Page 52 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
day believes, that Jackie Robinson, great as he was, should have been called out when he was credited with stealing home in the first game of that series.
Mom was an attractive and, some would say, “shapely,” brown-eyed brunette, about five feet two inches tall, who really liked to “dress up” and, of course, to shop. (Indeed, her brown hair was to take on a myriad of styles and “highlights” as I got older, some choices resulting from what was à la mode and some from the gray hairs that life and I contrib- uted over the years.)
Even when there was no special occasion, my mother would be par- ticularly well turned out, always in good taste. I believe that she bought my father’s clothing as well and would pick out what he wore when they went out. Needless to say, his outfit usually coordinated perfectly with what she wore. Of course, she was also responsible for picking out my clothing, and she made sure that I was always au courant. I recall having chinos with a belt in the back as soon as they came into style, wearing charcoal gray with pink when that combination was in, and having a madras plaid sport jacket to wear to bar mitzvah parties, in what was apparently some part of the Jewish ritual that I didn’t quite understand. (Bar mitzvahs, about which more later, inevitably tested one’s social relationships. Since my mother was particularly concerned about the mere possibility of offending any friend, at my bar mitzvah party there were about twenty-four children, some of whom I barely knew, seated at a double dais, which my mom pronounced “die-ess.” I had never before, nor have ever since, seen such an arrangement, even at charita- ble fundraisers.)
At the time she started dating my father, my mother was already living with Beatrice, Aaron, and Avis at 414 Hampton Avenue. My father, on the other hand, was living in Washington Heights, which was in northwestern Manhattan, quite a distance from Manhattan Beach but obviously worth the trip. They had met when my father was serving as the doctor at Camp Anawana, a summer camp located in the Catskills near Monticello, New York, and my mother came up on “visiting day” with Beatrice and Aaron to see Avis, who was a camper. (My first summer
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