His Father’s Hands

Ivanovich inherited his father’s hands. He told me how lingering wartime shellshock made his father go to pieces every time they drove over high bridges in the city. Ivanovich, then ten years old, had to reach over and take the steering wheel while his father covered his eyes and trembled.
  Ivanovich’s father was a dentist with giant, sentient hands, soft like a catcher’s mitt. Once, Ivanovich came up behind me and showed me how his dad would wrap his big, amazing hands around his patients’ heads. They would relax so deeply that he could drill and fill cavities without Novocain.


Limits of Love

Goldie and Ivanovich started as city kids from New Jersey, but now they were ocean people. They lived together to share the rent. Their love was so pure they didn’t talk about it. They wore sarongs, laughed, and said, “Aloha!” Above them, bamboo forest winds cracked a million wooden knuckles, but only the hollow sound hit them. One day, love was put to the test. They went diving off the side of a boat. When a curious whale came near, Goldie grabbed Ivanovich and thrust him in front of her. “Here! Eat him!” Like the sea, love ebbs and flows.


Self-Experimentation

Untoward gastric reactions to specific foods made Ivanovich suspicious. He read an article called “The Noble Tradition of Self-Experimentation.” It centered on  Samuel Hahnemann, the father of homeopathy, who did “provings” of remedies on his own children. He gave them a remedy and, ever the clinician, watched as their symptoms came and went. It’s said that Hahnemann’s children all lived into their nineties. Ivanovich, following Hahnemann’s example, hosted a “Gluten Party.” Breads, dumplings, cakes, pastas, pies, and pastries filled the table. He ate some of everything. Everyone went home, and he waited. Next morning, oh boy, he had his answer.


My Friend

My friend Ivanovich did an incomprehensible thing alone. No invitation, “Come with me,” from him. No request on my part, “Please take me with you.” My eyes teared, as together, we journeyed the shadows of his pathway. For seventy days, I covered my face with a beard, hugged the cloak of invisibility about me, and became the old man he would never become. In the end, a solitary traveler kept walking, one step at a time, into the unknown. His steps continued, while mine turned back to this world. How do we live with those we can no longer see?


Awakening

The nighttime vigils were over, and they buried dear, mysterious Ivanovich in the meadow. Frank and Zelda moved far away, across deserts and mountains, schlepping with them the man’s undealt-with possessions and responsibility for his crazy-making estate. “Ivanovich, what in hell were you thinking?” they yelled at him and shook their fists.
  One morning, they were awakened by a sweet violin duet. The music continued, insistent, and seemed to come in through all the windows at once. Under the piles of estate records, Ivanovich’s cell phone alarm had decided to come back to life and play them into the day.