in our family?" I asked dad, my pulse racing, "why didn't you ever tell me this? For years I've been going to doctors and handing them blank forms that ask for check marks next to diseases that run in my family because I don't know of any!" Dad mumbled something about it being a "mild diabetes" that I shouldn't worry about. Our waitress cleared the plates and dad asked her if they served espresso. "No," she said flatly, "we just have coffee."
"Dad," I hissed once the waitress had left the table, "we're in Milwaukee, not Florence."

I left that lunch wondering: if there's diabetes in my family and I never knew about it, what else didn't I know? I began an email correspondence with Lloyd and Mary, and visited them several times in Madison. My aunt - a retired librarian, had cataloged every piece of information about the Cohen family that existed on paper, and arranged them in scrapbooks that lined an entire bookshelf. I stayed up until three in the morning the first night I stayed at their house, poring over news clippings about my grandmother, who died in 1957 and was a concert pianist; my grandfather, who died in 1962 and was a chemist; and childhood photographs of my dad and his two brothers: photos of them dressed in cub scout uniforms, wearing mortarboards and gowns at graduations, and posing with cars and girlfriends. It was at once engrossing and alienating - if I was a Cohen, then why hadn't I been indoctrinated in the family history years ago? What wasn't in the scrapbooks I asked my uncle about. I learned more about my family in one weekend at their house than I had ever learned from dad.

When we weren't busy catching up on family history, we had fun. Lloyd is a retired car salesman, and a classic car enthusiast. He had a cherry red 1957 Thunderbird that he kept in a garage all winter, and took for joy rides in the summer. He even has a mailbox shaped like a Thunderbird, with plastic windows that fog up with condensation in the morning. He took us for rides in the T-bird, one at a time since its a two-seater. We visited for the fourth of July and watched as choreographed music played in time with exploding fireworks at an annual event called Rhythm & Booms; we walked up and down State Street, Madison's shopping district; and Lloyd treated us to his famous eggs Benedict, and homemade gazpacho made with tomatoes and cucumbers from his garden.

My dad and both his brothers came to our wedding, and we saw Lloyd and Mary in Chicago once about a year afterward, but then somehow the fragile ties that we'd built began to erode. One year passed, and then five more without either of us making the effort to visit, until Lloyd sent an email saying he was scheduled to begin dialysis, and I picked up the phone.

We borrowed my mother in-law's Mini for the journey, and I found a mummified banana in the passenger side door that I'd left there the last time we borrowed her car - in June. It was completely shriveled and black, the moisture having completely escaped, and had an unused Band-Aid stuck to it. The ride to Madison was familiar; we drove up through Rockford and crossed the state line into Wisconsin, passing through Janesville and driving up Highway 14-18, known as The Beltline, past streets with names like Old Sauk, Rim Rock, and Fish Hatchery Road, until we pulled into my aunt and uncle's driveway.

Lloyd greeted us outside, and the first thing we noticed was that he'd slimmed down. He's been heavy his whole life, and had dropped 40 pounds in order to improve his health and qualify for a kidney transplant. He was drawn to the Mini, and asked M several questions about it before we entered the house.

New floors had been installed since our last visit, and Lloyd had bought himself a new, large screen digital TV as a consolation prize since his travel options were now severely limited - his dialysis schedule is three sessions per week, three and a half hours per session. He'd also adopted a friendly orange tabby cat named Fernando who's about two years old. Fernando was the name given to him by the shelter that Lloyd and Mary found him in, and they kept it because Mary has a great love of all things Spanish.

Lloyd served us homemade gazpacho for lunch and got us up to date on his condition, telling us everything there was to know about dialysis. Lloyd can talk for as long as you let him, a trait that he shares with his brothers and that served him well as a car salesman. The morning after our arrival a couple Jehovah's Witnesses came to the door, and he out-talked them. Lloyd's condition did nothing to dampen his spirits or his sense of humor; at a trip to Copps, the local grocery store, we walked through an aisle of sugary treats. "Do you want some of these?" He asked, pointing to a bag of mini-donuts dusted in powdered sugar. "I can't have them, but you can."
"No thanks," I said.
"Are you sure?" He asked, "I really get a kick out of buying them for other people."

We accompanied Lloyd and Mary to the dialysis center, driving along a stretch of road that was under construction and hadn't been repaved yet; it felt like we were driving on square tires. A woman wearing a t-shirt with the word: Single...ish stood at the front door of the dialysis center. Once inside, Mary, M and I sat in a waiting area while Lloyd got hooked up to the dialysis machine. An aide pushed a woman in a wheelchair to the seating area, she had a beehive hairdo and a cone of soft serve ice cream, which I'm guessing was a reward for having undergone treatment. I flipped through a copy of the dialysis center's newsletter and tried not to get anxious. Lloyd had explained everything, but something about being there made my pulse rise; we were surrounded by people with failing organs, and it made me nervous.

"Lloyd sits in the same chair every time," Mary said, "and the man next to him is a famous drummer, maybe you know him - his name is Clyde Stubblefield." M's eyes popped and he leaned forward in his chair.
"Clyde Stubblefied?" he repeated.
"You know of him?" Mary asked.
"Are you kidding? He's the one who invented boom-boom siss, boom-siss," M said, holding his arms out and playing air-drums as he sounded out the beat to Funky Drummer.
"Oh," Mary said. "He lives in Madison, and he still does a show every Monday night."

We walked into the treatment area, where Lloyd sat reclining in a chair. He was attached to a machine the size of a refrigerator via two tubes in his right arm - one taking his blood out, the other pumping it back in. "This is my kidney," he said, pointing to the machine. I could see his blood being filtered behind a circular glass window, like laundry in a front-loading machine. A curtain separated him from the other patients, creating a semblance of privacy. "I've got everything I need," he said, "right here's a TV and headphones," he said, pointing to a TV bolted to his chair. "And right next to me is Clyde Stubblefield," he said, lowering his voice, "he's world famous."
"Yes Lloyd," Mary said, "I told them."

On the other side of the curtain Clyde Stubblefield was being attended to by a nurse.
"Can I get you anything else?" She asked him.
"Just some eggs, grits and bacon," he joked. The nurse returned to her desk and Clyde put his headphones on, and turned on the TV attached to his chair.
"Hey Clyde," Lloyd said - loudly, since he couldn't see around the curtain. When Clyde didn't respond he called for him again, and then a third time.
"Clyde," the nurse on duty finally said to him, "Lloyd is talking to you." Clyde removed his headphones and asked: "Yes Lloyd?"
"Clyde, this is my niece and her husband, they're visiting from Chicago," Lloyd said, as M and I sheepishly waved and smiled from Lloyd's cubicle. "They know who you are," he added. M and I continued to smile, our eyes darting from the floor to Clyde and then back again.

Back at the house, Lloyd said he'd bring Clyde a set of drumsticks to sign for us.

New York Part V - or - how I ended up wearing a maternity skirt to Friday night services

I had packed light; I brought a pair of jeans and a pair of cords, a dress for my high school reunion, a hooded sweatshirt, two pairs of shoes and an assortment of t-shirts. I put on my cords - later that evening I was meeting a friend for Friday night services at a temple on 9th Avenue, and I wanted to dress as appropriately as I could. I left Anne and Harold’s home with my suitcase and backpack full - they were leaving for the weekend, and I was relocating to Gabrielle’s. I took the #77 bus to the Smith & 9th Street station, where a group of construction workers were taking their lunch break on a concrete median in the middle of the train tracks; it looked like a photo shoot for a cigarette ad. I rode the G train to Clinton and Washington and rolled my suitcase seven blocks to Gabrielle’s store, it had never felt so heavy. Several plastic bags filled with gently used clothing and toys waited to be inventoried on the sidewalk outside the store, and the door was propped open. Gabrielle sat behind the counter in a humid stupor.

“It’s like the four seasons of New York or something,” I said to her as I deposited my bags behind the counter.
“Right?” she said, reading the computer screen in front of her. “Look at you,” she said, responding to the bright pink hue I’d taken on, and the copious amounts of perspiration on my forehead and under my arms, “you must be sweltering, is that all you have?” she asked, indicating my choice of clothing with a downward sweeping gesture of her hand.
“Yeah,” I said. A trickle of perspiration ran down my neck and traveled the length of my back, finally settling into the fabric of my underwear. “It was cold two days ago, I was freezing in my hoodie and wished I’d brought something heavier.” I eyed a display of maternity wear, and chose a black skirt that had an elastic panel in the front. “Maybe this will work,” I said. I tried it on in the bathroom next to a changing table and a handwritten sign reading “Please take poopy diapers with you”. It fit, and the pregnancy panel in the front of the skirt acted as tummy control, increasing my self-confidence.
“It’s cute,” Gabrielle said when I emerged. We walked across the street and bought a couple sandwiches from Choice Market, where I wavered over a decision to buy a cookie.
“Well, I am eating for two,” I joked.
“What?” Gabrielle said, her eyes wide.
“Relax Gab,” I said, “it’s just a skirt.”
“Oh, alright,” she said, “because I’d better be on the list of people you call when that happens!”

Sated and comfortable, I dropped off my luggage at Gabrielle’s co-op a few blocks from the store, and got back on the C train to meet Zach and his fiancée Patricia for shul. I’d connected with Zach at my high school reunion the previous weekend, and followed up on a promise to connect while I was in the city. When he suggested shul as a Friday night activity, I responded somewhat flippantly.
“It’s a really beautiful place,” he’d said’ “very open and progressive, very gay, lesbian and transgender friendly…”
“Okay,” I said, “but only if I get to sit in the transgender section so everyone can ask me who my doctor is.”
“Afterwards we have a tradition of going out for Chinese food,” Zach continued, unphased by my attempt at humor, “you’re welcome to join us for just Chinese food, or both Chinese and shul,” he paused, “or neither, it’s up to you.”
“All right,” I said, “but I have to tell you, in the interest of full disclosure I haven’t seen the inside a temple since I went to Len Schiff’s bar mitzvah in 1984.” Len’s bar mitzvah was the event of the season, all the teachers from I.S.88 were in attendance; Len’s mother was the universally adored home ec. teacher there, and she’d invited all her colleagues. Afterwards there was a reception at a restaurant called Terrace on the Park in Flushing Meadows, where we indulged in music, drinks and dancing. We got in two rounds of alcoholic drinks before the bartenders got wise and cut us off. I gave Len a top of the line calculator watch that I'd bought at a midtown Manhattan electronics store from a man in a yarmulke and love-locks, and we all left the reception with party favors - including a smooth flat rock that had several rows of smaller rocks glued to it. The smaller rocks had eyes painted on them, and over them a sign made of popsicle sticks read: “Rock Concert”. The words “Len’s Bar Mitvah” and the date were painted onto the bottom; I still have mine. I recently reconnected with Len, and the first thing I asked him was if he still had the watch.
“You know,” he said, humoring me, “I like to keep it for special occasions, and I didn’t want to take the risk of wearing it into Brooklyn tonight.”

The building located at the address Zach had given me was an Episcopalian church, but people kept walking through the doors - including a number of men wearing yarmulkes, and a sign on the right side of the building told me that this was the gathering place for Congregation Beth Simchat Torah. I never knew Zach as a practicing Jew, or any kind of a Jew really, so I was surprised to see him wearing a yarmulke himself as he loped towards me on 9th Avenue.

“You can participate in as much or as little as you want,” he said to me in preparation, “this is not your grandfather's shul.”
“It takes place inside an Episcopalian church, for starters,” I said.
“Yes, for starters…” he said. Inside we found two seats on the aisle. A red-haired woman seated directly in front of me turned around, extended her hand to me, and said:
“Shalom Shabbat, my name is Janice,”
“Shalom Shabbat,” I said, taking her hand, “I’m J.” The man seated to Zach’s right did the same. A podium stood in the center of the church, flanked by two flags on either side - the rainbow flag of gay pride and an American flag to the left, the Israeli flag and a second rainbow flag to the right. A bespectacled rabbi who looked like a fourteen year old boy, but was actually a woman, led the services accompanied by a guitar-wielding cantor in square glasses, dark curly hair, and a prayer shawl over his clothing. I had no idea what was being sung and couldn’t figure out how to follow along in the book that had been handed to me at the door, even in the phonetically spelled out English words printed alongside the Hebrew, but it was beautiful to listen to - the minor key melodies haunting the cavern of my middle ear. The man standing behind me had a beautiful voice, and it was making me a little misty to hear his devoted singing in such close proximity.
“How are you doing?” Zach whispered to me, possibly in response to my silence.
“Good,” I whispered back.
“Now we’re turning around” he said, and I turned, along with the congregation, and faced the back of the man who’s voice had been enveloping me. He kept his eyes closed as he sang, releasing the music within him.

When the singing was over, the rabbi spoke of a recent trip to Argentina, the plight of the Jews who lived there, and of late mayor of San Francisco, Harvey Milk.

It was dark by the time we left the building, and Patricia met us outside - she was running late and didn’t want to enter after services had already begun. We drove to Chinatown and ate oysters and pork at a restaurant called Mr. Tang, where Zach and Patricia are regulars. We discussed Judaism, and I explained my long and complicated history with the religion, which goes a little something like this: my maiden name is Cohen, I wasn’t raised religiously, and by most traditions I wouldn’t be considered Jewish because my mother isn’t. For most of my life people have not only assumed that I am Jewish, but have regarded me through that lens to explain certain behaviors - an appreciation for good pickles and matzoh ball soup for instance, and a tendency to avoid overt Christianity and the south. Over the years I’ve had various reactions to this, ranging from guilt that I don’t know more about Judaism, to anger that people would have the gall to assume anything about me based on my name. I once hung up on a teenaged boy who called me from a telemarketing phone bank to ask for my financial support of a Jewish organization, and I was irrevocably peeved when a former boss of mine asked, on Ash Wednesday, “so when is your holiday?” My high school chorus teacher was an African-American woman who taught us negro spirituals. Halfway through "I've been 'buked and I've been scorned" she looked up from her seat on the piano bench with a smirk on her face. She turned her attention back to playing the piano, and when she looked at me again was smiling broadly. Finally she stopped playing completely and burst out laughing.
"I'm sorry J," she said between breaths, "but you have never looked more Jewish to me than you do right now."

By the same token, it feels wrong to have my Jewishness ignored. The first winter I spent in Chicago I was surprised that the office buildings downtown don't display menorahs side by side with Christmas trees the way they do in New York, and was shocked when a coworker asked me if Cohen was a Catholic name.

Years ago I felt the need to learn more about “my” religion, and kept renewing the same book on Judaism from the Bezazian branch of the Chicago Public Library before finally returning it, unread. A Quaker friend of mine once gave me a menorah that had belonged to his deceased partner, and I asked a Jewish colleague to phonetically spell out the prayer that accompanies the lighting of the Hanukkah candles. For one holiday season I observed the candle lighting tradition, and now the menorah decorates the top of our television, less a religious item than a household decoration.

One letter less and my name would have been Chen - would people have expected me to speak fluent Mandarin Chinese and make Peking Duck on the weekends? The worst was when people told me that I looked Jewish - for those of you who’ve never met me, I look exactly like my Scotch-Irish shikse mother. How on earth can a person look Jewish anyway? I mean, I know what people were trying to get at - I wear glasses, I have curly hair that goes frizzy in the humidity, and I’m a little zaftig. Nonetheless, these indicators would amount to nothing if it weren’t for the name Cohen, and ever since I took my husband’s name nobody has assumed that there’s anything Semitic about me.

Now that I don’t carry the name Cohen, I feel a little nostalgic for it whenever I see it in print, and I enjoy being called Cohen by people who knew me before I was married. My husband's name is Palmer, which carries no such religious weight, although it should - the first Palmers made a pilgrimage to the holy land and returned with palm leaves as proof of their journey.

When we parted ways it was almost midnight. Zach and Patricia headed for Jersey, and I descended the subway stairs on Canal Street to wait for the A train. An interminable flat note emanated from the fluorescent lights overhead, and between that and the yellow cast spilling over everything they touched, I fell into a trance.