Family and Old Friends

I love the wonderful poetry and prose that have shown up on this blog. I find it stunning, and moving, and inspiring. So much so that I suspect I’m not alone thinking, as I read the blog, “Wow-that’s great! I could never write like that.” Or, “Damn-they’ve set the bar too high.” But these impressions (though accurate) are not good enough reasons for me to hold back. I hope this will prompt others to put aside their reservations and jump in. You each have a good story or two to tell, ones only you can tell the best, and if I can do it, so can you! (You know who you are, so do we, and we know where to find you.) So here goes.

This is called Family and Old Friends, so I have to start with Rudy. He was my very first friend, period. And he soon became family. I met him in August 1950, a few months short of our fourth birthdays. I didn’t meet Doug, my second friend, until the next day, probably because he lived across the street from Rudy, and it was a bigger deal to cross the street in those days.

Let’s skip straight to the part about why Rudy got kicked out of Criswell’s physics class almost every day. As best as I can tell, this was because of an unspoken, unfriendly gentleman’s agreement between Rudy and Mr. Criswell: they each REALLY wanted Rudy out of the classroom, the sooner the better.

The class would begin each day with Mr. Criswell asking us in turn for our answers to the previous night’s homework. It was intimidating. Tim and Brian sat in the first row and nearly always got the right answer. On an off day, Mr. Criswell might have to say to one of them, “Well, that’s close enough. The correct answer is 26.1, but I guess I’ll accept 26.3.” By the time it got to those of us in the back, the tension was mounting. Rudy would say, “I got an answer of 69.” If Tim and Brian had said “8.3”, Rudy’s answer would be “6.9”. If they said, “Zero point 34”, then Rudy’s answer would be “Zero point 69”. You get the drift. The giggles, then waves of laughter swept forward, and when they reached Mr. Criswell, Rudy was out the door. And that’s how Rudy got ejected.

But as we know, even a blind squirrel can find an acorn once in a while, and one day the whole class was stumped-even Tim and Brian. Each of us in turn heard another of Mr. Criswell’s variations on “Well-that’s pretty close, but I’m afraid I can’t accept that answer.” It was a pathetic showing until it got to Rudy (who certainly had not wasted his time on the homework).“I got zero point zero zero six nine.” After a long, uncomfortable silence came the unthinkable reply: “Well-that’s close enough.” That was the only part that was different. The rest was the same-the giggles, then the waves of laughter, and Rudy was done for the day. Once again, Rudy and Mr. Criswell each had improved their situation.

Well, there’s so much more, and since memories fade, I’m not even sure I can get it in order. At five or six or seven or eight we would sit in the car on North Santa Cruz Avenue as one or the other of our mothers would shop at the “Five and Dime”. Rudy would often have a peashooter and ammo. Think pedestrians and foolish children and you get the picture. A few years later Rudy would tee up golf balls in the back yard and practice chip shots towards a greenhouse a block away. I’m afraid that the telling of the stories about cars at age fourteen and fifteen will have to wait until all our mothers have been gone fifty years.

Even at age eighty-four, my mom’s forgetfulness yields to her most vivid memory of Rudy. For the hundredth time he would be coming into our kitchen and counting aloud as he systematically closed open cabinets and drawers. Thump, thump, click, click. Maybe he was trying to restore some order to a home with four kids. (The scientific term for this is ‘peeing into the wind’). At the end he would announce, “Well that’s nine. Not too bad today.” Or, “Twelve. Come on folks, you can do better than that. I’ll bet you could shoot for fifteen.”

For years and years there was the ongoing Bob and Rudy banter. The silent version involved Rudy quietly holding two, or four, or maybe seven fingers aloft as Bob spoke, to signify his informal count of how many times Dickson had told that joke or that story.

There was also the famous water-cooler-sized penny jar in Rudy’s room that eventually was filled with nearly three hundred dollars in coins. Rudy traded it for bills, and we drove to Tahoe to go gambling (we were about nineteen at the time). The three hundred dollars would eventually be gone, but not until it had generated nearly a thousand dollars worth of action.

One summer Rudy was selected to join talented teen classical musicians from across the nation at Michigan State University for a summer youth orchestra, to be trained and tutored by prominent conductors, a different one for each of eight weeks. The opportunity was thrilling, but Rudy had never been far from home for very long. We were all downcast as we drove him to San Jose Airport for the first leg of his trip, a connector to San Francisco International to catch another flight to Michigan.

We said our goodbyes at the gate. We left Rudy, seemingly sadder than he was. We could hardly make small talk. Finally someone said, “What the hell. Let’s drive to San Francisco and be there when he gets off the plane.” We ran to the car, hit the Bayshore Freeway, and sped to SFO, sure enough beating his connecting flight. Jaw-dropping shock and delight were reward enough. We were young, spontaneous, and foolish, but (anticipating your next question) no, we did not run back to the car and drive to East Lansing.

The quiet times were when Rudy would drop whatever we were all doing, head home, and practice his cello alone in the garage. This was all more disciplined, responsible, and purposeful than anything any of us knew in our own lives. At our age, were it anyone but Rudy it would have seemed alienating and strange. With him it all felt so normal. There was no complaining-only equanimity. Even at young ages, Rudy would drop what he was doing and go home to his own kitchen to help prepare or preheat, or time the family’s evening meal. None of the rest of us was so mature.

Over the eight years of Rudy’s illness, he spent hours and hours driving to and from the doctor’s office, or the lab, or Stanford Hospital, often alone, often with one or more of us. At that time, our drives to and fro were just part of the rituals of life. It seemed like no big deal, just teenagers together in a car. We never really spoke of the real meaning of Rudy’s illness, though I sensed it was bigger than any of our parents would let on.

But just once, Rudy said something out of character. He was driving us home on Highway 17, and he offhandedly mentioned, “You know, in some ways I’m kind of lucky to have this illness.” When I asked what he meant, he explained, “Well, most people my age never get to learn how important life really is." And that was that, end of that discussion.

Rudy died when we were twenty-four. I dreamed about Rudy many times a week for years, all kinds of dreams, including those in which I knew I was dreaming, that he was really gone, but everything was real anyway. Even now, over thirty years later, every so often I’ll awake sobbing from a Rudy dream. It doesn’t feel so much like sadness- more like primal loss.

A few years after we graduated, my brother, then a senior, told Mr. Criswell he had just seen an old friend who had said to say hello- Rudy Giskin. Mr. Criswell replied, “Oh-I knew Rudy Giskin. How is he? What’s he doing now?” My brother, faithful to the Rudy mischief, couldn’t help himself as he replied, “Oh, he’s teaching physics at Stanford.” Mr. Criswell froze and pondered. Finally he shook his head. “No, I’m afraid that’s not the Rudy Giskin I knew.”

Well, if anyone is still reading, this was a bit of the Rudy Giskin I knew, my first friend, my old friend. As life unfolds, and as this blog reflects, we do tend to learn how important life really is, and how lucky we are when we get to experience human connection. I don’t feel we’re necessarily all THAT much smarter than when we were seventeen. But something is different. We’re like teenagers without the attitude. Of course we learn how inevitable is suffering, and how unavoidable are the alone times. But along with this we have the chance for true human connection. That’s the part about family and old friends.


Lew Nerenberg