Vivid dreams I have vivid dreams pretty frequently. I’m not sure with what they are correlated. They could be related what is happening around me: a book I am reading, a movie I watched or a feeling with which I am wrestling. For a long period of time, I would wake up shortly after my […]
I hardly know where to begin in expressing myself without words. Below is one of my sketches in which I attempted to portray my older brother’s environment, as I saw it. He is autistic, profoundly retarded and has never spoken. I am moving away from intellectualizing about autism, probing my memory and records as to whether […]
A week ago I was just getting back from seeing my families. In my original family, my place is that of a son and a brother; in my family of choice, I am a husband, stepfather and grandfather. My granddaughter calls me Zaydie out of respect for my Jewish heritage. It was her parents’ idea. […]
I’m getting ready to return to Chicago after my side trip to New Jersey. My much-anticipated visit with my brother Mike was underwhelming, to say the least. It was a return to reality, in essence quite similar to my previous visits with him. It seems that I spent the intervening years between visits romanticizing my […]
Mom isn’t feeling too well. I feel bad for her. She told me, “You must be disappointed with your visit.” I’m not. I told her that I am happy to be here. That is the truth. I am up early. At this moment, I am reconnecting with the sense of time and space I had […]
Most people I know are busy. I think that if you are busy as a child, you will be a busy adult. My granddaughter, nine years old, is always involved in one project or another. Her mom, was the same way as a child and is a dynamo today. She is continually in motion. Ben […]
It just turned November, the month of Thanksgiving. A lot has happened in Novembers of the past: Mike, my older brother, was born this month; Dad died this month; my parents married this month. All so long ago. My brother will be 64 years old; Dad would have been 93 years old; Mom and Dad […]
My upcoming visit to see my mother and my two brothers is on my mind these days. My visit to New Jersey is coming up in less than a week. I’ll be staying with Mom, and we’ll visit little bro in northern Jersey. All of us will drive out to see my older brother in […]
My Dad had a thing for geniuses. He was an odd mixture of intelligence, adolescence, social awkwardness and confidence. One thing for sure, he admired the intellectual and emotional achievements of geniuses long past such as Mozart, Beethoven, Fermat, Poincaré. Those he admired who lived contemporaneously with him included Einstein, Norbert Wiener and von Neumann, […]
My older brother Mike is autistic, profoundly retarded and nonverbal. I had gone to parties at his group home before. I thought I had seen everything, and then I went to his Halloween Party. It was being held at a group residence in one of the bad areas of New York City, a place where […]
