Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family (9 page)

George, whom my father followed for years, became the subject of one of dozens of case studies and papers he published in professional journals. This academic output was quite remarkable for a doctor who worked seventy hours a week seeing patients in the office, at the hospital, and in their homes. The variety and pace of work suited my father, but the pay was low and as our family grew he longed to spend more time at home. He solved both these problems by leaving the hospital and practice on the South Side and partnering with another physician in an office that was much closer to our home and had a wealthier clientele. He got privileges at most of Chicago’s North Side
community hospitals and began seeing newborns in the maternity ward who became patients in his practice. He still worked hard, often seeing two dozen patients in an afternoon when his partner saw no more than ten. This happened in part because my father was filled with kinetic energy. Entering the exam room, he would minimize salutations with the parents and focus immediately on the children and the presenting problem. His typical visits were so short the nurses at the hospitals called him “Speedy Gonzales.” Despite his speed, and because of his openness and charm, his reputation grew as many mothers requested him personally.

When he was working, my father’s style was very relaxed and matter-of-fact but warm. A little blood, a little vomit, or a little crying was nothing to him. But if he could avoid tears, he made an effort to do so. For example, he often used a little misdirection, like an old-fashioned magician, to remove stitches without a child realizing it. “Are you tough enough to do this without crying?” he would ask. While he talked, and the child was screwing up his courage, my father had already begun to work. Before they could answer the threads would be out and he would delight his patient by declaring, “You did it!”

He taught parents to trust their instincts, be attentive, and enjoy their children because they grow up fast. One mother told me that my father showed up on the maternity ward, gave her son the once-over, and said, “Hug, love, squeeze your baby.” Desperately nervous about how to handle her first child, she said, “That’s it?” My father answered, “You’re going to be fine, and he will be, too.”

The mother and father who told that story about Ben Emanuel’s five-word introduction to parenting discovered that his advice, and the Spock-style confidence he showed in all parents, made perfect sense. They made him the pediatrician for their first son, and two more children, who all stayed in his practice until they became adults. Over time I would hear many similar stories.

Dr. Benjamin Emanuel’s no-nonsense style helped him build one of the biggest practices in the city. Most of his patients were middle-class, but many were so poor that he gave away a great many free checkups,
doses of penicillin, and free samples of other medications he received from drug company representatives. The only rich or famous people he saw in his office tended to be big-league ballplayers who played games at nearby Wrigley Field and lived in the neighborhood. He knew so little about American sports that he had no idea that Billy Williams and Ron Santo played for the Cubs and he called the football star Dick Butkus “Dick Bupkis.” (He wasn’t even aware enough to use his connections to finagle tickets for a game or two.) The “Bupkis” kids and all the others got my father up and going in the morning. He loved talking to children of every age. To him, they were never boring.

Although he still planned to go back to Israel one day, he liked everything about his life in Chicago and allowed himself to think about climbing the economic ladder. The American dream, as he saw it, included the chance to work hard at something you loved, and to provide for your family. He wanted financial security, proper schooling for his kids, and a few of the things, like travel, theater, and music, that he always considered essential to a full life. He may have been happy to serve the poor, but he did not think it was necessary to be one of them.

My father’s first big-ticket purchase was a fancy hi-fi—one of those big stand-alone console models—which he bought so he could listen to classical music records. He put the stereo and the vinyl albums in his little study alcove off the living room. After declaring that this was the one pleasure he allowed himself, he barred us from touching the stereo system or going into his office.

At the time it seemed a bit strange that our father never taught us much about music or skiing, which he had enjoyed in Switzerland. Later he would explain that the money and time required for ski trips just weren’t available when we were young. And when it came to music, he just could not imagine how his three hyperactive boys would manage to sit still long enough to listen to a prelude, let alone a whole symphony.

To his credit, our father did eventually introduce us to chess, which he played extremely well. These after-dinner and Sunday afternoon games were played either at the dining room table or in the living
room, where the board was set up on the round, white marble coffee table. Our father sat on the edge of the sofa and we plopped ourselves on the floor.

These chess games were not idle fun. My father did not believe in falsely building his sons’ self-esteem by purposely letting us win or larding on the excessive praise. He played to win and teach us by real competition. Sometimes he would simply stop the game and then show us, with quickly moving hands, how the next dozen moves would inevitably lead us to defeat.

“You will move here. I will move there,” he would say as his thick fingers quickly and nimbly shuffled the knight, bishop, pawns, and other pieces, showing us how the game would “inevitably” evolve. “And then this, and then I would checkmate.”

During these demonstrations he would repeatedly admonish us with two messages. “Think three moves ahead!” he would say every game. “Imagine all your opponent’s possible responses before you make a move. Think about how I am going to respond if you move your knight that way.” He would then show us a few possible counter-measures he might take to thwart our strategy. “Play the moves out in your mind before you move your piece,” he said.

The second imperative was easier for us to learn: “Remember what Napoleon said: Offense is the best defense.”

My brothers and I never checked whether Napoleon ever uttered such a sound bite, but we surely absorbed it. And it certainly fit with our personalities and natural tendency to take the “fight” side of the fight-or-flight response to danger. Hyperactive and distractible, none of us ever got good enough at chess to even come close to beating him. For my father, chess was about seeing problems in a sophisticated way and learning to plan multiple moves ahead. These games—and my father’s urgings—reinforced our natural tendency to be aggressive in whatever we set out to do. Winning became so important that we each deliberately sought out the particular hobbies, sports, and career interests that fit our abilities and in which we could excel. Life was about competition, and if you couldn’t finish at the top in one pursuit, you found the game where your talents allowed you to win.

While my father gradually became one of the more popular pediatricians on the North Side of Chicago, my mother was the center of our days. Happily, she found on West Buena Avenue a kindred spirit in another young Jewish mother named Carol Glass. Like my parents, Carol and Bill Glass had three sons. They were roughly the same age as Rahm, Ari, and me, so they were ideal playmates.

I’m told I introduced myself to her at a small playground near our apartment. She was sitting on a bench watching her two older kids on the swings and slides while my mother sat on another, watching me and Rahm. I walked over and handed Mrs. Glass an orange and asked her to peel it for me because “my mommy cannot do it.” In fact, she had told me to do it for myself. Mrs. Glass thought this was hilarious. She and my mother became friends on the spot and formed an alliance that made mothering just a little easier.

What little spare time my mother had she devoted to civil rights activism. My father solved the problems of individuals. When a black or immigrant family was facing discrimination and couldn’t get a white pediatrician to see them, my father would gladly care for the children—and reduce his charges or simply waive the fees if they were poor and couldn’t afford it. By contrast, when my mother saw discrimination she began organizing. Her tendency was to start a political movement, protest, and make systemic change. I think as we grew up, we boys became frustrated by our father’s approach of repeatedly addressing the same problem posed by many individuals, and learned from our mother to devote ourselves to addressing larger social issues.

Early on, my mother opened our apartment for meetings of the local CORE chapter, which attracted dozens of blacks and whites, many of whom were Jewish. CORE pushed for integration at public facilities like city beaches and for access to housing. But with Willis Wagons dotting the landscape and schools in white areas emptying out, education remained the movement’s primary focus.

Looking back at it decades later, the stubborn attitudes of local officials seem truly astounding. Superintendent Benjamin Willis, for
example, refused to acknowledge that the schools were segregated even though the district had kept the races separate for years. He would not say whether he thought racial separation in public education was a good idea or a bad one. However, every day seemed to bring new revelations of the district’s inequities and more protests at administrative offices and school buildings. On certain occasions, when civil rights leaders called for boycotts, schools in many neighborhoods closed for lack of students.

Officials responded defensively to protests and criticisms, digging in for what promised to be a long fight on behalf of the status quo. All the signs suggested the Chicago Public Schools system would be in turmoil for many years. My parents, who wanted us to learn Hebrew in case we moved back to Israel, expected to send us to a private Jewish day school. Still, they recognized the value of the city schools and committed themselves to the cause of change for the benefit of everyone in the city.

All this activity was a direct reflection of my mother’s deeply held moral code, a set of beliefs that was born in her father’s labor union activism, reinforced by her bike trip to that first housing protest, and hardened by the discrimination she felt, saw, and read about in the newspapers. Most Jews who joined the civil rights movement were motivated at least in part by their own ongoing, personal experience with prejudice and bigotry. In Chicago, 1961 began with a midnight bombing at the doorway of the Anshe Emet synagogue, which was just a few blocks from our home. Although we weren’t members, we attended Anshe Emet on the weeks when we did not go to the small shul my grandfather had helped to found in nearby Albany Park. The blast at Anshe Emet damaged the synagogue building and broke more than a hundred windows in the neighborhood. No one was hurt, but the crime, which was never solved, reminded everyone that hatred and anti-Semitism were alive in the world and good people were called to stand against it. This imperative lent a sense of purpose and urgency to the organizing meetings that took place at our apartment.

In the same way that other kids spied on adult dinner parties, Rahm and I would hang on the edges of these political planning sessions,
watching, listening, and learning. When these gatherings took place in our living room, which most did, we would crawl behind the crescent-shaped part of the sectional sofa that occupied a corner of the room and hide under the triangle-shaped table that filled the empty space between the arc of the upholstery and the plaster walls. There was enough room for two of us, although a few legs and elbows might stick out, and if the adults were engaged in the issues and talking loudly they could not hear when we whispered or made the tabletop bump against a wall. Eventually we would forget to be quiet. Once discovered we would be subjected to lots of oohs and aahs and “they’re so cutes” before we were shuffled off to bed.

At that time, the specifics about policies and tactical discussion went over our heads, but we felt, deep down, the emotions behind what was being said. The main thing was that people were suffering and anyone who cared about right and wrong had an obligation to speak up and demand better. In this crowd, indignation was infectious, and the sight and sound of so many different people speaking so passionately stirred the heart. Here were grown-ups who believed that it was possible to make the world a better place and to achieve it by pointing out the unfairness and the suffering and seeking a solution through dialogue. Undoubtedly this experience of eavesdropping on activists helped instill in us both a moral sensibility and the desire to do something about a problem whenever we could. It is not hard to see Rahm’s devotion to improving Chicago Public Schools and my work on universal health-care coverage as outgrowths of witnessing these meetings in our house.