August 1, 2019 Taken at a café in Queens, NY, The French Workshop French Sodas (iPXsMax)

Yesterday I had a nice phone chat with the speech therapist at Robert’s facility. She went and got the things I had mentioned that I had brought and used them; the award letter, the book of art to stimulate conversation. She asked questions, Robert told her that she didn’t have to quiz him. I suppose he knows things are different, that everyone is coming at him with questions, but with questions come tension: he is put on the spot and it is hard for him to answer.

Both the therapist and I agree that his receptive language is there, he gets it, he knows, but the disconnect is with the production of expressive language. He takes a while to be able to retrieve what he wants to say, to get it together and then produce it.

You do not have to quiz me.

It’s good to have a good accountant.

Eventually the words come. Sometimes the response is terse. Yes! No! But other times there must be some kind of engagement, some need to respond. This therapist saw Robert in December, informally, when he initially entered. She remembered him well; she is saddened, dumbfounded, shocked, as am,  by the profound change in personality. In communication. In affect.

I had a good cry in the shower, but it wasn’t enough. I am a barrel of tears.

The therapist told me that she had seen an aide feeding Robert, and she helped him too, made sure he could swallow, wanted him to eat. I care, she said. I am so grateful, said I. I was concerned about the way patients are brought to the dining room to be maintained, but I suppose it is no better in any other place. I would assume every place is short-staffed. maybe there was even a law suit due to people like Robert falling out of their beds and sustaining injuries, I am going to inquire about a possible move to another floor, not that this place is so huge, but perhaps the upper floor affiliated with the nursing home has a quieter dining area. There was truly a din in that dining room.

I just keep thinking…maybe this…maybe that…it is very hard to turn off a head. Or a heart. How can I help the staff deal with him?

But, I did suggest, to approach Robert as a teacher. Ask him questions, try to get information. And the therapist has been doing it, asking about our travels, playing the links to Mahler pieces. That’s cool.

I didn’t yesterday, but today I am going to wind back the clock to a typical Robert story that goes back to the school I told you about before, a JHS on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where some of NYC’s best teachers worked, a brilliant lot of intellects who played Bridge during lunch. A 1960s bunch of gems. During those years you had a load of men going into teaching because of The Viet Nam War. They broke the typical, almost all-woman structure of employment in the teaching field and brought father figures to many students.

In the cafeteria of the previously mentioned school there was a soda machine. Let me bring Robert in here. In many of his childhood tales of woe, he was not permitted to drink soda unless it was ginger ale for some kind of stomach problem, or maybe seltzer. That prohibition made him into a sugar freak, he coveted anything sweet. He loved soda. He incorporated it into lessons—he did food and soda blindfolded taste tests. (What happens when your nose is clamped shut by a clothespin, can you tell the difference between an apple and a potato?)

And then there was Moxie; a late 19th century tonic, now produced by Coke, infiltrated every school in which he taught. He would give it out like a reward. It was putrid. The kids loved it and loved hating it. It was an in-joke.

He took great pleasure in serving it to family and friends during visits and seeing  their reaction. Like his father, Robert was a real kibitzer.

So, how did it taste? Remember when you had a chancre sore in your mouth as a kid, and your mother would paint it with gentian violet? Moxie was all that and more in a can.

But let’s get back to the JHS and that soda machine. It was in the teachers’ room, supplied  by the union. Robert had access to the key via his friend and would fill it with the typical sodas: the colas, the orange, the black cherry. Probably Tab. Maybe a Dr. Brown’s.

And then there was the mystery slot!

To really make life interesting and do a little gambling, you could choose the mystery slot. Insert your money and out would roll, well, a “regular” soda…or a can of Moxie…or…a can of beer. Imagine that surprise. The one can of beer! Ding! Ding! Ding! Winner!!

Well, students managed to get into the teachers’ room and when a student “won” that can of beer, that was the end of the Budweiser…or Schlitz…or Pabst Blue Ribbon…Reingold? What beer did people drink back then?

And…

Could you ever imagine? So, on this St. Patrick’s Day, have a beer and think of Robert.