The Way it was Then #2

 

January 28, 1983

(My father, Dr. Joseph V. Rubba, left his dentist’s tools and departed this earth in June of 1984. Happily, he’d lived to read this column and, of course, offer his comments on it.)

Now this won’t hurt a bit …

 My father is a (and I say this word with all due respect and awe) dentist.

That should entitle me to some large measure of sympathy.

After all, not many of my fellow daughters can boast abut trying to tell Grandpop about the kids’ latest escapades while gagging on pieces of cotton.

Ever notice how dentists ask questions when you no way can answer?

Father dentists are no exception. My father has made this common trait an art form. In fact, since one of the only times we get to visit for any length of time, my father and I, is when I’m in the chair for my once-in-a-decade checkup, the questions and comments come fast and furious.

Although people say environment plays a big part in the way we turn out, I’d have to dispute that just on the basis of my dad and me.

You see, I didn’t grow up with my father. And so, I wasn’t exposed to his influence in any large measure as a kid … he was just the man who lived around the corner with his own family and with whom I spent a little time occasionally. It was only when I was grown and well into my college years that I got to know my dad. And the older I get, the more I find myself seeing his traits in my own personality. We are a lot alike.

One of the things I’ve always respected about Dad is his straightforwardness.That hasn’t always made him the most popular of people.

He has held public office, been on municipal boards, worked on church councils and boards of education. He is well-read, extremely intelligent and a gifted writer. He reads my column every week (a sure sign of his discriminatory literary taste) and often calls me to comment on something I said or failed to say to his liking.

Dad has never been short of an opinion on anything.

Neither, for what it’s worth, am I.

So imagine the tug-of-war when the two of us get together. It’s a battle for the word-in-edgewise. And on occasions like yesterday, it’s a battle in which Dad has a decided advantage.

First, he chats about ordinary, mundane things like my drive over to Vineland from Berlin, the weather, how the kids are doing in school, how the paper is faring. That’s as the napkin is going around my neck and I’m easing into the chair like a prisoner waiting for the current to be turn on.

Then, after the examination is over and the x-rays are checked, the novocaine needle goes in, the numbness starts, the cotton is packed around the tooth and the drilling begins.

That’s when Dad’s conversation gets really interesting!

That’s when he talks about his current political interests, his opinions on everything from profanity to gambling to television shows.

And I’m absolutely powerless to get my viewpoints in!

We’re talking frustration here, folks. Aside from the rolling of eyeballs, the occasional grunt of either assent or protest, I can’t get into this conversation!

Actually, it’s a monologue, conducted with the abandon of one who knows there will be no interruption. Except for the whine of the high-speed drill.

Really, though, it’s probably all for the better that he employs this little tactic. It’s hard to concentrate on raw fear when someone is talking about something interesting.

Dad has never had to resort to playing soothing music through headphones or dispensing analgesic gas of any kind. He incredibly gently slips the novocaine syringe into the mouth tissue, waits until there’s absolutely no feeling left in a large portion of the face and then does what he’s been doing for about fifty years now … old-fashioned, solid, reliable dentistry.

Yesterday, it took him about fifteen minutes to remove an old silver filling he’d put in for me decades ago. It was definitely in there to stay. The extra-added ingredient that makes his brand of dentistry so good is the conversation. He enjoys the discussion, even if it is one-sided.

Especially if it’s one-sided.

We didn’t quite get all my work done yesterday. After all, when it takes me ten years to screw up my courage for a stint in his chair, I’m bound to accumulate more than a few chores for him to do.

And there’s really no excuse for the fear. His style of dentistry is compassionate and gentle and there is a minimum of discomfort.

It’s the drill and the reverberation in the skull that I hate! And when it’s all over, I chide myself for being such a ninny and for putting it off for so long.

So, in two weeks, I’ll be back in the chair for more work.

And without a doubt, Dad will have questions and comments about earth-shattering events and deep concepts he will want to discuss.

Once the cotton is packed in and I’m out of the conversation, that is.

Thanks a lot, Dad.

The Way It Was Then, #1

 Over the course of the 21 years I owned and wrote for The Journal Newspapers, an opinion column appeared each week under my name (Jeanne Rubba Witzig and then Jeanne Rubba Smith). Mostly, I wrote about local issues, events in my family, people I knew and respected (or not). When the paper moved on to new owners and my column was no longer welcome, I left with a manila envelope filled with favorites of my dear friend, Marie Martin, who carefully cut out the column each week and kept it for... whatever. Not all of them survived and many are yellowed and crumbling. But at the behest of another dear friend, Mary Lou Capella, I'm slowly retyping them and will publish them as blog entries here. This is the first of many.

February 3, 1982

 Another Voice is Silent

 Requiescat in pace.

Long ago, I was taught that one could not pray for the repose of the soul of an inanimate object, because inanimate objects could not have souls. So, although we mourned for our pets, the deceased birds the cats brought home and even precious dolls that had to be discarded after years of wear, we could not invoke the beautiful, “Rest in Peace” over them. After all, God did not consider a prayer for something that had no soul.

Maybe a requiescat in pace is allowed, though, for an old friend that, although inanimate, had a soul. Maybe we should all be thinking of whispering a quiet prayer for the soul of the Philadelphia Bulletin, for the venerable institution truly had a soul and the spirit of service that kept people informed for nearly 135 years.

To the people who worked for The Bulletin, the end of the publication’s long life meant a drastic change in theirs. Imagine being a 40-year employee at the paper and finding oneself out looking for a job. I don’t particularly mourn for those in top management… somehow they have enough connections in the business to land on their feet every time. The press operator, delivery route man, copywriter, reporter and just plain staffer might have a much harder time finding work.

Those of us in the newspaper world, even on a small scale such as we, looked at The Bulletin as a colorful, well-designed product. In recent years, as the paper scrambled to regain its lost circulation and revamp its image, it took on a bold new look and went sniffing into stories that made it exciting to read. Even then, though, the death rattle was slowly beginning in its throat, as no amount of flashy headlines or in-depth copy could bring back lost advertisers.

The biggest losers will be the readers of the metropolitan Philadelphia area. Right now, it might just seem that the death of The Bulletin simply means one less newspaper on the stands. Wrong. Whether people realize it or not, there is one less voice in the city. Two newspapers with the same owner serve the whole town! It will be impossible for them to compete against each other and it will be impossible for readers to get a true forum on any issue. Now, more than ever, the losers will be the people.

The winners, so-called, are already zeroing in on the carcass. Listen to the ads for the suburban dailies, the ones who slowly strangled The Bulletin, and watch them battle each other for The Bulletin’s readers. By Sunday, two days after the closing was a reality, features that for years were associated with The Bulletin appeared in other papers. Syndicated columnists were picked up and favorite comic strips turned up elsewhere. Radio pitches and TV spots urged readers to continue reading a “big” newspaper by subscribing to the suburban dailies. The corpse wasn’t even cold before the scavengers closed in, driven by the pressures of business and profit to take the pennies off the eyes of the dead.

People say the newspaper industry is stronger than ever. People say the print medium is weakening because of the electronic medium. People didn’t think for a minute The Bulletin would go under. People knew all along it really would. Everyone had a theory about why and a reason why it shouldn’t be. But those of us who understand the struggle in which The Bulletin was engaged knew it would fold. Without advertising, a paper dies. It’s that simple and inevitable. Graphics, good writing, great pictures… all of it means nothing if the advertising revenue isn’t there. With each successful suburban daily, the advertising pie got sliced thinner and thinner, until there simply wasn’t enough to go around. Deprived its prime source of revenue, the giant newspaper slowly toppled and fell.

So requiescat in pace seems appropriate. We can put to rest an American tradition. We can wish godspeed to the people for whom the paper was a way of life. And we can nervously watch the rest of the giants across the country as they grapple with the same problems that overtook and killed The Bulletin, the Washington Star and others. If some solution isn’t found to the economic problems that caused their deaths, we’ll be seeing many more great newspapers fade from the scene. And we, the readers, will continue to be the losers.

Year Sixty-four!

 I'd know them all anywhere.

Put a member of the St. Joseph's High School Class of 1959 anywhere... in a crowd, in a restaurant, on the street... anywhere. I'd know him or her instantly.

Surprising, but not really so much. After all, there were only 64 of us in the class of 1959.

We have celebrated all the milestone anniversaries since we graduated. The last big one, the 60th, made us stop and ponder the wisdom of waiting for five years to pass before gathering again. Already we'd lost 13 of our friends and some were battling serious health concerns. It seemed logical to plan an annual party.

This past Saturday, September 30th, we enjoyed the 64th anniversary of our graduation... all 19 of us, plus assorted spouses and significant others.

I think times like those we experienced at the party remind us of the fact that we are all at least 82, we've all had suffering and sorrow in our lives and some of us may not be here for the 2024 get-together. 

I find it ironic that, back in 1959, I wasn't close friends with more than a couple of the people I now look forward to seeing. To start with, we were divided into academic and commercial classes and were not permitted to cross over for any specific classes. I would have loved to have taken typing, knowing I'd need it in college, but that rule wasn't ever bent, so I had to be self-taught.

The second reason for the division was the fact that our small group from Egg Harbor City didn't meet the St. Joseph's group until 9th grade, whereas the Hammonton kids had gone to school together since kindergarten. They had a head start on friendships and can share memories of their early school years we can't appreciate. Of course, they can't appreciate ours either.

Regardless of the divisions, by the time we'd spent four years together, we were the Class of 1959. We were kids, really, just starting out on the rest of our lives.

By 2023, we weren't constrained by what might have been differences then. We had learned some of life's toughest lessons (and are still doing so). So it was a joy to see the faces of our classmates and hear of the events of the past year, knowing how fleeting our lives can be.

As I said, I would know them anywhere. Silver hair, wrinkles, a few extra (or fewer) pounds... doesn't really matter when the smiles and hugs are the same as we remember. We're fortunate to be able to get together like we do and each party reminds us just how lucky we are.

Writing a memoir

 Betsy Carpenter and I had our regular lunch today at Turning Point in Moorestown, after a hiatus of three months, thanks to sciatica and assorted other illnesses on my part. My dear friend Betsy is very healthy, an outdoors person who hikes, inhales nature and is adventurous beyond belief to a couch potato like me.

We've known one another since we lived in the same Berlin, NJ neighborhood some fifty years ago and we enjoy spending time catching up on our family news and enjoying our selections from the unusual, always tasty menu.

Then we began our customary habit of touching on whatever we've been thinking about since the last lunch. Betsy is a philosophical gal... we're both Leos and share a common birthday, so there's nothing we don't discuss. This time, it was about how, looking back on our 82 years, we've discovered how much our youth taught us, how many lessons we absorbed from our many mistakes and how much richer our lives are for having lived and learned.

She recently found a book she'd purchased back in the 90s by William Zinsser called How To Write A Memoir. His advice is sound... rather than write a travelogue through the years, telling the story of our lives from Day One, a good memoir could be a collection of vignettes... pieces of our lives that stand out, that are vivid in our memories, that are part of what makes us who we are today.

Betsy is considering doing this. She has a rich family history with bits of ancestral lore to back it up. She could write volumes of vignettes about the things she has and the memories that go with them.

Not so me. My family didn't settle in the land early like hers did. My possessions date only back to my maternal grandmother and they don't have much meaning except to me, since I and my children and grandkids are basically all that's left of my family.

But as I drove home in a light drizzle that demanded the intermittent services of my windshield wipers, it occurred to me that I've been writing those memoirs all along... my blog entries and before them, the weekly columns I penned for The Journal, the newspaper I nurtured and loved for 21 years of my life.

Some of them have made it onto my computer, but I have a manila envelope filled with yellowed copies lovingly cut from the paper each week by my dear, late friend Marie Martin. Marie believed the columns should be preserved for posterity, not that my posterity gives much of a damn. But Marie did, so I have a stack of them waiting to be copied into folders on my computer. 

That's how I'll write my memoir... one column at a time, one yellowed, brittle piece at a time. When I'm finished, I may decide to find other vignettes from my life to add to the collection, but by that time, my memoir will be almost complete. It'll only wait for another blog entry, then another, then another.

Living pain free

 Last time I posted, I was complaining about the ravages of sciatica (or radiculopathy, as my doctor calls it). Since February I'd been virtually debilitated, walking hunched over with a cane from room to room or not at all, just sitting on my office chair trying to relieve the unrelenting pain.

I consulted a physician in late February who ordered an MRI and then told me my condition warranted "watching" but that I might qualify for a nerve-block epidural down the road if it didn't get better.

Then, I found another physician (and I use that word in jest) who set a blood glucose level of 200 as her arbitrary level before she would administer the epidural. Her scheduler took two weeks to call me with a date. When I arrived for what I hoped would be a pain-relieving treatment, my blood sugar was over 200 and I was turned away. Two weeks later, we tried again, and even though the bgl was only 216, I was turned away again, this time in tears of disappointment.

I consulted with my endocrinologist, who agreed to have his nurse school me in the use of an insulin pen so I could give myself a shot the night before my next epidural appointment, thus guaranteeing a low blood sugar level and the long-awaited injection.

Turned out I was allergic to the type of insulin or an additive in it and was violently ill for six hours and had to cancel the epidural appointment. 

But as I tried to rest, I decided it was foolhardy to rely on the strictures of one doctor when pain management practices were plentiful in the area. So my primary care physician gave me the name of one of his personal friends with a pain management practice in Voorhees. I called on a Monday and was seen on Wednesday.

My first epidural (called a transforaminal epidural because of where the medication is injected) was on July 27th. I'm scheduled for the second next week. 

During this past month, I've spent virtually pain-free days... shopping, making the bed, cooking dinner, visiting my kids... all the small, everyday things people do when pain isn't ruling their actions. Because there are some hours each day when I feel the pinch of the sciatica just a bit, it was decided a second injection would be of help and I'm happy to do it.

But now I'm beginning to feel like my old self, something I had almost despaired of feeling for those five and a half months when pain was all I knew. I'm driving again... even visited a dear friend today after not seeing her through the pandemic and then through my own personal travails.

Yes, I will never again ignore or underestimate the suffering of friends who live in pain as I did. But I will also add gratitude to that... the thankfulness I have that, for the most part, my days are pain-free. My thanks to Dr. Adam Sackstein and his nurse practitioner, Bill Biskup, for their compassionate, efficient and, best of all, timely care.

Living in pain

 I never honestly sympathized with them...those friends and acquaintances who lived in constant pain.

Oh yes, I said all the right things, tut-tutted and murmured the right words of understanding. I meant them, for sure, being cognizant of the suffering they were enduring and wanting to offer comfort.

But did I really understand? Could I possibly feel the same pangs of anguish they expressed? 

No. Until pain becomes part of every minute of every day, it's impossible to truly understand someone's agony.

In late November, I had surgery. The entire month leading up to it was dedicated to rest. Doctor's orders. Surgery was successful, but all of December and part of January was dedicated to rest and very mild exercise. Doctor's orders. 

I'm not an exerciser by nature anyway, so being sedentary suited my lifestyle very well. I didn't mind at all being at my computer editing novels, connecting with Facebook friends, and spending hours in our home office. 

But those months of inactivity resulted in a long-lasting and worsening case of sciatica, which began in February and has lingered to this day. The searing pain leaves me breathless sometimes and makes doing even the simplest of tasks impossible. 

I won't ever again take for granted someone's suffering. My sympathy will be real. Such is the lesson learned from my own experience with unrelenting pain.

A dear friend gone

A dear friend gone

 We didn't know the Doughtys very long. They moved across the street from us in 2016 and we moved to a different part of the community in 2017. But during that brief time, we had become fast friends. They were closer to Howard's age than mine, but we somehow clicked, as different as we were.

Terry is the definition of creative. She quickly made the former home of our friends Avis and John Anderson into her own showcase. Room by room, wall by wall, table by table. Terry can look at a blank room and visualize the most stunning finishes. She sews her own accessories, sees colors in rooms most of us wouldn't and has done wonders with a sloping back yard no one I know would dare tackle. 

From the onset, Bill loved it when I called him an "old curmudgeon." His public face often was one of displeasure, a frown more common than a smile. That facade never succeeded in hiding a good heart belonging to someone who knew how to care for people, who cherished friends old and new. In the younger years when we didn't know him, Bill was a master electrician, a craftsman who could build anything with just his hands and imagination.

Howard and I loved spending time with the Doughtys. We graduated to Sunday wine and dessert at their home when it became too difficult for Bill to navigate the garage steps into ours for dinner. We usually went to their house promising ourselves we wouldn't stay long. Never happened. We would walk in, spot Bill in his favorite chair down the hall in the family room and hear his happy voice shout out, “The Smiths are here!” Conversation never slowed. From politics, which Bill loved to discuss, to local sports, to weather, to construction, to family...the topics kept flowing.

Years of fighting diabetes and its debilitating health problems made Bill weaker and more unsteady. When he was forced to go into a dialysis program, everything he knew about living was altered.

Sometimes, I'd be surprised during the day with my phone ID lighting up with Bill's name when he simply had to get something off his chest, usually something political. We agreed avidly on matters politics, so it was a meeting of the minds that always gave each of us an opportunity to vent our spleens about a current issue about which we felt strongly.

Terry and Bill raised a son and a daughter and were blessed with four grandchildren, two boys and two girls. When we first met the Doughtys, they were still able to travel to New York to visit Billy and his family or to Pennsylvania to spend time with Terri and hers. In recent years, the family had to come to them.

Bill had talked with me, a fellow diabetic, often about how long he would be able to endure dialysis. It's a brutal regimen, three days a week, at least three hours in a chair having toxins removed from the blood. It's exhausting and weakening, and many dialysis patients run out of the willingness to subject themselves to it after a number of years. Bill wondered how long he’d last.

My father's baby brother, in his late 80s, spent five years in dialysis but finally succumbed to heart disease instead of the scourge of the dialysis sessions. But I knew enough about the process to understand what Bill was talking about.

Bill gradually gave up most of what he loved to do...he spent hours navigating his spacious home using a walker, often with Terry's aid. When getting into the car to go to dialysis became too much of an ordeal, when he couldn’t enjoy the beautiful lower level of the home he and Terry spent so much time planning and decorating, when simply living lost its beauty, he did what so many others have done. He quit.

Not because he wasn't courageous or didn't have the will to live. Just the opposite. Bill stayed committed to seeing his 58th wedding anniversary with Terry and to being with her as long as he could. But his health didn't give him that grace. In the end, he drifted away from everything he loved, peacefully and finally.

Knowing he wouldn't be with us much longer didn't make his passing any easier to accept. Only the Sunday before he left us, Howard and I spent a couple of hours at his bedside. He dozed a bit, then awoke and entered right into the conversation where it had been headed. When we made a move to leave, we heard, “Don't go yet,” he said, just as he always had done every time we were together.

We were blessed with Bill's friendship. We were blessed to be able to support Terry whenever she called on us. We intend to keep doing that as long as the need is there. And we are blessed with Bill's memory.

Every time we stop in to visit Terry, we'll look back toward the family room and hear, “The Smiths are here!” It's a gift that will keep giving.