Page 14 - Boca ViewPointe - July '23

Page 14, Viewpointe July 2023
Holding Babies And History

By Robert W. Goldfarb he said, but looking back, I think that’s when I became I’m aware the hope and joy that once again surge
a man. Barely out of my teens, I had earned the trust of through me can end with a fall and broken hip. I’ve long
My granddaughter handed me her month-old son, my men I held in awe. been old enough to be offered seats on trains and busses.
first great-grandchild, smiling as she did so. I had seen a I felt the surge of that pride as I held Amari for the first My arthritic shoulders grate as I raise my arms. Amari
smile like that 70 years earlier when my wife held out to time. Instead of slumping to the dirge of an old man’s music, and his parents live in San Francisco and I live in Florida.
me our first child. It struck me that neither mother spoke as I straightened to the blaze of a trumpet I heard on long-ago Travel has become more stressful for everyone, even
they placed the babies in my arms. As young as they were, fields. When the training day ended, I stood with tough, more for a 93-year-old. But, I’ve brought a baby-carrier
both seemed to know they were not only entrusting new life irreverent men who snapped to attention when “Retreat” and will continue flying across the country knowing
to me, they were writing pages in a family history. Muriel sounded as the flag we loved was lowered. It’s as though something young and promising awaits me. The blaze
was 19 and I was 23 when I held our first child. Now I am at 93 I was hearing the trumpet’s call to stand proud as I of a trumpet will stand me tall as I board a plane taking
a 93-year-old widower holding that history in my arms. held my great-grandson. me to my family’s future.
Most of my grandchildren are in their thirties and I’ve I wonder if it’s that call that made it possible for me to
held, fed and diapered them, carried them along streets survive the death of my wife. While no longer physically Bob’s articles have appeared in The New York Times,
where we now meet for lunch. They were probably too alongside me, Muriel’s presence is in my being, my soul. The San Francisco Chronicle and in Next Avenue, the
young when we began training together to run the three-mile She knew the boy I was and the man he became. She would publication of the Public Broadcasting Service. His
races we still enter. We’ve had time together I will not have want Amari to hear that call and his own as I held him. My book, “What’s Stopping Me From Getting Ahead?” was
with Amari. But his birth has me thinking of beginnings love for Muriel tightens my grip around Amari. I want him published by McGraw Hill and is in five languages. 
rather than endings. Just holding him creates memories that to know how much she would have loved holding him.
might one day tell him we touched.
I’ve also begun behaving in ways that should embarrass
me. I hurry over to young couples holding babies, telling Norbert Graber, R. Ph.
them, “I’ve just become a great-grandfather and held the and Lynn Graber, R. Ph.
baby the way you’re holding yours!” Instead of recoiling
and shielding their children, they smile and say “Here, hold
her. You’ll need the practice.”
I’ve begun to see something in the young father I was
that endures in the great-grandfather I am now. I became
a father less than two years after returning from the
Korean War. Most of what you bring back--especially the
memories--you discard, or hope to. But something far more
important must have lain dormant in me over the decades.
The men who trained and later led me had jumped
into Normandy six years earlier. They were quiet men
whose only words we heard were orders. I was surprised
one day when my platoon sergeant beckoned to me. He
said “Goldfarb, you’ve become one of us.” That was all

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