Posts Tagged ‘My Family’

We

Friday, January 15th, 2010

(The following essay is a guest post written by my father, poet Rowell S. Hoff, expanding on a theme from a poem he wrote a few years ago.  I have included the poem at the end. -Geoff Hoff)

We

My FatherThe English pronoun we is difficult.

Of course it is not difficult when it refers to the person speaking and the person or persons he or she is addressing. The “royal we,” the “journalist’s we” and the “nurse’s we” (“How are we today?”) are also fairly clear, although odd: they simply mean, in the first two instances, “I,” and in the third, “you.”

But we is often used to refer to an undefined and undefinable mass of persons that includes the person speaking or writing, and this can be difficult to clear up. This usage often appears to refer to all the people of every station in a given country or organization, many or most of whom could not conceivably take an active part in the actions being suggested, as in “We must improve our health care system.” It might be called the “polemic we.”

The polemic we is frequently used in scolding. The child utters a forbidden word at table and the father says, “We don’t say that!” Here, we apparently refers either to the family or to members of a certain class. Taken in its literal sense, the sentence is evidently untrue, for a member of the family has in fact just said the word. Nevertheless, the usage may be justifiable as a concise statement of a principle. Such philosophical or hortatory usage seems reasonable so long as the extension of the pronoun is clear, that is, so long as it is known to whom we refers.

Nevertheless, care is needed. Something possibly true of some of those addressed may not be true of all of them. An example, very often followed by a clause beginning with “but” or “however,” is “We are a peace-loving people,” a sentence that has with minor variations been pronounced by John F. Kennedy, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and who knows how many English-speaking Presidents, Prime Ministers, Senators, Congressmen, Members of Parliament, Lords, preachers, journalists, etc.

Use of the polemic we often occasions a descent into simple falsehood. A popular example of this is the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident” in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, followed by a series of things that the “we” referred to were alleged to believe, for example, “that all men are created equal,” having “…certain inalienable rights,” etc. This was, in fact, a lie; the signers of the document, many of them slave-holders or involved in the procurement and sale of slaves, all of them leaders in systematically taking over vast areas of North America from its inhabitants by violence and guile, could not, any of them, have believed either that all men are created equal or that they have inalienable rights beyond the right to die. In this case the extension of the pronoun “we” went well beyond the persons who signed the document, for the title line proclaims that it is “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.”

We need to think about these things.

Who?


Doggerel About Who Is We

Here is a question: Who is we?
For pundits, kings and CEOs,

we is I and us is me.
The nurse’s friendly
we is you,
her
How are we today? untrue.

Problematickest of all
is the
we that people use to call
those people
things like
nigger! honky! hunky! wog!

hun! gook! limey! frog!
jap! gringo! running dog!
kafir! bitch! pig! flic!
dago! polack! raghead! spic!
redneck! foreign devil! nerd!
papist! kike! fag! dyke!

People have a hateful word
for people people do not like,
believing that always, come what may,

our we is better than their they.

But the problem’s not so hard to resolve,
so long as the human heart can evolve
to the point where the finally human mind
is in love with the oneness of mankind.

Rowell Hoff
December 27, 2007

Sign up to get updates from Geoff and get the eBook, “Unleash Your Creative Writer” free.

First Name
Valid Email

The Long and Winding Closet

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

I am surprised when people I meet don’t know I’m gay. How could they not figure that out? I am also surprised when I meet someone and they do know. How can they tell? It’s a little schizophrenic, I guess (no disrespect intended to any of my schizophrenic readers) but both are true. I have been out of the closet for so long it’s almost like water to a fish for me and yet I don’t think I come off as particularly “gay” (whatever that means. And I know at least Steve will have several comments about it. Be nice, Steve. This is my blog and I’ll equivocate if I want to.)

As unexceptional as it is for me to think of myself as gay, the process of coming out was a long and circuitous one. (What, you may ask, should I have expected, that the path be straight?) It was not, I’m sure, as arduous as that of numerous other gay men and women, but it took many, many years. I knew I was attracted to men even before I really knew what sexuality was. I grew up in a tavern in a small town in northern New Jersey and most of the patrons were blue collar men. Trust me, I noticed a lot of them.

I have no idea when I first knew what a homosexual was, but I remember quite clearly when I started to realize there may be something wrong with being one. My older brother, who was perhaps thirteen at the time, told me that the way they treated homosexuals was to show them pictures of naked men at the same time as giving them an electric shock. He didn’t call it aversion therapy, I’m sure, but it seemed to me at age ten a rational way of dealing with the issue. I also wondered when I would have to have the procedure.

Several years later, and on the other side of the continent, my mother decided to have a “talk” with me. I had no idea of her agenda, of course. We had decided to take a drive to visit some family friends who lived in a big, old house on a scraggly piece of land in a small town about two hours drive from us. We often visited them on a moment’s notice, both families enjoyed each other’s company. It was a little odd to me that it was only Mom and me going, but what the hell, I was fourteen or fifteen and not that inquisitive about such things. We had a nice visit. Then, on the way back, my mother initiated “the conversation.” It was obvious she was having a hard time starting, but I didn’t help. In fact, I didn’t say anything. After a lot of hemming and stammering, she said she thought I might be (might be, mind you) gay, that she didn’t know if I’d had any overt experiences, that I could talk to her any time and that, if I needed it, we’d find a good therapist.

I didn’t say a single word the entire ride home, which couldn’t have made her task any easier. Thinking back on it, it must have been excruciating for her. What if she’d been wrong? What if her supposition put the thought into my head for the very first time, made me question, then experiment, then BECOME gay? My silence couldn’t have eased her trepidation, yet I remained silent. Being a parent can’t be easy sometimes. When I got home, I went downstairs to my room, dragged out my dictionary and looked up the word “overt”. I was disappointed. I’d thought it was something sexual. To be truthful, “overt” is the only actual word I remember from her long talk, the rest is only a vague sense of extreme discomfort and the sound of my heart beating fast.

I hadn’t had any overt experiences at that point, though. My first was when I was seventeen, with a twenty-eight year old relative of that same family, ironically, at their house during a weekend visit. My heart beat fast then, too, as I recall.

Many years later, again in another corner of the country, I finally “came out” to my mother. I was in my mid twenties and living in Los Angeles. I had moved here in part to have a big, anonymous place to figure out what all this sex stuff was about. I told myself and others I came here to be in the movies, which was true to a point, of course. I’d been here a few years by then, living in a house in the Silverlake area. I called my mother long distance (back when long distance actually meant something momentarily) and this time it was I who hemmed and stammered. Which I did for some fifteen minutes before I got out the operative sentence. I’m sure my mother figured out within the first two seconds what was up, but there wasn’t much she could say until I actually said, “I’m gay.” She said, “I know, honey.”

I cried and said the thing that hurt the most was the thought that I would be with someone who wouldn’t be welcome in her home. She said, “Oh, Honey, anyone you love I love.”

She proved it, too. When I was with Jerry, my one long-term boyfriend (if two years can be considered long-term), we took a trip up to her cabin in Idaho. One day I’d been out doing something in town with mom’s husband. That night, Jerry told me that my mother had asked him if he felt like part of the family.

“Of course, Toni,” he’d told her.

“Good,” she’d said. “Could you pick up all the coffee mugs in the living room and bring them into the kitchen?”

He said he’d felt very welcome, indeed.

The one thing she asked of me was that I not tell my great aunt. She didn’t want any blowback from that side of the family. I did anyway (many years later, of course, I said it was a long process.) Aunt Lou’s only comment was, “Well, do you have a friend?” I said I had lots of them and she said that’s not what she meant. I told her no, I didn’t have a friend and she told me I’d find someone and then changed the subject.

As the years progressed, my mother began wearing a pin that said, “Straight but not narrow”. She called me her fairy god son, and once asked if I were bothered that she had used me as an example when she showed the documentary Pink Triangles, about homosexuals in Nazi Germany, to her YWCA luncheon group. One of the group had said, “Gay people are disgusting.” My mother was horrified and said, “That’s my son you’re talking about.” I gave her retroactive permission and told her she could use me to enlighten someone anytime she wanted.

Oh. By the way. I’m gay. Did you know?

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Halva On My Mind

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

My mother had several things that she considered treats, things that she parceled out to us as if they were diamonds. Lox was one. If you are unaware of this rare gem, it’s sort of a marriage between smoked salmon and salmon sushi. Good lox, the best lox, melts on your tongue like sweet, smoky butter and at that time was only available in good Jewish delicatessens in New York or Newark. (Now you can get a fair quality lox at Costco, for goodness’ sake. Times change.) Mom rarely made the trip into the city from our small village in northern New Jersey, but when she did, she always bought some lox, usually a pound. She’d bring it home, pull one slice from the block, cut it into small, bite-sized pieces and give each of us one piece on a cracker. The rest would go in the freezer for special occasions.

Good Kosher LoxOne afternoon a friend was visiting and mom pulled out the lox and some crackers, cut a small slice, put it on a cracker and offered it to her friend, who was skeptical, but tried it.

“Oh, my God, what is this?”

She liked it. So much so that she went through the entire pound as they sat there in the kitchen chatting. Mom watched in horror, not willing to be so impolite as to take it away or tell her how much it cost or how difficult it was to get. Her only solace was the thought of the woman going into a deli to buy some and seeing the price of it and turning pale. Thinking of that moment usually made mom chuckle.

Sweet Chocolate SawdustAnother of her treats, also purchased in delis, was halva. Halva, however, was just puzzling. It is a confection made from sesame seeds and always tasted to me like sweet sawdust. Some halva was plain, some was swirled with chocolate, some had pistachios in it. It all tasted like sawdust. But mom loved it and whenever she found it, would buy some and cut small pieces for each of us. She considered it such a treat, was so delighted by it, that I would never dream of turning it down and she gave us each such a small piece that I was always able to force it down without much of a grimace.

Many years later, after my mother died, I was having dinner with a friend in a deli in Los Angeles. In the display case by the register they had halva for sale. I told my friend how much my mother had like it and bought a piece for each of us. It still tasted like sweet sawdust, but I savored every crumb.

“Yuck,” my friend said. “How can you eat this?”

He was only eating halva. I was eating a memory.

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Learning Spanish – What a Pity

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

When I was thirteen my father, his second wife and their then two young children moved to the Dominican Republic, the country that shares the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean with Haiti. I saw him once from then until I was in my forties. I kept saying I need to visit him in order to reconnect, but it wasn’t until shortly after my mother died that I realized it was never going to happen unless I simply made the decision and did it.

I made all the travel arrangements, got my passport, took the appropriate time off from work, then realized I should probably have some command of Spanish before I set foot in the Spanish speaking country. I bought some tapes and books and set out to study. I was diligent. I set aside time each day to work on it. I repeated all the phrases on the tapes. I did this right up until I boarded the plane headed for Miami where I’d get my layover to the DR.

With all this work, the only Spanish that actually stuck in my mind was the rather obscure phrase, qué lástima, which means “what a pity.” I doubted I’d ever get to use this hard won knowledge.

My father and his wife Carol picked me up at the airport. On the long drive through Santo Domingo, the capital city, to La Romana, the costal town they lived in, I kept noticing large stores with huge, bright, windowed fronts; Estevez Muebles, Frank Muebles, Pedro Muebles, Albert Muebles. I mentioned to Dad that the Muebles family must be really large. He was confused. I mentioned all the stores. Muebles, he informed me, means “furniture”. It seems furniture stores are very profitable in the Dominican Republic. They sell furniture to people on “time payments” and when the people couldn’t keep up the payments (which happens often in a country with so many poor), they repossess, then sell it again. And again. Very lucrative. He and Carol had the good graces not to laugh too loudly at my misapprehension, but it did become a topic of humorous conversation with the family and many of the people I met while I was there.

I also told them of my attempt to learn Spanish, and the one phrase I’d mastered. Dad complimented me on my pronunciation.

The trip was wonderful. Reconnecting with my father and his wife and meeting my half-brother, who was already an adult, for the first time were special experiences, but the biggest benefit of the trip, one that still moves me to this day, was how willing my father was to allow me to say anything, ask any question, make any accusation I had about his absence in my life all those years. He answered honestly and compassionately and without judgement. It was infinitely easy to forgive him, and to forgive myself for harboring any resentment. I now have a grand relationship with him.

On one of the last days I was there, Dad, Carol, my brother Paul and I piled into the car to drive across the island to visit Dad and Carol’s oldest, Ann, who I had last seen when she was around five. She now had her own family with three small boys. We got to their house, traded hugs and chatter and I told the muebles story and shared my one Spanish phrase, the one I had no hope of ever being able to use. They all thought both stories were very funny. (Ann and Dad translated to the boys and gathered friends, none of whom spoke any English.) One of Ann’s boys even tried to teach me Spanish by telling me the proper name for things and making me repeat them. None of those words stuck, either, but you have to give the kid credit for trying.

Late that afternoon, while Ann was fixing a traditional Dominican meal, her husband Daryoush went out to buy some ice cream for desert. During dinner, he was called out on some business matter. Later that evening he hadn’t yet returned, so Ann brought out the ice cream and divided it among those present.

“What about Daryoush?” I asked, knowing that he had been especially looking forward to it.

“He’ll have to miss out, I guess.”

“Qué lástima,” I said.

Everyone cheered.

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend