Where Were You on December 8, 1980?

I hope everyone doesn't mind that I seem to be veering off-topic this time.  Actually I'm not, because living with ALS is not about talking all the time about my woes and challenges with everyday living, but also reflecting on life and passages and having the time to reflect on the events that have an impact on our lives.  My life is about so much more than a disease that I have had to learn to live with.  Having ALS or any chronic illness is about reflection and also relating the important concept that there is a PERSON sitting in that wheelchair, and often a person who lived a regular, healthy and full life before getting sick or hurt.

I realize that I haven't been updating the blog as often as I would like because I seemed to have a writer's block as concerned ALS.  I was just bored with writing about a disease all the time.  Thankfully, I am stable and there were not a lot of changes.  I think I will have the will to update more frequently if I make it about me and not about the disease all the time. 

Is it possible?  Could 30 years have passed since Mark David Chapman senselessly shot John Lennon to death?  Could it be that the last time we saw him alive was when he was just 40?  What would he be like at 70 years old today?  I think he would be a supporter of President Obama and certainly would be very disturbed about the situation in the Middle East, and the fact that we are at war.  I am sure that he and Yoko, AND SEAN, would be out there demonstrating, making speeches, and even speaking on behalf of candidates whose positions they believed in.  I'm so sorry he isn't with us anymore.  I still miss him, and I don't think he would have been any more slowed down at 70. 

Yesterday at the Dakota, where Yoko still lives, and at Strawberry Fields in Central Park for John's
birthday on October 9 of this year [John's 70th birthday] fans of all ages gathered.  What was most striking to baby boomers such as myself, were the kids who were there who were not even born when John was murdered.  I cannot even wrap my head around that!  As a kid, I don't think there was any dead musician I would have worshiped like that.  It's testimony to the influence John and the Beatles still have on the world.

I thought a lot yesterday about the concept of legacy.  John Lennon left such a legacy to be honored 30 years after his death.  It's his way of living long after his death.  We can all leave a legacy.  Something so simple as my sister Haley making my Mom's special potatoes every Thanksgiving [she's been dead 15 years] is a legacy.  Even my two nieces who were born after my mom died, refer to these potatoes as "Grandma's potatoes".

With the wonders of the internet, it's so much easier to leave a legacy than it used to be.  I wish my mom had been able to have a Facebook page.  She would have loved that.  And, as a movie fan, she would have lived on imdb.com.  And John?  He would have had a field day with Facebook and Twitter.  Just think of how accessible he would have been to everyone through the Web.

We should all work on leaving a legacy.  What would be your legacy?  Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news?  I was in my kitchen in Los Angeles, where I moved a year before, cooking my dinner when I heard the news on the radio that John had been shot and was taken to St. Luke's Hospital.  I prayed for him, and a short time later, I heard he died.  I remember not being able to process the information, and wondering why someone would kill this man who had stayed home to be a father that he was never able to be for his first son, to his son Sean. And most of all, he wanted to be the father he never had, since his own father had abandoned him.  He talked about peace, and I believed peace was all he wanted in the world. 

The memorial to John Lennon at Strawberry Fields in Central Park, New York City

John loved NewYork!! I would have loved to hear his take on our city and what's happened since his death -- 9/11, schools, gentrification, Bloomberg.  Because of his murder, his widow Yoko Ono and his son Sean have been reclusive.  But if not for the murder, all three of them would be out there in the city, even in Washington.  Just as Mom lives through her potatoes [and other things, of course], John lives today through his legacy of peace and love. 

more on Feb 0७, १९६४

Apparently I didn't know the extent of the mania at JFK airport that day. The Beatles arrived on PanAm at 1:00 that afternoon....It is still freaky that my class was on a field trip that day, unsuspecting that there was such pandemonium!

Anyway, I found a great video of the Fab Four when they arrived at JFK
check it out here

February 7, 1964 [part one]

I remember the day I was born. My birth certificate says I came out of my mother's womb on June 7, 1955, but the date I was born was more than eight years later -- February 7, 1964. We all have days that change our lives, and the world, forever. I do remember a day about three years earlier when someone shot our president, and that was supposedly changed the world. I remember a lot of people on television crying, even men. All of a sudden John Kennedy's face was everywhere. And I remembered he had a little girl around my age. I recall briefly wondering how it would feel to have your dad shot to death, and see it on the news. But my dad wasn't the president, and I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to kill a mailman like my dad. The only person who got angry with Dad was Mom. So, although I felt sad that a little girl and her younger brother had to lose their daddy, I can't say that it changed my life any. I played with my friends and went to school as I had done before the president got shot.

Anyway, these days that change your life always start out to be very routine. We almost never wake up and say "This is the day that will change my life". If we wake up and think "this day will change my life", it won't. I knew this Friday morning was going to be somewhat exciting to an eight-year-old in the fourth grade, but I didn't realize how much it would change me; as a matter of fact, this day would change America, and was part of something that would change the world forever. My world, and the way I looked at life, was about to be flipped around in a way that I could only begin to fathom many years later.

Mrs. Hazelcorn, my fourth grade teacher, took us on a lot of field trips that year --probably one a month. She needed to enlist a lot of moms to go on the field trips. And this was the sixties, when most moms were home. I think Ellen Wallach was the only kid who had a valid excuse; her mom was a teacher. Teaching was the acceptable career in those years for a Jewish mommy; otherwise, they just stayed home, and most of us had a mom in the house when we got home from school. I liked going to Ellen's house after school, because she had a key and her mom would come home a little after we arrived, so we could do whatever we wanted for at least 45 minutes to an hour. I didn't appreciate the fact that my mom was always home. I wanted Ellen Wallach's life, with my own key and an hour to do whatever, with no mom there to breathe down my neck. So Ellen had a valid excuse to say that her mom couldn't go on class trips. After all, Mrs. Hazelcorn couldn't go on her kids' class trips. But she wouldn't accept my mom's reason for weasling out of her duty -- that I had a baby sister at home. "Mrs. Hazelcorn wants to know when you are going on one of our trips", I would tell my mom. "You tell Mrs. Hazelcorn that if she wants me to go on a class trip, she can hire me a babysitter." End of subject.

So I set out that day to PS286, the Jane F. Shaw School, in my neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. Dad insisted on calling it Idlewild Airport, even though less than three months before, the name was changed to John F. Kennedy Airport. Dad said he never liked those Kennedys. They were bums. Their old man hated Jews. It was sad that President Kennedy was assassinated, he said, but those Kennedys were no damn good anyway. I didn't care what they called it, I was going to an airport for the first time in my life. Mom told me I might see people in foreign costumes, like the ones in my book at home "Children Around the World". "Look for women in saris, or people in African dress. You might see a Frenchman wearing a beret, or even a Dutchman with wooden shoes, or a Japanese woman with a kimono", Mom said. I told her I would look for those things. I got even more excited as we walked onto the bus, and Mrs. Hazelcorn told us that we were going to try to get into a real airplane!