i by the name of jaleh (persian meaning a type of rain, morning dew) by the paternal surname ruhe (german meaning serenity) have been blessed with a very large family consisting of diehls, ruhfs, kunzs, boligers, gibsons, olearys, far and wide across the great north american continent. by marriages i'm related somehow to schoens, homnicks, gebals, by spit from kisses to most last names throughout latin america.
but all those mentioned are related to one man in particular, my grandfather David Ruhe Seiger M.D.
davido was the pipsqueek of the family, born after sally, he took after their father Percy until at the late age of eighteen he grew just enough to be taller than his next of kin William. they were all blue eyed blonds.
i've wanted to write about him for a long time, 50 years to be exact. he's been dead since 2005, october, he's been gone for 16 years. he died a few months after pope john paul died. they were samesies, religion men. i did not know then that we chase after one another weaving in and out of lifetimes and timelines.
a dear friend david zeledon died "with" covid last week, in his 50s, overweight, always had trouble breathing. his son, named after my grandfather, david ruhe zeledon, posted on social media that he'd died "of" the disease. semantics matter.
there was no man i loved more in the world than my grandfather. i love my dad christopher, but i loved his dad more. my dad is musical and macho, his dad was more.
the greatest generation born at the beginning of the last century davido was slightly derailed by his older sister sally, their mother amy had no intention of having daughters, there was a farm to keep and a few wars to be fought, sally was a mere of a glitch in the plans, davido was the plan itself.
pennsylvania, the lehigh valley, ruhes and seigers are many generations farmers. our farm house and barn in the hills above emmaus are more than a century old. we are frontline rodale press, we eat really good food. davido's dad percy, was the editor of the morning call newspaper in allentown call when bethlehem steel built manhattan. davido travelled with his choir to sing psalms at saint john the divine outside columbia at 122th st on the island. allentown the song billy joel sang about.
percy ruhe editor, percy ruhe fact-checker, percy ruhe editor in chief of the steel workers connection to the rest of the world between 1930ish and 60ish, the ruhe in the know.
davido had 4 brothers william, edward, joe and benjamin. joe was the golden boy, he died young. william captained war vessels at sea and married a carole, settled around the district of colombia in virginia. edward found a fellowship at the university of kansas and hung out with writer william buroughs. benjamin did an australian walk-about with a fullbright and married a continental.
davido was a vaccine expert in that he studied malaria and treatments, contagious disease and inoculation. in georgia, in the 1940s, audiovisual recording was in adolescence, and as such, it's use to illustrate theory could be easily exploited. davido had a good heart and theories of pasteurization and penicillin had legitimized a means of food production that could defy seasons and resist infestation. modernity seemed bright for his heirs, his legacy. as long as the skies were still dark and full of stars, while humanity still slept sound and peacefully at night, modernity seemed safe.
modernity: the vacuum cleaners, the baby formula, the telephone, the toy, the tinsel, the automobile, the rocket ships, the air-o-planes, the 24-7 help desk, the mall of things, the comfort, the commodity, the effortlessness, the instant gratification, would even increase time for rest and restoration. as long as the streets were still, slumber was safe.
when you have history with history, you know your own history within general history, both vertically and horizontally. historically, i've learned, you need to be a tall man with a deep voice in order to be heard.
we record history as deaths and births. that's all that history is made of, ends and beginnings of time.
for davido then, and for me now, history also means seasons, tradewinds, equinoxes and solstices, moons and menstruations, sowing and seeding, pruning and harvesting, time only means something here on earth where it's polite to be punctual. time means measure and manifestation for all being, for all light to come through, for all particles to accelerate. time can also means a number of candles, a karaoke machine, a wink, an understanding.
davido was a vaccine expert, a medical cowboy, a bypass recipient, a pill taker, a new york times reader, a buick driver, a long standing member of the baha'i universal house of justice in haifa israel. a tall man with a deep voice. a capricorn ox he was a dark night and a bright morning.
i was a girl, then a woman, with a soft voice and a medium stature moved to write about him. i was a truth teller. i went to school with everyone.
i brought the moons and menstruations to davidos table. his wife meg had born two sons a leo and a libra. they did not let her speak either unless it was creature comfort. when davido and i quarrelled, she was right there in between us at the table pushing pistachios and bitesize candy in our directions in a loving way of dispelling the subject of administration and machination.
meg only had one sister, anne marie honnold, who outlived her by less than ten years. meg had been considered the rebel of the two. a libra herself, she could not stop flirting. that was who she was. born a taurus, i was slow to anger and horrific to blow.
the table talk had gone well the few months i lived with my grandparents in 1994, the conversation was mainly about the wildlife that lived in the suburban back yard of their newburg, home. we'd had conversations about women not serving on the nine of the UHJ, about cancer, about diet, about the spiritual language of astrology and the mirror between eastern and western myth, about brain formation and gender dysforia, about abortion and gun rights, and for the most we agreed on the conservative side, but we nearly came to blows about masks, about masking against disease, about the effectiveness of nostrils vs breathing in your own breath, about oxygen deprivation and madness, about the world not being a hospital, about surgeons using them to not get blood and stench on them. and i won the fight by calling all of modern medicine an incompetent mess, a snakeoil business model at best and an evil plot to destroy humanity at worst. then i stormed out of the house in a blinded rage and went somewhere to cry alone and pray. same god, one god, all god, made in his image i testified and eventually calmed enough to go back and face my gorgeous, awesome, unique grandfather.
i found him in the study, at his desk, bumbling between the typewriter, the canvasses, the books, the files and projects of his life, i had nothing to say. so i apologized i leaned my gentile self on his broad bony back, hugged his large pointy bald skull that housed that mighty brain and blue eyes and noticed once again that he only had my picture of all his grandchildren on his wall.
