Until Marv’s death, I had only ever seen one picture of Raphael and Brunya, his parents – an image of a dapper, elegant Gatsby man seated in tall grass beside his round faced, curly haired lady with deep, expressive eyes.  Marv never made any comparisons between Pammy and I, and his family – no sentiments such as “You’ve got your grandmother’s eyes,” and so on.  It almost seemed like a superstition with him to avoid discussing what they had been like, as if knowing about them might make some negative quality or powerful flaw contagious.   During our last week together, though, Dad found me dressed to go out in my striped corduroy pants and medallion print shirt.  “My mother always wore prints together like a gypsy,” he said with amusement and, I think, some pride.  “I never knew that,” I said.  “Oh, she was a gypsy, a real gypsy at heart!”

Other kids thought the Jungle Book was a Disney movie with goofy songs;  I thought it was part of my father’s wardrobe,  since for several years of my life, he was rarely seen without one volume or another of Kipling’s fables of animals who behave like humans, or a little bit better.  Kipling imbued his monkeys, the Bandar Log, with our callow, smug, self-satisfaction, reflected in their motto: We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true. 

Here is an excerpt from the Road Song of the Bandar Log:

Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete, in a minute or two–
Something noble and wise and good,
Done by merely wishing we could.
     We’ve forgotten, but–never mind,
     Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!

As touching as it is to see Marv’s picture, it is his handwriting which goes straight to my heart.  He commented occasionally that he meant to try writing in script again; and once or twice mentioned that he printed everything because he felt his script writing was very poor.  Though a few other mementos equal it, nothing I own is more precious to me than this note, which he sent with a housewarming gift for my first days alone again, as a gallant woman.

While this picture may seem to be about a bowl of watermelon, it was actually an excuse to record Marv’s hands, and to remember the times I wondered why they were so much larger than mine, the times I watched mesmerized as they whisked a flaming torch over metal, turning it into liquid, or flew effortlessly along the guitar, turning it into music.  I want to remember, too, how small he was, 87 years ago tonight, maybe feeling hungry for the first time in his life, and to wonder at how tiny his hands were then.