(A reworked post from September, 2012.)
For
those of you who aren’t members of my tribe (Jews), let me translate. I don’t think there’s an English word for the
relationship between the parents of a child & the parents of that child’s
spouse. In Yiddish, the two sets of
parents would be “machatunim”. And in
the case of my son’s in-laws & us, another word would be “friends”. I am grateful. This doesn’t happen nearly often enough.
I’d
like to tell you about Matt’s father-in-law, John. He used to fly airplanes in the Navy, taking
off from & landing on aircraft carriers.
He also worked as a Navy paramedic & he became a civilian paramedic
after his discharge. (I once asked him
why a regular fire truck always accompanies the paramedics. He said that was in case the victim suddenly
catches on fire. He MAY have been
kidding.) When that career ended he
became a safety consultant for large corporations, helping them to design
buildings that would keep their workers safe & to help them in case of an
emergency. He became very well known in
this field. Once, when he was having a
problem finding a solution to a safety problem, he asked me to design a
baseball cap for him to give out to the people working with him. What he wanted--& got—was a squirrel
wearing dark glasses & swinging a cane, like a golf club, at an acorn on a
tee, with the words BLIND SQUIRREL GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB. (Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn
sometimes.)
Something
like this, only more detailed:
More
importantly, I’d like to tell you what he was like, as a MAN. He was (again, a Yiddish word) a
“mensch”. That translates, literally, to
“person” but it is used to describe someone who is warm, friendly & really
cares for his fellow man. John was all
that.
He
liked to run & ride bikes. His wife
is allergic to dogs, so they couldn’t own one themselves. John would “borrow” a neighbor’s dog &
take it running with him. He was fun to
be with. When our kids got married in a
formal ceremony at an upscale hotel, John & I were going to put a live
shark in the pool. He realized his wife
wouldn’t think it was as funny as we did, so we settled on presenting the
newlyweds with an inflatable one on a silver tray at their reception. He loved to fly. One Christmas I had a neon sign made for his
home office. It had a small plane on it
& said FLYING LESSONS 10 CENTS.
Our
kids live in Connecticut & we both live in California, but we all get
together for Christmas every year. On
their 25th anniversary (in December) John & his wife, Jeanne,
flew down to Los Angeles a couple of days before the kids got here so we could
celebrate their happy day with them.
Sometimes we would all meet in another city to spend the holidays. When
we were in Phoenix, he talked a pilot friend into letting me operate a flight
simulator. I (virtually) crashed! When we were in San Diego, he rented a plane
& flew the 20 of us around the area, 3 of us non-pilot passengers at a time
in a 4 seater plane. He had caps made
for everyone with our last name, his last name & the words “FLIGHT CREW”.
John
died in 2006. His was the only military
funeral I’ve ever been to. I thought I
was holding myself together pretty well, even during the 21 gun salute, but
when the bugler played “Taps”, I lost it.
I could almost hear John whispering in my ear, “Enough of this sad
stuff. Let’s go have lunch.”
One
added note—do you believe in Karma? When
John died, my daughter-in-law immediately flew out from Connecticut to
California be with her mother. My son
& their 2 kids followed in a day or two.
The plane reservations were obviously last minute & they couldn’t
get 3 seats together. They were seated
directly behind one another. Matt asked
the man sitting next to Brian, who was 8, to change seats with him. He explained that Brian was very young &
was taking this cross country flight to go his first funeral—his
grandfather’s. The man refused. During the flight, Brian threw up on
him. When we heard, we all congratulated
him on his excellent aim.
A friend
says, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours!!”
I
miss you, John----fishducky
