Category: Personal (Page 8 of 26)

My car is fourteen and one-half years old, give or take a few weeks. It has more than 142,000 miles on it.

I have since 2002 shared this car with my brother; when we bought it, we were both bachelors in Manhattan. These many years later, we still share it, transporting two families of four everywhere from Virginia to Maine, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts—and that was just in a one-month span earlier this summer.

The car drives younger than it is, thanks to an engine block replacement at 39,000 miles, and years of well-minded upkeep. Still, these last few months, the problems have been accumulating: a variety of leaks, vibrations, noises and odd smells that suggest the end is increasingly near.

It’s been a really good run, our time with this car. But it pales in comparison to the mainstay of the trunk: our father’s army blanket.

We have two such blankets, actually. They are remnants of Dad’s tenure in the Army Reserves in the late 1960s. Army green and heavy wool, with an unassuming “U.S.” on one side, they look and feel pretty much as you’d expect, and in true 20th-century American fashion, they were built to last.

For decades now, they’ve been part of our lives. I have distinct memories of the army blankets spread out on vacations and July Fourth fireworks displays as a kid. Nowadays they come in handy at the beach, and for the occasional picnic or event in the park. I’m not sure they’ve ever been washed in 50 years, but they’re so hardy, I suspect they don’t even need it.

Those uses suggest that the army blanket was often in the trunk of a car. So when I got my license as a teenager, I claimed one. It followed me to college, where it most memorably came in handy during a three-week deep freeze, where my car, literally iced into its parking space, finally found some traction with the blanket wedged between a rear tire and the compacted snow beneath.

From there, the army blanket took up more or less permanent residence in my car. For awhile, my brother and I each had a car, and a low-grade, three-way trunk tussle ensued between the two of us and our parents. “Do you have the army blanket?” “I need the blanket.” “Where’s the other blanket?”

We stumbled onto a perfect solution when we decided to share a car. Got the keys, figured out the stereo, threw the army blanket in the trunk, and away we went. We only use it a handful of times each year, but at this point, it just belongs there.

When our car finally goes, my brother and I are considering each getting our own. It’s time. Yet I’m going to miss sharing with him, for a host of reasons, including the efficiency of the situation (I don’t need a car full-time) and the many, many conversations that have started with the email subject, “Car.” And we’re going to have a heck of a time figuring out whose trunk gets blessed with our army blanket’s presence.

Update: We have new cars, and I have the army blanket tucked away in ours. (Thanks for not protesting, Jeff.) Also, I washed it. It smells clean.

Ina Golub, an award-winning Judaica artist whose weaving and beadwork are in the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum of New York and many congregations nationwide, died today in West Orange, New Jersey, from complications resulting from throat cancer. She was 76.

Ina was my aunt. She was the only notable relationship I had on my mother’s side of the family; my grandparents died early, and Ina and her husband, Herb, did not have children.

Going to their house was a much different experience than being in my own home. Ina and Herb were into the fine arts. He was a concert pianist and university professor; she, of course, was a weaver, and later a beadworker.

As a kid, stepping into their home was fascinating: the pianist rehearsing downstairs, the huge looms taking up two bedrooms, the balls of yarn and professional-grade drawing tables, the reel-to-reel playing classical music, the Eames recliner. Her house, never renovated, always stood out in my mind—the polished-brick entryway floor, the thick carpeting, the purple accents everywhere, and the dog, always a dog, a succession of fluffy Shetland sheepdogs when I was young (named Sebastian and Amadeus, naturally) and later an adorable rescue.

I spent hours drawing with high-end colored pencils in Ina’s studio, encouraged by her continual focus on creativity. Ina, my mother and I all inherited some of my grandfather Irving’s creative genes—Ina most of all, by far, but enough trickled down that Ina saw her lineage in me, and welcomed my explorations and curiosity.

Once a year, she’d drive me into New York from the suburbs, and we’d spend the day on the Upper West Side, poking around the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History, and occasionally exploring the flea market on Columbus Avenue and the curio store Maxilla and Mandible. Decades later, I now live in the neighborhood, and I think of my aunt every time I bring my sons to the museum.

Ina was immensely talented in a variety of physical media. Her “Adon Livyatan”
Havadalah Spice Container (right) won first prize from the 1998 Philip and Sylvia Spertus
Judaica Prize. Her tapestries hang in congregations like Emanu-El in New York, Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, California, and at several synagogues in her home state of New Jersey, including my mother’s own congregation.

I am honored to possess a variety of Ina’s works, including a woven challah cover and an astounding pair of beaded candleholders. Ina also created a pomegranate encasement that contained the ceremonial glass that I broke at my wedding ceremony, and the tallis in which I was bar mitzvahed and married. They are among my more cherished personal belongings.

Ina is survived by her sister, Myrna, and a lasting body of work that should be her legacy.

Discovered late tonight that I had script errors that were compromising my WordPress install. The Ideapad looks to be up and running cleanly again, but some errors may persist. My kids’ websites may be offline a bit longer. Of course, you should just be following Nate and Eli on Twitter, anyway.

Seems I’m blogging at a regular clip again. Those recipes didn’t do the trick, but getting worked up about music and writing about it has been rather invigorating.

The Ideapad has been publishing since 1998—sometimes multiple times a day, sometimes not for a month, but never dark, and always perpetually archived. Like the headstand anticipated a few weeks ago, there’s more to come. Thanks for reading.