A Concise Synopsis of my Life with Linda
By Gene Aronowitz
Linda and I met in March 1986, a few days after the Director of the Westchester County Volunteer Service Bureau asked me to be a judge in the selection of their Volunteer of the Year. I told him I was too busy, a barely veiled excuse for wanting no part of it. He persisted and, to incentivize the request, he said my co-judge would be a really interesting woman. That was inviting and I almost asked him what she looked like. I pulled out my pocket calendar, pretended to ponder a moment, and said, “OK, if it’s really important to you, I think I can work it out.” He had already asked Linda if she would be a judge, an offer she found hard to refuse. She was the Activities Director of a nursing home in Westchester and had always made good use of the Volunteer Service Bureau.
Linda and I had a great time judging. We laughed a lot, joked about the subjectivity of the selection process, and frequently lost our focus as we segued into other areas of mutual interest. Yet, we knew that getting awards for service would be meaningful to the volunteers and did our best to do a credible job.
After our session ended, we went out for coffee at a local eatery Our conversation there was free-flowing and she definitely was interesting. And besides, she was very good-looking. A month later we had lunch at “Marty’s Mug and Munch.” I remember the name vividly, not only because of its alliterative nature but because of its meaning to me as part of the beginning of something marvelous. A few weeks later, we went kite flying and got together frequently after that.
Five months after the judging, Linda had been invited to a gathering with some of her colleagues on Long Island. She asked me if I wanted to come along and suggested we stop at a nude beach on our way. The details of that life-changing day are contained in a separate brief memoir (See “The Nude Beach”). In brief, Linda got hit by a huge wave while twisted, tore her anterior cruciate ligament which stabilizes the knee joint, needed crutches to get around, and because she couldn’t drive her stick-shift car, the day ended with the first moments of our living together.
I was very serious about Linda and suggested marriage often. She was reluctant to make that kind of commitment, and after many rejections, I finally said I was through asking. Linda welcomed the lack of pressure and began to work on resolving many issues bearing on her decision. She knew she wanted to be with me, long term, but wondered whether she would be comfortable with a man 18 years older than she with four children. She was in the process of changing the direction of her work life and was completing a second master’s degree. I thought I would have to settle with our living together until the day she said, “If you ask me one more time, I won’t say no.”
For the big event, we got a perfect candle-lit table at an Indian restaurant on 6th Street in Manhattan, with a sitar player performing softly in the window. But an over-solicitous waiter wouldn’t leave us alone, constantly filling our water glasses and asking us if we liked the food. So it didn’t happen that night but we decided to spend a couple of days in Woodstock, New York, where we both knew that the question was sure to be popped. Once, late in the evening, I asked her to sit down with me on a park bench, took her hand in mine, spoke of many things, but did not say one word about marriage, a benign retaliation for all those rejections. But when she arose the next morning, I had placed, on her pillow, a poem I had written with a marriage proposal. As promised, she did not say no.
We spent a considerable amount of time planning our wedding. I am culturally, but not religiously, Jewish, and Linda has a Christian background. We surprised everyone by planning a ceremony in the Orthodox Jewish tradition. Just minutes before the actual wedding and, most memorable for me. was the Bedecken Ceremony. The basis for this ancient practice stems from the Biblical story of Jacob who was in love with a woman named Rachel, the younger sister of Leah. After working seven years to earn the right to marry Rachel, Jacob was deceived by Rachel’s father because tradition required that his oldest daughter be married first. He covered Leah’s face with a veil and Jacob fell for the ruse. The Bedecken Ceremony consists of lifting the veil covering the face of the bride to symbolically ensure that a similar deception does not occur.
Linda did not wear a veil. Instead, she created a mask, like the one worn by the Phantom of the Opera. Inside that facial covering were pictures of her at various stages of life. By bringing the mask away from her face and talking about the photos, she revealed not only her facial identity but also her background and character. She told us much about the woman I was about to marry. I was overwhelmed with emotion and some of those in attendance cried.
After the wedding, we had a reception at a nearby restaurant. To get there, everyone at the wedding strolled through Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, which was packed because the annual Welcome Back to Brooklyn Festival, attended by thousands, was taking place that day. Many onlookers, seeing Linda in her gown and me in my tuxedo, clapped, cheered, and wished us well. A motorcyclist allowed us to sit on his bike for a photo.
We honeymooned in Spain. On the first day, Linda and I were waiting for a train at a Barcelona Metro station. When it arrived, I got on but Linda was still on the platform as the door began to close, I thought that blocking the closing door would cause it to reopen as it does in New York City. But it didn’t. I couldn’t get off, so I pulled my aching arm and shoulder back into the car. I was frantic, separated from my wife in an unfamiliar, foreign city. I began shouting “Mi esposa. Mi esposa,” as fellow passengers gawked, some giving me suggestions in hurried, incomprehensible Catalan. Linda stood on the platform, shocked and dismayed, as the train left the station. Although there were a variety of alternative troubleshoots, like proceeding to our destination or meeting back at the hotel, we were of one mind like an old married couple. I got off at the next station. Linda took the following train, got off at the same station, and we were reunited.
We traveled to Europe frequently during our marriage including France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, and three times to Germany where Linda has family. We stopped those journeys when my knees began to erode and began to do what we called virtual travel. To do this we watched Great Courses videos about the countries to which we were virtually traveling, watched travelogues, ate native foods at home and in restaurants, drank their wine, beer, and other beverages, went to museums featuring their art and history, read some of their literature, and watched films made or set in those countries. Since we lived in New York City, all of this was easily accessible. Using this approach, we virtually visited Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, India, Greece, Turkey, and China. I started a Facebook page describing our virtual travels and planned but was never able to develop a virtual travel website, particularly for those whose infirmities either prevented touring or made it unpleasant.
When we first began living together, it was in my co-op apartment in Goldens Bridge, New York. After three months, we moved to a three-story brownstone townhouse in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn. Linda was co-owner of the house, with her brother, Jim. It was then an SRO, a single-room-occupancy dwelling. A large family moved out and the whole second floor became available. We moved into that vacant space. The house was in seriously bad shape and, as other tenants started to move elsewhere, we began the process of renovating it. The beginning of the process involved gutting the third floor. By carrying the debris through and out of the house, I ended up with five hernias. After the third floor was rebuilt with some local help, we decided to restore the rest of the house. We bought Jim’s share and engaged a wonderful architect, Margaret Salamone. We then set up a woodworking shop in our cellar and hired some skilled craftsmen. Linda created an exquisite 20 by 40-foot garden, which reflected her extraordinary sense of design and the knowledge she gained growing up in a rural community. After living for 19 years in what was essentially a construction site, requiring several relocations of our bedroom and kitchen, the complete makeover was complete. We lived in that house for a total of 32 years.
Linda grew up in East Taghkanic, New York, an agricultural community in southern Columbia County, a good place, we decided, to retire. We bought her old house from her brothers and engaged the same architect we utilized in Brooklyn to help us rehab and expand the house. This turned out to be impractical, potentially costing more than building new with a far less satisfactory outcome. We began the excruciating process of working with the architect to plan a house that would meet our needs and our wants, getting approvals from the Town, taking down the old house, and building a new one in its place. We were lucky to find an extraordinary general contractor, Don Hoysrad, to make it work.
In the meantime, Linda and I are working on the landscape. Linda knows every inch of our property, having meandered through it from childhood through adolescence. That sensitivity, love of place, and sense of design are producing spectacular surroundings. I, on the other hand, grew up urban. The first time I drove the tractor we bought, I went over a large tree stump and the tractor ended up on the stump, swaying like a seesaw. I had to call Linda’s brother, Larry, who lives just up the hill from our house, to move it off the stump. That’s the day I rated myself 9% country and only that high because I was beginning to replace some of my black New York City style sweatpants and tee shirts with clothes of many colors. Now, after a year and a half, I am up to 87% country and proud of it. My contributions to the endeavor include mowing, weeding, weed whacking, and digging. An entire 48-foot-wide and 4-foot-tall retaining wall in our garden was built with the rocks I extricated from the land.
We are now in the Summer of 2021 as I write this final paragraph. It has been over four years since we first called Margaret, our architect, to begin planning our move to East Taghkanic and over three years since we moved. We are now living temporarily nearby in Hudson, New York, waiting for the new house to be completed. The wait has been interminable, like watching a glacier passing by, but the house is finally nearing completion. That eagerly anticipated ending will mark the beginning of the next wonderful chapter of my life with Linda.
