5/18/14
Prolog to Martin's story.
What can I write about my dad that I have not already written?
Have I seen his life through his eyes? Yes, to a good extent.
If it is true that my difficulty with authority figures, my giving away power, belittling myself so I do not achieve my potential- so I go through life awake only a fraction of the time- is a result of my early, habitual pattern of taking care of my father's ego so I would not as an infant, then young child (what felt like) be annihilated (by his on and off again focus and attention – as extreme as that sounds, his anger and frustration, his feeling trapped and humiliated) then I still have not resolved this issue. It also plays into my compulsion to seek approval, show off, perform, talk too much, be the center of attention, give away power… perhaps oddest of all is my difficulty accepting increasing happiness.
Martin's story.
Happy day. Sun shining. Lollipop. Watermelon summer smile. Pop gave me two bottles to take to the store. I get a penny back for each. 1922.
What did mom say? Careful Marty! Noise. Loud sound! Bang! Crash! Boom! Blowout. Flat tire. Crash car into garbage can. Mess. Yucky smell. Horses scared, wild. Big teeth.
Happy. Not so happy.
Make myself feel the happy.
Swing those bottles.
I want happy!
Swing harder. Bring back happy!!
Flying bottle. Lost grip.
Crash.
Crying.
Never want happy!
Boys don't cry.
Willie. Big brother. Six years old. When I get to be six, I'll fix him. I'll fix him good. Put up them dukes.
****
Willie and I made up this great game. All the kids want to play.
They made me captain of the stickball team.
I boxed with Joe today. He nearly beat me. I walloped him. Walloped him real-good.
Mom wasn't happy when she heard from Joey's mom. Hey, did she want me to get beat?!
Willie keeps saying, “Hey Marty if you spend all your time playing ball and boxing how come they keep skipping you in school? You'll graduate before I do.” I told him that's because he's not as smart as I am. He whacked me. I walloped him. We ran a race. I won. We got milkshakes. No hard feelings.
Willie and I wrote another play.
I hang around with his gang - don't like kids my own age.
****
Teacher called me in. “Marty with a little more effort you could be valedictorian.” Who cares?
****
Where can I meet a girl?
Where can I meet a girl like I see in the movies? Charlie Chaplin always has the best girls.
Maybe I should go to Hollywood.
“If you go to Hollywood- I'll jump out the window.” Mom gets on my nerves.
Golden gloves. Girls like boxers.
I'll jump out the window…
You're my favorite Marty.
Yeah, I wish Willie were her favorite. He knows how to have a good time. Knows how to love mom without letting her getting in his way.
Almost
1/4/15
1918 Martin Lieberson was born the second of two sons.
That year, his father, Benjamin Lieberson nearly died from the Spanish Influenza. The same year Leonard Bernstein came into the world, three years after Frank Sinatra. Rose né Dukorsky, was overjoyed with the arrival of her new child - her joy immediately tempered by her having to care for her ailing husband, her toddler and put herself together, not to mention get back to running the laundry store. She found strength, healed her Ben, raised her boys, resumed singing. She still worried - all the time. Almost all the time. Perhaps Rose was free when she sang.
1929 was hard on business; no kidding…
They survived- more than that. It was a hardworking, resourceful family. A family building a business- together. Even though she loved to sing popular songs and go to the opera, Rose worried always about tomorrow.
Martin was a clever kid, also a pugnacious stick ball playing urchin.
1934 If you box in the Golden Gloves, I'll throw myself out of the window.
1939 If you continue to try to make a living as a cartoonist, I'll throw.... so you got one cartoon published in The New Yorker… as if that will pay the rent...
1940 Now you are writing for radio... But your show is only broadcast two minutes a day.
1942 If you move to Hollywood to write movies...
1947 Yes, I know you write for Captain Marvel...
1950 OK... You have a show on Broadway - it closed after the first performance... How are you going to get married, support a family?
With all that throwing herself out of the window, it was a lucky thing my grandmother lived on the second floor.
My father, in recounting these stories from his young adulthood once added as if in passing, I wish I could clear my mind, be a blank slate... My mother ruined my life... Pass the salt. We were at Tony’s Italian Kitchen, one of dad’s favorite hang outs from before he was married. He was happy when someone mistook him for Italian- coincidence that my son is fluent in Italian.
My father had talent, desire, a solid work ethic. He kept trying, then burnt out - or his goals changed. Humor, money, fame were not the holy Grail- making a living, having a family and middle class comfort were what mattered. Well, humor was high up there too.
What allowed Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Philip Roth, Neil Simon, other first-generation Jewish comedians, writers, musicians, scientists, scholars, lawyers, doctors and other professionals to succeed where my father never fully succeeded?
Were they all first generation? Not sure. Some may have had the advantage of being born to American-born parents - one generation removed from the fear of the pogroms.
My dad did not fail. I often confuse moderate success with failure - all or nothing thinking - similar to my son's friend who got slapped for getting a 99. He is Asian. Similar to Jewish attitudes.
When did my dad give up on his artistic side? When I was in first grade, he was the manager of a laundry factory. It was my grandfather's dream - if all the little guys who owned laundry stores got together to buy a laundry factory, they could share profits which formally went to large factory owners. My grandfather was good at organizing. He got his buddies together. They bought a factory. Dad was anointed head honcho.
When I was six, for show and tell I asked if anyone's parents wanted to buy a laundry factory.
My grandfather probably did not get past eighth grade. Maybe less or the same for my grandmother. On my mother's side there were doctors. My maternal grandfather was a Doctor of Pharmacology. His brother was an MD.
I have always felt I was more connected to my father's side than my mother's. Dad and his family were warm- and hotheaded, rough Russian Jews... Mom and her side were educated, detached, not first generation, some Polish, German and British- Jews all, successful, a touch aristocratic – some of them chillier. Though my mom’s Aunt Bee was vivacious. Her uncle Murray was warm. My view of my mom’s family was tinged by my father’s opinion—as were all my opinions. Except for my reconnecting with my cousin’s after dad’s passing, I have had remarkably little interest in getting to know my extended family… reminds me of the shame which has prevented me from going to HS reunions- cognitive distortions of not being successful enough – reinforced by my minor fiascos a couple of years ago meeting HS friends. Was it because of dad that our family and social circles contracted?
Ben Rose
Joe Dvora
The five generations of rabbis
My mother's side
Will Adeline
Mark Elaine
Murray
Michael Andrea Richard
We have a book, yes a book of a family tree. I opened it once or twice.
**** Dad said in his later years that he was happily surprised he had been as successful as he was. Funny, in an odd sort of reversal, I felt dad after missing out at being a TV or film writer or investor in the huge market rise or having a business of which he was not often ashamed, was an almost- success.
In some ways, dad was as successful as one can be. In addition to feeling like he was happily surprised at how well-off he was, his attitude became increasingly loving and positive.
In his last year, at one of the doctor’s appointments I took him to, he was breathing with the help of an oxygen tank. His hunched walk aided by a walker, supported by son and wife, when the nurse asked in greeting, “How are you?” He smiled, warmly with just a hint of playfulness and said, “Not bad.”
It was as if all the negativity, shame, guilt, regrets, fear had washed away. What was left was his natural state of loving sweetness. As an old man, he told me he loved me. He was genuinely happy and excited to hear from and see me. Tears come to my eyes.
When he passed, I kissed his forehead, still warm. I couldn’t believe he was gone. I cried inconsolably.
When I returned to work, I couldn’t sincerely accept condolences. I was already back to my defensive, off-putting shield. I was blue. I was a little bit monstrous.
Symphony Without Notes
(My Unfinished)
Mov. I Remembering
My father loved listening to The Vocal Scene, with George Jellinek on WQXR.
The great voices of the 20th century called to him, Dietrich Fischer Dieskau speaks to and moves me now-not my young self, locked in my instrumental world. Words were a necessary, not evil, but added baggage. As a teenager I sang only once or twice, a tune based on a melody my dad wrote.
He loved opera.
Mein Vater, mon père, mi padre… he knew a few words in a few languages, could read Spanish and French. He didn’t know much Yiddish and I doubt he would have taught it to me... assimilation. My mother knew more, but she spoke less. Often, she was silent. After he passed, she chatted cheerily.
He said I would never be much of a composer unless I got back to my Jewish roots. I tried a few times, but eastern meditation was what finally spoke to me.
Dad was 11 when the Depression started, stock market crashing. He was already working for seven years. Tiny little tough kid delivering laundry packages with his older brother.
A little Gershwin may have helped. His mom, a former shoe model sang with their player piano. (First theme of the development is from my Variations in Eb for piano four hands- Gershwin-esque the next theme with its modulation to f# minor is also a far off reference to that piece.)
Dad was too happy. In his mind- one day his mom gave him two bottles to redeem at the store. She told him to buy candy with the coins he would get. Running down the street swinging the bottles. Of course the bottles broke. No big deal- except to him. His early life later seemed like one disappointment after another. To protect himself, he tried to limit his happiness so he wouldn’t crash. He crashed plenty though. The Great Depression, his dashed dreams of being a cartoonist, a painter, a playwright, a boxer... He was in fact a good-looking man, a strong runner and ball player, smart and street-smart, good story teller. He made a living writing humor, then editing, called himself a hack. He was my first writing teacher. He built a life working for himself mostly because he knew he couldn’t work for anyone else. His depression was intermittent, not often explosive but it was there. Shame too. Lots of it. When he wrote for the original Captain Marvel, it was the filler stories. He couldn’t tell anyone because he was a ghostwriter. Lots of secrets. What a burden. Then he was the manager of a laundry factory. That had less shame in it. Often happy and often down in the dumps he felt his faults the more he dwelled on them, the angrier and nuttier his behavior. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He was warm, over-protective, enraged by social injustice. Rather than teach me his street-smarts, I learned fear.
Mov. II Rumination
Mov. III Mom and her Art
Mov. IV my little family