Spelling Bee

Spelling Bee

Alby and I were compadres when it came to games and puzzles, so I came to Room Number Seven with some of our favorites. I’d thrown some pencils and game books in my bag and when the ennui set in I was ready to thwart it. Alby’s eyes lit up when he saw my stash and sorted through the pile to find the puzzle he wanted. It was a “make-a-word,” in which you’re given a word and have to make as many other words from it that you can. Pencils poised, we opted for a three-minute time limit and Mom was the timekeeper.

“Ready? Go!” he said and was already scribbling away while I was still trying to find any word that made sense.

We threw ourselves into the competition with fervor, Alby constantly psyching me out by muttering, “Give it up, Susie Q. You know I’m gonna win. . .”

“I don’t know anything of the kind,” I answered which was an out-and-out lie. I could never beat him.

“Time!” Mom called in her best referee voice and we put our pencils down. “Okay Al, you go first. Read off your words and Susan will see if she has them on her list.”

He was getting cocky as he checked off his answers until I challenged him. “Wait a second! You spelled that wrong,” I said as I pointed to the last word on his list which would have given him one more word than I had and therefore made him the winner. “It’s a tie!”

“Where is my dictionary when I need him?” Alby answered, referring to my oldest son Sam. “He’d be able to prove I didn’t make a mistake because no one is better at spelling than he is.”

I knew just what Dad meant.

As a young boy Sam enjoyed learning new things and one of his favorite subjects was spelling. He loved to have us pretend he was in a spelling bee at the dinner table and he’d come up with a subject and we had to think of words he needed to spell. If he did them all correctly he got a cupcake; if he made any mistakes, he got a cupcake. Not a bad deal.

Mom and Dad were over for dinner and Sam decided that the evening’s subject for the bee was “Our Family”. He couldn’t wait to strut his stuff.

“Here’s your first word, Sammy. Spell DADDY.”

“D-A-D-D-Y.”

“Spell MOMMY.”

“M-O-M-M-Y.”

“Spell MANNY.”
”M-A-N-N-Y.”

“Spell LEAH.”

“L-E-A-H.”

“Spell Grandma Pearl.”

“G-R-A-N-D-M-A-P-E-A-R-L.”

“Spell POP-POP ALBY.”

“G-O-D.”

We were dumbstruck. Had he made a spelling mistake or was he, in his childhood innocence, privy to something on which the rest of us could merely speculate? No matter. “You are the champion of this family,” my father said and gave Sam a kiss, a hug and a cupcake.

I thought back to that night and still found myself wondering whether or not Sam understood the significance of his faux pas. And was it a faux pas or, rather, the purity of a child’s mind that allows him to look at things on a more basic level? Even in my grown-up, adult mind I couldn’t help agree with Sam’s perception of the man whom I believed could move mountains.

I agreed with my father. “No one is better at spelling than Sam. So since he isn’t here I’ll add some spelling words. See this I.V. bottle? It spells H-E-L-P.”

Alby pushed his glasses down to the tip of his nose as he often did, and looked over the top of them at me. “You’re off by one letter. It spells H-E-L-L.”

If he was right and it was hell, why did we all shiver?

Singin' In the Vein

Singin’ In the Vein

With a wince and a sigh, Alby had no choice but to accept the chemicals that entered his body. I felt his apprehension and shared his fears, but when he started to sing Dean Martin’s “That’s Amore”, I was instantly at ease. It wasn’t because his voice was pleasant; quite the contrary. Alby’s singing voice was a reliable emetic, making his listeners feel the need to throw up. In his forties he’d had polyp surgery on his vocal chords, changing his already mediocre singing voice into an instrument of torture. Add to the mix the fact that by the age of fifty Alby was legally deaf and couldn’t hear his own voice, well, you get the picture. So why did I have a sense of ease when he sang that day? Because I knew that underneath his misery, his mischievousness was waiting to come out and play.

The tune he was attempting to sing was coming out more like the sound of a cat being electrocuted. Apparently these delightful, lilting strains made their way down the hall sending Jenny racing into the room to find out what was wrong.

“Mr. Rich! Are you okay? What’s the matter?” she asked breathlessly.

“Just singing,” he answered, enjoying the disbelief on Jenny’s face. “Thought I’d hum a few tunes to pass the time. Any requests?”

“’Sounds of Silence’ would be nice,” I joked.

“Don’t know it,” he countered and resumed his assault on our ears.

“Al, must you?” Mom asked. “You’re going to make the patients even sicker than they already are.”

“I happen to know that sometimes it’s the people you least expect who appreciate bad singing the most.”

On January 7, 1987 my second son, Emanuel “Manny” Lev, was born. He was my parents’ third grandson and their first foray into the world of a baby who cried incessantly. Manny was challenging in our inability to calm him and all the tried-and-true parenting tricks were worthless. We’d rock him, walk with him, bounce him, stroke him, and he’d still scream.

My husband Gary and I didn’t know what we were doing wrong. After all, our first son, Sam, was happy and calm all the time but at merely two-years-old he was subjected to the upheaval of his baby brother’s unabating discomfort. Even Sam pitched in to try and soothe Manny and although he came closer than Gary and I, Manny never quite reached a state of peace.

Unnerved by Manny’s crying, my mother declared, “I can’t spend time with you until that baby quiets down. He drives me crazy.” She was as good as her word and made herself scarce; Alby, on the other hand, had a secret weapon.

He would turn off his hearing aids and in his silent world was able to hold and rock Manny without becoming edgy. This allowed me to shut the door, knowing my baby was safe while giving me a break. During one of these grandfather/grandson moments, Alby inadvertently began humming and that turned into singing. I was about to beg him not to do that when I realized that Manny had stopped crying and for the first time, my baby was cooing. My usually inconsolable little boy was making happy-baby sounds and now it was MY turn to cry!

It was almost laughable that all the time-proven methods of soothing my baby didn’t work and then my father’s tone-deaf, nauseating, absolutely offensive singing voice brought my son to Nirvana. I opened the door to find Manny staring up at my father adoringly as Alby stroked his grandson’s cheeks. If ever there was a perfect moment, this was it. I left the room and closed my eyes as I listened to my father sing, knowing the world’s most beautiful music was being played right there in my baby’s room.

“Dad, you go right ahead and sing. You never know whose life you might save!”

I hoped it would be his own.