Unbelievable

Ep 5: Dori feels a shift in family dynamics when her stepfather dies. And after a rocky start to a London trip to see her son, a new day and an attitude adjustment bring surprises.

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My beloved stepfather, Larry Kanzer, died on April 30, 2022 at 11:50pm. Today, the day I’m recording this, would have been his 80th birthday.

As I said in the last episode, Larry and I were close. He was the first of my parents, the first of any close family member, in fact, to die since my grandparents, when I was in my 20s and 30s.

I’m so fortunate to have mourned so little in my life, I know. Processing death now, it’s early stages anyhow, I’m struck less by the obvious sadness of it, the loss, and more by the way roles and relationships shift. Families are like a game of Jenga. Sometimes pieces come away and the structure shifts but stays intact, pieces connected to one another for support in new forms and different shapes. Of course, other times the whole structure falls apart. 

 My immediate family is small, but sturdy. Still, the dynamics have shifted. A lot. 

INTRO:

Welcome to Life-Changing with Dori Fern, a podcast about the messy middle between when you hit pause and what comes next. I'm Dori Fern, a single empty nester in Brooklyn, New York who quit a corporate job at 55 on a quest to live a more purposeful, exceptional. I don't know, happier life? I'm figuring it out as I go along.
 
 But as my high school drama teacher used to say. The trip is the trip. I hope you'll join me.

Larry was a guy inclined to make splashy, “more is more” kind of meals, especially for company. We would all ooh and ahh at the abundance when he sat down to the table, and in his own version of saying the motzi (Jews’ version of grace) for the meal, he would proclaim in his Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn accent: “If you die, you die.” And then we would dig in.

 We might eat an elaborate Cantonese dish he had adapted from a Martin Yan recipe or his perfect fried chicken (which one Thanksgiving, my kids and I requested in place of turkey). I particularly enjoyed his Eastern European Jewish classics, like his homemade half-sour pickles, his matzoh ball soup - no one made a more flavorful chicken stock -  or the dish we just called “The Eggplant.” One of Larry and my last little quibbles, a few weeks before his death, was over what to call this garlicky mash – like a babaghanoush but with crushed tomato in place of tahini – in the recipe book I made for him. He wanted me to name it “Eggplant Relish,” but I would have called it Ukrainian Eggplant Caviar, since you look online for similar recipes, that’s mostly what it’s called, even though when I checked in with my friend Rosie, who knows this sort of stuff, she said that the dish has different regional names, though Eggplant – or Aubergine – Caviar is common. Interestingly, my maternal grandfather—who otherwise didn’t really cook-- was famous in my family for a similar dish, but without the tomato. Anyhoo, of course I deferred to Larry on the name. The headnote for his Eggplant Relish recipe goes like this:

"There are probably as many varieties of this dish as there are Hebrew children in the world. If you are a newcomer to this dish and prefer living out your life not only surrounded by friends and family but without constantly grabbing your chest as you eat it, my suggestion is to cook two-thirds of the garlic in olive oil until brown and leave one-third raw. If you really don’t care if your neighborhood is declared a war zone after a chemical warfare attack, and are inclined to love your life as a hermit then leave all the garlic raw. YOU HAVE BEEN SUITABLY WARNED! "

My relationship with Larry was uncomplicated by many of the factors that can make parent-child relationships hard: He just loved me and liked me as I was and am. And I him. That this was and still is untrue of my relationship with my biological father is a massive understatement. 

On a visit to my dad at his nursing home the week Larry went into hospice, I told him that my stepdad was close to death. His response: “I don’t get too upset about Larry for a number of reasons.” Shortly after that, he informed me that he planned to live at least as long as his father—who died just before his 101st birthday—or maybe longer. I suppose I should have been glad that my father was no longer depressed, and threatening to take his own life like he was the prior few years when he lived, wheelchair-bound but otherwise healthy, in his decrepit, handicapped-inaccessible Bronx apartment. But instead I was struck by the irony of who I was losing and who would remain. 

It is a universally agreed-upon fact that my mother -- a nurse by training, caregiver by inclination, and a fierce, outspoken broad from the Bronx from birth (like her mother before her, and me after) -- was responsible for keeping my stepdad alive as long as he was. 

Larry spent the last week of his life in hospice, unconscious and mostly—but not entirely—unresponsive. He held my mom’s hand tightly when she sat beside him and even, at the beginning, mouthed “I love you,” after she told him the same. I asked her to put me on the phone with him, but not to listen to what I said. I wanted him to know it was ok to rest, to go, and not to worry about Mom. She was strong and would be ok, and I promised to take care of her. I could hear his breathing get labored, and I knew he heard me. Mom told me he kept moving his head—eyes closed—towards the phone.

I cried a lot that week, in anxious anticipation of losing him. When Mom called around midnight the night Larry died, the phone jolted me awake, a pit of dread in my stomach. But I didn’t cry then and barely shed any tears over the two days my brother and I went to Florida to be with my mom and help her take care of the business she wanted to deal with in the immediate aftermath of his death. It was the first time the three of us had slept under the same roof since my parents divorced and my brother went to live with my dad. He was 13 years old and I was 16. Nearly 40 years ago. 

Because Larry’s body was donated to science and my folks were not at all religious, there would be no funeral, no sitting Shiva, the seven days when Jews traditionally come together to mourn. There will be a celebration of life soon, but for now, we were here to help our mother take care of the business of death and to do our best to set her up for a new life without her best friend. 

A week later, I was in London to visit my son, who’s studying ceramic design at Central Saint Martins for a semester abroad and hoping to transfer there for his final year of college. This was my first stop on a nearly monthlong trip, including Northern Ireland and Spain, my longest time traveling since my own junior year abroad in Israel in 1986. Happily, my visit would coincide with Lev’s school art show. His project, an assortment of pots imprinted with design riffs on professional soccer jerseys from the 90s, needed to wow his advisers, who will consider this the final stage of his transfer application process. 

The plan was that we would leave the day after I arrived for a weekend in Brighton, outside the city. But Lev was anxious. His project wasn’t finished and he wanted that Saturday to work on his pots. It was too late to cancel the hotel and I wanted his company, so I tried to help him figure out how to get his work done and still come, which at first seemed to make him feel better. But at the train station, he was clearly on edge and grumpy. I asked him if he was mad at me. He said he was frustrated that I didn’t seem to understand the urgency of him staying back and felt bad canceling on me. We got on the train and talked a bit more and he said that if he could work that day, he would take the train to Brighton to meet me Sunday morning. So when we got to the next train stop, close to school, I just said “Go” and he bolted off the train just before the doors closed.

 I knew it was the right thing to give him the permission to go and was embarrassed by my selfishness in not doing so sooner.  

When I got off the train in Brighton, it was about 72 degrees, the sky as blue as could be. Unsurprisingly, the narrow streets of this popular seaside destination were overrun with locals and tourists alike. I immediately hated it. When I got to my inn, I asked the manager for advice on a non-touristy destination for the day and she inexplicably sent me to a mall at the end of the beach. I nearly cried when I saw the Burger King in the parking lot. All day, all around me were couples strolling the boardwalk holding hands, families frolicking on the beach, and rainbow-haired teenagers eating soft-serve by the pier. I hadn’t felt so lonely in a long while. If disappearing was my superpower of choice, I was the Invisible Woman. I had planned this trip as I did precisely because I would have family and friends to accompany me, and here I was alone on day 2. Solo travel is not new for me, and when I was younger, I quite enjoyed the adventure of meeting new people along the way. But now I want a travel companion. To my mind at this stage of my life, this one of the biggest allures about having a partner. Someone to share in these types of adventures.

 So, yeah, I chose darkness on this bright beautiful day. 

 I lay in bed that night feeling a sadness I hadn’t felt in a long while: Larry’s death, my mom figuring out how to mourn and how to be alone for the first time in her life. And on the other hand, my kids growing up and being adults and needing me to do less and accept more. I let myself get sucked into self-indulgent melodrama: Lev wouldn’t come at all, and I would be stuck by myself another 2 days in this relentlessly cheery, yet cold and unfriendly place.

 It was grey and rainy when I woke up on Sunday. I should tell Lev not to bother coming, I tell myself melodramatically, burying my head in the pillow. Like clockwork, he texts to tell me he’s on the way. Of course now my dumbass is all giggly. I meet him at the train and we meander in the rain to North Laine, a lively neighborhood nearby filled with vintage stores and cafes. The opposite of the marina mall from yesterday. The crowds had thinned, of course, due to the weather. Lev was giddy about the secondhand shopping, and spent much of the afternoon trying on various ‘fits and I happily provided any and all requested sartorial feedback and personal photography services. Many looks and laughs later, we sat down at a café for tea. I was keenly aware of the contrast between this day and the one prior. Not just because the circumstances of the day improved, which of course they did, but how my relentlessly self-pitying attitude made the previous day so much worse than it needed to be. 

 I decide that now is a good time to check in on my mom, so we video chat her. She puts on her game face, happy to see us, but even though she doesn’t like to show it, to maybe put a damper on our day, her eyes droop sadly, her smile is strained. We chit chat about our day and when I ask how she’s doing she says, “Ok. I’m ok… The nights are hard.” She starts to choke up and I feel tears well up in my eyes. We say our “I love yous” and hang up. Lev and I are quiet for a minute. We talk a bit about my mom and I tell him that I am adjusting to the weight of this shift in our family, that it’s heavy to see your parents and your kids get older with you in the middle trying to figure out how much more or less you’re supposed to be doing. 

 I choke up again, and sob as softly as I can muster and then, WHOMP! A guy in a hot pink lycra unitard and bejeweled sunglasses, looking like Elton John circa Captain Fantastic and backed by a couple of lanky young things who were probably not the popular kids in middle school, all of them wearing and holding oversized headphones, skipped right over to me and Lev and started singing EMF’s “You’re Unbelievable” at the top of their lungs, placing headphones over our ears and drag me up to dance with them. Lev is amused by this whole goofy silent disco scene, but meanwhile, I’m singing as loud as I can muster until the song ends and then they slide the headphones off of our ears and skip along.

 Lev looks over to me, chuckles and says “Well that was perfect timing.”