Time for Valentine's Day

There is a clock here in our house, an antique Seth Thomas. It hangs in our dining room. I love winding it, so does my wife. First, I wind the counterweight that controls the gong, and then I wind the counterweight that keeps the time. All the while my eye on the weights, watching them rise into the shadows at the top of the clock. There is just something about the antiquity of this act and this clock to me.



At least once a day, I will stand in front of the clock and simply watch the brass pendulum swing to-and-fro. Each “to” marking one second, each “fro” marking one second, audible ticks at the apogees. Those ticks settle into the background breathing of our home, mostly unnoticed until they stop.



The sound of the clock’s gong is made by a small hammer striking a coil of iron. In the clock’s long life, this coil has become bent and distorted resulting in the sound of the gong being damaged and blunted. Somehow the survival of this sound in its fractured state brings me comfort and the feeling that the clock has lived its long life that was both easy and hard in unknown measure. I think I can relate.



My favorite time of day with the clock is when both hands are joined at twelve. It is a moment that lasts precisely twelve seconds. The longest this arthritic gong will sound at the top of an hour. It almost never fails to give me pause twice a day. I will go silent, I will listen, and I will hold my breath as I keep count listening to each word and hoping for understanding. I am thankful for those moments and realize to keep them I must share my attention with the clock once each twenty-four hour period, this is about the longest our clock will go without our touch.

And maybe that is it, maybe the magic in the clock for me is in the symbiotic nature of our relationship to it. We keep its heart going and it whispers and sings to us thanks in its cracked voice. I really liked my wrist watch, but when the battery died, I simply put it away in a drawer. It didn’t really need me and I didn't really need it.  If I need to know the time, I have my phone, my computer, my tablet, my oven, my clock radio, and even my microwave. I am surrounded by impersonal time. These electrified and battery-operated descendants of our wall clock don’t need us much. They don’t ask for attention unless a battery dies, or the electricity fails. Their call for help could take weeks, months, or years. Otherwise they could not care less. But our clock relies on us as we rely on it, every day. It is a ritual. If I want to know not the time but the hour, I must listen for our clock. And in that instant of the gong I step from outside time and into it.



Today is Valentine’s Day, and the clock by its presence and not its talents reminds me of that. It keeps me present in the understanding that love is not all passion. It is more ritual and care and understanding. It is being with someone who enjoys being around you at least as much as you enjoy being around them in good times and in bad. My wife is and always will be that person to me. Later today, my wife and I will go to a movie then out to eat. We will hold hands as often as possible and share those soft quick kisses that I cannot resist sharing whenever, wherever I am near her. At home, the clock will continue to keep time in ticks and gongs, breathing steadily because we wound it, eased because we rubbed oil into its elderly wood, clear because we clean its glass. It will wait for us to come home, and we will smile when we do as the ticking hits us and then settles into the house. We will look at it, making sure we have remembered to wind it, then we will retire into each other for the rest of our evening.



Happy Valentine’s Day

Gothic Cathedrals

There are few things more powerful than being raised both Southern and Catholic. It amounts to a boyhood steeped in intimacy and ritual. It results in a lifetime of Gothic views and spirits.



Not everyone is Catholic. So it may be difficult to see how being Catholic reinforces being Southern and vice versa. From baptism, Catholicism is a road of ritual, a path through shadows ending in the light. Baptism is not the simple daubing of blessed oil in the symbol of the cross on a child’s forehead, or the pouring of water through the infant’s fine hair. The source of water must be flowing, it cannot be still. One does not simply receive communion, they must go through appropriate training and instruction by both laity and the ordained. They must have made their first confession to God through a priest. They must take to heart and soul the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the holiest of flesh and blood. Life is marked and recorded by these moments of sacrament. Each sacrament cataloged on your baptismal certificate held at the church of your baptism, held where you were born in Christ. We are fed the mysteries of the saints of our Church throughout the millennia. St. Francis of Assisi, his life a roadmap to sainthood and forever naming him as patron saint of animals and the environment. St. Erasmus is the patron saint of sailors simply because he was martyred by having his entrails wound upon a capstan. St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. Lost causes, is there anything better to have a patron saint of, anything more gothic, anything more truly Southern.



Being raised Southern was not as well documented as being raised Catholic. But being born in the South there is an immediate link to the land, to the earth by an inseverable umbilical cord. Life blood no longer coming from your mother, but from the red clay beneath your feet. It is a link that is spiritual, but not pagan. It is the sense that there is no smell like that of pine sap and the rotted leaves of a forest floor, or of salt and death in the scent of the pluff mud that fills the coastal marshes. It is seeing winter not as domineering, but as flirtatious with the springtime as her skirts flare out in flaunting enticing unequal wisps of hot and cold. It is embracing the humidity which embraces us, telling us that we are both loved and possessed. Instead of saints, we have our ghosts. Lost family, neighbors, even the occasional stranger that is still tied to us rather than making the step into what is next. Beyond these ephemeral qualities, there are rituals to be learned, to be passed down from father to son and mother to daughter.



I was raised to be a gentleman. To open doors for girls, to yes ma’am and no ma’am no matter what age I was speaking to. I was raised to tend my own garden of a soul alone and in quiet no matter how rocky the soil or how blistered and blooded my hands got. To be a man is to bear up, to take the load and carry it unblinking. Girls are raised to be fierce and to be the foundation of the family and the keeper of our dead. They are raised to smile sadly and with complete empathy as they pierce you unnoticed. The presence of blood (actual or metaphorical) the first and most lasting impression that the argument is lost, and you have just been killed with kindness.



My life has been and will always be entangled in the mysteries of my land and my faith. There are shadows in both but no place to hide. Whether it is the red of the clay or the red of Christ’s blood, whether it is the humid kiss of summer or the oily smearing of ashes on my forehead, my life will always be guided by the symbols of my birth and baptism. My life will always lie on this beautiful and flawed foundation because I know nothing else. Bless m’heart.

Romancing the Moon

Last weekend gave rise to a Super Blood Wolf Moon. A very special moon. A moon at its closest point to the earth. A moon full at mid-winter when it is said that wolves would howl into the night from the snow covered land surrounding Native American villages. A moon eclipsed by the earth, kissed with red. As with so many things in life, there are multiple aspects but it is blood that is most important.



The first Blood Moon that I witnessed preceded Halloween of 2004, a spectacle that I shared with my oldest grandson who was just five and half years old at the time. This was our first “guys’ trip.” We could have just as easily called it our Dinosaur Volcano Blood Moon trip.



We traveled from Colorado Springs that weekend, setting our course south (a direction that brings me much comfort). The first leg of our journey saw us cross the Colorado/New Mexico border by way of Raton Pass then turning east in the direction of Texas.



At the border with Texas, there is Clayton Lake State Park. The park has one of the most extensive dinosaur trackways in North America. What better way to start our trip than walking where dinosaurs walked, by witnessing the fossilized footprints of creatures that now only live best in our imaginations.



My grandson ran me ragged over those grounds. We saw every site of interest. The highlight of which was my grandson and I looking out from a foot bridge over a dry shallow river bed the color and texture of moonscape. It was covered with the rounded prints of thick-skinned herbivores and the three toed prints of the long-toothed creatures that pursued them.



From Clayton Lake Park, we headed back west the way we came making for Capulin Volcano State Park. Capulin is an extinct volcano (my level of courage only extends so far!). Visiting something so ancient, something that helped to define the landscape, define the earth with my young grandson at my side grants a particular perspective on past, present, and future. Our trek was not limited to the rim, but we also followed a trail down into the crater. We walked on rocky ground and among stubborn ragged vegetation aware that at one time this hole in the mountain was bare and gaping and spewing ash and lava into the air and over the land.



Exhausted from miles of travel and long hikes, we made our way back into Colorado for fast food and our hotel in Trinidad. We ate our food and watched tv waiting for nightfall and the lunar eclipse. When the time came, we went out into the cold. Scrub oak and small pinon pine trees were dark twisted silhouettes in the night. Above us the moon shone dully in the sky, a celestial eye, unblinking and bloodshot. My grandson pointed up toward the orb and breathlessly uttered, “Look, Bumpa. The BLOOD. RED. MOON.”



As a post script to this trip and to my grandson’s beautiful innocent enthusiasm, I took one of the many photos from the trip and scanned it into my computer. Ineptly, I did a rough cut and paste of a T-Rex image into a picture of my grandson looking at a Clayton State Park sign. When I showed this composite to him, he looked at me wide-eyed and said, “Bumpa! I didn’t even see that when we were there!”



For me, the moon makes time fluid. Starting from the moon, I flow with ink black waters from one memory, one story to the next. And those stories are not only behind me. As-long-as the moon rises in the sky, the headwaters for those stories are not yet reached, and there are memories upon memories to be made.

Knots

I am not sure what everyone else goes through when feeling stressed, I can only speak for myself. There were times growing up when I would feel a nervous twinge in the pit of my stomach. A feeling of being a little disconnected, a little lost to the moment. If my parents were home, I would seek their proximity and would feel better. If they were out, I would go to their bedroom. There was something calming about just crossing the threshold. I would sit in one of their chairs or explore my father’s top dresser drawer until I felt at ease. In that drawer I would touch his tie pins and cufflinks, poke at his pads containing notes and bits of his life, and feel the wooden beads of his rosary slip through my fingers. In finding my parents or the symbols of my parents I was reassured and made safe.

It has been several decades since I have lived with my parents, in fact they are no longer around to visit much less live with. But I feel they raised me well, and the strength I once sought from them I have attempted to pass along to my wife and children (and have watched them do the same with their families). Still there are times as an adult that I get worried, that a knot twists in my belly. For the past two years especially, I have felt that knot daily.

This is not a tangle within me that can be eased by a visit to mom’s and dad’s bedroom, or by the cool feel of wooden beads on my fingertips. It cannot be eased in talking to my wife, or children, or friends. In many ways sharing my feelings just tightens the knot because there is no one to invalidate my fears.

In the microcosm of one’s life, parents, family, the circle of close friends help smooth rough spots. Similarly for American society, our government functions much the same way for citizens – at least for me. When the world turns frightening as on September 11^th, knowing my government and my president were there to defend us and to rally a world of allies in support of us gave me some calm upon those turbulent seas.

I don’t have that security now. Our president works to divide people. Our president works to subvert faith in the judiciary, the congress, law enforcement. Our president works to separate us from a world of friends while embracing well known enemies. I cannot at this time look to my government to untie my knots, the government has become fractured, ultra-partisan, and contentious or servile depending on the side of the aisle that is viewed. It has been made this way by the master of knots, Donald Trump.

When the nation’s “father” is the stressor and the uncertainty, we are without a core. Rather than a cohesive orb, we have become fractured flotsam in irregular orbits about a volatile center that seems to threaten a big bang or big crunch at any moment. We have no room to enter for peace, no words to read that can bring comfort. Even our founding document is being used and taken advantage of in ways the framers never imagined.

I want better for my country. I want better guardians than the polarized few we have elected. I want a president and representatives that think first of what is best globally, nationally, and personally for the citizens. Now it seems all about power, the president has it, his party wants to keep it, and opposition wants to take it away. Where has love, peace, and understanding retreated to in the presence of paranoia and fear? Where has the security gone? Where is my parents’ bedroom, and the drawer with the icons of my father?

Borrowing Against Christmas

Just eight days until Christmas, and at 56, I can still feel the childhood echoes of excitement that I felt in anticipation of toys, of good food and treats, and of the smiles of exhausted parents who (unbeknownst to me at the time) had been up half the night putting toys together. The phrase “some assembly required” would always raise a rueful chuckle in Dad – and you did not want to get him started on the Coleco brand toys!

I never really had to assemble anything for my kids, thank the gods. Our greatest worry was to spend the same amount on each of them every Christmas. One thing I have never gotten used to though has been the pragmatic approach to gifts that my family has taken over the years.

As a perfect example, this year our grandson needed tires on his car and was trying to figure out how to afford them. He is a sophomore at Colorado State University (not actually germane to this story, but I like to brag), and has been taught well by his mom to budget effectively (another bragging opportunity). He has also always been meticulous about any sort of shopping from the time that he was little. He was never the kind of child to ask for everything in the world at Christmas-time. Instead he seemed to be weighing the pros and cons and cost of each toy under consideration. He could spend hours on the Target toy catalog and then hand it back to his Gigi and Bumpa with only two or three things circled. This behavior was not limited to special occasions either. It was torture to stand with him at the Chuckie Cheese’s counter selecting what combination of items would best suit him in exchange for the tickets he had earned playing countless games.

When Russell told us that he needed tires on his car, his Gigi and I did not hesitate to offer to buy a set for him. We were happy to do this because it would keep him safer, it would save him money, and it would likely save our daughter money. It was a win, win, win. Russell first offered to pay us back, which we turned down. Then he offered to pay half, and again we turned him down. He finally insisted on this being his Christmas present from us, and we relented.

Another example of this kind of behavior can be seen in my wife. Every year we try to make it up to Denver to a pet friendly hotel (can’t leave Mabel behind) and treat ourselves to a nice weekend during the Christmas season. This year was no different, and included a wonderful night at the Monaco, a meal not to be beat at Panzano’s (worth saving your pennies for!), and some fun shopping about town on Sunday. As we planned all this, my wife said to me, “This is our Christmas present to each other this year, right?” Yeesh!

I am uncomfortable with this because I am of the mind that if there is a need and we can afford it, we should just make the purchase without having my wife, or children, or grandchildren “borrow” against Christmas or a birthday or whatever occasion. Understand that my family is so practical that they may borrow months in advance of the holiday at times!

It’s not that I prefer to buy frivolous gifts, I often surprise them with practical gifts like a gift card or stationary. It’s not that I think they are being overly self-sacrificing (though they are incredibly considerate). It’s not that I am being impractical in terms of spending, it's just that they are being more practical than I. I guess my objection originates from wanting to surprise them. I want to have a choice of what I can get for them. There is joy for them in anticipation and unwrapping.

My wife and children are not as bothered by this as I. I know the kids have an unmatched record for being on Santa’s nice list (except perhaps for some high school years and even then, they weren’t too naughty), and that my wife and grandchildren are beyond reproach. So, I think they should all have at least something they want and not just something they need. Just some trinket at least that lets them know I have given them thought and might actually know them pretty well.

As selfish as it sounds, borrowing against Christmas doesn’t let me be Santa. Why can’t I be Santa? My beard is white, my eyes twinkle, I wear reading glasses, and I have the belly for it. I have also walked on a rooftop on Christmas Eve (once for my grandson Russell). And I am willing to become conversant with reindeer. Though I don’t know how to get around the neighborhood covenants against caribou.  It does make me wonder however, does pouting about not being able to be Santa make me a Grinch?

To my friends and family around the world:

Merry Christmas

Feliz Navidad

عيدميلادمجيد

کریسمس مبارک

Pay it Forward

It is funny how one thought in one direction can end up in an entirely unanticipated destination. This morning I was journaling and started off recalling my earliest memories of running. I started running with my father who was an early form of “health nut.” He was a health nut before there was such a thing. In the late sixties he was riding a bicycle to work, and was a runner before that. I came to believe this arose from his father dying of a heart attack when far to young. Sometimes I would run along with dad back when I was barely in double digits. He would slow his pace to accommodate my short legs and even shorter breath until I had to stop, and he had to go on. At this point I would walk the mile home alone in a security that most of us would not feel for a ten-year old walking home alone today.

It was a different time to be growing up (to weigh heavily on an overused platitude), especially in a small town. It was a safer world. Our mischief was not the mischief of youths today. Today, the misadventures of too many youths seem to be attempts to establish an adulthood they are not ready for. When I was growing up, my friends and I ran through the woods. We placed dirt clods on busy roads and laughed as cars crushed them. We explored the swamp down the street and often wondered if we could make money by the carving of cypress knees (the fact that none of us had those skills nor knew how to harvest cypress knees was never taken into account).

Not only was our mischief different, our view of authority was different. We respected the police that drove languidly about town. We respected the school principal who was rumored to have a paddle in his desk (complete with holes drilled through the paddle head to ease its passage through air when delivering some deserved punishment). We respected our parents. We argued less with them and listened more. Parents weren’t concerned with being our friends, but being our protectors, our safe havens, our guideposts.

Since I was raised, times have gotten progressively more complicated. I have often wondered if my generation has done justice to those we fostered. I can proudly say that the children my wife and I have raised have a wonderful since of morality, caring, and toughness that they are passing on to their children. But I look at the nation now, and I see a profound inattention to any sort of moral compass.

There seems a hole where that compass should be. A hole whose pang of emptiness is more keenly felt as men of honor in the form of John McCain and George H W Bush pass from our company. Leaders who knew we must work together, who knew that compromise serves the country better than partisan winning. Compromise in governing reflects an inclusive nature, while winning at all cost is anathema to true governance.

Just yesterday, I heard that two state legislatures in a lame duck session were attempting to pass legislation lessening the power of the incoming opposition administration. This is a reflection of our current executive branch of the federal government which rejects the nature of having co-equal branches it serves with in favor of a more dictatorial approach that favors division and disenfranchisement.

We are not the only ones experiencing the rise of hate that has been lurking just below society’s surface. Across the globe, there are nationalist movements afoot similar to a greater or lesser degree than what is happening in the United States. But we cannot address the worlds problems in this area without getting our house in order. We can only be the true leader of the world by example, and not by a fiat bestowed upon our brow by our own hands. We must move from the fringes and recognize that we are a diverse nation that must be addressed as a whole, rather than ruled over by the cudgel of those given electoral control. If in politics we yield to the notion of winners, then we all are ultimately the losers.

The salvation I seek, for me can be found in the manner and times I was raised. There will always be a need for a moral compass. There will always be a need for authority that recognizes duty over power. There will always be a need to understand right and wrong. There will always be a need of those who pay it forward. Our jobs as adults and parents are not done yet.

No Finish Line

I have put in hours working on my family tree and there is no finish line. How could there be. I am but one Handal of many past Handals, and many present Handals, and untold futures of Handals. As for my task, I have stacks of pictures downstairs to scan, catalog, share, and if possible put into some kind of context. I have the family trees of others to study. I have notes to take and stories to write.

I have discussed before that this journey began on Ancestry.com, and it blew wide open with the DNA test my wife gave me for Father’s Day this year. With the help of new found family members my tree came together abruptly. With the help of family is how it should be, forming ties as I find links.

I first followed the tree from me along a reasonably direct path to a man named Handal in Tiqoa in the West Bank in the late 1500’s. His son Nassar Handal moved to Bethlehem and fathered the line I am part of. After some aimless wondering and refinement of my tree, I am fleshing out the tree, adding branches, twigs, and leaves with the information I have at hand and that shared by my new relatives. For the last few weeks, I have sat hours at a time in a recliner with a lap board, at my desk, at the kitchen table. I have bent over a lineage of Handals organized by branches stemming from Nassar and have progressed to reorganizing it by generations. There are twelve or so generations to go through and record.

With my reading glasses on, my head turns left-right-left again reading the tree and copying it to levels/generations with my fountain pen and my legal pads. It has been an effort that makes me feel monk-like. My home-my monastery. My documents, ancient tomes that must be preserved the only way possible, by transcribing, by sharing. All I need to complete the image is guttering candlelight and a nondescript brown robe of rustic fabric tied at my waist by a length of cord.

Name after name I write. Names that would be familiar to anyone -Evelyn, George, Eddie, Nathalie, Frank. Mostly the names are exotic - Khalil, Jamile, Issa, Jadallah. Some even straddle the two realms: Yousef (Joseph), Yacoub (Jacob), Ibrahim (Abraham). The places of births, deaths, weddings exist as places I have seen, places I know, and places I must look up to find, to pinpoint: Brooklyn, Beit Jala, Tiqoa, Amman, San Pedro Sula, Jerusalem, Santiago, Paris, Bethlehem.

I melt into the pages of names and places and dates as I read and write. My hand and wrist are starting to ache, but it makes me smile because this should be an effort. I am to the point now that I am transcribing, re-ordering the names of those that are alive, the names of those I am older than. I have gone through the past, to the present, to looking at this vast family’s potential. I know that I am exploring only those of us who originate from Bethlehem and Nassar, and there are other ties from other regions in the Arab world. Maybe one day all these branches will connect. That is my hope. If not with me, then with some other Handal, perhaps some future unnamed Handal.

In this way, I am doing my part to add to an oral heritage. The stories both told and written that color our history. That make that history rise from pages of pictures and scribbles and stories to take on a four-dimensional image comprised of height, breadth, depth, and a time locked shadow we call our ancestors. And the best part is that I am answering questions as the disturbed dust of the past raise other questions. Questions upon questions. I now understand why question begins with quest.

Its not the Kilt on the Man, but the Man in the Kilt

My mornings have a typical routine that often starts with a blind groping for my phone to shut off the alarm. Once I am out of bed, I check my phone for calls and to find out what is going on with my friends and family on social media. Then bathing, then work. Today’s routine was thrown into shock as the first posting on my Facebook feed was this from friend and writer, Mary Ogden Fersner:

Sadly, Jeff is preparing his body and mind for end of life. Please everyone remember him as the funny, fun-loving, vibrant person he’s always been. He survived juvenile diabetes, beat kidney disease with a transplant, and a leg amputation with a positive attitude and spirit few would be able to muster. Cancer however, is a brutal foe. It has run him over like a Mack truck. This was Jeff on Plaid Night during the 2018 ShipRocked Cruise. He is my heart forever.

Jeff is my friend who except for a brunch last year, has been lost to me as so many friends by time and distance. We reconnected (as many reconnections have happened for me) through Facebook. And since Jeff is not a social media guy, I kept in touched with him through his wife, Mary, and in doing so got to know her. And though I can’t claim to know Mary well, she seems perfectly suited for Jeff, someone who can easily stand toe-to-toe with Jeff in spirit, love, and life.

Though we are both from Orangeburg, SC, I didn’t meet Jeff until I went to Clemson. My first roommate was Baxter Sowell. Baxter and I had gone to high school together. Baxter was good friends with the Fersner clan, and through him I got to know Jeff and his two fine brothers Joey and Johnny. Jeff quickly became a friend, co-conspirator, and mentor. Before I was out of school, Jeff and I shared an apartment. He was the last roommate I had in college.

Jeff (as-well-as all Fersners) is very smart. I did not know their sister well, but the three boys all earned master’s degrees in engineering. Jeff’s was in mechanical engineering and had something to do with heat transfer by radiation in a vacuum. What I remember most about it was when I would go to the bowels of Riggs Hall to visit Jeff where the laboratories are found, he would often demonstrate some of the fun things you could do with liquid nitrogen (the liquid nitrogen was required to achieve as close to a perfect vacuum as would be possible). My favorite demonstration was when Jeff would open the canister and tilt it to spill some on the floor. Briefly the liquid nitrogen would flow out like water upon the floor with a white cloud of cold about it, and before the puddle spread even an inch it was gone, evaporated. Cool.

Jeff was the first person to get me drunk. He along with other friends took me down to the Tiger Town Tavern where I was introduced to the game of quarters. Who knows how many cups of beer I had to chug, but it was enough to make the short walk back to campus a long stagger. There is no hangover like your first hangover. For this, I blame you, Jeff.

Jeff and I used to go downtown to drink, and sometimes we would stop outside the girls section of Johnstone Dorms on the way back to our rooms. With girls looking out the window into the dark of night I would do a “magic” act with Jeff accompanying me on the music, “Da DaDa Tah..Da Da DaDa Tah…” The act consisted of such feats as putting my hands behind my head, and when I pulled them back in front they would be locked together by rings formed by thumb and index finger of each hand. Once I demonstrated the unbreakable bond of those interlocked “rings”, my joined hands would go back behind my head and reappear separated! (maybe you had to be there) Some nights we would take home as much as fifty to seventy-five cents in pennies and nickels and dimes the laughing young women had tossed out the windows to us. By-the-way, I still perform those incredible acts of illusion – just for children. I don’t do it for coins, I just do it for the smiles.

At Clemson, Jeff was on the CDCC (Central Dance and Concert Committee). Through this connection, I was able to help with setting up for concerts by the likes of Stanley Jordan, and Jimmy Buffet. At the Jimmy Buffet concert, while I was onstage with Jeff moving monitors around and laying down cabling I turned to the thin early audience that had already gathered, spread and raised my arms, and yelled, “Save the whales!”

Jeff is the first diabetic I ever knew. Now I have a son-in-law and granddaughter both with type 1 like Jeff. Jeff never let diabetes get him down, and he never let it hamper him in any way I was aware of. There was a particular joke Jeff liked to play on others. As an example, I would be walking down the hall from my dorm room towards Jeff’s when he would run out into the hall with one arm flat against his side and the other wrapped around his body to hold it while yelling, “It’s stuck! It’s stuck! Help me!” all the while with a big grin on his face. When I looked at the arm he held, I would see a diabetes syringe high in the bicep flopping a little. Having seen this often, I would move to the side of him and kick him in the ass as he removed the syringe with a flare and a laugh. This is the Jeff I knew.

Jeff isn’t supposed to die. He is a friend, forever locked into my memory as one of the people that defined my all-important college years for me. And even though he will always be in my thoughts as someone unique and happy and just a little mad, he was supposed to be immortal. As my love and prayers float out to him and Mary, I hope Mary knows that my wife and I are here for her. As my friend lies in the hospital, I hope he knows I love him. I’m a bit angry at God, Jeff was supposed to be immortal.

House without Elders

"A house without an elderly person is like an orchard without a well."

Arabic proverb

Without an oral tradition, how will we know who we are and where we came from. I let my best chance at building such a history slip away by not being curious enough when my father was alive and before Alzheimer’s assaulted him. In fact, I didn’t get the longing to establish a heritage, to learn about the Handal family line until just a few years ago after more than 50 years of my life had passed.

My start to this journey seemed hopeless. I was armed with so little. I am one of five children – sons and daughters of Frank, grandsons and granddaughters of Nicholas, great grandsons and great granddaughters of Solomon. That’s it, I could go back three generations from us and not even completely.

I did know the two children of my Grandfather Nicholas. They were Frank my father, and Eddie my uncle. It gets very thin beyond that. Nicholas was married to Emilia who was a Handal before marriage from a branch in Honduras. I knew Emilia (called by we children, Nanny) had at least two sisters, Lydia and Anita. Finally, I was reasonably sure that Nicholas had brothers named George and Joe and a sister Mary. Also, I had been told that the Handal family is a large family and that Nicholas immigrated from Bethlehem. I take no small amount of pride at the thought of being part of a family from Bethlehem.

When I started I used Ancestry.com to perform my research and develop a Handal family tree. The first layer was easy enough to fill. I know the birthdays, spouses, and children of myself and my siblings, and I know the names of my first cousins (Eddie’s kids), but no dates etc. The lack of information on Brian, Paul, and Jeanie is due to a rift in the family that occurred around the time my Uncle Eddie was taken far too early by cancer. I do not know the specifics. I do not know our perspectives or theirs. Further, I have no interest in knowing. They were issues of a different generation that were not my issues. I am just happy that after I started the family tree in a fit of coincidence, my Cousin Brian reached out to me on Facebook.

Facebook. Social Media. I have been such an idiot. I would think of my cousins from time to time over the years, but I didn’t know where they were or what they were doing. I knew that eventually my Aunt Joan (their mom) had re-married, but I did not know where she moved to. Time passed, the computer rose to prominence and social media was born. In that revolution of technology I had reconnected with old friends of my youth, but I never thought to look for the cousins time had misplaced. God bless you Cousin Brian.

I came back to my family tree (more a small bush than anything) after Father’s Day this year when my wonderful wife surprised me with a gift which will be giving for a long time – the Ancestry.com DNA kit. I was so excited when she gave it to me. I looked it up online, I researched it, I memorized the instructions (all of 4 steps), performed the test, and sent it in!

While waiting for results, I was able to refine my research techniques and filled in Nicholas’s generation though was still woefully short on Nanny’s. I found an image of the 1930’s census that had Solomon and his brood all living together in Brooklyn. So Solomon had immigrated as well. I found out the name of Solomon’s wife (or at least his second wife), and all the siblings of Nicholas along with a couple of daughters-in-law to Solomon (one of which was Nanny). I was getting excited, so I continued to dig. I found a sobering image of my Nanny’s gravestone. I located a passport application and picture for Solomon. I located the death date of most of Nicholas’s generation as well as associated locations.

While I was waiting, I did not want to lose momentum. So I worked on the Bell side of the family and started a family tree springing from Mom. I did the same thing with the Stovall family which is Jean-Marie’s enjoyable and loving clan. Finally, in less than a month’s time my DNA results arrived.

Thankfully they were as expected. I didn’t have to change out a desert heritage for lederhosen or give up my search into the annuls of Bethlehem for the cold climes of Siberia. When I gave permission to Ancestry.com to match my results to the results of others, I was given further proof of its reliability as one of my first cousins on Mom’s side of the family turned up as a top relation. Thank goodness, Jeb, we are related both by what we have been told and science!

It is fascinating to review and study the link of potential relatives. The list starts at first cousins and moves along rating the chances of a match as excellent, good, fair, and poor. One such excellent match was an unknown fourth cousin, Claudia. She had an amazingly full family tree rife with Handals. I did not see in it then a direct link to my branch (I knew too little) but reached out to her to ask if she could give me advice on how to find my own way.

Claudia lives in the U.S. but was born in Hondurus (Tegucigalpa I believe). I have enjoyed getting to know her and commune with a fellow Handal. She did me the favor of introducing me to her cousin Jorge who she described as the “Family Historian.” He lives in Tegucigalpa and has graciously and selflessly helped me. He inquired about what I knew of the Honduran Handals in my lineage. I told him of my grandmother, of her being from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and the names of her sisters. The name Lydia Handal was one he knew. There was a famous Honduran composer named Lydia Handal who was a national treasure. I didn’t know anything about this, though my father did have an album of my Great Aunt Lydia’s entitled “From Lydia with Love,” but I didn’t know of any other music.

Jorge then referred me to Guillermo (another cousin) who lived closer to San Pedro Sula. Guillermo helped me look into Lydia as he also filled me in on some generalities with the Handal family in Honduras – the largest of the Arab families in Honduras Guillermo said. But I had too little information on Lydia for him to be sure that our Lydia Handal was THE Lydia Handal.

Meanwhile, Jorge sent me an invitation to the “Handal Family Worldwide” Facebook group. My family has a Facebook group. Wow. On there, I introduced myself and in turn have met several other Handals who I have spoken with and found to be charming and wonderful. One of them, Myriam, stunned me with the question, “Is your father Frank, the same Frank Handal that took me and my daughters sailing in Charleston.” We talked back and forth on it, Charleston threw me as Dad did not do much sailing there. He mostly sailed on Lake Murry outside of Columbia, SC. Then I had a “Doh!” moment and sent her a picture of my dad and asked if that Frank were her Frank. It was (and that made me smile). Myriam turned out to be a first cousin of Dad’s, and thus my second cousin. I was a bit floored. Myriam is a daughter of a brother of Nanny’s. She was born in San Pedro Sula though lives in the U.S. now. She then confirmed that her Aunt Lydia, my Great Aunt Lydia, was THE Lydia Handal of national treasure fame, and that performance of her songs can be found on YouTube. Amazing.

Then another relative of some flavor, Joe, contacted me through Handal Family Worldwide and linked me to a document that connected me back to Nassar Handal in Bethlehem who was born in the mid 1600's. It was an incredibly emotional moment when I found our family within this document, and our lineage going back unbroken to the seventeenth century. My head is still spinning. Such a generous act to bring us into the fold. Prior to this when I would see the name Handal my faith in relationship was based solely on spelling, but now there is a feeling that reaches into my gene memory that I have never experienced before.

The joy of being back with my first cousins, the loving act of a simple gift from my wife, and walls tumbled. I am expanding family. I am not only gathering together something to pass along to my children and grandchildren, but something that can be shared with my siblings and my cousins Brian, Paul, and Jeanie. There are times that a task seems daunting and incredibly large, and then something magical occurs and the world itself shrinks to such a small thing I don’t know why I was ever intimidated by it. Now I can bring an elder into the house, and hopefully soon I will be able to say more than just that the Handal family is large and comes from Bethlehem.

Ghosts of Birthdays Past

My birthday is around the corner. For quite some time now, I have not had much interest in celebrating my birthday, I just don’t think that it is that important. Still with 56 of them behind me, they have supplied me with many smiles and special moments to remember.

Actually the first birthday memory I have is one that involved a friend’s birthday when I was just a little guy. It was one of those birthdays where mom would take me to K-mart or Eckards to pick out a toy as a gift for the party. I think I always wanted the gifts Mom got for my friends. This particular time I remember sitting in the front seat as Mom drove me in our station wagon to John Wilson’s birthday party. I was crying because she said I had to give the wrapped gift in my lap to John, that it was not for me. I don’t know why that memory or part of a memory is so vivid, but it is. Maybe I grew to be ashamed of my selfishness, maybe deep down I think all gifts should be mine, or maybe it is just one of those memories that you hold onto for no particular reason like the fact that Yule Gibbons (that once famous eater of pine trees) was the spokes person for Grape Nuts.

As for my birthdays, here are the top three in no particular order. They all concern adult Teever, and they all have their place in my heart for a reason.

The first one that comes to mind was when I was at Clemson. I did not have too many friends on campus. From the beginning, I fell in with a local group of runners. Great guys that I will never forget. Together we formed the Outta Control Track Club (OCTC) and to me our adventures will always be legendary. Anyway, I don’t remember which birthday it was – likely my 20th. I invited several of these friends to dinner down the road at the Swamp Guinea Restaurant in Hartwell, Georgia. I did not tell any of them it was my birthday. I just wanted to spend some of that birthday in the company of my friends and surprise them by paying for the dinner (my way of giving thanks for another year and the blessings it had brought). As it turned out, my friends knew it was my birthday and they surprised me. They surprised me with gifts and paying for my dinner – fried catfish and fries served family style. We all loved the Swamp Guinea. That fish camp is still there and is worth the price of admission, especially if you are short on making your grease quota – no kale allowed.

The second birthday in my top 3 would be my 30th birthday. At the beginning of 1992 was when I met Jean-Marie and began dating, followed by the dive off a steep cliff into love. That summer Jean-Marie said she wanted to throw my 30th birthday party for me. We had it in the back yard of her house. I vividly recall being surrounded by friends in the glow if the little white lights in the apple tree. It was very special to me that Jean-Marie would have that party, invite all my friends for a warm summer night of food, drink, and laughter. Few days have made me feel more special (with the obvious exception of our wedding day).

Finally, there was a particular birthday when I came home to celebrate with mom and to see my father who by that time was in a full time Alzheimer’s care unit. It must have been a birthday in my forties although I don’t recall which one. Jean-Marie was with me and we were staying with mom. It was a nice little party as some of my siblings were able to make it. Living out in Colorado the sightings of my South Carolina bound siblings is far too sparse. I know my little sister Ginny was there with her family at mom’s for cake (they only lived a mile away). I don’t know what if any gifts I got, but I won’t forget the cake. After I blew out the candles the cake disappeared back into the kitchen along with Jean-Marie, Mom, Ginny, and Ginny’s eldest Cameron. My niece Cameron’s birthday is just a week after mine, not that it bears any on this story but as long as I am allowed to babble – I’m going to take full advantage of it. In my family, the tradition is that the first slice of birthday cake goes to the birthday celebrant. This is critical. Because we didn’t cut the cake into wedges. The cake is first cut vertically through the middle. Then pieces are sliced perpendicular to that cut. You may ask why that should make any difference. Well it does, it makes a big difference. The first piece (and only 3 others in the cake) will have one full side covered with icing and not just two of the edges. In my family, that slice is the most coveted. So out of the kitchen comes little Cameron with my piece of cake and I can’t wait. She stopped just outside the kitchen and smiled holding the plate out in my direction. “Uncle Teever, Annie (her grandmother/my mom) told me to give this piece to you. Can I have it? I already licked it?” It is hard to stop smiling when I think of that – and yes I gave her the first piece.