IMAGE: untitled, closeup of old person’s hand, probably Max

[56]

EDITOR: In ??year?? Lisa met with Max, quite evidentally to sum up what they had been doing together since ??year??.

MAX: Did you put in the memories that you're writing?

LISA: What about them – oh, yes! On every page there's gonna be at least one memory.

MAX: Yeah? Heh, heh.

LISA: I have been working so hard, you can't imagine, Grandpa. I have everything you said on these transcripts from the tapes, so you'd better watch what you say! No – I want you to be honest. What I want to do is to focus on you and what you have to say. I'm writing on what you have to say because I'm third generation and see things so differently, but I want to write about it.

MAX: So we don't argue about any of the points, we just give you, we give over the bare facts. How things developed, I didn't do anything hard that I should be considered a hero; I was no hero. I was a plain, ordinary person, with all the feelings, all the good parts of people, of youth, and of bad parts.

EDITOR: It occurs to Lisa that Max had not tracked the process they had worked through together.

NARRATOR: After three previous interviews in which you revealed more of your life than ever before, it suddenly became apparent that you had done so without any conception of what I was doing, or why. Certainly you got a big kick out of the questions I asked, going through alternating periods of shyness and arrogance with the tape recorder. Sometimes you responded to my queries with much enthusiasm and detail; other times one question would initiate a long reflective monologue, that could conceivably span several times and issues at once. But regardless of how you treated each question; whether you skirted an issue or repeated an event, you spoke with little awareness of what I was aiming for. It was really only in this last conversation that you questioned my reasons, and I struggled to find a way to explain it to myself, and thus be able to explain it to you.

MAX: So you think your honest opinion is, that your enterprise is gonna be something good?, important?

IMAGE:  untitled (Max with hands at his cheeks)

LISA: Are you kidding? There's no doubt about it, in my mind. The whole family's interested in it! Yes, I am much younger, and I grew up a Jew, but I grew up a Jew much differently than...

MAX: Than other Lisas.

EDITOR: Lisa drills down to what she is after: how does her life track with his.

LISA: – others, and yet there are some very real similarities between the way you were raised, and the way I was raised. I want to get to understand that.

MAX: So where are the similarities? What are your similarities?

LISA: I don't know, Grandpa. That's what I'm trying to find out. A way of thinking. It's something that's innate – it's nothing that you can look at, or see externally, because the traditions are different, the cultures are different. But there are some things that don't change, and that's what being a Jew is all about. And I just...

IMAGE: untitled (Max in pool facing away from camera)

MAX: What doesn't change, what doesn't change...

LISA: I don't know, there's a certain unity.

NARRATOR: As hard as I was trying to illuminate the bond I felt to exist between us, you succeeded in thwarting my every effort. Although I barely knew you, there was something that was so intriguing and complex about you, yet very real and recognizable. The "Jewish identity" I was supposed to attain in Hebrew School never materialized, but your presence said more to me than any suburban Rabbi of my childhood. Your "Jewish identity" was borne of the experience of oppression that we of the second and third generations have been fortunate enough to have been spared. The durability of the Jews has always been based on their forced exile from country to country, and on the perpetual hatred of those nations that did accept them. The alternating pattern of repression and tolerance created and destroyed Yiddishkeit, the culture of the East European Jews. You were so much a part of the flow of the Jewish masses that you were hardly aware of it. But it was a major determinant of your personality, your values and attitudes having been shaped by the continual need to survive.

MAX: You go to college, and you've already tasted the taste of making money. You worked by Paul a few years, and you made money, you spent your own money, you're on your own! I think you are a made product!

LISA: A made product? What do you mean?

MAX: I mean that you have everything at your disposal. You can go and make money in a food store, or in a bakery,  or –

LISA: I could be a secretary.

IMAGE:  untitled (Max in necktie, scratching back of his head)

MAX:  – a secretary, or you could ride horses, what couldn't you do? It's not similar to me at all!

LISA: Right! You were up against odds and anti-Semitism and problems of being poor that I have never known and that I hopefully won't know. But that's not what I'm saying is similar. There's just a way of thinking that allows you and I to talk that's the same...

MAX: Well, this is all right, this is... partly, two parts. The love that I have for you, is unheard of. Usually grandchildren swim away from their parents, and I consider myself not exceptional. I'm not educated, I didn't go to college, don't drive no car...

LISA: But you are educated!

MAX: No...

LISA: You're one of the most educated people I know!

MAX: No, no...

[57]

LISA: You can talk, you can articulate, you have a wonderful vocabulary, you've read all your life…

NARRATOR: While you might not have been terribly aware of your position as an upholder of Jewish traditions and values, I do believe that you were quite cognizant of differences between yourself and your children. All you could do with the knowledge of these differences was to place yourself at a distance. When it dawned upon me that you saw my life as already being more successful than your own, I realized how inferior you felt yourself to be. It also became apparent that you saw more value in a formal higher education, which you lacked, than in an experiential education. You really had no conception of how much you had taught yourself. And I, listening to you compare yourself to me, was at a loss as to how to convince you otherwise.

LISA: I know you're not a hero, and you're not anybody famous, and you're not Rothschild, and you're not whatever, but you have opinions and you think! And you're not willing to say, "What good am I, because here I am and a series of things happened to me in my life, but... I have a lot to offer!" – You've always expressed your opinion and you think about it! You don't just fly off the mouth, you know? That's why I – I respect that, and I want to know... what it is...

MAX: But I figure, Lisa, I figure that you with your ability, you should use it up for your benefit. Because whenever you have an old man like me, it isn't so well-paid, so profitable like this.

LISA: Grandpa, don't you know that this biography of you is for my benefit? I'm not being selfless, I'm being very selfish! How? Because I feel like I can learn a lot from you.

MAX: I don't know, I don't know... I feel myself very small... Very spit out... You have a full mouth with spit, and you don't know what to do, you just spit it out and you're done with it.

MAX: Now I feel that way sometimes because I see the way your father, your mother, Ben, Herbie, everybody, they go out of their way to change their way of life on account of me. You know what I mean?

LISA: I don't think it's as much as you think it is! Do you think anybody is resentful because...

MAX: Well, little by little, little by little, I'm afraid of the future, that I should be resentful to them, yeah. For instance, you're aware, the latest story about my coming operation. Do you know about it?

LISA: I know that they had to decide what in their opinion would be better for you! It has nothing to do with inconveniencing them. They want to see you read! They know how important that is for you.

MAX: I'll tell you the truth. I'm beginning to believe that it's not such an important thing.

LISA: Why?

MAX: 'Cause the trouble that all the children go through...

LISA: What trouble?

MAX: The trouble with making one appointment, and taking another appointment, and then comes in the money part, the expenses of the cost. And I had to go to Benny for Yontif, and I had to go over [to] Herbie to sleep over two nights...

LISA: Did you have a good time?

MAX: I had, but the inconvenience I gave to the children, the question is, is it worth it?

NARRATOR: Your super-sensitivity towards being dependent upon the children really confused me, Grandpa, in light of your coming operation. The chance to read again promised a fairytale ending to a long life of struggles. Yet I soon realized that you really weren't fabricating imaginary problems; you were dealing with the realities of your situation. The reminders that you were going to be eighty-five years old were with you constantly, and could no longer be romantically eliminated. Instead every aspect of that which concerned you was magnified in a constant effort to determine whether it was all worth it in the end.

IMAGE:  untitled (Max flanked by two women)

MAX: I don't say you personally, 'cause you're an exceptional soul, exceptional that you go for those things that not every American girl looks at that, you're different. If you find an interesting pleasure, it's a different story! But in general, American girls don't bother with those things.

MAX: Because you see over here elderly people, pity on them, pity, their children come here and they just throw it out. Just like an automat comes, you throw in a dime and it gives you a bottle of beer. But they haven't got no feelings, it's just automatically. I could show you a woman, she's rich! And the way she boasts about her grandchildren, about this, it's only a matter of boasting that's all. Underneath, there isn't anything. It's just automatically they come, they pay their respects, and they go back. So in your case, it's different!

LISA: What about besides me?... the rest of the family?

MAX: The rest of the family, they are doing automatically a duty. They are confronted with a problem, not me, and not Grandma, not your mother, expected that it should turn out the way it turned out with Pauline with me. When all of a sudden after seven and a half years things change from the top to the bottom. That nobody could do it...

LISA: But don't think for a moment that that has so shocked everybody that it's altered their lives drastically. It's altered your life, but everybody is only interested in your comfort, and it's not an inconvenience... Well, Grandpa, I'm not gonna argue with you, because you know better. I don't know, but – all I know is the way I feel, and the way my parents feel, and the love that's there... is very strong. And if my parents feel that they're obligated to do something, they're not going to do it. They're not that way – they're very independent.

MAX: (Pause) By the way, do you know we're having turkey dinner at your house?

[58]

IMAGE: untitled (Max at a meal, elbow on table)

NARRATOR: Well, Max, in being so damned honest you succeeded in putting me on the spot, forcing me to confront your situation, the family's role in it, and ultimately how I was going to deal with it. I was elevated by your compliments to my ego, deflated when I realized that I was the only recipient of them. But you should know that I am not quite deserving of your praise. Wasn't the whole blossoming of this project the result of my desire to justify your sad existence?

NARRATOR: Originally it was a sense of helplessness, of not knowing how to just be with you, that brought me to you with my tape recorder, only later evolving into a quest to learn about Max.

NARRATOR: But the attaining of such knowledge carried with it dubious rewards. We were breaking through barriers in our communication, only to confront more unresolved emotions. We were both facing conflicting sentiments of pride and need, confidence and insecurity. Your way out for the moment was to change the subject, crushing me in its abruptness but creating the needed space for both of us.

MAX: For instance, that incident that changed the future of my operation, eats me up alive. Because when we went to Ben's doctor, and Ben didn't take a doctor from the street, he took a doctor who did an operation for somebody from Ben's office. And we decided to take that doctor. And so we went to the doctor, he examined me, and decided that he's gonna do it. So somebody else heard about it, and he says do you have another doctor. So we listened to the other doctor, we didn't even listen to the other doctor.

LISA: Then what's the complaint?

MAX: The complaint, it isn't exactly a complaint because I don't know what to complain. We went to the doctor with Ben, and he examined me, and at the office, we had to wait an hour and a half, till the picture develops...

LISA: You mean the X-ray.

MAX: ... X-ray. So after the examination he put in some drops over there. And until we got through with the doctor I saw that I could read in the magazine lines that I couldn't read before.

LISA: Why do you think that is?

MAX: On account of the drops he put in. Okay. That showed that he knows what he is doing, the doctor. And the fact that originally Benny made an appointment with the doctor, 'cause this doctor did something to his boss, Benny's boss. All of a sudden, the thing was changed. Instead of sticking to his appointment, they started with another doctor. So, to say that they misled me, I would be a fool. They do their best for me. But something changed!

LISA: You came to the conclusion that because of these eyedrops this doctor seemed to know what he was doing. And it bothers you that they switched the appointment –

MAX: Yeah...

LISA:  – for you to see this other doctor.

MAX: Yeah...

LISA: Um, I think that the first doctor could be a very good doctor. But I think that the procedure is more traumatic than the other one.

MAX: Traumatic?

LISA: Traumatic. I think it's for your well-being that they're concerned with. I don't know why you're putting so muchimportance on the fact that it changed. It wouldn't have changed unless there was a good solid reason behind it.

MAX: Well to me, when he put in three drops in my eyes, and let it develop, and in the meantime I took a magazine, and I saw lines that I couldn't see before –

LISA: But Grandpa, the drops don't mean –

MAX:  – showed, showed that he knew what he was doing!

IMAGE:  untitled  (Max with taller, younger man who is holding a jacket over his shoulder)

LISA: Well, maybe not. That could have been due to a lot of things. And that was a temporary effect. That doesn't really have much to do with the problem itself. That doesn't say to me what he knows about cataracts.

MAX: Look you can't prove it one way, and I can't prove it the other way.

NARRATOR: It had been apparent for some time before you came to New York that your eyesight was a major source of your despondency. Although the trauma of Pauline leaving you was certainly dominating your thoughts, after awhile your brooding turned towards your eyes, the root of your problems. At first we were all convinced that nothing could be done, and so we tried to make you as comfortable as possible and to encourage your acceptance of the situation. But when it became conceivable that a cataract operation might indeed restore some of your eyesight, the family eagerly explored the possibilities. It was necessary to get several opinions; they were considering your psychological as well as your physical well-being.

NARRATOR: But while they could determine the best alternative, they could not totally eliminate your fears. All the convincing and reassuring could go only so far; ultimately only you could decide if it was worth it. With all the support your doubts and indecision were based on matters far more complex and farreaching. My dream was to see you once again reading the Sunday Times. But I believe that such a simplistic vision had little relevance to you, and to the rest of your life.

MAX: I go with the idea that Benny, everybody, all the children want one thing for me. The best. Now which way is the best, nobody can tell. The way that they describe it is, that this eye, we can't do nothing. But this eye can be focused. So, there's a chance for me that it would give me full vision in this eye. They don't tell me full vision, but they

[59]

wanted me to believe full vision. And this is a good thing what they want me to believe, because otherwise what would I need it [for] altogether?

LISA: Well, do you mean that they don't say you'll get full vision, but they want you to believe that you will?

MAX: No, nobody can guarantee this. The only thing, there is a live thing over there, and this is the way to do it. To make this here cataract work again.

LISA: Well, that's done a lot! It's a very common operation.

MAX: So in the meantime, we stopped off everything. So... I can't bring any charges against anybody!

LISA: Grandpa, I don't know why you should! Because you must believe that if they changed, if they decided that you should see this other doctor, there must be a good reason for it, and it has only to do with your health! But – you're letting your imagination run away with you. Don't do that. You must believe... that this is the best. They don't want to put you into any situation which is in any way not going to be the most beneficial to you especially. When there's another possibility on the horizon. And that's all they're doing. Don't look at it in terms of a delay. Look at it as just an exploratin of all the possibilities. Isn't it true that three months ago you were saying to me, "my God, my good nobody konta anything could be done. And from then to now, is terrific! You know, at one point, I don't know if you did, but I didn't think that there was anything they could do. And now, it's not hopeless. You have to explore all the possibilities.

MAX: So I'm doing it!

NARRATOR: The enormous scope of your doubts and fears kept you fluctuating like a pendulum, perusing, weighing the disadvantages with advantages. Acknowledging the fact that your family was primarily concerned with your best interests, you were willing to believe in the possibility of regaining full vision in your one operating eye You also recognized that the move to see another specialist was the logical thing to do; yet pervasive throughout was your helplessness and fear, coloring all conversation. We all were thus forced into reiterating and expounding upon the same themes, trying to give you encouragement and to allay your apprehension.

MAX: But all this, darling... turn around, we come back to where we started. It means me!

LISA: What do you mean?

IMAGE:  untitled (Max with 3 women, two men, 2 babies, and a toddler)

MAX: I mean that I'm in a bad position, seeing the way the children call, and talk over the phone, and drop everything and come. I couldn't manage with my glasses, and Herbie had to come here and drop everything in the evening and collect me the glasses, and collect me the face... It falls hard on him! And your father drops everything, last time he dropped everything and brought me to a ear man...

LISA: Grandpa, he would do it for me, he would do it for a friend, he would do it for anybody who needed him! There's a feeling that it's a family unity, you just can't turn your back on that. You're talking as if you feel that you're a burden...

MAX: I'm talking about from time to time I am a burden.

LISA: But, but I don't think you are. Listen I would say you're a burden if you were an unpleasant person to be with. If you weren't a nice person, if you sat and complained, or if you butted in, or if you treaded where you shouldn't tread, so to speak. But you're not that way at all! Nobody minds being with you, you're funny, you've got a wit…

NARRATOR: I know now that everything you were saying could not really be disputed. Countless are the times when children in our society have had to make the decision to place a single parent in a "hotel" or nursing home. I wish you could have witnessed the struggles of your children as they battled with each other and with themselves to make the right decision. The process of soul-searching had begun with the realization of their own encroaching aging. They had to ask the inevitable question of how they would deal with their parents, and ultimately what they would want for themselves. But the harsh realities of the situation finally decreed the only solution. For you to live with one of your children would not be healthy for anybody involved. You knew this in your heart, and accepted it. Your children had their own lives – families, friends, work – and you had to accept that precisely because it was you, Max Leavitt –father, educator and guide – who was partially responsible. The values of shtetl life no longer existed, but you had never really expected them to.

NARRATOR: Yet it was difficult for you to exist with this reality comfortably, and you made yourself carry the weight. The fact that you felt bad about having to ask your children for help was partly the result of anguish over your loss of independence; but was also your reluctance to interfere with your children's lives.

NARRATOR: While you would have loved the situation to be such that you could have lived with one of your children, your pride struggled with the compromise you were forced to live with. The children's acknowledgement of their own selfishness would not allow them to see you as just a human being, their father, who needed to just be with them. In the attempt to maintain their distance, emotional and physical, they were forced into seeing you as an obligation. Yet although they could allay their guilt feelings and show their love for you at the same time, by seeing to your physical needs, the difficulty lay in getting past all the emotional barriers in order that you once again might feel like a whole factor in life.

MAX: Sometimes, sometimes I feel I am a burden on you... For instance, I ain't got my own teeth. It's no crime, you know, whose got their own teeth? So it developed to such an extent, that I can't put in my teeth myself. The gums deteriorated, and the teeth don't fit. So, so much confusion,... with the teeth, with the plate, you know. I go, like in Yiddish, they say a vertl in Yiddish, if I want to scratch my left ear, so instead of going to my left ear to scratch, so I go around my head like this (wraps arm around head).

IMAGE:  untitled  (R: Max,  L: man wearing tartan cap)

[60]

LISA: So what are you saying this in reference to, that it was a larger problem than it needed to be?

MAX: So much nuisance to be in this state. I wore false teeth since we got married. I made false teeth and I wore it, and wore it, and wore it, just like I wore glasses all my life. And I never failed to do my duty towards my job with the glasses, meaning being an operator, until the golden years came with Pauline... So I had so much trouble with my teeth, so now, if I have to put in the teeth, I have to get that nurse, you know her? She should find a device, how to put them in. And then Herbie came, and he was excited, and he told me which part to take out, which part to put in, which part you use salt water, which part you use regular water, a nuisance, you know, a nuisance.

LISA: What's a nuisance? It's a nuisance for you to have to do that!

MAX: Yeah, to do it, yeah! Life gets miserable.

LISA: Why should life be miserable? Look, you make a choice. If you want teeth that are going to work, you're going. to have to take care of them in that way.

MAX: Yeah…

NARRATOR: Your desire for independence greatly overshadowed your awareness of how, in  fact, you created a certain amount of freedom for yourself. You weren't interested in sitting in a chair in the lobby, day after day, waiting for death. I suppose that as the months went by, it was inevitable that the knowledge of your deteriorating faculties would cause a gradual weakening of your resolve. Although nothing was ever said to me directly, I wonder if in those days you ever wished for death.

LISA: You get used to it, you know, it's just like I get up and I brush my teeth in the morning, I also put my contact lenses in. And at night when I brush my teeth, I take them out. So it's just adapting! Everything's a big thing with you!

MAX: So, you're a young kid, you can do it! But I, for me, it falls out.

LISA: Well look, you're you. Your independence isn't where you'd like it to be, and you have to depend on other people, and you feel they resent you for that, and you feel like you're a burden to them. Listen, Grandpa, you said that your father's mother lived with you all your life, right?

MAX: Sure.

LISA: And you always accepted that, that's the way it was. She might've not gotten along with your mother, but that was their own problem. The fact was, she was part of the family and that's what had to be done, there was no doubt about it. Nobody resents you because you need them. Is that what America means to you? You know? You've had a hard life, and maybe that's the thing, you know, maybe you've been so independent and you've had to be independent, because nobody was gonna do it for you, that now, to go back on that... You know I don't blame you... for not liking it, but you shouldn't be upset about it...

MAX: (interrupting) Is there enough light for you?

LISA: Nah.

MAX: You want another light?

LISA: Nah, do you want the light?

MAX: 'Cause I can't see you in the dark. (Max adjusts the light)

LISA: That's why, that's why you really have to get over that.

MAX: Well, I don't know, we didn't make that choice, fate made the choice, to throw me out over here from society, that wonderful sight of it we develop here, and now we have problem with my eyes, it seems to me that something happened that brought us a little hope! From the operation, maybe, I would like to get back my sight! As much as I can, that's all. One thing at a time!

LISA: Yeah, that's right, and right now that is the most important thing.

MAX: Right now, yeah, of course! I'm trying to get along with these people, people like me here. I go to pray with them, though, over here, every Saturday morning. And I try to be friends with everybody. What else can I do?

NARRATOR: Out of my desperate desire for you to accept your situation and to be happy I stabbed at anything that came to mind. I babbled on in search of parallels between your life and other's in an effort to establish a base of truth that you could apply to your situation. Although my display of verbiage was largely incohesive and ended on a weak note, you allowed it to sink in –through yet another interruption– and responded to it. Your survival mechanisms once again employed the romantic's realism, seeing what good really could exist from all angles. The question I had pondered earlier about you wishing for death was steadied. By this point I knew you well enough to see you as a fighter; it was part of the game plan that you would persevere. I was puzzled by your last comment, but not for long.

MAX: So you think your endeavor is gonna be a success?

LISA: Oh, yeah.

MAX: What do you wanna bring out, the main point?

LISA: I want to focus on you and your experiences... to try to understand a little bit more about, first of all, being an immigrant, coming from one way of life to another, living through depression and world war, and raising a family, and where your family is to you. And how you see them.

MAX: Listen. What my family means to me I'll give you just a few, a few points of information. If you would watch, the evenings with Ben and Florence coming in here, and your father and mother coming in here to visit me. When Florence comes with Benny, the way everybody turns their heads, and look you kids over, so I get fat like this, pride you know, that all these nice specimens belong to me. And I'm not telling you just for false pride. It's the truth. And this is the main thing that holds me up.

MAX: I always find different excuses, and what everybody who has a little sense understands, that I had nothing to do with the way my children conduct themselves now, the only thing that I watch and observe, and see, is that you should go straight, and not go on the wrong way. You should do things right!

NARRATOR: You had endowed your family with love and a permanent sense of family unity. It was the strength of this unity that empowered you with a continued desire to live. I see now that it was you, Grandpa, who was responsible for the existence of your family's togetherness, and you drew on its force for your sustenance. Your world was your family – but you were unquestionably an entire world unto yourself.