Eulogy for a great creator

My grandparents in New Haven, CT in 1948, when Harold was a student at Yale Art School.

In one of my earliest memories of my grandpa Harold, we celebrated Hanukkah with a menorah shaped like a Christmas tree.

He wasn’t strictly religious, but he had a love for certain traditions. He didn’t follow them as prescribed, though. He had a way of making everything his own.

Passover meant sitting around my grandparents’ table with all my cousins while Harold told the story of Moses, passing candy around to demonstrate the ten plagues. The chocolate chips he gave us represented boils, and there were gummy frogs. The grand finale came when he’d bring out a big bowl of red Jell-O and “part” it by spraying a line of whipped cream down the center. Then he’d drop a handful of little plastic soldiers into the bowl, and we’d all dig in.

One year he told the Passover story by putting on a shadow play with my aunts and uncles. They set up a big screen and a light in the living room. Harold narrated while they acted it out with shadows of puppets. My grandma Kiki had made a witch puppet for the Angel of Death. She flew it across the screen on a cardboard broomstick, making it cackle with glee. Aunt Abbie’s hair was the burning bush. She crouched behind the sofa, revealing the silhouette of her wild curls as she shook her head around, mimicking fire.

Harold was an incredible storyteller. He didn’t write, but his inventive and articulate style met perfectly with his theatrical flair. He came up with thrilling sagas to tell his kids and then his grandchildren. He brought stories from the Torah to pulsating life. He invented epics about dragons and monsters. His sound effects were flawless. He knew when to whisper and when to shout. His eyes would pop wide as the momentum built. These adventures left us gripping our seats or shrieking with laughter. His everyday manner was as animated as his stories and art.

Harold did everything to maximum capacity, sucking the last bit of air from every experience yet leaving more for everyone else. He danced on tables. He rolled in the autumn leaves. He watched sad movies with tears streaming down his face. He smacked his lips in appreciation while he ate. I used to try to correct his table manners as a toddler. When I was two years old, I’d shake a finger at him and say, “Grandpa, you’re not supposed to chew with your mouth open. You’re supposed to chew like this!” I’d stuff my face and chew exaggeratedly, mouth closed, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk. My whole family would laugh hysterically and I wouldn’t know why. Harold ate just as he was supposed to, though. He consumed, and he gave, with unrestrained joy.

It seems so appropriate that his middle name was Wolf. He always reminded me of a canine with his exuberant manner and love of people and food. With his exploratory nature and endless curiosity, he always seemed to gather a following that became his lifelong pack. Even his physical features were embracing and full. His round face, broad nose, and full lips conveyed generosity. I’ve never known someone so financially thrifty who gave so much.

The frugality had a lot to do with his upbringing. He grew up during the Great Depression in a family where he had to vie with his brothers for food. But this seemed to only feed his resourcefulness. When my mother and her siblings were little, he’d take them on family trips to the Bethany dump. They’d explore the junkyard to look for materials they could use in art projects. This became a time honored Rabinowitz tradition.

I can’t think of Harold without remembering that, or without thinking of Kiki. He and my grandma are forever linked in my mind. I’ve always said them as one word: “HaroldandKiki.” One of my favorite stories was the memory of how they got together. They knew each other from the time they were children. They went to junior high and high school together, but were only distant acquaintances back then. In their class photo, they’re seated next to each other. On the last day of high school, Harold signed Kiki’s yearbook with, “I’ll be seeing you! Ha ha ha.” Neither of them had any idea they’d see each other every day for seventy years.

They reconnected three years later on the day World War II ended. They found themselves at a mutual friend’s party to celebrate. They sensed an interest in each other they hadn’t felt before, and started dating. Kiki told me they went to a carnival for their first date. At one point during the night, they got stuck at the top of the ferris wheel. Harold smiled at her and asked, “Can I kiss you?” She laughed and said, “Well, I guess I can’t run away.”

            They were married a year later and rode their bicycles cross country for their honeymoon. And then, in the early ‘50s, they built their tall, gorgeously chaotic, ramshackle stone house. Kiki built it while she was pregnant. That’s how badass she is. They made friends wherever they went with their playful antics. After Kiki gave birth to their sixth child, they gifted the nurse with a watermelon wrapped in a baby blanket. Kiki told her, “We’re returning the baby. It leaks.”

Over the years, their house became a haven. It was a community in itself. They took in family friends. Many of their kids knew someone who, at least briefly, had lived at their home. They started their family business there, Rabinowitz Design Workshop (later renamed Witz End Workshop). Creative Arts Workshop also began at their house when they gave art lessons to kids from the area. They used to come over, and Kiki would make them all a big pot of spaghetti and hot dogs.

For two people who seemed like one entity, Kiki and Harold butted heads a lot. They had some pretty hilarious arguments. I’ll always remember them fighting over directions in the car. They’d be equally insistent about which way to turn. Finally Kiki would shout, “Goddammit, Harold, I’m not going to listen to you anymore!” and pointedly veer off in the opposite direction, even if it got them briefly lost. He’d do the same when he was the one driving. Despite this, I’ve never met two people more wildly in love.

They loved to dance together. Any time I visited, I’d see him grab Kiki and twirl her around in the kitchen while they laughed. If there was no music, they’d invent their own. They were constantly ad libbing silly songs and rhymes together. Harold was a master of words. He invented a game to play with his children, and later his grandkids, called Stinky Pinky. In the game, people took turns coming up with a pair of words that rhymed and then gave a short description. Everyone else had to guess what it was. For example, someone would say, “A wet puppy.” Others would guess what they had in mind until somebody said, “Soggy doggy.” If you guessed it, you won that round.

Harold could speak in iambic pentameter off the top of his head and improvise limericks and poetry. This made him really popular at parties. At one event he donned Kiki’s purple muumuu, held a pineapple in his outstretched hand, and began to recite Hamlet. At another he stood under the balcony in his living room and extended his wine glass, shouting “My cup runneth over!” At that exact moment, a guest tried to pour wine over the balcony into his glass, but it ended up spilling on his head.
               And, of course, there was the time his son had Show and Tell back in first grade and decided to stand up in front of the class and announce, “Last weekend my dad was at a party and had a lot to drink and fell into a big bucket of popcorn!” My uncle hadn’t been there to see it, but he’d heard the story. Harold wrote legends just by living.

This is why it was so sad when Harold had a stroke back in 2000 and lost a lot of his verbal abilities. He went from someone who could keep a whole room in stitches to having trouble articulating basic thoughts. I remember the look of anguish on his face as he once said, “I can’t say what I mean to say.” And, for a short time, he referred to everyone he spoke to as Kiki. It was because of the stroke, but it made sense. He loved Kiki so much that he saw a part of her in everyone.

Even so, he never stopped enjoying life. He still drew beautifully. He still saw friends and rejoiced in family. He laughed until the end and died surrounded by everyone who loved him; all the lives he had changed. In the end, I can only regret that he won’t be a part of the memorial celebration, because it would be just like him to surprise everyone by showing up in a jester hat or a purple dress, ad libbing satirical poetry. But he’ll be there regardless, because he is everywhere he’s painted and joked and sang.

          Harold is the world he created.

Remember Her Name

           I was heading down to the bus stop on Chapel Street to wait for my ride to work. It was unusually balmy for an October morning, and the city dwellers seemed restless. On the way over a lone cockroach had caused a hilarious uproar on the bus, to the scorn of a pair of New Yorkers. From the time I stepped onto the bus until leaving the Green, I had been called Strawberry Shortcake and Carrot Top. I’d been approached by separate strangers suggesting I take their business cards, get tattoo sleeves, become a Jehovah’s Witness, and smoke weed with one of them in the bathroom (apparently in that order). They had a lot of strong opinions about what I should do with my day. It could get a little overwhelming, but I loved the energy of downtown New Haven. I always came home bursting with stories.

            Passing Foot Locker, I noticed there were a number of people lounging on the benches at the bus stop. There was one open space next to a woman, so I sat beside her. A bald, middle-aged man spoke up.

            “Miss, you got a husband?”

            They used to ask if I had a boyfriend. Maybe I was getting old.

            “Yeah. Sorry, man.”

            “Oh.” He paused. “You got fifty cents?”

            The woman seated next to me laughed. “Gary, are you trying to pick up white girls again?” She turned my way. “Is he bothering you?”

            I shook my head and smiled at her.

            The woman was dressed in baggy black clothes. Her skin was dark and she had long dreads pulled back in a bandana. Her face was very kind, and strikingly ageless. She could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. There was a beer bottle in her lap, wrapped in a crinkled brown bag. She sipped from it periodically.

            “What’s your name?” she asked, holding out her hand.

            “Emily.” I shook it.

            “I’m Stacey. You going somewhere?”

            “Yeah, taking the bus to work. It won’t be here for a while.”

            “Where do you work?” she asked.

            “New Haven Register.”

            I was about to ask her the same question but caught myself.

            Stacey craned her neck to peer at someone behind me.

            “Quick, let’s switch seats,” she said.

            I complied, letting her sit closest to the sidewalk.

            “There were some men I know over there and I didn’t want them to see you,” she explained in a hushed voice. “They bother girls over here. Not me, though. They leave me alone.”

            “Thank you.”

            She winked and took another swig of her 40. “Us ladies, we gotta look out for each other.”

            We chatted for a few minutes before she said, “Are they paying you enough at your job? You make sure they are. Go to the higher-ups if they’re not.”

            “I’m doing all right,” I said.

            “Well, that’s good. Me, I’m not working right now.”

            I fumbled for a reassuring reply. “Yeah, the economy’s been doing a number on everyone…”

            “It’s not the economy. It’s me. I have a real problem,” she said, gesturing toward her beer. “I made some bad choices.”

            “We all have,” I told her.

            “They don’t land everyone here, though. Hey, you don’t have a dollar, do you?”

            The way she asked, it didn’t sound like the discussion had been leading up to that request. It seemed like a peripheral thought.

            “I’m sorry. I only have enough for bus fare,” I said. It was true.

            “It’s okay, hon. You keep your bus money.”

            I rummaged around in my bag and pulled out a cake pop from Starbucks. “You can have this if you want.”

            Stacey’s eyes lit up as she took the pastry. “Is that chocolate? I haven’t had chocolate forever! I have to make this last. Before I eat it, I’ll watch it melt a little in the sun. It’ll look real pretty.”

            A pang of sadness struck me, but I thought maybe I shouldn’t be sad. She was appreciating something I wouldn’t have even noticed.

            A mother and daughter stood in front of us on the sidewalk. The girl must have been about four. She bounded around her mother in circles, chattering excitedly.

            Stacey hadn’t touched her 40 in a while. She looked thoughtfully at the cake pop.

            “I think I’m gonna give this to her,” she said. “I have a daughter, too. I’d give her the candy if she was here. But my daughter…she had to get taken away.” Her voice caught in the air and she was quiet for a moment. “Have to do it when the mama’s not looking, though. Don’t want her to think I’m trying to poison her kid.”

            There was a lump in my throat that hadn’t been there before.

            “That’s really considerate,” I said.

            Before it could fully sink in, a wiry old man ambled up to our bench, struggling to hold his pants up. He was laughing and babbling exuberantly, much like the four-year-old child. His two front teeth were missing.

            “Harvey, get your skinny ass over here!” Stacey reached over to re-buckle his belt, tutting in disapproval. “I gave you this belt. At least wear it right, not like some fool kid with his pants around his ankles! How’s anyone gonna want to help you, looking like that? How’s anyone gonna give you a job?”

            She tucked in his shirt and he lowered himself onto the bench opposite from ours, swaying slightly.

            “You’re like a mom to them,” I said.

            “Well, somebody has to be.”

            As she chided and joked with her friends, I was ashamed to realize that I’d never thought homeless people would have such comradery. Wouldn’t they be fighting for the same resources? But here they were, laughing and teasing one another and fixing each other’s clothes. How could I have been such an ignorant snob? How could I have ever assumed that people wouldn’t need each other, especially if they had nothing else?

            Stacey glanced back at the girl and her mother.

            “Not everyone here looks after their kids,” she sighed. “Some of these kids—twelve, thirteen years old—they run around the Green at night. Run wild. Sometimes they kick us in our sleep. And we can’t tell nobody, cause then they’ll come after us even worse.”

            A chill spread over me. “That’s horrible! Is there anything I can do?”

            Stacey shook her head sadly. “I’m not worried about me. It’s just awful no one raised them right. You’d never do that. I wouldn’t, either. I was raised to treat everyone with dignity, no matter who they are.”

            I was ready to burst with the insistence that something had to be done, that there was no way a just or even marginally decent society could sleep at night knowing that homeless people couldn’t. But Stacey continued.

            “Let me tell you something,” she said, gazing at me intently. “This is important. Not everybody has parents, so cherish yours. Treasure and honor them. I wish I still had mine. I lost my mama a long time ago, and it fucked me up in a lot of ways.” She cast her eyes down and took a deep swig.

            It seemed that as brutal irony had decided, Stacey started drinking when she lost her mother and then lost her own daughter because of it. They might have been trapped in bottles generationally; living in glass houses, floating out with desperate messages inside. I thought of baby bottles evolving into the other kind. She could no longer be a mom to her daughter, but she could be one to everyone else.

“If you want to help me, there is one thing you can do,” Stacey went on.

            I waited.

            “You work for the newspaper, so look for my friend Carton’s obituary. He was a good man. He…had an accident. You don’t have to bring me the obituary. Just find it. People don’t remember our names, Emily. I just want his name in the paper. And even if I never see you again, remember my name, too.”

            My bus was approaching but I was rooted to the spot. I couldn’t look away and didn’t want to.

            As the bus shuddered to a halt in front of us, Stacey fell against me. She dropped her head on my shoulder and clutched my arm with icicle fingers. I couldn’t breathe.

            I tried to jerk away, but she only wanted a hug. I held her.

            Her eyes glazed over for a moment. She drew my face close, speaking in the most intense whisper I’d ever heard.

            “God told me to tell you something,” she said. “He said you’re special. If you help somebody else, God is gonna help you.”

            We broke apart in time for me to catch my bus. She waved goodbye. I waved back and told her I’d look for Carton’s obituary.

            I never did find it, but I remember. I haven’t seen Stacey since.

            For the rest of the day I felt heavier, but not in a burdened way. More like I’d been entrusted to carry something invaluable and find somewhere safe to keep it. So I’m putting it here on this page, and trusting you with it, too. We can all look after it together.

            I don’t think Stacey’s message came from a god. It breached to the surface from somewhere inside her, outside of the bottle and straight from her core. She thought I was special just for listening and caring, but I’m not special. I’m a hypocrite.

            I still don’t give her friends money, but I try to carry food around to have something to offer. I promised to make sure she won’t be forgotten, but put off writing this for a year because of my own discomfort. I lost sleep thinking about her, but she doesn’t even have a bed.

            I’ll never forget Stacey’s story, and I hope you remember it, too. Remember that there are friends who become family and take care of each other when no one else will. Remember the children who roam the Green at night, kicking homeless people while they sleep because their parents never taught them not to. Remember there are people who give each other everything they have, and everything they don’t, no matter what it costs them. And remember there’s an ageless woman in New Haven who sees beauty in chocolate melting in the sun.

            Her name is Stacey. Remember her name.