Of rings and things and the nature of love

Ring back where it belongs and all is well with the world

So there I was, lost in a dream, sleeping away the early morning hours and happy to be warmly adrift in my head and in my bed. Sadly, some cosmic force tapped me on the shoulder and I momentarily opened my eyes.

Big mistake.

It was early. The sun was just a vague smear of orange on the horizon, but I noticed that the light was on in the master bathroom and I could hear the lovely Miss Wendy rummaging about in a frantic fashion.

I don't recall if I called out, or if Wendy simply began speaking. I do recall the plaintive and anguished tone of her voice. Houston, I groggily thought, we have a problem.

And we did. Between heavy sighs, weighted down with equal measures of guilt and loss, Wendy shared this tale of woe.

As is her custom, Wendy was up early and off to the bathroom to wash up and prepare for the day ahead. Still wiping the sleep from her eyes, she was in the process of putting on her wedding band -- a magnificent ring of gold -- when it slipped from her grasp, tumbled into the sink and disappeared down the drain.

Yikes!

Wendy worked mightily at removing the metal stopper atop the drain, but alas, it wouldn't budge. The harder she pulled, the more certain she became that her precious ring was lost, buried deeply in the innards of our home's plumbing system.

Yech!

So she went in search of a solution. Google offered up a number of possibilities. All she need do to right this wrong is pull apart a few pipes and dig through the bits of nasty stuff that swirl about a bathroom sink. Right; that was never gonna happen!

Instead of jumping into plumbing mode, Wendy wrote  out a few cautionary notes to me, detailing the problem and the hope that I would somehow continue to love her despite the loss of the golden ring that has bound us together for nearly four decades now.

It was during this melancholy exercise that I joined the conversation. I listened and nodded, then listened some more. Then I unscrewed the stopper from the drain. The ring was resting comfortably atop a bit of plastic, strategically placed near the top of the drain to keep rings and other such things from tumbling into the darkness below.

Wendy retrieved her ring. I went back to sleep.

"Miss Wendy" moving on to exciting new chapter in her life

A wonderful life: Bubbe and Bailey creating new memories

It was way back in the early 1980s when the lovely Miss Wendy opened a special door that will be closing on a euphonic, if melancholy note next week.

We had just moved to East Cobb and our daughter Lauren was starting pre-school at the JCC. Back then the school was housed at Congregation Etz Chaim, the synagogue that we stumbled across shortly after moving into this little corner of the world.

Wendy, being Wendy, got to know the teachers and administrators at the school quickly, so it didn't come as a surprise when I learned that she would be joining the staff as a part-time worker. Actually, it all made sense.

For a decade or so, Wendy had worked in various offices doing mostly secretarial chores. It was decent work but, well, not really a career. That all changed the first time she sat in a classroom surrounded by a group of youngsters, held up a book of colorful pictures and created a story that both entertained and enlightened the children.

The lovely Miss Wendy had found her calling.

As Lauren got older and moved on to elementary school, the part-time gig became a full-time job. Over the years Wendy worked with just about every age group, helping youngsters find their way as they took their first tentative steps into the world.

She continued her important work in the summers as a camp counselor, eventually becoming a director of one of the JCC programs at Shirley Blumenthal Park. And then she blinked.

Now, nearly three decades of work spread out from there to here, a bit of time filled with the stuff of life -- playing and learning, laughter, tears and memories.

Hundreds of young students -- many part of her legion of "teddy bears" -- have made their way through her classroom, learning their letters and numbers, stories about a fella named Waldo and a warrior named Judah, songs and dances and how to make matzo. They've also learned important lessons about how to get along with one another from a woman who's lived her life smoothing out rough corners with a joyful heart and a constant smile that most always lightens the heaviest load.

And here's just one way Wendy can measure her success. Walk along with her into any shop, restaurant, grocery store or park, movie theater or synagogue, and within moments her students -- many now  grown with children of their own, others just a year or two removed from her class -- spot "Miss Wendy" and most always offer up a warm hello, a few words of shared memories and, occasionally, a little embrace followed by words of thanks.

I'm the guy standing nearby, the one who is occasionally greeted as "Mr. Wendy." And although I often roll my eyes and tap my feet impatiently, the truth is that I couldn't be prouder of my wife and what she accomplished in a world that was once unfamiliar, but now is partly defined by her personality and good work.

For Wendy it's time to retire and move on to new adventures; time to create more memories, especially as a Bubbe. But "Miss Wendy" and the children she taught and loved will always be part of her life, warm thoughts that she can embrace in the golden years of her life.  

Life can sometimes be a pain!

I was deep into a wondrous world of light and shadows earlier this week when a nagging call came my way. It pulled me from the tranquil calm of REM sleep and demanded my attention.

The lovely Miss Wendy needed me awake. The last time I had gotten such an early wake up call was three decades earlier after Wendy had gone into labor. This time around the problem was just as urgent – at least for the moment – but involved a much different sort of pain!

Wendy, who’s up before the sun each morning, was feeling just a little faint and puzzled by a growing pain in her chest. It was the sort of feeling that moved around a bit and the sort of problem that toys with all those existential fears we push aside when night gives way to day.

And it persisted; the pain a pulsing tease, the thoughts a growing concern. Wendy talked and detailed the problem. I listened and diagnosed. We weighed our words and spent a few moments handling the issue in a high-tech sort of way, fishing about the web for answers. All we managed to do, of course, is raise additional questions and scare ourselves silly.

I’m thinking most of us of a certain age have played this little game; measuring out the problem and viewing it from all angles, then trying to figure out exactly what needs to be done. The problem is there’s nothing “exact” about the issue, unless you happen to be a physician and also keep an EKG parked in your closet!

And so it was that the lovely Miss Wendy and I found ourselves in the emergency room of one of the mega-hospitals in our little corner of the world, listening to the beeps and bings of all the gadgetry that defines modern health care today.

Five hours later, the hospitalist – that’s a term I’m thinking Marcus Welby never heard back when doctors made house calls – announced that Wendy was not only fine, but “the healthiest young lady in the entire emergency room.” Let me repeat his diagnosis: Wendy’s fine!

He smiled. We smiled. Hope, yet again, rested easily on the horizon.

1948: Year filled with hope – and Miss Wendy

The country had regained its equilibrium. After a decade of economic collapse, followed by years of war, the United States was once again moving ahead in search of greatness. It took a cataclysmic war to pull the country out of a dark and bleak depression that had taken hold of the world in 1929. That same war demolished old empires and created new alliances and federations.

Hope once again could be felt across the country, a hardy land filled with men and women who came of age when a darkness huge and mighty hung heavily on the horizon. Teetering on the abyss, this greatest generation struggled and fought and suffered. They found strength in one another and the rightness of their cause. And when the battle had been won, they quietly returned home – to their cities and towns, to their families and friends.

In 1948, life, yet again, was grand! Vast fields of acreage were being covered with homes in something called the suburbs; business was good and employment soared. A huge assortment of consumer goods – dish washers, refrigerators and electric stoves; portable air conditioners, radios, stereos and tiny TVs – were spilling off assembly lines like stink off poop, all aimed at making life easier and more enjoyable. And please forgive the simile!

The American dream was alive, well and affordable – at least for the rich and the growing middle class. The average cost of a new home in the burbs was only $7,700 – three bedrooms and a bathroom, living room, dining room and kitchen – and a new car could be had for $1,250. A gallon of gas was only 16 cents and a loaf of bread a dime. All of that could easily be handled by most families when the average worker was making just under $3,000 a year – a small fortune in 1948!

Roosevelt was still being mourned by the masses three years after his death; Truman was in the White House and the cold war was growing chilly. Israel was declared a country and the summer Olympics was held in London.

The game of scrabble was introduced, an exciting way to spend the evening while listening to soap operas and comedies on the radio. Frank Sinatra remained hot and happening; so too Dean and Jerry, Jack Benny, Sid Ceasar and Arthur Godfrey. South Pacific opened on Broadway and Hamlet won the Oscar for Best Picture – go figure.

The mood in 1948 was festive and upbeat. Love was in the air and there was a birthrate so large and vibrant that people born during this period are now known as baby boomers. Among their numbers are politicians and artists; the rich, famous and infamous – Al Gore and Alice Cooper; Bernadette Peters, Andrew Lloyd Weber and Billy Crystal; Mikhail Baryshnikov and Ozzy Osbourne; Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower; Richard Simmons and Jerry Mathers – that would be The Beaver!

It was also in 1948 that the lovely Miss Wendy found her way into this world, taking her very first breath exactly 63 years ago today in, well, Brooklyn. She was born a Yankee but her parents, Roz and Joe, had the good sense to whisk her south to Jacksonville a few years later. It was there that I met and married her in 1975.

If you do the math, that means we’ve spent nearly 36 years together – our anniversary is in November – and celebrated 35 birthdays with one another. I was lucky; I managed to pick a mate from a vintage year. And after all these years she’s managed to both mellow and hold onto her bubbly effervescence. I think maybe it’s time to, um, pop the cork!

Me, Miss Wendy and 35 years of wedded bliss

The lovely Miss Wendy and my future were in the office at the end of the hall. Turn the wrong way or get called to a breaking story and, well, who knows what direction our lives might have headed.

It was over three decades ago and the world was moving a lot slower. Nixon was being tossed from the White House, Elvis was wearing spandex and I had a full head of hair. I was living in Jacksonville, working for the worst big paper in Florida, the Times-Union, and on this fateful day I was being trained to handle the police beat.

Turns out young Wendy was working as a secretary for the Duval County Sheriff’s Department, staying busy handling paperwork and flirting with cops. The guys with the guns, however, didn’t stand a chance against the nice Jewish boy with the reporter's notebook who had just arrived in town – that would be me!

We had heard stories about one another through friends and relatives and it was just a matter of time until the stars aligned properly and we met. There had been a few missed opportunities but when the city editor went looking for a temporary cop reporter, cosmic forces were set in motion and that thing called fate came into play.

It was early spring of 1974 and, um, love was in the air. I found myself asking some dude in a khaki uniform if Wendy Klein was working that day. Turns out she was. As I just said, fate was rolling the dice and I was about to meet my lucky number.

The lovely Miss Wendy was sitting behind a desk when I first spotted her, focusing on her work, a huge pair of glasses hiding her beautiful eyes. I stood for an instant waiting for her to take notice that I had come into her life, but she took little note of me.

I sort of shuffled about a bit, giving fate a little push in the tush and Wendy glanced up and spoke. “Yes,” she asked!

I don’t recall my exact response, but when I managed to introduce myself, Wendy whipped off her glasses, jumped to her feet and in a Yankee accent tinged with southern softness, said, “Hello”!

The following year we married. In fact, that memorable moment was exactly 35 years ago today! As I mentioned earlier, there are some things in life that are just destined to happen and some people simply meant to be together.

Such a cosmic happening is called beshert and I’m the lucky guy who once upon a time walked down just the right hallway, through the proper door, and found someone special to share this thing we call life.

It's the lovely Miss Wendy's special day

The lovely Miss Wendy turns a lovely 62 today and I’ve been lucky enough to share, well, many of those years with her – we’ll be celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary in November.

We’ve managed to celebrate her birthday in a variety of ways – surprise parties and a few that were planned; festive meals with family and friends; small, intimate dinners for two! Each was special, a nice memory that collectively, I think, define what we call life. And it’s been a good life that remarkably can only get better.

We’ll gather again today with a few special friends and much of our family – they’re friends, also – to offer our cheers and love to a woman who has always been sweet and gentle and kind.

For whatever reason, my much better half has decided to stay close at my side, balancing out my introspective and world-weary nature with a disposition filled with laughter and smiles, good words and good works and an attitude that always – and I mean always – views the glass of life not just half full but spilling over with joy.

It being my nature, I’m inclined to say, “bah-humbug” at such an upbeat personality. But it’s the lovely Miss Wendy’s special day, so I openly proclaim myself a lucky man and promise to smile, well, until it hurts. Truth to tell, her smile and warm embrace of life – and me – is a present I receive each day.

So happy birthday, Miss Wendy! In my book, you’re lovelier than ever.

Gambling for fun and very little profit

Turns out that Miss Wendy has a little gambling jones, a bit surprising since my lovely wife has never been to Vegas, doesn't particularly care about card games and thinks the perfect trifecfta is an afternoon of shopping at three different shoe stores!

On a recent cruise to the Caribbean, we stumbled onto a smallish casino on our large-ish ship and spent a few minutes checking it out. My son-in-law, who is apparently familiar with the pleasures of Vegas and the massive casinos on its iconic strip, tried to explain the yin and yang of all the one-armed bandits in the room.

The more he explained the less I understood. The slot machines were whirring and purring, numbers flying about and colors blinking. It was information overload and none of it made much sense. I certainly couldn't figure out how you went about winning -- or losing.

We were heading for the exit, passing packs -- gaggles, herds, colonies, clusters -- of excited folks playing craps and roulette, poker, blackjack and other such games of chance, when we happened upon a Rube Goldberg-ish type contraption that caught Miss Wendy's attention.

It had at least five playing positions, was filled with quarters and, in a bizarre sort of way, was somewhat mesmerizing. After all, there were all those glittering quarters just waiting for someone to take them home.

Let me explain. The machine, creatively known in the trade as a "coin pusher", is something many of you have probably seen in arcades or at county fairs. It's essentially a large container, made up of two tiers, both filled with quarters. At the back of the contraption, on each level, is a metal arm that is in constant motion, moving a few inches back and forth. You drop a quarter into one of three slots strategically placed at the top of the coin pusher. If you're lucky, the coin plops against another quarter, then is pushed a bit by the mechanical arm, which causes several of the coins to fall to the bottom level, pushing a few more coins into the exit bin.

Slot machines -- all those bells and whistles, blinking lights and whirling numbers -- are an enigma. But the coin pusher seemed so simple, so easy to maneuver and outwit. The quarters were spilling over the edge, just waiting for a little push and the clinking coins would spill, literally, into your waiting, trembling hand.

Right, when pigs fly!

Miss Wendy rummaged through her purse, found a handful of quarters and dropped one into the slot. It clanked its way down to the first tier and did absolutely nothing. So, too, the second and third coins. But the next quarter gently nudged up against a heap of change, then slowly spilled onto the next level, unleashing a small torrent of coins into the exit slot. If you were keeping score, we were now even -- $1 had been entered into the machine and 4 quarters had been spit out.

Miss Wendy was hooked. She suggested I get some more quarters to feed the machine and a few minutes later I handed her $5 in change. For the next 15 minutes or so the demon was upon my lovely wife as she fed the mechanical beast, first down a few quarters, then up, then down, then ... well, I'm sure you get the idea.

The bottom line? The house always wins and this machine is a mechanical engineer's dream. It always looks like it's ready to deliver, but the bonanza is always just another quarter away. In the three days that we walked through the casino, I only saw one person walk away from the coin pusher a winner.

And Miss Wendy? Let's just say she spent a happy hour or so over several days having fun.

COIN PUSHER: Rube Goldberg-type contraption (photo above) looks like it's ready to deliver, but is always one quarter away from delivering.