Blondie lay under the table, her paws stretched across my toes for the first time in decades. She didn’t care what the food was or where it had come from. If it once sat on a human plate, it was good enough for her. I couldn’t resist and instinctively regressed into a nine-year-old boy. One for me. One for you. She ate half the ribs.
We were a symphony of utensils clicking against plates. Nobody talked, but we all nodded, smiled, rolled our eyes with that “holy-shit-can-you-believe-how-good-this-is?” look, and kept eating. Depending on the room, no talking can feel lonely and desperate. I grew up around a dinner table like that. Silent. Cold. Mean. On this night, the silence didn’t feel tragic but instead felt hopeful. I suppose that’s hard to understand or even explain, but the room was filled with such reverence. It wasn’t uncomfortable. It was respectful. Multiple conversations were had with simple eye contact. Yeah, mine is amazing also. I have eggplant. Liar. Nobody likes eggplant. Not even God’s chef could cook that mistake well.
The room was also full of anticipation. I mean, we were invited to dinner at God’s house, but nobody knew if that meant God would be joining us. At least I didn’t know. I assumed the same for the rest of the guests. Will one of life’s greatest questions be answered on this night? Will they all be answered? I imagine that’s what everyone was thinking.
Until . . . silence was replaced by indescribable and uncontrollable laughter when the same little old lady who had helped me get my legs moving let out a ferocious burp worthy of a hardcore biker bar. It was a shock that caused us all to put down our forks and knives and start talking.
I used to love sitting in a crowded room, off to the side, watching. Kind of like how I loved watching cars. I liked to imagine the stories that were being told. The intimacies being shared. It’s ironic, but I think one of my happy places was hosting a party and then watching my friends engage one another. I wanted people to be happy, even if I didn’t know how to be. For a brief time, I could feel good knowing that, in some way, I had been responsible for a moment in their lives when they felt happy.
I knew that people felt jealous when their friends became friends. Not me. I found beauty in that. I loved creating connections. Maybe it was a subconscious way of creating a future for myself. Maybe I knew I’d someday be gone, but my memory could somehow live on this way. How did you meet? Oh, our mutual friend Erik introduced us . . . I didn’t spend much time thinking about legacies, but that would be a good one.
Obviously, however, I had nothing to do with the events that brought all of us together around the Seven Wonders of the World table. I wasn’t the host. But the joy I felt from watching people quietly introduce themselves—post majestic belch!—was no less impactful and meaningful.
The people in this room were a mix of life. We were young and old and everything in between. The youngest looked about twelve and was seated next to the oldest, who was more like one hundred twelve. We were white, Black, brown, and all combinations therein. There was gray hair, black hair, no hair, and even some purple hair. Our clothes represented different cultures and ranged from high society elegance to, well, not so elegant. Some had played in our impromptu game, but not all. Where did these people come from? Where did all the others go? Are there other tables somewhere in another room? Do those tables and rooms look the same as this one? I wondered who was sitting in front of the Grand Canyon in another room.
None of that mattered because, on this night, we shared the most intense bond we could never have imagined: we were all dead. Talk about belonging! Whatever we did in life was inconsequential. Or maybe it wasn’t. I started to wonder if there was a thread that brought us all together, like Jon Favreau’s old TV show, Dinner for Five. He brought together four celebrities who all shared a common element, and they’d dine, talk, and smoke cigars. I wondered if we all shared a thread. Did we die on the same day? Were we born on the same day? Did we all own the same breed of dog? Were we all afraid of living? I wanted to figure it out.
I watched the kid across the table talk to the thirty-something, beautiful African American woman. Oof. I made such a huge assumption about this woman. She was Black, but that didn’t mean she was African American. She may have been from Paris, Japan, or Mexico, for all I knew. She may never have even set foot in America.
I couldn’t stop staring at her while I realized just how much and just how easy it was to put our biases and expectations into a neat little box so we can tell ourselves a story that is most convenient for us. What was that cliché? Don’t assume anything—it makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me.” I wondered how many beautifully unique moments I missed because I assumed some reality that wasn’t anywhere close to the truth. Or because I was afraid of what might happen outside of that box. All because I was addicted to my own story. The story of a boy whose emotional growth stalled at seven.
The man sitting next to me tapped me on the shoulder. “Excuse me, can you please pass the salt?”
I gave him the salt and watched as he proceeded to all but empty the shaker onto what looked like fish.
“My wife didn’t let me have salt on my food for the last ten years. Can’t hurt me now! What’s your name?”
He spoke fast, and in my deeply contemplative, meditative state, it was shocking, like an alarm going off during the deepest REM sleep. He told me his name was Mort, and like any man named Mort, he last lived in Florida. I had lived in Florida for a short time, I told him. I hated every second of it. Mort laughed without comment and continued his story.
He was seventy-six and had died of a heart attack on the eighteenth hole of his favorite golf course. “I was lining up a nice sixteen-foot Birdie putt . . . I would have made it, too! It was the round of my life! Hey, that’s funny!” Mort was married for fifty-six years. “All of them to the same woman,” he said, cracking himself up. Her name was Jeanie. She was only eighteen when they got married against the wishes of both of their families. “They said it would never last. They were right. It didn’t. We were only together for fifty-six years.” There was so much sadness in the way he said it. For most, nearly six decades together was a lifetime. More than a lifetime. For Mort and Jeanie, it was just the start of their honeymoon.
Mort was a Florida Jew straight out of a sitcom. Short and balding, his well-fed belly was framed by a red golf shirt tucked neatly into his checkered shorts, which clashed nicely with his calf-high brown socks. And he wore sandals. I was falling in love with Mort. He felt like that awesome uncle who smuggled you a shot of whiskey at family events or took you to your first strip bar. I never had that uncle, but that’s how I imagined it was for other people. I asked him how he and Jeanie met, and his eyes lit up again.
“It was fate,” he told me without hesitation. For the next fifteen, twenty minutes, Mort Goldberg spoke without a breath. The smile never left his face. His eyes were as bright and soft as the morning sun. I’m not sure I had ever experienced anything like it. I was witnessing the embodiment of true love.
Mort was running late for a job interview. “Always a mess and forever disheveled” was how he described himself. He had lived in Brooklyn because every Jew in Florida starts their story in New York. His mom was yelling at him to get out the door. His dad was telling him he was a bum, and his sisters quietly laughed in the corner as they played with their dolls and rooted against him. He came from lower-class roots. He didn’t have much, but he also didn’t know what he didn’t have. He said he had a feeling, though, that there was more for him to accomplish. More for him to experience. He said, “I knew there was a bigger life.” His dad disagreed.
He made it out the door, managed not to kill himself running for the bus, and long before anybody was talking about taking deep breaths and mindfulness, Mort quietly closed his eyes and visualized his new, bigger life. When the bus driver called his stop, he opened his eyes, calmly walked off the bus without paying attention . . . and immediately got hit by a car. Jeanie was in the passenger seat. Her older brother was driving.
“And you were together from that day forward?” I assumed, having seen too many romantic comedies.
“Hardly. I was in a coma for six months. The doctors weren’t sure I would live. You must remember, this was a long time ago. We weren’t exactly dealing with the kind of medicine we have today. I’m just lucky they didn’t pull the plug too early!”
“I understand, Mort. When I was growing up, my grandfather always said, ‘You know why they call it a medical practice? Because the doctors are always getting things wrong, and they need to practice, just like baseball players.’ My grandfather told me never to believe a thing doctors say.”
Mort continued with a nod but was quick to discount my grandfather’s skepticism. “The doctors saved my life. I owe them everything I ever had. I’m grateful they practiced.”
I was dying to know . . . Sorry, poor choice of words. I was champing at the bit to learn when and how Mort and Jeanie got together. I was like a little kid on the verge of a tantrum: “Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me!” He was about to tell me when the dessert arrived.
I dove into my carrot cake and again savored perhaps the single greatest bite of anything I’d ever had. Mort took a bite of his key lime pie. Key lime pie was the only good thing about Florida, as far as I was concerned. After leaving Florida, I had been in search of key lime pie that was “Florida good.” I would order it if it were available. And I’d be disappointed. “Not as good as it was in Florida.” I finally gave up on that mission. I wanted to ask Mort if I could have a bite after he said, “Oh, my God. I’ve died and gone to heaven.” After another bite and with his mouth full, Mort, laughing at himself, said, “Truer words have never been spoken.”
We finished our desserts, and as I pushed my plate away, I prepared myself to continue peppering my new friend with questions when the lights dimmed. In the distraction of our food and conversation, I hadn’t noticed that the seat at the head of the table was now occupied.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A three-year-old boy declares to his preschool classmates that he has met the love of his life and promises to someday marry her. “Just you wait.” Twenty years later, he does.6
I strained to make sense of the shape at the head of the table. In spite of thinking that God was the collection of my experiences and need not have gender or form, I was programmed to imagine an old man with long, flowing robes and a white beard. My mind and eyes conspired to trick me into that picture. The truth is, I wasn’t sure who or what sat there. The light was darkest in that part of the room.
I heard someone gasp and utter, “Oh, my God, she’s beautiful!” She? Is God a woman? Another said, “I love you.” I love you? Why can they apparently see so clearly, but I can’t? I strained even harder to see. I found myself needing an answer. A truth, more than whatever perceptions I had, misguided as they might have been. I would always have been happy to be completely wrong if I knew what was right. Another lesson in assumptions, perhaps. Fuck, I want to see! I want to know! I saw nothing. At least nothing I could quite put my finger on. The story of my history with faith encapsulated in the moment.
Then the room grew darker.
Silence.
More silence.
I was holding my breath.
A single spotlight appeared against the stark, white wall directly in front of me and behind the younger boy and his new one-hundred-twelve-year-old friend.
An announcer’s voice followed, “All riiiiight!” I couldn’t see him, but I knew the voice. I couldn’t help but smile and laugh. Mort also knew it immediately. It was the late Chicago Cubs legendary broadcaster, Harry Caray. I wasn’t a Cubs fan, but it was impossible not to recognize Caray’s boisterous, signature style. During his day, he was a permanent fixture in TV commercials, and his Chicago restaurant was legendary. Caray, Cubs, and Budweiser were a different kind of Holy Trinity.
Perhaps what made Harry Caray most famous, however, was his rendition of the classic seventh-inning stretch. Before the bottom of the seventh, he would open the window to his broadcast booth, lean out with his microphone, and fire up the crowd with a bellowing, “Allll riiiiiigggghhhttt!!!!” And together, they would sing, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
For most baseball fans, the song was a fun tradition, but for Cubs fans, it was a prayer. Please, God, let this be the year we finally win it all. Harry never got to see his beloved, hapless Cubs win a World Series in his lifetime. They came close but always fell short in some mysterious way. Some felt they were cursed. He died, and I suppose if you become God’s announcer, that’s a pretty good consolation prize. An indication that you did something right. As they say, it’s not whether you win or lose, yadda, yadda, yadda.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” I still couldn’t see him. “Welcome to God’s house!”
