David's Harp: Remembering Av

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Norman stood in front of his home as he did for over 40 years. This time something was different. He looked at the house and a feeling came over him. It was incomplete. After almost a half century of raising four children, paying taxes, and helping his community, he felt his residence needed an accessory. “Norman, after all these years what’s got into you?” His wife questioned in confusion. Norman wasn’t so handy with the toolbox, nor did he even know if he had the proper tools, and frankly he wasn’t quite sure where the toolbox was.

He asked a neighbor for the drill and the bits and the hardware and the ladder and the extension cord and then off he went to the store to buy an American flag. Some neighbors over the years would display their Old Glory during national holidays but Norman’s Jewish home along with others never got around to it.

So Norman enlisted his very kind Italian friend next door for the paraphernalia to accomplish all that it takes to secure a bracket into the brick of the upper part of the house above the garage door. Of course all the while Norman’s wife would inquire as to why, for G-d’s sake, after a lifetime of years do you need to put a flag on our house? How many decades of July Fourths and Memorial Days and President’s Days had come and gone without a whimper or a breath or even a slight reflection for the need to hang a flag? And even most of those who had the metal accoutrements affixed to their homes did not have the pennant and pole in place that day or that week or that time of year.

Two neighbors, two Americans, of different ethnicity and religion helped one another with the mechanics, logistics and physics that go into the joining of screws and bricks and mortar. The fresh red, white and blue fabric was placed. After all these years it was now Norman’s home that singularly waved the star spangled banner in the quiet flagless neighborhood in the heated dog days of summer.

Shortly after his raising of the flag, my father, Norman Nesenoff passed from this world after a heroic eight-year battle with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He died on Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av, 10 years ago. He was magical, brilliant, funny, generous, creative, and youthful. He was kind and he was a kibitzer.

One month after his soul left his material being, the World Trade Center tumbled to the ground. A part of me has always been secretly thankful that he did not live long enough to witness such hate on the shores of the country where his parents found refuge, where he so flourished and endeared himself. He didn’t have to see the towers fall or reside in a world of 9-11.

As all the streets, blocks, cities and hamlets throughout the United States put out American Flags in September of 2001, my father’s home was prepared and already displaying the patriotic cloth that he so desperately needed to place, one month earlier.