My writing group selected the topic, “The Most Interesting Person I Ever Knew,” but when I tried to choose one, I got stuck. There were two men in my life. I loved them both equally so the topic posed a problem with no solution — a question with no answer. Both were bigger than life and had a lot in common. At the same time, each had his own unique special talents. My years with them were wonderful — and terrible.

Both men were 6’ tall, while I was 5’ short. They were the perfect size for me to curl up in their arms, put my head on their chests, smile and drift off to sleep.  Not both at the same time, of course. I’m not a parallel lover. I’m more of a serial wife.

The first had sandy-colored hair, grey-blue eyes and rosy boyish cheeks. We were young when we met. He barely had a beard. His hair was soft and wavy and long.  I loved the feel of his hair.

The second had dark straight hair, short in the back and long in front so that a lock of hair always fell forward into his eyes. He would toss his head back and draw his fingers through his hair to make it all one shiny piece. I loved the feel of his hair too.

My hair wasn’t silky, but was soft and wavy. I wore it long and loose for the first man, short and puffy for the second. Each one liked a different hairstyle so, of course, I had to please.

Man number one loved to play basketball, lift weights and run hard. When I hugged him, he smelled of sweat and the outdoors. Every morning, man number two did twenty push-ups, thirty leg-raises and bicycled vigorously for a minute and a half. Then he showered, shampooed and shaved. When I hugged him, he smelled of Old Spice.
They were both good lovers but the first was more exciting, maybe because he was the first.

I learned a lot from these men. From the first, I learned about fine art, great literature and classical music. He encouraged me to look closely at people and nature. He talked about Weltschmertz and the pain of creativity. He wrote books and poems and never once suggested I might do the same. We had a large and varied group of friends.

From the second I learned about politics, the law and the seamy underside of both. I learned how injustice was the norm and honesty was a salable commodity. He was a lawyer and never once suggested that I do anything except keep to my own career and put my earnings in our joint bank account. Our friends were all lawyers and judges.

But, there was one important thing they had in common. They loved me as long as I accepted them “as is.” As for a mate, they wanted a woman who looked good in a bikini, was inventive in bed and whose breath smelled like chocolate chip cookies. They were searching for a marshmallow-woman, soft and fluffy, a good cook, a loyal companion mindful of their needs, the ideal friend-lover-mother. In short, they needed someone who would fulfill their own narcissistic dreams. When they discovered that I wasn’t the masochist they were looking for, they left for greener, younger pastures. It didn’t seem to matter how much younger. Just as long as those pastures were much, much greener.

I picked them both, loved them both, so I “set my cap” and shamelessly pursued them both. I convinced them I was perfect. Twice I made my bed, but twice, I couldn’t figure out how to lie in it.

♠ ♠ ♠ ♠

You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson by now. “Don’t be a jerk,” you say. “Give it up. Get a life — your own life.”

But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks so I keep hoping I’ll meet the perfect man.

I want to be a couple — even if we’re both too old to share the same bed and our teeth are falling out. I’m still up for it even if he has prostate trouble and gets up four times during the night, while I have a gaseous stomach and leg cramps that wake me screaming at 4:00 a.m.

I want someone to listen to my stories over and over again, because, to tell the truth, nothing new ever happens in my life and he won’t get bored because he can’t remember how they end. And if he does, it doesn’t matter because he can’t stay awake that long anyway.
I want someone who won’t look at me first thing in the morning. Who’ll wait until I shower, put in my hearing aids, find my bifocals, locate my wrist watch, retrieve my dentures from the glass on the sink and finally, pull my wig on and pin it tightly in place.

I want someone to sit and talk to me at the kitchen table … not about his medical problems or my mental issues. Someone who holds my hand when I cross the street and steadies the chair when I sit down so I don’t land on the floor, my wig by my side and my false teeth just out of reach.

I want someone who likes my jokes and my cooking and my dumpy figure and finds my glasses, the car keys and the phone for me. Someone to take me to a movie and buy me ice cream before we go back home.

At the end of the day, we’ll hug and kiss while we watch a little TV. Then we’ll each toddle off to adjoining bedrooms. He’ll close his door. I’ll close mine. We’ll both sigh, take off our clothes and lie down in separate beds. I’ll fall asleep and dream that I’m making it with eighty-year-old Michael Caine while my third husband is dreaming that he’s running naked on the beach with seventy-two-year-old Jane Fonda.

♠ ♠ ♠ ♠

 Tuesday Night

A few weeks ago, my writers’ group meeting ended in a flurry. Not unusual. Sometimes we started late but, “Sorry, I just can’t stay,” created a stampede towards the door. Sometimes we chatted too much squandering large lumps of valuable time.  I always had something I wanted to say before we left, and even when I saw that “Oh why doesn’t she shut up already?” eyebrow arch, I never could stop. Last time we didn’t have time to pick the topic for tomorrow’s meeting. Since it was going to be at my place, I had the privilege of choosing whatever I wanted.

I put off thinking about it for several days. I was having too much fun arranging my old books in my new hand-me-down bookcases and cleaning up a special writing space in my bedroom. A sweet little writing desk purchased at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. An old lamp dragged along because it might be useful one day. A small plant in a ceramic pot my sister made for me. I arranged it all in front of my bedroom window where I could see tall oak trees and overgrown white pines and behind them, way down below, a glimpse of the Farmington River when the sun hit it at just the right angle in the later afternoon. I could never have imagined that peaceful feeling in this quiet corner of Avon. And there it was … the prompt … “Imagination.”

I planned to write a grand little story. Not a story actually … more like a sketch … or maybe a willowy prose poem or even a piece of doggerel about … what?  A gaggle of geese!

I wasted a lot of time considering the pros and cons of these unfortunate creatures. With all their beauty in flight and silly waddle on land … despite their loyal guardianship at the farmer’s gate, flapping their wings and honking to keep his home safe from intruders … no matter all their virtues, people simply cannot tolerate geese because they poop. Dirty, filthy creatures. On the other hand, consider what would happen if we were in the same position. Unimaginable! I had this fanciful image and it was just a question of which way to go with it. No hurry. It would wait until after my morning at the temple.

Every Tuesday, the Seniors for Art, Growth and Education (SAGE) meet at Congregation Beth Israel. The format is always the same. A group discussion as an appetizer, a modest lunch, a guest speaker for dessert.

Today was a special treat. Watch a film, grab a quick salad and then an hour to discuss what we had seen. Roberta had volunteered to provide both the vorspeise and the nachspeise. SAGE took care of the meal. What could be better?

Roberta chose “The Reader,” a movie based on the novel written by the German lawyer and author, Bernhard Schlink. I know the movie. I’ve seen it at least three times before. I read the book years ago. This little book is a gem, a multi-layered story that sparked the birth of this thoughtful film.

Our discussion was lively, passionate. Each person in the room tried to convince everyone else of the film’s meaning. What was Schlink trying to say? Was this a misguided love affair? Why had the forty-year-old Hanna seduced the fifteen-year-old Michael? Had she destroyed his life? Was that what she was trying to do? Why pick him? Why call him “kid” all the time? And if he was a kid for real, why didn’t his parents stop him?

We argued over why she turned down the promotion from bus conductor to office clerk. No one agreed why she cried in church. We couldn’t even agree why she always let Michael choose the outings or the lunch or the books.

Underlying all the questions and doubts about his character and her motives, was the need to figure out who Hanna Schmitz really was. She taught Michael the passion and joy of sexual love. In return, she wanted Michael to read to her. It was a brief affair, only a few weeks one summer. What was the meaning of all that?

Year later, when Michael was in law school, he attended a trial of six women who had acted as SS guards at Auschwitz. Hanna, his Hanna, had performed honorably there doing her best to fulfill all the duties assigned her. She did not see the problem. Should could not imagine what she had done wrong. It was during the trial that Michael discovered the source of Hanna’s thirst for books and with it, a reader. Hanna could neither read nor write. Her life had been shaped by this undeniable misfortune.

What was Schlink saying? Was she an evil torturer or, perhaps, a victim? Or both? Could anyone understand the depths of depravity she had reached? And what about the law? Was she complicit in the crime? What was her intent?

There are so many questions in this tragedy. In my own mind, I believe that Hanna Schmitz committed crimes any one of us might have committed. Hannah Arendt in her book “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil” has surely demonstrated, that anyone can be coerced into doing anything given the right circumstances and the wrong leader.

I was passionate in the belief that “The Reader” deals with more universal problems than just the Nazi regime in Europe. It deals with guilt. It deals with the loss of innocence but not merely on a sexual level. It deals with inherited guilt that comes when we first realize that the ones we loved when we were young, were monsters long before we knew them. It deals with responsibility and guilt transferred from father to son.

When I looked at what I wrote I saw the words “just the Nazi regime. Just the Nazi regime? What an outrageous phrase to choose! Why should I even try to explain an idea that is, in itself, unthinkable. It is a battle I will never win. A battle I do not wish to win. I should have known better. Shame on you, Martha. How could I let my brain carry my heart away? What was I thinking?

We’ve all heard the stories, watched the films and counted the bodies being thrown into pits and covered by lime. As if that could destroy or hide the atrocity. The unimaginable sights … ovens in camps now swept clean so people can dare to walk through … the filthy remains of rancid, swinish actions.

Piles of clothes, sacks of gold fillings, walls of photos … men women children … tattoos … and a mountain of children’s shoes with a ragged doll buried underneath.

We try to forget but of course that would be like forgiving. We must not forget. But in our compassion we try to imagine what it was like for nine million souls … almost a million children

Tell me, how does one imagine the unimaginable?

Martha Reingold
June, 2017

Please do not flatter me
About my anatomy
Compliments won’t get you anywhere
Praises too cloying
Are simply annoying
So stop it, I say, or you best beware.

Whatever you see
It ain’t really me
Don’t tell me I look like I’m twenty.
I used a few tricks
That you match and you mix
From a list that my grandmother sent me.

This stylish hairline
You might think is all mine
This platinum blond wig was a bargain.
I went to a surgeon
And after some urgin’
He straightened my nose for a farthin’.

My cheeks are so tight
My false teeth cannot bite
And my neck is so stiff it won’t swivel
The cleft in my chin
I bought on a whim
From a sculptor with hammer and chisel.

My boobs are as high
As an elephant’s eye
My waist is held in by a suture
My stomach is flat
Liposuction did that
There’ll be no midnight snacks in the future.

If you look at my bum
It might make you hum
It is perfectly shaped like a pear
The down of a puffin
Was used as the stuffin’
To make me this fine derriere.

There is nothing to do
With the patterns of blue
That are etched by my varicose veins.
My feet have these bunions
Like overgrown onions  …
Let’s not discuss what remains.

So to all of the youth
I offer this truth
“Beware of the people who flatter thee.
Be ready. Be humble.
Your body will crumble.
Say farewell to your youthful anatomy!”