W Milan

W Milan

One essential trait in growing up in Milan, or any other Italian city for that matter… is belonging… that sense of belonging you may find in the US when waving a national flag… except in Italy, and most of modern Europe, national flag waving are identified with neo-fascism…
Back to my belonging… as a young Italian male, I had to have a favorite team… Milan (red and black), Inter (blue and black) and Juve (black and white)… Milan and Inter were local Milanese teams… while Juve was from Torino (Juve was owned by Agnelli owner of Fiat)… I chose Milan because red and black were my school colors back in Alexandria, making me a Milanista, i.e. rooting for the Milan team…
The only problem I have with this is that Berlusconi (yes the clown who is prime minister of Italy) owns the AC Milan team putting me, and many others, in a very uncomfortable position… by the way the W in W Milan is short for Viva…

After three years of school, I graduated with a Diploma in Electronics… where I learned basics in electronics and television. As the school end approached I went to the British Consulate and got a list of UK television manufacturing companies and wrote them asking for a job in England, explaining that I was an alumnus of British education system and was looking to live in England…
As the summer approached, I spent two months vacationing in Greece until I received a telegram from my great uncle Edmond indicating that he had a job for me in Cambridge, England.

Cambridge was a dream… it reminded me of the dreams I had of “going to university”. Atmosphere was so relaxed in Cambridge, after the hectic Milano… everybody was biking… luckily after two days I met a guy who had an extra bike… I was living in the east part of town, some six miles out… so the bike was really handy…
Work-wise was less pleasant, my boss felt they should employ a young Englishman… so I went less often to work… and I had lots of fun… until I met by chance my boss’s niece and… I was given a train ticket to Milano … So off I went back to Milano, and found a job as television technician in a local factory.

One way of making extra money was installing UHF antennas on roofs, I had paired with a colleague, who was a carpenter and spent Saturdays and Sundays installing antennas, earning another half salary, if the weather was good…

After some three years as a television repairmen, with various companies… I finally found a job in computers… I was accepted a job at IBM.

Oriundo...

Oriundo…

An Oriundo is a person of native origin, i.e. a person whose ancestry is Italian in as my case… it was/is a terminology used by soccer players to allow them to join the Italian national team…
It also was a proof of my Italian roots… it gave me a sense of belonging… it was strange because until that moment I had lived in a city who was cosmopolitan “par excellence”… Yes, I was both Italian and Jewish and I identified with both… at times.

Luckily my father, who had been living in Milano for two years, had already arranged for me to get an Italian passport… because it had been impossible for me to get one in Alexandria since I was born during WWII, and Egypt was at war against Italy, it was impossible to register my birth in the closed Italian Consulate
Everything was OK except my father indicated my birthday to be on June 18th, instead of June 28th. It took some twenty years to get that birth date rectified, but everyone knows that bureaucracy in Italy is slow…

So now I was Italian, 14 and spoke barely the Italian language… which was a problem when deciding what school to go to.

It appeared that my mother was moving to Greece because her husband Guido found a job with an Italian company in Athens… leaving me in limbo in Milan, where my grandfather (and father) would take care of me…
Schooling was another issue… where and what school.
There was in Milano a vocational high school called ORT… they had a three year program in electronics. I remember looking at a textbook in electronics at the school and the first lesson spoke of electrons… it reminded me of chemistry, which used to be my favorite subject in Egypt… so I accepted going to ORT. The school had a boarding house and we lived and ate our meals there…

Refugee

Refugee

When I was 11 my father decided to divorce my mother and marry another woman… It sounds very common, but during the mid-fifties in the Alexandrine Jewish Community it was quite scandalous… to the point that my father, and his new wife decided to make their life elsewhere and emigrated to Milano, Italy in 1955.

In late 1956 Egypt was attacked by Israel, France and Great Britain and these forces occupied the Suez Canal within a few days… By coincidence the day before this surprise attack, my mother and her newly wed husband, Guido, embarked on a liner for a vacation cruise… you can imagine the atmosphere on this ship when news of the attack came known to all…

I was staying with my grandparents, and I remember, in late October 1956, biking to school, ignoring completely about the attack, and being told to go home… until I hear from the school.

Even though the attack in itself was a surprise, there was tension in the air in Egypt, ever since Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956, without caring who built the Canal i.e. who owned the Suez Canal…
In Nasser’s view the Canal was built on Egyptian soil, by Egyptian workers, and the colonial forces had gained ample profits to date… it was time for the rightful owners to benefit from this century old construction.
I remember buying dark blue paper, the one we used to wrap our school books with, and tape the paper to the windows… in case we would have an air attack in Alexandria… luckily the only attacks, air land and sea, were in the Sinai and in the Suez Canal area far from Alexandria or Cairo…
My mother returned a few weeks later, school started… and things returned to normal…

Things were changing… First all British and French citizens were given fifteen days to leave the country… that included citizens of Malta, a British colony (my best friend since fourth grade Carmelo Baldacchino was one of them), of Cyprus, another British colony (my mother’s friend Tassia had to leave), even Algerians were viewed as French… victims of colonial rules had to rush back to their homeland…

Egypt was ruled by a corrupt king (Farouk 1) who was deposed and exiled to Italy in 1952… He was deposed by a military Junta led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, who tried to right some wrongs in his homeland… Egypt had a population of twenty million, of which one million were in Alexandria and three million in Cairo… Of the million Alexandrines about one third were non Arabs and practically everyone spoke at least another language… a real “cosmopolitan city”… Being a trading capital, life in Alexandria was pleasant and easy going for almost everyone… Egypt was rich with cotton and revenue paid for the Suez Canal… but most of the riches stayed in Alexandria…
In spite of these monies, the Egyptian "fellah" (farmer) was one of the lowest remunerated in Africa… infant mortality was at an all time high… in brief the have (in Alexandria and Cairo) had much more than the have not (in the farmland)…
So Nasser decided to put an end to it… He “encouraged” the non Arab population to leave Egypt to the Egyptians, even though some families were in Egypt since the Roman Empire, others since the twelfth century, etc…
All of a sudden there was a flux of refugees who were “homeland seekers” throughout Europe… Greece, Italy and France were the principal ones…

On June 29th, 1957… I was one of them… embarking on the Esperia from Alexandria to Napoli… Little did I know that I was seeing Alexandria for the last time…
I was a “profugo” (refugee)

She is with God

She is with God…
Written in August 2008
It is so simple,
Tikva is with God…
Says Dahlia…
And Dahlia knows…
God is a simple way for a four (and a half) year old to accept death…
So…, what’s wrong with being simplistic…
Why am I writing this… why am I addressing the most important question in the universe… the meaning of life and the meaning of death…
Am I playing with words… as an easy way out… as a way to avoid the meaning of death… or as a way to avoid the inevitable… as a way to avoid death…
Why… why did my little angel die… I already know that… I already said that… she was too tired of suffering… of suffering every breath she was taking… I remember looking at her breathe and thinking what short breaths she was taking… Vai con Dio… my little one… you will always be in my heart…
What is a coincidence… why did my generator (Cyborg) break down on the day I had to go to Tikva’s farewell… to my granddaughter’s goodbye I remember how distant to Tikva I felt when I was shaking vigorously… I felt so much out of touch with the world… just me and my shaking… was this a reminder… to tell me that I am still disabled, and that my Cyborg is just a stop-gap… a temporary stop-gap…

Did I lose all my optimism for the future… can I allow my emotions to control me… the facts…
My generator implant (the one that makes me a Cyborg) all of a sudden stopped…and
The portable remote generator which I keep for cases like these broke down too… so it was impossible for me to function…
Also when I called Stanford Hospital they told me that they could do nothing till Monday (it was Friday)…
Coincidence… or Murphy’s law…
Am I condemned to live with Murphy breathing on my neck all the time…

Cyborg II

Cyborg II
Written in August 2008
A couple of days ago, I realized that my life, the life I blessed technology for rendering me a Cyborg, for inserting a generator in my brain, a generator which would eliminate my Parkinsonian tremors.
And when I had the proof that this generator works… I felt like I was leaping high into the sky…
But that lasted a mere year and a half… Yes Cyborgs do break down they are machines… and my machine suddenly said pluf!!!, no more…

If I go back to Logic101…
Cyborgs are machines,
Machines break down,
Therefore Cyborgs break down…

Is that acceptable, for a human being to go pluf!!! because of Logic101…

Some two weeks ago, I have been confronted with the death of my two month old granddaughter, it was, and still is extremely painful to lose a child… especially because there was a reason for my sweet Tikva to leave us… she was tired of struggling to breathe “every second of her life”…

When my machine went pluf!!! without a reason… and my hands were shaking and shaking and shaking… I got scared… scared that I am going back… back to my inability to walk, drive, eat properly, etc…

It was the “GOING BACK” that scared me… I have spent my last year and a half in “GETTING BETTER”, and with great success… I found that I still “have a family”… I found that I could still travel and have friends on both sides of the Atlantic… I found that I am still a human being with love of life…

And now I am going to lose all that because of Logic101???

Unless…
Unless I remember that I am now Cyborg II
and Cyborg II is a “New and Improved” cyborg technology…
Therefore Cyborg II is unbreakable…
or unpluff!!!able

Cyborg

Cyborg
Written in August 2008

Late this morning as I was sitting on a bench waiting for my ride back home from Stanford Hospital, I was remembering about a year and a half ago when I called myself a cyborg… with my new brain probe I was jokingly (?) speaking of adding a xxxx to my brain…
What is xxxx? I could be a port, c-sb or other, a blog or a novelty which is yet to be invented…
The common thread between them is “How do you kill them”… simple just pull the plug… all you have to know is where/what is the plug…
It’s hard to realize that, all of a sudden, the cyborg armor you have been wearing for the last year and a half, disappeared… pluf!!!
And that is how I felt after spending my most crucial and painful weekend IN MY LIFE …
Painful because my hands were shaking like cake batter in a shaker…
Also the deep regret of missing my recently departed granddaughter Tikva’s celebration of hope, as I was talking to Gal on the phone I heard Dahlia’s voice in the background, say “Tikva is with God”
Go with God my child… and bless your sister Dahlia…

To Be Proud

To be proud
Written in August 2008
Some time ago I wrote this brief poem…
I love you because you’re mine
I love you because you’re mine
I love you because you’re mine
Are you?
What does this have to do with pride…totally random… I ignore it… but it will come to me…
Who am I proud of…
Proud of my daughter Gal, my forever princess… and her daughter Dahlia, who really believes she is a princess…
Proud of David, Gal’s husband, for giving his family the love and attention a husband/father is supposed to give…
Proud of my daughter Sharon, my sunshine always… for her gleam of light even in the darkest moment…
Proud of myself… for having made it through in these difficult times… where I can proudly say… I now know who I am… I now know where I am… I now know what I am… as they say in Latin… cogito ergo sum…
Is it sufficient for me to think…
We are in 2008, and for most of the past decade I was totally “out of it”… my drugs and my instability due to my Parkinson and the medications I was taking, made me I kind of zombie who could sometimes hide the disability of my intellect (by blaming it to Parkinson)…
As the Beijing Olympics are in full swing, I tried to remember the past Olympics…
1996 I think it was in Atlanta…
2000 I was told it was in Sydney… Zero recollection
2002 Winter games in Torino… Zero recollection
2004 I heard it was in Athens… Zero recollection
2006 Winter games ???
It is fascinating for me to notice the difference in my sanity and my memory immediately after stopping this forsaken medication… in more than just taking drugs… my life priorities have evolved… unfortunately during these years of oblivion I managed to spend all my money… thanks God for Social Security…

Of God, Love and Life

Of God, Love and Life.
Written in August 2008
Listening to a couple of TV programs on life… and more recently the memory of my departed granddaughter Tikva…
My little Tikva who is making me wonder why has she gone away in such a short period… less than two months… I keep asking myself for a reason for such a short visit… I am told that there is a reason for everything…
How many children and infants died in the same instant than Tikva… and how many of them had as much love during their brief life as Tikva had…when I think of the love she had around her gives me joy… and a smile… but… It is still very hard to for me to admit that there is a reason for everything, including my granddaughter’s death.
I am at loss of words… especially because I made it a habit to avoid using the words “no and not” from any of my writings.
What is the reason… where can I find that reason… how can I justify that loss… One thought that keeps coming to my mind is that this baby girl was constantly suffering and fighting to breathe on her own… Thank God that your suffering has stopped my dearest little angel… God, whose goal is to have a world in equilibrium devoid of suffering… succeeded in helping my Tikva…
Thank you God…
Some forty years ago I was visiting an Aquarium in Eilat… at the sight of such a colorful collection o fish…a friend remarked “these fish are so beautiful… all my compliments to God”
This is what life is about… colorful fish and hope for a better world… “Tikvat Hahaim”…

I

Looking Back...

Looking Back
Written in August 2008

When I look back at the past few years of my life… of these pre-deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery, before I regained my life…
Memories come back, on the days I had to find a shelter since I got kicked out of my temporary housing because I tested positive for cocaine. I found a shelter where you had to register by 3:15pm… wait till 5:00pm for dinner… go to church for 15 minutes minimum, and then shower at 7:15pm… To bed by 8:30pm and lights out at 9:00pm.
Wake up is at 4:30am and out on the street at 5:00am…
The first time I was homeless was at the end of November / early December, so you can imagine how cold it felt at 5:00am (around 15-25 degrees Fahrenheit)… of course one could wait till 6:30am for the kitchen to open for breakfast…
As an addict I needed to stay in the streets till I tested negative… then I could go to another SLE (sober living environment), till I get caught again…
This routine of homelessness became so repetitive that it is a miracle that anyone survives in these circumstances…
Drugs and addiction are a real problem… I was lucky that I discovered about the compulsive behavior effects of my Parkinson medication (Requip and Meripex)… the more I was shaking, or witnessing stiffness, the more meds I was taking… which led me to seek more drugs, which led me to try other drugs… which, luckily, I failed to be attracted to its effects… so I stayed with crack…
Was I an addict… were the effects of compulsive behavior a form of addiction… If so, how come that my craving for crack cocaine disappeared… another craving which disappeared was cigarettes… it took me a week and, voila… cigarette craving is gone.
Next month will be two years since I stopped …
Two years since I stopped craving for drugs, or cigarettes…
Two years since I regained my smile…
Two years since I am a new man…

The year 2007

Written in early 2008

The year 2007

When I look back at this past year, it is clear that 2007 is a year to remember.
The year started with quite a few questions, like…
What am I doing in this home where the residents are some thirty years older than me…

Little did I look back at the last place I was… with drug dealers knocking on my door in the middle of the night…
I remembered also my legs freezing in the middle of the road, and me thanking god that I was not in a busy street and using a cane is OK.
Yes, I had surgery scheduled for early February, but who knows how the surgery will go…

I was getting out of my compulsive behavior for crack… and, apparently, my cravings had disappeared,… but I missed being an addict…
I missed looking at these addicts and say to myself, I am better than they are…

Now, if I see an addict my look is blank, because there is no commonality between us… my compulsive behavior is gone…

So 2007 is the year I stopped drugs, forever…
After my surgery (mid February), I needed less and less my cane to walk…
Also I could do things I had completely forgotten… like buttoning my shirt, or tying my shoe laces…
I no longer had the fear of my legs freezing…
I WAS A FREE MAN…

The year 2007 is the year of freedom.

I even managed to organize a “nostalgia trip” throughout Europe and in Israel…
I saw my aunts, my mother, and a bunch of friends from the last four decades…

I have to thank my friends and family for helping me finance this trip… and make it possible….
Of course one of my goals for making this trip is to see my grand daughter Dahlia…
She is almost four and is in Jerusalem waiting for her mother to give birth around the end of May 2008…

One of my latest achievements was to stop taking any medication… After 20 years of taking
Parkinson medication I can say… finito la musica…

Yes 2007 was definitely the year of accomplishments…

… may 2008 bring us all happiness, love, good health and prosperity…

…HAPPY NEW YEAR…

Never Again (?)

Written in September 2007

Never Again (?)
Yesterday I went to Stanford Hospital for a series of tests, six months after my deep brain surgery…

The surgery was really “deep brain”, it took over my motor brain functions and gave me back my ability to tie a shoe lace, close a button and I even have the ability to sew a button… my morale came back and I am constantly amazed at the miracle I am witnessing…

My tremor stopped and I am getting closer and closer to normalcy…

As part of the testing the deep brain generator was turned off… yes I was advised … but to witness the effects was devastating…

Some half a minute after the generator was turned off my left hand started to shake, my legs were feeling weak… but I said to myself I’ll do it, I know how it feels, I’ve done it before… so I tried walking to the bus stop and take the shuttle bus to the Hotel… but as I limped to my destination, shaking and all… I started getting scared…

I was scared that I would not be able to get back to normal… and the depression was deep… I had to calculate the number of steps I could take before I reached the next tree (to hold)… it all came back, the limping, the shaking, the fear of ending like I was before…

So I called the Hospital and went back (with the bus) and had the generator switched back on…

It took less than five minutes for my shaking to stop and my mobility to return to normal, or should I say

RETURN TO NORMAL…

Amen

Remembering Eric

Remembering Eric.
My cousin Eric died suddenly at 56, I wrote this obituary for his three daughters and his mother my beloved aunt Lina…

When I was 11Eric and I were playing cowboys and indians in nonna Clemy's balcony... we had taken some boxes and made a wagon from which we could shoot the indians attacking us... Eric was barely speaking, and it is the cowboy and indians which got him to start talking, and he never stopped...

It was around 1969-70 that I remember Eric visiting Orit and me in our new Jerusalem apartment for shabbath.I remember him spilling wine on the, just washed and ironed, tablecloth because "the kiddush glass must be filled to the top... on Saturday a.m. Eric went to the makeshift synagogue in our building... and of course he had to criticize the arrangement, or the prayer sequence...

It was four years later, in early 1974, that I had moved to Paris and started a tradition of going to aunt Lina's for Saturday lunch. Being alone (the family joined a couple of months later), we used to spend the meal on some political argument or other, between Eric, Jacques, Yanne and myself... But it was in the late afternoon that Eric took me to see the various Quartier Jiufs of Paris, we walked and talked and eat till the late hours of the night... and I have to admit that Eric taught me allot of my knowledge in Judaic tradition...

Rest in Peace, Ezra Eric Sutton... my cousin, my pupil, my rebbe!

Ivo

It's a mad, mad world

Written in January 2008

It’s a mad mad world
Two days ago my car’s transmission died, luckily it died in an area surrounded by garages and mechanics…
Why did it die?
Because that is what cars do, they are built to die, just like people, they require a different type of doctor though…
It’s a mad mad world
San Francisco has a zoo, with all sorts of animals in it, mostly they live in cages, but some of them jump away… and when they get hungry they jump on people… that is exactly what happened
The Siberian tiger (called Tatiana) jumped out of her cage and jumped and killed a visitor, she then went to the zoo café and jumped on two more guys visiting… luckily the cops were there and they killed the tiger, saving the two guys in the cafe
ll that happened on Xmas day
It’s a mad mad world
There is a young 17 year old woman who needed a liver transplant but it was denied, due to clerical error, she died too on Xmas eve…
It’s a mad mad world
This morning I went to the county office to reapply for MediCal, amongst all the papers I brought a bank statement, the worker saw it and said… You have too much money… (I had $2,700 at that time)… Your application will be rejected
So, after I left I went to the bank, removed all but $600 and printed a bank slip, which I faxed to him…
It’s a mad mad world
A Latino man in East Palo Alto was shot, and killed, just as he was leaving the restaurant after finishing his Navidad dinner
The fact that it occurred in EPA… still makes me sayIt’s a mad mad world

Coincidence

Written in August 2008
Coincidence
Back in 1966, after spending two years in the kibbutz, I decided that I was, after all, a city boy…
I was missing life in Milano, even though it was easier to find a girl in the kibbutz…
girls coming from Scandinavia looking for fun and sunshine…

So I left this communal farm and moved to Haifa where my mother had moved from Athens because Guido, her husband, had been transferred. Finding a job was harder than I thought… then I saw an ad in the Jerusalem Post for a technician to work on board a liner, responsible for the network of TV sets throughout the ship.
It sounded exciting, my language knowledge was a real advantage. But I had to pass a test… so I went to the Technion (technical university) library and studied the English terminology, since I had learned electronics and TV in Italian…
Having passed the test, I was told that I would get an answer within three weeks, and start working a month later, you can imagine how happy I was…
A couple of nights later I was in a disco, the “Club 120” and I was talking to an American at the bar, when he asked me what was I doing I told him about my future job on the liner called Shalom.
His expression changed, and he said… “Don’t take it, because I am here negotiating the sale of the Shalom to a Norwegian company, and the crew is not part of the deal”.
I got home pretty depressed, and to check this guy out, I asked Guido, my stepfather, who was in the shipping business on the veracity of this story. After checking the next day, he confidentially got confirmation.
Now that my dream job fell through I luckily found a tech job in a start-up designing a mini-computer…
thus launching a career that spread over three continents, during three decades.

Back from the cold

Written in January 2007

Back from the cold

Around the end of last century I embarked on a dangerous path...
Taking drugs...
That path was so treacherous that I was unable to detach myself from
It.
...and I am far from being the type of person that gives up...
so I succumbed to the life of a drug addict...

My struggle lasted almost a dozen years and, believe me life on the
other side of the railroad tracks is far far from being interesting,
or even exciting for that matter...

I tried and tried to detach myself from that life of drugs, and
Sometimes it worked for a little while, but... ploom... I fell into
The trap again... to try another time to control that craving...

I recently was in contact with Stanford University Hospital with
Regards to my Parkinson... and I found out that the medication I
Have been taking has a tendency to create compulsive behaviors to
such things as gambling or other "high risk" endeavors...
I told the doctor that my compulsive behavior was crack cocaine....
She took me off this medication (Requip) immediately... and my
craving disappeared...
...Never to reappear again...

... It feels soooooo gooooood to be back in real life...

Double Miracle

A Testimonial

Written in April 2007

Oncle Gustave
The first time I heard of, and met, Oncle Gustave I was four or five years old, I remember going, with my mother, directly from pre-school to see this important uncle. I learned later that Oncle Gustave was Nonna Clemy’s favorite brother, which is probably the reason why my grandmother wanted to show off her grandson.
I remember being proudly dressed in my school uniform, with the school yellow and brown tie and brown cap. I also remember sitting down on a chair and shaking my leg to the point of having my aunt Nelly to tell me to stop shaking… was that the first sign of Parkinson?
Oncle Gustave must have been dealing in nylon stockings, because the only other thing I remember was him giving nylon stockings to his sisters and nieces.
It was some three decades later that I saw Oncle Gustave again, I was in Paris on business and Nonna Clemy asked me to come with her and see Gustave.
What I saw was an older man sitting on a chair in the living room of this classy apartment where pieces of art were hanging on every wall.
Oncle Gustave, I learned later, was afflicted with Parkinson Disease, could barely move his legs and had extreme difficulty talking. None of the art pieces or other fortunes could make this man walk and talk again. He died a few years later.
It is with this knowledge of Parkinson Disease that I found myself, a decade later, outside Stanford Hospital in my car crying like a baby…
I had just found out that I had Parkinson’s, like Oncle Gustave. But he was in his seventies, I was only 44 years old. Shall I end up in a chair like my uncle…
The optimist in me forced me to refuse to look at such a bleak future and understand my options, I remember asking my doctor what was I to expect and his answer was “Well, there are certain things you will not be able do in five to ten years.”
So I decided to start playing tennis, and I found a partner and played every week for some ten years.

Tennis
This tennis decade was the most fulfilling of my life…
I allowed myself to forget my condition and focus on the pleasures of life. Professionally, I was very successful in cementing solid relations with key European customers; this allowed me to travel extensively to Europe and enjoy the gratifications of a jet set life.
I achieved this while remembering my responsibilities and obligations of fatherhood. I was very lucky to have two daughters who were very understanding and rewarding.
I ignore if there is anything more satisfying for a father than go to his daughters’ graduation.
Thank you Gal and Sharon.

Maybe I am being sentimental but I really enjoyed the times I was discussing things with my daughters’ classmates and see them grow up.
Spending numerous hours on the air, or in airports, gave me time to read; and since I found interest in history, I spent my free time visiting museums or churches when traveling in Europe. I always admired the beauty that surrounds us, whether it is the Pantheon in Athens, the four thousand year old cuneiform tablets in the British Museum, the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, or some ancient temple in Seoul, Korea.

As time went by my Parkinson required me to increase the dosage of artificial dopamine for me to feel and function “as I was before”. But it was an illusion, I knew that my shaking and tremors would continue, and I had to keep my positive outlook, not withstanding the terminal nature this Illness on my future, hoping for a new development in finding a cure for this illness.
As I look back, I noticed that I was becoming more and more defiantly assertive. I was trying to live with several behaviors which I would never before have dreamed of, the most severe was my propensity to smoke crack cocaine.

In all the past years, living a very active cosmopolitan life style, I never found the need to ever try taking drugs, even growing up a Beetle fan in the sixties in no way gave me the compulsion to look beyond Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds… never requiring a little help from my friends.
But as I took more and more crack, I entered a life style which I never dreamt I would participate in, and culminating in my going to jail for ninety days, because the judge did not believe I was serious about quitting the cocaine habit…
Over the past years, I have tried seriously to stop smoking crack, but every time I would tell myself with all sincerity, no more, I would turn around and go buy some more… I had a sincere desire to stop… but something was impeding me to do it.

I tried going to several programs, but after a couple of weeks outside, I would do it again… all the promises I made to myself, and others, I was unable to keep… and my tremors and shakes increased, so I would increase the dosage of medication, never dreaming that there was a link between them.
The relation I had tried to keep with both my daughters was non existent, it got to the point that I was not allowed to see my grand daughter anymore. So I made an effort to stay clean, and I did with modest success, I was able to count my sobriety from days to weeks… which was a big feat for me.
A few months back I had tried, through my neurologist at Valley Medical, to register in Stanford Hospital’s Deep Brain Surgery program. In the meantime I made one last attempt to sober up, by putting my stuff in storage and sign up for a residential program again… hoping for some miracle.
So here I am in a program again, kidding myself that this time is different. This time I am going to make it… (?).

First Miracle
During my first week in the program I received a letter from Stanford Hospital, inviting me to go and test for DBS. During the long six hour session the doctor asked me if I had any compulsive behavior, like gambling. Having just learned the day before (in my program) about compulsive behavior being a form of addiction, I said yes… and it is not gambling, it is cocaine…
Apparently, the Parkinson medications I was taking for many years (Requip and Mirapex) had a side effect of giving a compulsive behavior, The medication gave a dopamine punch so strong that it had the brain go for compulsive behavior.
When the doctor heard that, she immediately took me off Requip, in a two day phase-out plan… and that is when the miracle occurred… as I stopped the Requip my craving for cocaine disappeared… that desire I had every morning, and was fighting daily, for drugs disappeared…

I just cannot believe it, all the desires I had “for living on the wild side” are all gone. It is as if it is a very distant memory of someone else. Today, it is hard for me to believe that I craved for such things as picking cigarette butts in bus stops and going to sleep in shelters.
It appears that I totally killed this Albatros away from the realm of my existence.

My daughters, who have lived through my numerous promises that “this is it”, were justifiably skeptical at first, they were afraid of seeing me fall down, as in the past, and succumb to another fall to drugs.
But this time was really it… the craving I had waking up every morning, a craving which I was fighting every single day for the last years, had really disappeared… without any nostalgic thoughts or feeling.

Second Miracle
With crack cocaine behind me, I now focused on getting ready for my surgery, remembering that I had just switched from Requip and was taking a much weaker medication… which allowed me much less mobility. Also I had to find a new living place, since I had finished with the program I was in.
Luckily, after a few mishaps I found the ideal location, a senior community with in-house nursing capabilities… and located far away from any drug infested environment.
The surgery was performed in two phases, the first one was to implant a couple of probes deep in my brain (making me a cyborg), a week later a pacemaker/generator was implanted in my thorax and connected to the probes. Apparently both these surgeries were positive.
The probe was not connected to the generator, and would not be for another week, so I had to wait for the results…
During that week, even though everyone was telling me that all was OK, I was very restless, praying that everything was really going to be all right.
During this last month both my daughters have been very helpful in every step of the medical procedure, in finding a place to stay during this waiting period, in being with me during every step of my surgery, even doing my laundry… I can safely say “could not have gone through all this without you”.
Again, Thank you Gal and Sharon, and thank you Dahlia for your smile.

Then on March 8th, one month after the first surgery, I went in to connect and calibrate my generator… and it works!!! My shakes (after twenty years) are gone.
For those who have known me for a while… Ivo is now free of drug addiction and free of any tremor and shake…
If this is not a double miracle I don’t know what is…

Tikva

Tikva
The other day I buried my granddaughter Tikva.

Tikva was/is a special child, in her brief 57day life she touched many a soul. First with her name Tikva (hope in Hebrew), where she appeared in her mothers dream with this name…
I bonded immediately with this little angel who gave me her heart from the first instant… Every time I was going to see her in the hospital I was bringing the book Goodnight Moon and reading it to her…

Ah my dear Tikva, how you opened my heart with your fragile little body… so perfect, so delicate and fighting to keep your breath… you are such a fighter that you were combating against all odds till your were exhausted…

The doctors tried performing miracles… but you had decided to put an end to all this struggling and go to an eternal rest… and I shall go to the cemetery as often as I can and read to you Goodnight Moon.
Goodnight little angel, may you find eternal rest forever…

My Mother

My Mother
Written in October 2007 and completed in August 2008

Yesterday I left my mother in the home she is staying.
I still remember her smile when I told her “Que tu est belle maman…”
She said “Quoi…” as if she did not hear what I said ”Tu est belle maman .” She then gave me her modest smile and I felt her happiness.

It must be hard to be alone in a home in a far away land, a land where, until her accidental fall, she was ruling, as always, with a colonial fervor.
My mother was born in Egypt in the early twenties, she grew up in a privileged class of cotton merchants, a class on the top of social pyramid since the discovery of high quality Egyptian cotton during the US civil war.

She was part of a “family” called Riches. There was a story running in the family that the origin was Portuguese and that the name used to be Riquez. That may be true, but I am sure that my ancestors which respelled the name to Riches knew the meaning of the word in English.

These “families” were predominately Jewish and had over the ages moved around the Mediterranean but kept Alexandria as a home base. There is a (very plausible) story that when Cleopatra was in Rome she had convinced the Roman Senate to give “Roman” status to the Alexandrine traders/citizens living in Rome, and since most of these citizens were Jews an important trading tradition flourished.
It is in the houses of these “Alexandrine Romans” that Saint Peter and disciples were hiding from being captured and later fed to the lions…

When I look back at my genealogy I find one great-grandfather who was an important rabbi and city council member in the city of Oran, Algeria. He was a signatory of the union of France and Algeria, thus ending a major conflict in the eighteen seventies.
Another great-grandfather was recruited as an English / Arabic interpreter by Lord Kitchener’s army for the battle of Khartoum

Going back to the eighteenth century in the port-city of Livorno, Italy came a man named Attias. He settled with his family and established a wide commerce in oriental goods. He also bought a significant piece of land.
Apparently when he grew old he had a fight with his sons and expelled them from his business and donated the land to the people of Livorno. To this day in that city there is a district known as all’Attias.
One of these sons settled, and prospered, in Constantinopolis. One of his sons married into the Terni family and moved to Alexandria.

Another great-grandfather was established as Italian Consul in the isle of Crete. He probably was also handling the banking interests of his father in law owners of the Aboaf Bank of Rome, bankers of the Vatican and the Pope.
In that period, the island of Crete was in turmoil… The Turks were invading and persecuting the Jews, Greeks and Italians… most of them escaped by boat

My grandmother, Nonna Wanda Cohen, who was, at that time, three years old was unable to swim, so she was wrapped in rags and thrown in the water from a cliff… She was picked up by her father and proceeded by boat to Alexandria, Egypt. She ended her days in the port-city of Marseilles, France.

With the start of World War l, Italy drafted all their young men in Egypt who had an Italian passport to go and save the patria…
Of the people drafted I had four Riches great uncles who fought in the trenches, and survived… My grandmother Wanda was less lucky, her only brother got killed by the Austrians in the Dolomiti

What a leap from the Riches clan in Egypt to an old folk home in southern Italy…
My mother had her share of mishaps, but she always found a way to adapt.

At 21 she got pregnant and married my father, with whom she had her share of troubles. My father was a charmer but was also a weak character, strongly overpowered by his father. My grandfather, had the odd notion that now that his son was married into the Riches clan he could safely have his wife, my mother, pay his gambling debts. My mother who still had a sense of pride, sold her jewelry and paid her husband’s debts.
My father then went into a long depression, with its share of institutionalization and god knows what. Then to culminate this instability he fell in love with a strong willed woman, and they decided to divorce, marry each other, and lived together for 45 years… Sounds romantic, maybe, but what on the effects on the fatherless children.

After the divorce my mother had to find a job and she went from teaching English and French in night school to working in a travel agency. It was in the travel business that she met and married Guido, a very very kind and energetic man who respected his wife and her family.

With Guido my mother had a wonderful life in Greece, Israel, Lebanon, and later in Brindisi, going from cocktail party to cocktail party… always meeting ambassadors, consuls, judges etc.
Guido, who was working for a large Italian shipping line, enjoyed these years outside Italy and expected ending his career in Venice, the company headquarters. He was transferred to Brindisi, a small but important port in southern Italy as his last leg before going to headquarters.

Unfortunately, in 1972, after barely six months in Brindisi, Guido had a massive heart attack (his first) and died at the age of 51.

That must have been a shock to my mother, gone were the cocktail parties, the international communities of Beirut, Athens or Tel Aviv. What she found instead was an entourage of a few people in the shipping/ferry boat business.

The rest of the people reminded her of colonial Egypt. The neighbors, the hairdresser etc., were kind hearted and warm, but they definitely lacked the social skills my mother was used to. She made her life resorting to the colonial custom of giving, winning loyalty by giving, giving with a smile… “smile to life and life will smile to you”, she always said that to me, ever since I was a little boy. She said it so many times that it (still) is impressed in my brain. Should I ever create a family crest, smile to life will be the centerpiece.
It is with that smile that I left her to her peace in the outskirts of a small town in the deep south of Italy.

On the way back I was contemplating how did she end up at the end of the world… My mother.
If there is one trait which I inherited from her and from her mother, Nonna Clemy it is the will to travel and get to know people from around the world.

One other trait which my mother has is fatalism, she learned to accept what life gives her, whether it is the very sudden death of her husband, or the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco…

In the begining...

In the beginning…
Written in July 2008

My earliest memory dates from when I was a few months old, I was sleeping in my parents’ room at that time, (that’s how I know my age…) I raised my head and saw both my parents fast asleep, it was a warm morning and I looked around me and saw a lady bug on the sheet… I put my hand on his path and the lady bug was now walking on my hand… I looked at him and smiled. This lady bug came to see me very often and we played for (what seemed) hours in the early mornings.
In French lady bugs are sometimes called betes a bon dieu… which translates to the good god’s beast, that was my first encounter with God, or the notion of God in our lives… God at that time was that cute little flying insect that keeps me company by walking on my hand…

Some twenty eight years later, I was walking amongst olive trees in Jerusalem, with my very pregnant wife and we sat under a tree to rest… it was a quiet day, quiet as only Jerusalem can be on a shabbath and suddenly came a little lady bug and rested on the very pregnant belly…
I told my wife Orit that the lady bug was the baby inside her belly and, a few days later I was standing in Hadassah Hospital smiling at Gal… and she smiled back, and I took a dozen pictures of my Gali’s smile…
To this day Gal is my little lady bug and I am sure that on my next trip to Jerusalem I will find my lady bug… “or the good god’s beast”… I will find my lady bugs either in the park… or in the angel smile of Dahlia or Tikva… my third generation lady bug.

At eighteen, I was living in Milano working in a TV factory as a test technician; it was my first real job… the salary was lousy barely enough for a young man living away from family… it was therefore natural for me to be interested in the strikers picketing in front of the company next door to my job.
Being the first time I was confronted with pickets, I tried to find out its implications and repercussions to other factories, including the one I worked in…

The young man suggested I come by the party regional headquarters and get some more information. Having nothing else to do, I went to the HQ the following evening… I soon discovered that to get the “real scoop” I had to join the party… so I joined the Italian Socialist Party.