A Proper Way to Say Good Bye

Mid October ‘O7 Panaji, Goa

It’s time to tell about how I left the U.S before the days run together and all I remember is the rubble of a thousand unmatched experiences.

The question that occurred to me a dozen times is how was to say good bye - to make a break with a whole continent. Many people move from country to country with no more thought than driving from one town to another. If I’m going to cross an ocean, it’s a special occasion. When I made my first trip to Europe, I remember standing by the railing and watching for the ship’s first movement that would take me from Montreal to South Hampton. One could disregard the moment, but then birthdays and anniversaries aren’t much to me. When would that moment happen on this journey?

Packing and dozens of chores are how it starts. What to take; what to leave? Shots, a visa, last minute shopping “for those things you must have.” Water purifying pills, malaria pills, to take a camera or no? It wound up, no. I left a tape recorder. How many shirts does a person need? Which books are really necessary? The 21st century Letter of Credit is an ATM card. Then there is purchasing a ticket from a computer program that is not as clever as it thinks it is. Punch a button and you are branded forever with a name your sure to forget. And the final question is will all this fit in the pack and briefcase and most importantly, can I lift the load? When you move, you never leave a second load behind. One trip, one way. And you keep thinking that someplace up ahead is a place that is affordable and a place to sit beneath a tree with dense foliage and do something or nothing as the mood strikes you. That place will have more people to talk to than you can ever shake hands with in a lifetime. And that was the way I remembered India from 40 years ago. Now was a good time to see what I had not seen on the first crossing. The Malabar Coast, the South, which is what some people call the real India. As for this trip the real India starts for me in the visa office at the consulate in New York. With over a billion minds at work, one is bound to encounter other definitions. The term, “The Real India,” comes about because northern India has been invaded beginning with the Arians and coming through the Greeks with Alexander, and somewhere along the line the Persians and the Moguls swept into the North; I can’t remember who got there first. I’ll probably learn in time. Of course the French, Portuguese, and the British came and went but the South seemed to escape the disruption and I’m told Kerala is one of the most peaceful places in India. Not because of some homogeneity but just because people have better things to do than fight. Every religion in India, which takes in the western faiths before they worked their way that far west, is there and apparently the people learned to live together. Kerala has the second lowest crime rate in the country. That alone is a good enough reason to call it “The Real India.”

Now I must admit that there was some socializing and sight-seeing in New York. David Nordlander and I attended vespers at a church St. Tikon built sometime after his moving the Russian Orthodox Church headquarters from San Francisco to New York. The cathedral is not high on most visitor’s lists but when you’ve worked in the Russian Bishop’s House at Sitka and have told people about the three saints who lived in the house, one of whom was Bishop Tikon, and then you are standing in his church on the upper east side, listening to the liturgy sung in Russian, and there in the half-light of candles is his cathedra, it gives some people at least a little rush. And while that is all great, the walking gives me a pain and the way I get rid of the pain is with patience and extra strength Tylenol. I look at the pack and hurt even before I sling a strap over my shoulder. But there are always something more to decide – insurance, more vaccines, what about a cell phone? I don’t plan on going east to die but anyone who knows about foreign public health can wag a knowing finger in your face and tell you one more horror story about a unwary traveler who came to a bad end. There are a billion people there. Everyday millions die but more millions are born. I don’t intend to die or get reborn. All I want to do is live in India for a week, a month, or a year and enjoy meeting some nice people. And somehow, like the finality of an execution date, an airplane will lift off with me in steerage and all these things will settle out…I hope.

Rachel had stopped living her life and begun to live mine, which wasn’t very fair of me. But she stuck with the organizing and slowly we packed, finding what it actually was that I would take to the other side of the world.

Then on a Saturday morning after sunrise, the car came to take me to JFK. Rachel and Evan stood in the street, Evan holding their dog in his arms like a baby and waved me a good bye. I looked back through the rear window. Something told me that I hadn’t really left. This was not the real good bye. Not the real thing. On the way down I think FDR Drive, we met a car whose driver said good bye. The wrecker hooked up to a totaled head-on. My driver was Dominican and hadn’t learned English. That was just as well. I was more interested in his ability to move with or ahead of the traffic.

I had remembered to tuck my pen knife in my pack, which I checked and boarded with the brief case in which Rachel had stuffed every cubic inch with food. She is her own person but occasionally a quirk of mine or a characteristic of Bobbi will surface. Packing survival food was surely a Biederman trait.

The seat number ended with “F.” Touching thumb to finger tip and counting seats in my mind’s eye, “A” would be a window, “C” on the aisle starting from port to starboard, then “D” would be on the right of the aisle looking forward and “F” would be a window. I’d get to look out at the world as we flew one way and the earth turned the other….not in a wide bodied fuselage. “F” was a midship seat and a seat more narrow than a coffin. I suppose that that would be a good thing. When I sleep my head would be on somebody’s shoulder and if sleep were deep enough, it would be they, not I, that I’d drool on. The flight was late, there was a maintenance problem, and an airplane losing its place in the order of take-off must go to the back of the line or something like that. Then we were off and I still hadn’t felt I’d said good bye.

Etihad is a new airline which means that while the pilots must have enough hours in the air to qualify for whatever is defined as experienced, the plane still had some of its brand-new gloss. You could read, which I think I did or you could figure out how to operate the monitor set in the back of the seat in front of you. One program held a map projected with a bright green land mass and a deep blue sea with an airplane superimposed. Where we’d been was marked with a red line, which in not many hours cut the edge of Newfoundland. There are times you’d like to be in the air but I’ve always wanted to go to Newfoundland and another part of the program allowed you to see the real Earth in real time via a TV camera mounted in the plane’s nose. Most of the planet is covered by cloud and so even looking at a televised version of what must be a beautiful land will have to wait.

Then we were over the blue and had eaten a meal which was strange but substantial, mutton and some starch stuff. Maybe it was a special variety of rice. The young man next to me is doing an internship in psychiatry in New Jersey. He graduated from medical school in Karachi. He was bright and quick to joke and furthermore he knew how to change the programs on our personal monitors. Along with the map and nose camera, we had a big selection of music and about 40 plus movies to watch. But from time to time I’d find a drawing of the plane from overhead. An arrow lay beneath the plane and the word “Makkah” stood to one side. I had never considered the direction to Mecca to be that important but then I’d never flown on an Persian Gulf airline.

Sitting aft and across the aisle from my seatmate and me was another Pakistani, who had written an essay on the Faith. He showed it to the internist. I don’t read as well over other peoples’ shoulders as I once did, so I can’t say much about the content. Probably it amounted to about the same thing said by the priest leading the service in the Tikon’s cathedral in Manhattan but the blessing there was that I don’t understand Russian. The seatmate looked back and made some comments but most of the talking was done by the author.

But then I looked out the starboard window and while I could neither see sea nor cloud, the wing was visible. The silver had reddened. It was only a little after 4 pm New York time. The sun traveled one way, we hurried on the other, and all I could see was the red-orange light of a sunset I couldn’t watch. That was the end of my last North American day for a while. When the sun would rise, I’d be well out over Eastern Europe, and when I landed I’d be in Asia. The light on the wing deepened. The earth’s shadow lay just ahead of us. When the day faded, I had finally found a way to say my good bye.
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Theodore Roosevelt's Birthplace

A few days before I left New York for India, Mike, a professor who taught literature at Baruch College, and I met for breakfast to talk about his subject. Last time we met was in Sitka and we talked mine, history. We aired our likes and dislikes on literature. We talked about the Nobel Prize and noted that neither of us had ever won it and wondered why that was so. Mike introduced me to eggs and pastrami and that was a most delicious breakfast. When we finished he collected his things and left to check on how his wife’s physical therapy was going and I found myself downtown with some time on my hands.

David Nordlander, who had been my history guide the weekend before had told me that the Theodore Roosevelt Birth Place was a must see. Furthermore seeing the house, which wasn’t open when he and I were walking, walking, would now be open. Open yes, you go into a servants’ entrance, why I’m not too sure. Could be that NPS is worried about someone toppling off the stairs to the main entrance. The Golden Age Pass saved me $3 and I was told that I had about an hour to look around.

The house is interesting just for its design. To begin with, this is not the original house. No DNA of Theodore Roosevelt around anywhere. They asked him if he wanted his birthplace preserved and he was not interested. About 1920 they leveled the house. Then about 1923 they decided that that was a mistake and some of the family, friends, and anyone else they could interest in rebuilding began the task of money raising and construction. First you tear it down and then you rebuild….I had nothing to do with it but it does sound like me. But because this was a house for the public, the house was divided down the middle as seen from the street. The east or right side was to be exhibit halls, a workroom/library for scholars, and for any other utilitarian purposes they could think of. The west side (and I do hope I’ve got my directions straight) or the right hand side as seen from the street, where recreated rooms of the period. The good news was that there were plenty of people alive who could remember the house and there was other documentation which was still fresh and available. The thrust of the thinking was what would TR remember about his home. This was not an Upstairs, Downstairs tour. As a matter of fact the ground floor housed today an exhibit room where once the kitchen had been. Of course, I would have really enjoyed seeing what the original kitchen looked like. You can see some of the things we still haven’t learned after a hundred plus years.

This exhibit room (the kitchen) was an overview of TR’s life. The cases were set against the wall with a long island of them in the room’s center and every case had information, photographs, and artifacts concerning his life. There were no railway belt buckles or Cossack uniforms. Some might call it Disneyland but it was a very informative attempt regardless of a name. Had David been there, it would have been interesting to see if he could have read all the labels within the hour before the tour. I read slowly and didn’t get half done, when they called me. Whoever wrote the labels didn’t know that they were supposed to be no longer than 25 words, therefore they were very informative.

One of the great things about TR is that he had a lot objects in his life and the family saved them to the point that several years ago when I did some research for a story, Christie’s was having a TR memorabilia sale. At the “ranch,” the birthplace, Sagamore Hill, and the Smithsonian, there are great collections. No pun intended but he was a man of many hats and the hats and photos of his wearing the hats were saved. His fringed chaps are at the Smithsonian. His sealskin chaps (ring seal) are at the birthplace. His Rough Rider hat hangs in the “great” room at Sagamore Hill. Then there are his bird mounts and some of his trophies at the Museum of Natural History. By the way his father was a founder of that museum and another aside, the father organized a “waif” society. They found kids out on the street and shipped them west on orphan trains for adoption. Some did well. John G. Brady became governor of Alaska and I think there was a Nevada governor also out of that group of children. As I recall either an uncle or the father to Theodore Sr. was a property investor and from time to time would give an extra house away to a family member. That’s is how the house came into the Roosevelt clan. I can’t remember if they were first owner or not.

And so up the stairs we went to the “Lion” room, where his trophy heads are exhibited. Thank God nobody went PC and hid “those horrid things.” If you read Preservation, a recent issue took a stance for half the article excoriating big game hunting and hunters. By the way, TR help found the Boone and Crockett Club. He was a far thinking liberal but few liberals would today vote for him but I need to get on to other things. His favorite Winchester is on display in the lower exhibit hall.

On one floor on the reconstructed room side of the house, I can’t remember which, you can look out a back window and see the “gym” his father had built for him. It is pretty modest to be called a gym. It’s more like an enclosed corridor…enclosed with cyclone fence material but I guess he could run up and down and thrown things around whether it rained or not. It was roofed. In the “pretty” side of the house they had just collected a new artifact. TR never played with this medicine ball but had played with one like it. Neither I nor any of the rest had seen one but I knew what it was the minute I saw it. The ball weighed the better part of 20 lbs. as it was filled with sand, not air. And you throw this to or at someone; they caught it and threw it back. The last time I tried to catch a basket ball, I very nearly broke a fingers. This thing could break a rib. Certainly knock the breath out of you. There were bed rooms, a dining room, and a parlor. The wallpaper in each room was done by a different contractor (no Scalamandra.) I can’t remember how they matched the paper. The ranger thought that some of the mantle pieces were original and almost all the furniture…and they were beautiful pieces.

When David and I came by the house on the weekend and it was closed, I had a time figuring the lay of the land. There is a photograph that you can find in either a collection about TR or about Lincoln. After Lincoln was shot, his casket went to various cities and there were a number of funeral marches. One went up through the city and what you see are two children looking out a second story window from across an intersection. The kids are a long way off and hard to see. In the foreground is the cortège with the coffin riding on a probably a gun carriage. The caption is that there are two presidents in the picture. Lincoln in the foreground and TR as the nearer of the two children. That was a family call. You can see that they are children but I don’t think you can tell much more as to identity. A jeweler’s loop and knowledge of subject probably helps. But that house was on the corner and the birthplace is in the middle of the block! David and I talked it over and I couldn’t figure it out. The angles were off. The kids would be even father away from the camera. In the exhibit room they have both a reproduction of the photo and the explanation. The corner house was not the birthplace but Uncle Cornelius Schaack Roosevelt’s house and I think it was on Union Square. Anyhow that’s cleared up and now we can wonder on other things like how many antique shops you’d have to noodle before you found another medicine ball.

The ranger knew my sordid past and would often turn to one of us and ties us into the talk. When he ended the tour, I automatically looked at my watch and using Bishop House Rules reminded that he ran eight minutes over time. He had a good sense of humor. I want to add that I did return to my label reading but finally my legs, my back, and India called and I left for uptown.
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