sounds a thousand times brighter, happier, and more excited to hear from me on the telephone or in E-mails than in person. Why is this? I was learning the ropes, the ropes of peopleâs love limitations, and settling for what little I could scramble to get. My deduction: I may have to steal the love I crave. Where can I go to shoplift love? Maybe Iâm just not interesting enough to linger over, so Iâd better work on that. I must be burdensome and not worth putting time and effort into. My needs must be too big and unwieldy, for meeting them takes too long and takes too much out of others, who have more important things to do with their time. My feelings about the state of my needs donât count or matter. I will always be alone in the world. Castro said if you need a friend, get a dog. Maybe Iâll ask Mami and Papi for a dog for my birthday. A puppy could help me.
A weird fatalism was taking hold within me. It wasnât logical. Could it be a chemical or genetic hand-me-down from my great-grandparents, who died anonymously in the death camps, piled high in pits like the extinguished cigarette butts in the day room on the ward? Zeide Boris, my father (though heâs always denied it), and TÃo Bernardoâeach has had a predisposition to depression. How well you tolerate frustrationâsome of us break sooner than othersâis an element of that predisposition. The messages I was picking up day-to-day seemed to trigger that fatalism, and converge into a submissive, sometimes self-destructive, melancholy: inevitability and those recurring dreams of death by water and of being ripped off. My Juban family had secrets, hidden agendas, unfinished business. What were those things? It was all very subtle and therefore hard to identify and to resolve. We certainly never talked about it at home, but I knew I had it, whatever âitâ was. A masochistic malaise, perhaps? I was much too young to articulate it to anyone at the time, but I knew I had a certainâ¦syndrome. It was Jewish and it was Cuban. Though it appeared to be at odds with the cheerful, lively, sparkly Cuban spirit called el echar paâ âlante âwhich literally means the throwing forward, or the ability to push aheadâall Cuban exiles are sad underneath the skin. I was like Papi in the Jewish syndrome sense, Papi who metaphorically hid under the bed his whole life: ill-at-ease with anyone but family and intimate friends, resigned, sweet, mistrustful of strangers and yet too trusting of othersâ real motives, a little sad, always picking up the tab and not letting others do for him, perceiving the world as a dangerous, inhospitable place.
I once asked Mami why most of the Jews seemed so passively to submit to the Nazis. She said, âBecause dey couldnât believe dat what was happeneengh to dem was really happeneengh to dem.â
Dr. Raymond Band, my pre-Gramps psychiatrist, the onewho said I was conflicted about my own individuation and who regarded me as though I were an alien, once called me âa driven leafâ; I had no moorings. âI lived on air that crossed me from sweet things,â wrote Robert Frost in his poem âTo Earthward.â Imagine, a New England Yankee farmer-poet-philosopher-anti-Semite who read at Jackie Kennedyâs husbandâs inauguration, speaking to me. âI craved strong sweets, but those/seemed strong when I was young: The petal of the rose/It was that stung.â
Dr. Band couldnât see that generations of displacementâfirst my great-grandparents, from their shtetls to the camps; then my grandparents, from Europe and Russia to Cuba; then my whole family, from Cuba to the United Statesâtake their toll, and how. What little morsels my parents could offer me, and I donât mean materially, werenât sufficient. I remained hungry. So I looked for my mother and my father in other people. âA driven leaf.â I wish. âI crave
A weird fatalism was taking hold within me. It wasnât logical. Could it be a chemical or genetic hand-me-down from my great-grandparents, who died anonymously in the death camps, piled high in pits like the extinguished cigarette butts in the day room on the ward? Zeide Boris, my father (though heâs always denied it), and TÃo Bernardoâeach has had a predisposition to depression. How well you tolerate frustrationâsome of us break sooner than othersâis an element of that predisposition. The messages I was picking up day-to-day seemed to trigger that fatalism, and converge into a submissive, sometimes self-destructive, melancholy: inevitability and those recurring dreams of death by water and of being ripped off. My Juban family had secrets, hidden agendas, unfinished business. What were those things? It was all very subtle and therefore hard to identify and to resolve. We certainly never talked about it at home, but I knew I had it, whatever âitâ was. A masochistic malaise, perhaps? I was much too young to articulate it to anyone at the time, but I knew I had a certainâ¦syndrome. It was Jewish and it was Cuban. Though it appeared to be at odds with the cheerful, lively, sparkly Cuban spirit called el echar paâ âlante âwhich literally means the throwing forward, or the ability to push aheadâall Cuban exiles are sad underneath the skin. I was like Papi in the Jewish syndrome sense, Papi who metaphorically hid under the bed his whole life: ill-at-ease with anyone but family and intimate friends, resigned, sweet, mistrustful of strangers and yet too trusting of othersâ real motives, a little sad, always picking up the tab and not letting others do for him, perceiving the world as a dangerous, inhospitable place.
I once asked Mami why most of the Jews seemed so passively to submit to the Nazis. She said, âBecause dey couldnât believe dat what was happeneengh to dem was really happeneengh to dem.â
Dr. Raymond Band, my pre-Gramps psychiatrist, the onewho said I was conflicted about my own individuation and who regarded me as though I were an alien, once called me âa driven leafâ; I had no moorings. âI lived on air that crossed me from sweet things,â wrote Robert Frost in his poem âTo Earthward.â Imagine, a New England Yankee farmer-poet-philosopher-anti-Semite who read at Jackie Kennedyâs husbandâs inauguration, speaking to me. âI craved strong sweets, but those/seemed strong when I was young: The petal of the rose/It was that stung.â
Dr. Band couldnât see that generations of displacementâfirst my great-grandparents, from their shtetls to the camps; then my grandparents, from Europe and Russia to Cuba; then my whole family, from Cuba to the United Statesâtake their toll, and how. What little morsels my parents could offer me, and I donât mean materially, werenât sufficient. I remained hungry. So I looked for my mother and my father in other people. âA driven leaf.â I wish. âI crave
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