The OG Underground with a young demographic. Paul Goldfinger photo. Auditorium Square Park. Ocean Grove. 7/14/24. Click once to enlarge.
Scene: New York City–We were living in New York in 1968 when Eileen delivered our first son, Stephen, at Mt. Sinai Hospital, where I was a doctor in training.
Before she was discharged, she was given some detailed instructions including how to bathe the infant. When we took her and baby-makes-three home, she bathed him in our tiny kitchen sink and she was quite nervous about it:
Me: Getting paged at the hospital. Eileen was on the phone; she was in tears.
Me: What’s wrong?
Eileen, sobbing: I was giving Stephen a bath and I washed the left side first.
Me. It’s OK; you can start with the left side and do the right side last.
Scene: Wegmans today. I got on an elevator which was already occupied with a mom and her two young daughters; the oldest was about four and she was very cute in a sparkly dress with a colorful headband. I said to her, “Your dress is pretty. What’s your name?”
Little girl: no answer–too shy
Mom: Her name is Noa.
Me: Wow, what a coincidence; my new grandson was born only 4 days ago and his name is Noah.
Mom: No, it’s not a coincidence, Noa is not the same as Noah.
Me: Really?
Mom: Noa is a woman’s name taken from the Old Testament. The Bible story is that of biblical heroic Noa , one of 5 sisters, during the Exodus, obtaining the right to inherit property in the absence of a male in the family.
So it’s no wonder Mom got a bit testy–her daughter’s name is not about an old guy with an ark; it’s about women’s rights. Truly a contemporary theme among many found in the Torah (the Hebrew Bible.)
Mom: We’re from Israel
Me: Oh–thank you for explaining all that.
We had, by then, stepped off the elevator at the 2nd floor cafe, where Mom and her two daughters joined Dad and their young son for breakfast. They were eating a giant pizza.
DUKE ELLINGTON “There Shall Be No Night” From the soundtrack of Ken Burns’ film The War.