It’s Never Too Late to Reconnect with Family

I have learned in my 74 years on the planet that it’s always good not to be attached to the outcome of any occurrences. This can also apply to the process of getting to the occurrence as I experienced yesterday, July 6th.

The adventure began innocently enough with some serious rain greeting me as I entered a friend’s car. Joel had agreed, with very little notice, to fill in for Abraham and provide the start of my journey to Baltimore with a ride to the train station in Springfield, MA at 7:50 a.m. The train was on time and it wasn’t until we arrived in New Haven that the first of the ensuing series of glitches occurred.

A barely audible announcement informed my fellow passengers and me that there was a power outage between New Rochelle and NYC. No information was available about the cause, the time it would take to fix and what our next move might be. Soon after the announcement I left the train and an Amtrak employee in front of the ticket window suggested that I consider taking a bus to the City, which I proceeded to consider while requesting a refund on what was left of the cost of my ticket. While waiting for the refund I learned that there was no assurance that I could get to Manhattan in time to catch another train that would get me to Baltimore when my cousin Lauren was expecting me.

So I asked to have my Amtrak ticket reissued in the hopes that the outage would be resolved sooner than later, since it was clear sticking with the train was my best bet. Throughout this part of the ordeal I remained determined to find a way to get to my cousin Harold’s 80th birthday/family reunion. I had not seen Harold in half a century following our closeness through my early teen years. Harold is 5 years my senior and was a most wonderful older cousin/friend who took me on adventures in the City – movies including “The Graduate, Radio City shows complete with the Rockettes, $1.19 steaks at Tad’s Steakhouse. When he chose to attend college in Iowa it was a serious loss. Little did I know it was destined to last half a century.

All of which had me willing to deal with the adversity that continued as the train, after 1 ½ hours in New Haven, took off for New Rochelle where we learned upon arriving that we had to leave the train and take a Metro North train to Grand Central Station. The new problem was that the next train I could hopefully catch to Baltimore left from Moynihan Station. My choices, with 20 minutes until the train I sought to take from Moynihan, were to take two subway trains – the S and either the 1 or the A – or to walk very speedily the 8 streets and 4 avenues from 42nd St. and Park Ave. to 34th St. and 8th Ave. on a very hot and humid NYC afternoon.

I made it even though I had some difficulty finding the entrance to Moynihan. When I got on the train I was sweating profusely so I chose to take a cool “air shower” while standing next to my seat. In walked a family speaking what I thought might be Russian but turned out to be German. I ended up having a lovely visit with the dad, Phillip, a psychiatrist and researcher into the world of bi-polar folks. We spoke of his home in Dresden, of Germany’s loss to Spain the previous day in the EuroCup, of my recently concluded Germany adventure and when the train departed about a half hour late, which had enabled me to board thanks to my seroius march from Grand Central, I shared my three books which I brought to give as birthday presents for Harold.

The train wasn’t a half hour late. More glitches occurred en route to Baltimore, which resulted in our being an hour late. I texted frequently with my cousin Lauren who gets credit for encouraging me to attend her brother’s birthday celebration starting a year ago in text messages. Instead of her picking me up at the station and taking me to spend some time before the party at Harold’s son Josh’s home, she was already at the party and I needed to use my Uber app. Since I had never used it on my own, I asked a young Black woman who was exiting the train with me if she could provide some support.

Nile did just that and 6 minutes later Hervé from Burkina Faso had arrived to drive me to the country club, site of the party. We had an entertaining conversation about his homeland, which I began by telling him that the man, a Rastafari from Senegal, whose memoir I am currently ghost-writing, Manou, has only praise and respect for the man credited with de-colonizing Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara. He had spoken of him as inspiring him during a fraught arrival in the U.S. Hervé appreciated this and shared his hopes for the current leader who he feels is doing much to undo the damage the country has experienced since Sankara’s assassination. We laughed about the troubled state of this country’s government and I learned that Hervé married an American, but wants very much to return to his country of origin.

13 minutes later we arrived at my destination, a mere 11 hours after leaving my house that morning. It was all worth it as Lauren met me at the entrance and escorted me into the party room. Harold, not surprisingly, didn’t recognize me at first and when he did he exclaimed, “Tommy! You’re here!” and instantly all I had undergone was completely worth it.  His surprise and his joy along with that of the other 14 family members who took turns greeting and hugging me were thrilling to experience.

While enjoying a delicious salmon meal, several toasts were given, starting with the younger of Harold’s two sons, Josh. His older son, Adam, had not been able to make the trip. Josh told a sweet story of how he had hoped to get into a gifted and talented program in 3rd grade and didn’t make it. He shared how Harold had gone all the way to the superintendent to try to reverse the decision. Josh saw this vote of confidence as a major factor in developing his self-esteem and honored his dad for both the effort and the manner in which he went about it with consideration, diplomacy and respect. For him it was a pivotal moment in his becoming more self-confident. Lauren was next and she highlighted Harold’s kindness and gentleness which she attributed to a large extent to their parents, Aunt Helen and Uncle Arthur. I asked to follow her and echoed Lauren’s sentiments regarding her parents. I went on to share my appreciation for Harold’s friendship as well as my sadness when he left for the University of Iowa in 1962 when I was 13.

Following the delicious dinner many photo opportunities featuring 5 of my first cousins, their spouses, their grandchildren and me. The atmosphere was cordial, welcoming and loving, making everything I’d encountered in my travels feel abundantly worthwhile.

The decision got made that I would spend the evening with Josh’s family in what turned out to be a very beautiful home. I heard the story of the painting of the Italian village on Lake Cuomo where Josh and Kelly who had organized his dad, Harold’s party, had honeymooned 22 years ago. They commissioned the painting when they returned to the lake to celebrate their 20th anniversary and the painting is beautiful.

Time with Josh and his dad, my long-lost cousin Harold, was yet another gift. Watching their easy intimacy and mutual knowledge of one another as well as their sincere interest in my world and life were pleasurable and satisfying. I went to bed with a full heart – full with newly discovered cousins and other family members, all of whom know each other so well and who I now have become part of…

The morning brought more connections and sharing. I heard about Josh’s 4 experiences of a collapsed lung, one incredibly complicated and frightening one that occurred in India when his wife, Kelly was 8 months pregnant back in the States. I shared about Stefan’s hydrocephalus trials as well as his Tiny Desk Contest song and Maddie’s chef exploits. When cousin Andrea, daughter of my Uncle Andrew and my father’s sister and my Aunt Shirley arrived along with my cousin Mitch, another of Andrew and Shirley’s children, there were mysteries I had been seeking to unravel for decades that I could finally ask about.  What I learned was very sad indeed.

According to Andrea, who to her credit knew this story and still was very connected to my parents, my father and his other sister, Helen, had traveled to Cleveland right after Shirley and Andrew had married in 1947 to convince them to get their marriage annulled. Evidently this also was the expressed hope of my grandparents, Nana Rosie and Papa Itch, parents of my dad and his two sisters. It was a result of Andrew not being Jewish and even though none of those seeking the marriage’s annulment were observant Jews, the cultural imperatives took over.

The result was estrangement, which caused a rift that meant I never got to know my 3 Cleveland 1st cousins. My parents never made the requisite effort needed to sustain relationships with this family and I lost the opportunity to forge closeness that would have enabled our family’s to know one another over the now 70 plus years that have transpired since.

I felt this gap and loss most acutely not when interacting individually or even in threesomes or foursomes, but when Josh showed us the final surprise for Harold – a “This is Your Life” slide show on a huge screen TV. In it the bonds between the rest of the family, from which I was kept apart and all the years during which the children and grandchildren were growing up that I missed, really hit me and I teared up. When Lauren came and put her arm around me I decided to share my momentary sadness with her – a sadness tempered with the appreciation for all the joy evident in the photos that Harold, his children and grandchildren experienced also as a result from remaining an intact family…

Saying good-bye was hard. Not knowing when such a joyful reunion would recur, when Susan could meet and be welcomed by this family added to the power of the final moments when I profusely and tearfully thanked first Harold for welcoming me so fully and then Lauren for wanting to include me and knowing how much it would mean to Harold to have me there.