Category Archives: Family

Watching the 49ers lose, thinking about crab for lunch

Family, Food and Drink

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 Fresh cooked crab (with a torn part of a paper bag in one of its claws, it had been trying to hold on when Michele put it in the boiling water).

As Michele and I were getting ready to watch the 49ers beat the Seahawks, Michele suggested she get some popcorn and hot dogs. She thought it would be a nice touch, typical football game food; I thought, What? Crab is much more typical playoff food after all it comes in season just in time for the playoffs, before I caught myself , realizing that hot dogs are – indeed – the quintessential game time food. At halftime, as we waited for the teams to come back so San Francisco could finish off Seattle, we ate our hot dogs. But, in the second half, as it became increasingly certain that Seattle would win, I started thinking about watching those Super Bowls with my mother and stepfather.

Growing up, college football was a much bigger deal than Professional Football, my stepfather – who my mother had married while I was stationed in Korea and did not feel like much of a father figure – however had season tickets to the 49ers at Kezar Stadium. Kezar was a much smaller stadium – only 18,000 people between the goal lines – than Cal’s Memorial Stadium or Stanford Stadium, and watching the 49ers play there, in the early 60’s, seemed more amateurish than watching the actual amateurs (and I think college players were amateurs in the 60s).

I was living in Oakland at the time and, a couple of years after the Raiders came to town, I got season tickets. Oakland was a great place to live that always seemed to be getting the wrong end of the stick compared to the much more glamorous San Francisco and that carried over into football. The 49ers were in the NFL and the Raiders were in the new AFL which was considered inferior. My stepfather, Sherry, was very gracious about the NFL’s superiority however, and several times we took each other to our team’s games.

After the first Super Bowl, Sherry and I talked after the game. We both agreed that Green Bay was almost unbeatable, after they beat Kansas City Chiefs 35 to 10 (most people considered the real Super Bowl to be the NFL Championship game in which Green Bay had beat the Cowboys). During the second Super Bowl, while Green bay was crushing Oakland, Sherry called me several times to talk during the game. We agreed to watch Super Bowl III together at his home.

My mother was not especially interested in football, college, professional, or otherwise. As an aside, I played football in highschool and it occurs to me that my mother never came to a game. End aside. As uninterested as she might have been in the game however, my mother was interested in having a nice lunch for the occasion. In those days, going to a professional game was more formal and the men would wear sports coats and ties – maybe this is where the term sports coat came from, something to wear to watch a game, that would be more casual than a suit – and I am sure that I showed up for Super bowl III wearing a coat and tie.

Going to my mother’s was usually a formal occasion and this luncheon was no different even though the occasion was a football game. The women were probably wearing dresses, the TV was probably black and white, and most people expected the NFL to – again – beat the AFL team. In this case, the NFL team was the Baltimore Colts that had gone 13-1 during the regular season and the AFL team was the New York Jets. The Colts had crushed the Cleveland Browns 34–0, in the NFL Championship Game, and the Jets had to come from  behind to beat the Raider’s in their Championship game (they had previously lost to the Raider’s in the infamous Heidi game, named that because NBC had cut away from the game, with the Jets leading, to broadcast the film Heidi). 

At halftime, we broke for lunch, in the diningroom, with the Jets leading 7-zip and we were served fresh crab with a salad. Today, it seems so incongruous, even slightly archaic, but it started a Parsons/Stern family tradition of getting together for the Super Bowl with fresh crab.

Unlike the 49ers, the New York Jets increased their lead in the second half and beat the 19-point-favorite Baltimore Coats 16-7.

Soccer and the above average grandchild

Americana, Around home, Family

Charlotte -0015Our granddaughter, Charlotte, was in a soccer playoff game Saturday. Her team, the Mustaches, were playing the Mustangs in the semi-final. The program is through the San Anselmo Recreation Department and as the girls got together just before the game, I remembered that it has been at least thirty years since I have been to a girls soccer game.

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I have seen alot of women’s soccer since, including a couple of World Cup games, but this is a different game. The girls are just starting to learn to play position so there is alot more following the ball and moving the ball down field rather than passing. There was also alot less follow up when they got close to the goal. My daughter, Samantha, said They have to teach the girls to attack the goal, to take shots, and they have to teach the boys to pass. I can believe it.

The game started with the Mustaches playing into the sun and they were scored on early. .

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Also, pretty early in the game, one of the girls got hurt. I was impressed with the tenderness and compassion everybody showed (including the girls on the other team).

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As the game went on, the Mustaches started to dominate but they were unable to convert that to a score and lost one zip. Just like her mother used to be, more than thirty years ago, Charlotte was the star of the game. I hope every grandfather that was watching felt the same way, but I don’t see how they could.

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In the end, after they had lost and I saw Charlotte trying to hold back her tears and it hit home how much she was invested in winning, I thought of how much little girls playing soccer – any sport really – is changing the world. I remember a soccer game between Samantha’s soccer team and the parents and talking to an older woman who remarked, The women I know who went to college after Title Nine was passed are just less afraid to take risks. I hope so.

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Michele’s Cousin’s get together

Americana, Family, Food and Drink

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When I was growing up. my family didn’t much talk about the Holocaust and I have since learned that, at the time, almost nobody did. Out of shame, I think. On the Jewish side, shame that they let the catastrophe – Shoah – happen to them (although, of course, they really didn’t). On the German’s side, shame that they had let themselves become such monsters (although, of course, not all of them were). On everybody’s else’s side, shame that they were passive bystanders (although, of course, in the end, they weren’t). However for much of Michele’s long lost, just found, family – collectively known as The Cousins – the Shoah was the center of their lives.

Michele’s father, Kurt, got out of Europe before the war with, apparently, the help of his – then -wife’s family. They bought him a ticket to the United States where he joined the US Army, watched Europe convulse from the safety of the Aleutian Islands, divorced, changed into a lapsed Catholic named Kurt von Henriksberg from Belgium, remarried, became a photographer and, then, an American success story as Kurt Heath, the developer. In the process, he left his family behind with his old life.

Michele grew up wondering why all of her Catholic  father’s stories didn’t quite line up. So, after Kurt died and after she read and reread his self-written obituary, after she obtained his Social Security application and found out Kurt’s real name was Hoenigsberg, Michele went to the Internet. There she found a family tree that had a branch almost the same as the family Kurt talked about. One of the family, Fred Hilsenrath – in suspenders above – even lived nearby. Michele called him and to see if he was related to her father, while he doubted they were related, he invited us over for dinner (just like Kurt would have done). That was the first clue, the second was their matching accents, and the third was a picture that Claudia brought of their grandfather that was taken in Fred’s home town in Romania.

I had the honor of spending some time with this family at a get together organized by Fred and Michele’s sister, Claudia. In a curious way, I felt very much at home with them. Michele’s cousins give the impression of being closer to my father’s family of my childhood than they do to any part of Michele’s family that I have known.

There is an observational joke sometime attributed to Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, who said For every two Jews, there are three opinions. In many ways that is the core of  the Jewish intellectual legacy. I have been told that it is much of what the Talmud is about and it seems to be the core of both this family and what I remember of my family growing up. Some of my fondest memories of my father – and mother, for that matter – are arguments. Arguments over Dred Scott v. Sandford or the desirability of a tram to the top of Mt. San Jacinto with my dad; here, arguments over Israel or affordable health care. There were more than two Jews at the reunion – and because this is a modern family, and much of it, a modern American family, there were more than just Jews – and many more than three opinions.

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There was also time for more than arguing and discussing the world at the reunion, there was time to eat – lots of time to eat – Cousins-1863

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There was time to visit with grandchildren,

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time to tell stories, and take photographs.

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At the end of the day, there was time to drink a toast to life, to resilience, and to family.

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ADD, ADHD…whatever

Family, Psychological Musings

Steve-0546I am not sure of the terminology here but I have been diagnosed with ADD (or ADHD, I am not entirely sure what the difference is or if there even is a difference). For awhile, I was more or less in denial driven by shame.

To start at the beginning, I was listening to a woman complain about her husband who, she said was ADHD and I thought, That’s me. So I went online to take a short test and I aced it.  Now the problem with ADD tests is that they are like Enneagram tests in that they are about self-identified behavior making it pretty easy to influence the answer in the direction you feel is right. Typical questions are Do you have an unusually acute sense of smell and sensitivity to touch? or Do you go off on tangents easily? Michele said Those tests mean nothing, if you really think you are ADD, you should talk to an expert.

I went to a Neurologist who has ADD and is an expert and he tested me. The expert also gave me a book about ADHD to read. One of the things the book said, in the preface and then the first chapter, or so, is something like, If you are ADHD, you probably won’t finish this book but you should read Chapter 11 and take the test in Chapter 4. Humm, the not finishing the book did sound like me and the stories even more so. After not finishing the book, I went back to the expert.

He prescribed Bupropion. Now I am not entirely sure that I even believe in ADD just like I am not entirely sure I believe in the Enneagram. But, I am sure that I am a Nine on the Enneagram, that I am not sure I believe in, and I am sure that my behavior is ADDesque.  But, when the expert prescribed Bupropion, I really went into denial. I have seen too many movies when somebody says Watch out, he is off his meds, and the whole thing sort of reminded me of Ann Hathaway just getting out of rehab in Rachel Getting Married or Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook. To say that there is a high level of shame involved, is an understatement.

According to the expert and the book, some of the symptoms of ADD are “zoning out” without realizing it, even in the middle of a conversation and struggling to complete tasks, even ones that seem simple. Over the years, I like to think that I have been good at covering up these symptoms, but I know they are there. Another symptom is a tendency to overlook details, leading to errors or incomplete work and I know that is the reason I had failed the so-called Louisiana literacy test. Both the expert and the book said that these symptoms could be alleviated by the Bupropion and hope and curiosity have led me to give it a try.

I figured, while I am at it, I might as well quit all intoxicants, none of which are supposed to help. So, here I am, a clean and sober, out of the closet, ADDer on  Bupropion.

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