Sonovista, my friends... i'm back home in northern california... i arrived late last night (thursday) after an a totally fucked-up day of travel... what should have been a 6 1/2 hour flight, coast to coast, turned into 14 hour sojorun with the US Airways shuttle from LaGuardia to Philidelphia taking off an hour late, which caused me to miss my connecting flight, which resulted in me being put on an even later flight, which resulted in me getting a broken seat, which resulted in more delays, which resulted in me getting my bags at SFO at around 8pm pacific time (14 hours after i got into a cab in NYC)... oh, and although the people on US Air were very nice, the airline is SHIT... everything is broken and torn and dirty and stained and for this i was granted the privilege of paying almost $500 one way... but god bless sheri, who picked me up and took me out for a nice dinner and strong bloody mary...
And now i'm home and dealing with the moment-by-moment reality of being alone... you know, after my dad passed away about 7 years ago, i started to call my mom every day... short calls, 5-10 minutes, just to touch base... talk about politics or popular culture... it wasn't because she was lonely, but because she was alone... and i told myself i was doing it for her... but what i didn't realize is that the tether connects at both ends, and now i have no one to call when i land after a long flight or get a good report from my kidney or brain doc or score some minor cosmic win... and i keep running into this just days after her passing... i think the buddhist philosophy i've studied and integrated into how i live my life will be helpful in getting through... just pay attention to the thoughts and feelings and see how they're connected...
in any event, a heartfelt 'thank you' to everyone who has written or called with their words and thoughts of condolence... it means a great deal... the memorial service was this past wednesday in NYC and it was very nice and warm and comforting to see how many people loved my mom... my uncle (the rabbi) strong-armed 
and now we move forward... next week, if the good lord's willing, the creek don't rise, and there ain't no meltdown, we'll do our 20th episode of Schnauzer Logic... i need to collect the gang, but it should be a great show with lots of guests and comedy... and then the week after that we'll do show 21... and 22... and 23... week by week, one step, one bad joke, one plumbing update at a time...
see you all there
namaste... robin
Mom - Riverside Memorial Chapel - NYC, NY - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - 11:30am
Good Morning… Thank you all for coming… It’s wonderful to see you all here this morning… I think it would have surprised my mom, though… we all knew how special and wonderful she was, but I’m not sure she always knew.
When I spoke with my uncle yesterday, he asked me if I wanted to speak at the memorial service this morning, and I said I didn’t know… and I said I didn’t know, not because I didn’t think I’d be able to find something to say, but because I was afraid that once I started talking, there’d be no way to stop… My mom was an amazing person… if you met her, even once, you’d never forget her… she was strong and smart and funny and opinionated… she was dedicated to her family and her friends and devoted to her grandson, Jason… and she was passionate about children and education and teaching… I think if the arthritis she suffered with and fought against for over 40 years hadn’t sapped her strength and broken her body, she would have been in classroom, even last week, passing on her knowledge and wisdom in her own unique way… There was nobody like Mrs. Goldstein… Old School, as the kids say today… my mom was old school before it was cool to be old school and she didn’t care about being cool… she was a complete human being, contradictions stacked on top of each other… I’ll give you an example… my mom didn’t like gadgets and wasn’t a big fan of technology… she didn’t have a TiVo… she allowed me to get her, only after a battle royale, a simple cell phone which she kept turned off (“its only for emergencies”), and though we’ve made considerable strides in the last 200 years in heating water, my mom insisted on making coffee by boiling water in a little pan on the stove… and she had an iPod… which she used to listen to books on tape… which she agreed to let me get for her only after I assured here they didn’t cost very much…
As I said, it wasn’t that I was afraid I would have nothing to say, but that one story would lead into the next and the next and the next… which would be fine with mom… she was first, and foremost, a story teller… in the past few days as I’ve met some of mom’s friends down in florida, they’ve all told me how ‘funny’ mom was… and she was funny, and she knew it… but she didn’t tell jokes… she told stories, in the grandest tradition… she was a natural performer with perfect timing… the few times I had her on my radio show she literally stole the show… she could have been a star in the modern world of punditry… she had an opinion about everything and wasn’t afraid or ashamed to let you know it… some of our biggest fights in recent years were over whether the latest season of Monk or Law and Order were as good as past seasons… and if she thought they stunk, she said so… and truth be told, she was usually right…
No, the challenge of speaking this morning is going through my countless memories and seeing what I can find to say about my mom that won’t end in tears now that she’s gone… I’ll tell you what I mean… I flew into LaGuardia yesterday afternoon, from florida, and as I got into the terminal I pulled out my cell phone to call her to let her know I was okay, and realized there was no one to call… when I was younger we used to fight about it all the time… “mom… I’m 20 – or 30 – or 40 –or almost 50… I’m O.K...” and she would say “I’m your mother… I worry”
So I looked for something to say about my mom that wouldn’t immediately start the flow of tears, and one thing came to mind… Pizza… My mom introduced me to pizza… I think she told me it was my first solid food… and some of my very earliest memories are of walking with her pushing my sister Lisa in her stroller, down the street, past the Bohacks, to the Newkirk Plaza, where we’d get a slice of pizza… just cheese and those hot red pepper flakes she liked so much…. i must have been 5 or 6, but I can still remember the sights and the smells and the taste… a little sweet… a little salty… chewy and crispy at the same time… when I think of meals with my mom, I think of pizza… now don’t get me wrong… she was an excellent cook… nothing haute cuisine, but good nutritious meals… veal and beef and chicken and turkey and fish…. The fact that I’m a vegetarian is no reflection on my mom’s pot roast or matzo ball soup… but she loved pizza and so did i… when I got a little older and started elementary school, the biggest treat would be to meet her for lunch at the little pizza parlor around the corner, next to the Leader Lanes on Coney Island Avenue… I still search for the taste of that memory… and when we moved to Central Valley, one of the first things we did was search out the local pizza place… in fact, I can tell you the location of the nearest pizza shop for every place I’ve every lived… and when I worked for Sony and spent all that time in Japan, I even kept the number of a Japanese pizzeria in my wallet… they were the only ones who would deliver, on a little motor scooter, and the hotel thought it was unseemly that I would order pizza on a motorbike, delivered to their fine establishment, so they would make me wait outside, in the parking lot, for the delivery, which I would accept in my broken Japanese, and scurry back to the room to taste a bit of home… and whenever and wherever I had some pizza, I would call mom and she would ask, “what did you have for lunch, or dinner” and I would say “Pizza”, and she would say, “Go On… make me jealous”… so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first food I had after my brain surgery, more than 20 years ago, was pizza… or that I’ve broken almost every yom kippur fast with pizza… or that lisa and I shared a pie in florida right after seeing her, the night before she died… or that I had a slice for dinner last night… you see, even though I grew up in a jewish home, my comfort food is a little bread, a little cheese, a little tomato, a little oregano, and a little olive oil… hot and fragrant… crispy and chewy… a little salty and a little sweet… my mom bought me a slice…
So the next time you bite into a slice of pizza, think of my mom and say, “Edna… I’m having some pizza” and you’ll be able to hear her say, “Go On… Make Me Jealous”
Thank you again for coming today… it means a lot to my family and to my mom.
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