Voyage into the depths:
Beginning weight (July 14): 230 lbs.
Weight at start of Week #2: 222
Weight at start of Week #3: 218.4
Weight at start of Week #4: 215.3
Weight at start of Week #5: 215.1
Weight at start of Week #6: 211.2
Weight at start of Week #7: 208.1
Weight at start of Week #8: 204.3
Weight at Start of Week #9: 201.9
Weight at Start of Week #10: 199
Weight at Start of Week #11: 196.8
Weight at Start of Week #12: 194.4
Weight at Start of Week #13 (current week): 193.5
Total weight loss so far: 36.5 lbs.
Eighteen weeks to go.
Maybe they should put a warning on the cover of Moby-Dick: “Caution when reading while on a liquid diet.” Herman Melville’s famous — but, until now, unread by me — novel begins with a veritable flood of watery imagery. This week, as I sat in my cosy armchair and began Chapter 1 — titled “Loomings,” which a helpful footnote (I highly recommend the Norton Third Critical Edition) evocatively defines as “dimly seen land or ships ahead or even beyond the horizon” — I periodically took a sip of my 160-calorie protein shake, occasionally changing pace with some zero-calorie fizzy water (we’re supposed to stay super-hydrated during this diet, lest yucky things happen to our livers and kidneys and such). So much fluid sloshing around, in the book and in me! Perhaps as a result, while our narrator Ishmael spoke of his — and everyone’s — longing for the sea, I had the unexpected sensation of dissolving into my own childhood memories. Simultaneously inhabiting Melville’s world and your past can make for a disequilibrating experience — if you try it, I’d avoid operating heavy machinery.
As I followed Ishmael’s circumambulations around lower Manhattan, I began reliving innumerable walks with my father, Paul, through those same districts. After my parents divorced, when I was a baby, they staked out opposite ends of the island — my mother, Bunny, up north in Washington Heights, and my father way down south on East Seventh Street. Dad and I spent much of our weekends together strolling for hours and hours. He was always broke, and walking was cheap! Moreover, every excursion offered him a chance to continue training me for what he was sure would be my destiny: leading the upcoming socialist revolution in America. (Spoiler alert: it hasn’t happened yet.) Signs of capitalism’s evils were everywhere — sometimes literally. Stopping in front of one of the many electronics stores on Broadway, he’d point out how a camera in the window had a label that seemed to indicate that it cost only $29.95 — unless you noticed the teeny-tiny words “AND UP” that had been squeezed in after the price. The mendacity! At the grocery store, he’d hold up a soup can and rail against Campbell’s sneaky corporate psychology of filling it only partway while fooling working-class consumers into believing that they were getting a full can’s worth.
But besides the ruling class, he constantly reminded me, there was another enemy as well: my mother.
Frequently, he’d turn to me and solemnly announce: “Your mother is a very crazy woman.”
And I’d say: “I know.”
And we’d continue on our way.
She was his White Whale.
Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach?
— Moby-Dick, Chapter 1
One day my mom packed some bags and we got on a bus to Far Rockaway, in Queens. It was as far away from Manhattan as I had ever been — as far away as I could imagine ever being. It was Far Rockaway! I was about five years old, and I was confused, because it was a weekday: I was supposed to be in kindergarten, and Mom was supposed to be at work at her library. We ended up spending a lovely week there, sharing a rented bungalow with her friend Eva Reisman, who had survived the Holocaust by hiding in a closet, and her daughter Edie, whom I adored. (Mom and Eva had met in our neighborhood playground while Edie and I played in the sandbox.) There were many sandy beaches, and the air was salty and soft. I could wear flip-flops everywhere we went!
It was decades later when Mom told me why we’d suddenly gone to Far Rockaway: Her arguments with my dad had taken a particularly bitter turn, and she’d become afraid that he was just going to take me away from her, perhaps forever.
They must have worked things out, because after Mom and I went back to our apartment in Washington Heights things got noticeably more cordial between them.
One day, on one of our walks, Dad said to me: “Joshy, when your mother and I argue, the person it ends up hurting is you. We’re not going to argue anymore.”
And for the most part, they didn’t.
This gives me hope. Mom and Dad were the mighty antagonists of my early life. In winning custody of me (except for every other weekend), she had ripped away the most precious part of him. His fury — which I later came to realize was not just at her, but also at his parents, and, ultimately, at himself — might have consumed him, but he was able to overcome it. Love did that. His love for me did that.
It’s time for me to uncap another protein shake and dip back into Moby-Dick for a spell. See you in the loomings!
So good Josh! Another beautiful one. Your stories have the rare quality to evoke deep personal memories, even when what you describe happens to be so distinct than my own experiences.
So many of us are children of divorce. Mine didn't split up until I was in high school, but they argued as far back as I can remember. I have a memory of hiding under a chair as a young child while they were yelling at each other...
I'm glad that when I went through my own divorce from my first husband, it was reasonably cordial, and we had no kids to experience that kind of trauma.