I began my first novel in seventh grade. It opened with a description of a solitary male figure on a hillside, gazing out to sea, wearing sandals. That was as far as I got in terms of character and plot development before the narrative spontaneously evolved into a discussion of my sock drawer, and how my older brother Harry used to irritate me by opening it without my permission and helping himself to my socks.
Some years later I agreed to co-author a novel with that same sock-thief of a brother, entitled November Under my Sole. He wrote the central story, concerning a disgruntled New Yorker named Noah Wilner who decides to wreak havoc on New York City by arranging to import massive quantities of dehydrated elephant waste that he plants in the city's street cleaning machines. Recalling Noah's biblical namesake, the novel concludes with an apocalyptic flood that essentially drowns Manhattan in elephant shit.
My part of this epic was to interject a sub-plot about Noah's son, Norbert, and his zany friends. I was an undergraduate at Northwestern University at the time, where acclaimed novelist John Gardner happened to be a visiting professor. Although I wasn't in his class, I boldly marched into his office one afternoon and presented him with the complete, illustrated manuscript of November Under my Sole. He told me to come back in a week. When I returned, he clearly hadn't even glanced at it yet, but took it out in my presence, flipped it open and read the opening sentence, which was: "Noah Wilner could barely see the Palisades through the grey haze, let alone think clearly about the past."
Gardner proceeded to spend close to an hour, speaking without pause, explaining in great detail exactly why that was possibly the worst opening sentence he had ever encountered in the history of western literature. It was amazing that he could find that much to say about it. And it's not that I no longer remember what he said; it's that I wasn't actually listening to him, because throughout his diatribe I just kept thinking, "But that was my brother's frigging sentence, I want you to look at one of my sections."
Finally, when he came up for air, I managed to redirect him to page 46 or so, where my first contribution to the work began. He read the following aloud:
"Michelle and Ellen are trying to imitate the sound of a red rubber ball. Howie thinks it practically sounds orange, but that doesn't stop the girls."
About that, Gardner remarked, "Yeah, that's not bad; that's actually pretty good," and I left feeling somewhat mollified, and vowed never to collaborate with my brother again. Harry had majored in English as an undergrad, once sat in a café with Allen Ginsberg, and penned a few poems of his own before changing gears and eventually getting his doctorate in Psychology. His inner English major slowly retreated into the recesses of his mind, yet that fundamental urge to express himself in fiction never fully gave up the ghost. Since he no longer had time to write entire books, he confined all of his further efforts to only the opening lines for novels, perhaps in an unconscious attempt to win favor with the long-dead Gardner's soul and redeem his tragic early work. Here are some of his more well known openers:
"It all started when the split-pea soup exploded in the blender."
"In the end, it became clear to him that his younger brother had wrecked his life."
And perhaps his favorite, referring to a character from his graduate school days:
"It was clear that life was about to change when Pollock ate too much chocolate pudding; Pollack himself, perhaps, put it most elegantly: ‘That was a lot of chocolate pudding!"
Our father had a minor stroke last week. He is the full-time, at-home caregiver for our Mom, who is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's Disease. Needless to say, we had to rally the troops, my brother taking the first five-day shift, then I showed up. On the one night we overlapped, as Harry broke open the Scotch, 
we were reflecting on how lucky our Dad was. His stroke left him only slightly impaired in his hand and right leg—his driving leg, thankfully, because one of the early signs of his stroke was finding himself driving on the curb one day, thinking something was wrong with the car rather than his neural pathways.
"As he was about to mow down several pedestrians on the sidewalk, it occurred to our father that perhaps the problem wasn't actually with the Lexus."
Amazingly, within a few days Dad was virtually back to normal, just moving a bit slower, being more careful, using a cane at times, and in Physical Therapy twice a week. We have had many discussions over the years concerning the easiest and least stressful ways for him to care for Mom, and changes to his routine have always been rather difficult to implement. Two full years after my brother and I emphatically told Dad he needed to bring in outside help if he wanted to keep Mom at home, he finally hired his first aide, and only for a few mornings a week. He continues to do all the shopping and cooking. It has been a very long and arduous, uphill journey to reach the point where we are now, with one or two aides in the house every day from morning ‘til night, with a few gaps at mealtimes, and nobody there overnight, which has always been troubling to us, though we did try somebody recently; she lasted a single night.
"When their father discovered the overnight aide was fast asleep under the covers, snoring, he decided she really wasn't worth the twenty-one bucks an hour; and she wasn't much to look at, either."
To my Dad's credit, though, he did seem to take the stroke as a warning sign and became surprisingly agreeable to several immediate changes: we installed an emergency LifeLine medic-alert system that he will wear around his neck, in lieu of overnight help. He agreed to close the gaps in care during the day. He agreed, finally, to give Meals-on-Wheels a try.
"Their difficulties boiled down to a single concern: is it feasible, in this day and age, to get a decent, lean piece of kosher brisket delivered to the house?"
All of these were major victories that have afforded us a bit more peace of mind. Of course, from the outside looking in, many professionals have let us know that our parents are both about three years past the point where they would have been much safer in a facility—Dad in independent living, Mom in an Alzheimer's unit—but our father is a determined, endlessly devoted, willful warrior, and wants to provide Mom with the one-on-one care that she'd never get in an institution, and keep her in familiar surroundings.
"After 63 years of marriage, it occurred to us that our Dad had taken the ‘in sickness and health' bit pretty literally."
I have spent a good deal of time videotaping my Mom over the last eight years of her gradual decline, capturing priceless moments at every stage. The other day she saw me with my oversized, box-like copy of Middlemarch, and asked, "What's in the box? Middlementsh?" 
Earlier she had randomly stated, "I'm such a nice person and there's nothing I can do about it." And when I told her I was going upstairs for a minute, she asked, "Until Wednesday?" Of course, Dad always appears in a supporting role in these taping sessions, but I've been primarily focused on capturing memories of Mom.
"As I zoomed in on my mother for the close-up, it was as if I could hear my Dad's voice in the background, asking, ‘Who am I, chopped liver?'"
I finally sat my Dad down alone the other day, and got him to reminisce, and even sing, for the camera, (including his famous version of "Tutti Frutti") and afterward I told him—and thankfully, our family shares a great sense of humor that has gotten us through these trying times—"Dad, now that you've had a stroke, I figured I'd better start videotaping you." He laughed, and I laughed, and Mom is always laughing (except, of course, when she's screaming bloody murder at an aide who might need to be a bit too intimate for her tastes.)
