Loving Dad: Continuing the Creativity

Rachel Greenbaum is the daughter of the late Horror and Speculative novelist T. M. Wright's first marriage to Sally Edwards. In this episode of Heart to Heart with Michael, Rachel commemorates her father, his many talents and the way his gifts are still living on today. She shares how his talent has been passed down to her children and her and how those talents have manifested themselves. Rachel also shares about how important it is to celebrate her father and the significance grief traditions are in the healing process.

Transcript

spk_1:   0:16
welcome to the fifth episode of the second season of Heart to Heart with Michael program for the Braves community, Our purpose is to empower community with resource is support and advocacy information. This season's theme is a celebration of life, and we feel fortunate to have Rachel Greenbaum on the program today. Today's show is loving Dad, continuing the creativity. We'll be talking with Rachel Greenbaum about her father, her religion on how today she'll be honoring her father. And we'll finish up our show by talking with Rachel about

spk_2:   0:44
how the father's creativity is being passed on to future generations and what that means for her. Rachel Green Dam is the daughter of the late horror and speculative novelist TM Rights First marriage to Sally Edwards. She has lived in Israel for over 30 years. For the most part in Jerusalem, Rachel made Aliyah mainly out of a mixture of idealism, rebellion and personal necessity. Rachel is married and has three Children, all in their twenties. Her daughter is enrolled in the Creative writing project in Tel Aviv University. Rachel paints and draws as her father did, and even on occasion writes a little bit too once many years ago, Rachel's father even published one of her poems in his poetry journal. Today we'll be Commemorating her father and his many talents and the way his gifts air still living on today. Rachel. Welcome to heart to heart With Michael.

spk_0:   1:32
I appreciate the opportunity to be here to talk to you.

spk_2:   1:35
What's your fondest memory of your father?

spk_0:   1:38
It's kind of strange because my fondest memory of him is when I got in touch with him again after our relationship was suspended when, between the ages of two and 16 he he took me for a driving lesson and I was actually afraid to go through puddles. But he put on music that I had never heard. He put on Jack for Jack Grill, the French singer, and then he put on Forget this albino needed aggio, and as the uncle 16 year old that I was I said, You home who without bony

spk_3:   2:12
and it was kind of new in

spk_0:   2:14
my life that he could set me straight on something so artistic and cerebral. I didn't I love my mother very much, but we have a different kind of relationship in different strengths, and this was no This was something that I remember. Even now. That's my fondest memory. There are others.

spk_2:   2:33
You drive to puddles now. Does that come back?

spk_3:   2:38
It comes back

spk_0:   2:39
when I hear Jack Boyle.

spk_3:   2:41
Oh, well, what? Every time. Every single time when I hear Jack Pile is a

spk_2:   2:45
specific, What was he playing? Do you remember?

spk_0:   2:47
If you leave me, I can't. I don't want a mangle the French, but I think it's a picky palm. Something like that. If you leave me, it's been translated into many languages, and he knew it in the French, I think, for my grandmother spoke French a little, Um, and that's that's really when I really found out and thought about it. That was my fondest memory.

spk_2:   3:08
Your closeness with your father wasn't on enough affair. Um, yes. For a number of years, he wasn't there. Then around 16 he was back. So how did you find out that he died? And were you able to do anything about it at the time?

spk_0:   3:23
It's a very, very strange story, as I told you how I found out that he died. I had and strange are contact have been cut off between us again as It had been fractured and fragmented for many years, but I kept having a very bad feeling about him. And then one night I just I put in Wikipedia to see what was new with books, too, and one word changed at all. It was tm right was an American novelist.

spk_2:   3:53
Mm. The third word in Google is is either is or was. That's the tip off.

spk_0:   3:58
Yes, yes. And that, um that's the word that changes everything that it is or awas. That's when I got in contact with my aunt. My aunt, Danielle Hynes, will be listening to this faithfully. I'm sure, um, intently and right that that that found out it was a bad feeling that I just had to find to find out about even after contact had been suspended again. Because it was just a very difficult relationship. And it's really felt for a very long time. And in spite of it being a difficult relationship,

spk_2:   4:36
what were you What were you getting? What were you what was making think that you needed to check? Nothing

spk_3:   4:42
specifically. Okay. Um,

spk_0:   4:44
I was having nightmares, Nightmares? I was my father with a horror writer. I'm sure that this would have

spk_3:   4:51
amused him. In a way, um, I was having

spk_0:   4:55
nightmares, and occasionally I know people are going to say this can't be. But I did feel that there was a presence in my house.

spk_3:   5:03
I felt it was a male presidents,

spk_0:   5:05
and I thought it what? They're too hard. Me And even sometime it seemed to me it was amused.

spk_3:   5:14
I thought he would certainly have been a meal. I mean,

spk_2:   5:19
has many a time is

spk_3:   5:21
Yes. Yeah, yeah. Here. Here's

spk_0:   5:25
the horror writer who wrote his whole life about ghosts. Yeah, yeah, but I just a bad feeling. I had that. Something terrible had happened. Ah, and it turned out that he had died on Halloween. Appropriate horror writer who died on Halloween? Yeah.

spk_3:   5:44
So appropriate and planned. I don't know. I don't think so. Exhibited, but it's totally appropriate. I read his works and that, and it is appropriate, isn't it? It is the appropriate way. It's the perfect way. I'll have to show you.

spk_0:   6:00
I have to find the book. But the teenagers breaking into a crypt on ah on Halloween, and I reread that after a couple of months later, when I could handle it again. Um,

spk_3:   6:16
that's how we found out it was the feeling. It

spk_2:   6:19
seems that calm a bit him on the leg on that one. Oh,

spk_3:   6:22
I guess they did. I guess if you court something your whole life, you know Well,

spk_0:   6:28
if you court a thing like that your whole life sometime, it's going to get you your Sometimes you're you're gonna be part of the plot. Let's

spk_2:   6:35
Well, that's a very interesting, very interesting and pro time. And I never actually I never I never met

spk_1:   6:42
him on I've met. I've met your mom and I know your whole family. Uh, I can just assume it was one of those crazy kind of constellations were things like That Come Together

spk_4:   7:01
Forever by the Baby Blue Sound Collective. I think what I love so much about this CD is that some of the songs were inspired by the patients.

spk_1:   7:12
Many listeners will understand many of the different songs and what they've been inspired. Our new album will be available on iTunes amazon dot com Spotify.

spk_4:   7:22
I love the fact that the proceeds from this CD are actually going to help those with congenital heart defects

spk_1:   7:29
join music

spk_4:   7:30
home tonight forever. You are listening to heart to heart with Michael. If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on Michael's program, please email him at Michael at heart to heart with michael dot com Now back to our program.

spk_1:   7:53
But let's just go back a little

spk_2:   7:54
bit. How old were you when you made other yum and why did you make that decision? And for those who don't know, making Aliyah means moving to Israel from anyplace in the world. That's not Israel.

spk_0:   8:04
Um, I came here to study when I was 17 and I stayed a my That had been my purpose. Really. I went to a Jewish day school as a kid on, and they kind of indoctrinated me. And I decided to to try to live here, even looked when it was 12 even. And there was that intense indoctrination. Indoctrination.

spk_3:   8:26
That's

spk_4:   8:27
what

spk_2:   8:28
I didn't know you had that in your background that you had the day school

spk_0:   8:30
that I went Teoh. Yeah, I went from second to sixth grade. I went to a hello school was active in NCs. Why, as a teenager. Yeah, and although I was more on the conservative side of the time, but everybody went there, so I did, too. Um, yeah, but I came here after high school and I was 17. And to study at the, um, machine on the preparatory programme for university here. And I stayed, Um, that's what I wanted. And it fit in with the fact that my life is a teenager. My home life had been put it mildly fractured and fragmented and very, very complicated. With home A I met my father again when I was almost 16. My

spk_3:   9:17
mother

spk_0:   9:17
re introduced him to my life, and he really, really thank her for it. Uh,

spk_2:   9:23
that was already when you were here. Oh, just before you came. This is

spk_3:   9:26
just before

spk_0:   9:26
I came here. Just before I came here for a two years before I came here. A year and 1/2 2 years before I came here. Yeah, something like that. Um, I can't say that meeting him influenced me coming here or not. It was something that I had planned it not planned on doing anyway.

spk_2:   9:46
Now I want to ask you something else. Your connection to Judaism is, of course, to your mother. Your father was not Jewish. So when you found out that he had died, was there a decision to sit? Shiva? Are you allowed to do that? You're not allowed to do that. Did you ask and

spk_3:   10:03
what really happened?

spk_0:   10:05
I got in contact with with two friends who were both saying ones that conservative Rabbi higher Beckles on. And yeah, and I also talked to my friend Dalia Milk about him out about it a little bit. And what what do you do? What do people do when they both told me they knew of people like that one parent, sometimes both parents, um it became up with some idea. The fire came up with some ideas that sounded a little bit like awake, actually, because my father had been raised Catholic. There

spk_3:   10:42
wasn't a

spk_0:   10:43
memorial, Nobody. Nobody held any kind of memorial for him, and it really disturbed me. I felt like whatever the relationship Waas I wanted the human life to have something, and so I sort of adopted him. Uh, yes. We want to talk about this already have sort of adopted doing a, uh, a candle lighting. It's actually on October 31st cause that is very power hold. If

spk_3:   11:07
he horror writer died on Halloween, that has

spk_0:   11:11
to be October 31st not the Jewish state, because it's sort of not appropriate for it, But it is sort of a mix of traditions, I guess because I know from my aunt that, um, Catholics also use a lot of candles, candles and light is a big element. Is a big concept in all religions. So So it seemed appropriate. And I have been lighting candles on the anniversary of his death, and, I say a kind of private prayer. Nobody could seem to find me anything appropriate to say so I just do something on my own.

spk_2:   11:44
Interesting. Usually they have everything covered. Yeah. So you didn't see you. You were sort of robbed of the opportunity to sit. Shiva?

spk_3:   11:55
Yep. Yeah, some people dio, but, um, yeah, I was

spk_0:   11:59
sort of robbed of that.

spk_2:   12:02
It's interesting because I didn't know at the time that this has happened, I'm I can't also remember any great within our own community people coming over and visiting and doing all things that people dio. So did you feel that you were sort of alone on this?

spk_0:   12:17
I did, for a while I actually really did. For a while, people, sort of. I sort of expected me to just go on regularly. And there is a There is a ah, meaning of super Shiva has meaning it. It really does. It's important to dio um and it was really lacking that I had nothing to no way to commemorate. No way to remember and no way to I don't think about it that had been sanctioned somehow that everybody recognized

spk_2:   12:47
not that interesting. It's an interesting problem because, uh, you're, you know, far enough removed physically from the rest of his family. There's just your aunt. She's not too actually. You

spk_3:   13:00
want you I know a little bit college for has

spk_0:   13:05
been. And Uncle, my father was a was an identical twin

spk_3:   13:08
when his brother

spk_0:   13:09
Right now, too. Yeah.

spk_3:   13:11
Okay. That's a

spk_2:   13:12
spooky family. That's just, you know, leave it like

spk_3:   13:14
that thing. Spooky a little. Yeah,

spk_0:   13:21
right into that. Yeah.

spk_2:   13:23
So you were left really? With nothing to do, except maybe light a candle and no, you know, the interesting about interesting thing about Shivan we've discussed this on earlier programs is that, um it's designed to sort of bring you down or a company you as you go down and then helped bring you back up at the end of the week so that you have experienced your sadness, possibly even your anger. But by the time it's over, you are beginning to get ready to come back into the community. So it's a much longer process than that. But the 1st 7 days, a really critical You didn't have that?

spk_3:   13:59
No. So I didn't have that.

spk_2:   14:01
And now you like the outside candle once a year, and that's what you have. Do you tell stories to your kids about Did they know him?

spk_0:   14:13
They met him. They

spk_1:   14:14
met him.

spk_0:   14:15
They definitely met him, Um, twice. And we stayed with him. We even went to a writer's retreat with him. He had There was a cabin That's part of what I was talking about later. But he there was a camera house, the house in the woods that we went to stay there for a weekend with him.

spk_2:   14:34
No, After they did

spk_0:   14:35
meet him

spk_2:   14:36
after he met with a poem, didn't.

spk_0:   14:39
Yes, he did. Do

spk_2:   14:40
you want to tell you about that?

spk_0:   14:41
Would you like to hear the

spk_3:   14:42
pole way.

spk_2:   14:43
Have enough time to hear that. Pope? Yes. Do you conveniently haven't located in front of you?

spk_3:   14:49
I absolutely do. In practice in

spk_0:   14:51
the book that, uh, the story was that I was standing right behind him. He stayed up all night to write, uh, to finish a book that he was working on, you know, 25 books after all. Um, I was reading a book called The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, which is a lot like things that he would write by Amy Bender. Short stories, but e I saw what he was writing over a shoulder, and I wrote it into the back of the books. Yeah. Yeah. Would you like to hear it?

spk_2:   15:19
I would like to hear. Yes.

spk_0:   15:21
Okay. It's called in July like I am right. As far as I know, it hasn't been published anywhere. Even my grandchildren, so sturdy and full of life, is loudest crows. Truck storms is beautiful. A sudden night. They are mostly eyes and mostly Malik's and most the arms and mostly legs. Clambering about on gentle slopes in the morning and following the day from beginning to end, beginning singing the songs of their childhood in the music that is their language. Songs about dinosaurs, princesses and chocolate The that that reflects. Ah, I have a picture at home, too. And there was they were rolling around the the world outside of the the cabin and having a very good time. So they really were clambering about on gentle slopes and the the songs that they were singing. I remember that I made with my older son was wandering around singing the Israeli song about how he likes chocolate. Honey wife Chocolat.

spk_3:   16:20
There you go. I know that some way away on her. Yeah. Here. He kept singing it. Yeah, you kept

spk_0:   16:28
thinking it. My father was very impressed that he was so into Harry Potter, too. He was reading Harry Potter the whole time. He was old enough to be doing that. So yeah, and the princesses are water. And my daughter and the dinosaurs, airily who was fascinated wanted to be a t rex and

spk_2:   16:46
moved about the house as one Hey,

spk_3:   16:49
did he did He moved about the houses way,

spk_2:   16:53
have a mutual neighbour, and they had a kid that they called little destructive. Oh,

spk_3:   16:59
and I was like that. Yeah, the funny part is that

spk_0:   17:03
now he's like, you know, we talked about karma. Now he's in the Army and he, you know, he works with new recruits, so it was going to get him some health at Karma.

spk_2:   17:13
I have bad things like

spk_5:   17:14
that. This program is a presentation of hearts, unite the Globe and is part of the Hug Podcast Network are tonight. Theglobe is a non profit organization devoted to providing resource is to the congenital heart defect community to uplift on power and enrich the lives of our community members. If you would like access to free resource, is pretending to the CHT community. Please visit our website at www dot hugged dash podcast network dot com for information about CHD, the hospitals that treat Children with CHD summer camps for CHD survivors and much, much more.

spk_3:   17:51
I was five hours old when I had my first surgery.

spk_4:   17:54
The only advice I could really give someone like that is to be there for your family.

spk_3:   17:59
This is life and you have to live it or you sit in a corner and cry.

spk_4:   18:04
I am in a Gorski and the host of heart to Heart with Anna join us on Tuesdays at noon, Eastern time on Speaker our block talk radio. We'll cover topics of importance for the congenital heart defect community. Remember, my friends, you are not alone. I am with origami l jewelry and we personalized luck. It's It has helped me heal so much by having that locket. I've had other friends and customers who have created lockets. They'd love their lockets, and they gift lockets to people who are bereaved or they're celebrating somebody to get your own origami. Our luck it contact Nifc Jensen on Facebook for her website. Dancey dancey may dot origami owl dot com. You are listening to heart to heart with Michael. If you have a question or comment that you would like addressed on our program, please send an email to Michael even at Michael at heart to heart with michael dot com. Now back to heart to heart with Michael

spk_2:   19:07
Rachel. You are an excellent artist, and I can attest to this personally. Your Children are also writers and very creative. How do you feel that your father's talents have influenced you and your Children?

spk_0:   19:20
The influence is undeniable, that is, I'm sitting here right now in my room where my daughter you still have, and now she's moved out and the paintings, they're all around me. It's a world that I feel like he kind of gave me that I can immerse myself in. Um, even though I wasn't raised with him for most of the years, that contact is undeniable. It's like in their writing to that. The almost obsessive impulse to tell a story is apparently also genetic.

spk_2:   19:57
That's what I want to throw it. And do you think it's just genetic? Or is that also a function of your relationship that for so much of your time with him, you weren't with him? And is that, you know, some sort of Is that in some way related to the the expression of art in all of your family?

spk_0:   20:15
I think it is related to the expression of art in my family that he wasn't a part of our lives for so long. It may be the kind of creative imagination that we have that I have that my Children have, um spurred us on to fill in the blanks in a way way got that genetically. But it the absence Firdos on to do things with it, Andi to seek him out in the end and to seek out his work. And, um, I think kind of, ah, reference. They didn't a lot of things that I paint or a lot of things that I write and I'm looking right now. Actually, it a picture that's one of my favorite topics and all favorite subjects in all. All things that I paint is a girl at the window

spk_2:   21:02
from the

spk_0:   21:03
justices, Picasso or Dali. And I did my own version of it. And there's something about the looking out over the sea, about longing, that I

spk_3:   21:12
get the Dublin for me. His absolutely does that

spk_2:   21:17
your daughter, I I knew what I didn't know. She was a later. I know there's a singer, and what does she still do? That

spk_3:   21:26
she thinks a little

spk_0:   21:26
bit, But I think, um, like my father and kind of like me, I think she was in a frame or two, the teenager that was too much like boot camp, and she

spk_3:   21:37
may go back

spk_0:   21:38
to it eventually, but she always kind of feels like she's being strangled when she has to go into some kind of choir anything, and instead it's funny because it came background. Instead, she's taken on the site of writing that has taken on the art of writing. Um, and that's why she's an old study literature. She loves literature. Um, Tel Aviv, and she got into the creative writing, um, department there to she had to hand in a bunch of foams, and I helped her with it, and I asked her about this. I asked her. I told her about this podcast, and I asked her if there's anything she wanted me to read

spk_3:   22:15
and gave

spk_0:   22:16
me something

spk_2:   22:17
good will get. We'll get to that very shortly. As she read your father's work.

spk_0:   22:23
They've read a little bit of my father's work. Yeah, they have, um, some of it. Ah, there was a poem that he wrote that I gave her recently that was in a collection of his cult bone soup that he only published their only like 700 copies of it. There is a copy of one of his last books, which was cold house, Uh, not one of his last, considered one of the best really in there. And but there are also Poland in there and I gave her one of the poems to read and see. She really liked it. Um, it's funny. I think she really kind of height like him like I

spk_3:   22:59
do. There's something in the style. Well, I've

spk_2:   23:03
beverages. I read his work. It's very readable and it draws you right into it. And you're right there. While he's clearly thinking about where to go next in the story, you're trying to help him. That was my experience with sleep. Easy is that he's presenting ideas of how things might be in heaven slash hell and you wanna go with it. But then it changes and you want to help him and you want Oh, so it really sucks you right? And I can I can see why he would. You know what, why they would be interested in that.

spk_3:   23:34
But they are. And they also

spk_0:   23:36
have that kind of I don't know if he would have liked the word, but that kind of spiritual bent to them to that, especially my daughter. They, um, wanting to know what else there is, what else happens to us? Kind

spk_3:   23:50
of the mystery boyfriend death

spk_0:   23:51
there. He's whole life. Writing about that

spk_2:   23:54
is disturbed populated that that she wrote

spk_0:   23:58
a little bit. Yeah, a little bit.

spk_3:   24:01
Not life. Yeah.

spk_2:   24:02
You want to tell us more about the poem? You read it.

spk_0:   24:05
I will read it in the second I after. And she gave me one poem that I thought wasn't the best. That was about her team. Um And then she gave me another one that she wrote, I think inspired by ah ah, a picture of her That where her father held her up when she was 2.5. It was that all these their brothers address. I don't know that she knows that, but I put it all together, see on. And she wrote a poem about it. I'll give years later. I put the poems right next to each other. The one that my father wrote his grandchildren in the princess. And, um and hers is called. My father promised me. Okay. Okay. I read it.

spk_2:   24:53
Yes. Let's go.

spk_0:   24:55
Okay. My father promised me a golden dress I could swirl in. He picked me up in his arms and smiled at me and spun me around our teeth of bright white in the fixer and our smiles or pinking shiny. My little hands are clutching the buttons on his dress shirt. He's spinning around with me. High in the air All goes the world on the pixelated colors of my skin, my yellow curls bouncing involving. My father promised me a golden dressed It's world, and he held my hand and asked me where I wanted to go. Our steps clicking on the yellow pavement, stones in the yard as we stumbled through the shiny black mirror. Cuddles, he said, It's all right. If the puddles get your dress a little bit wet, our steps accelerate. Increasing scope running forward towards kindergarten than to school. To the army, to university, to a wedding, to Children to work, to grand Children, to love, to sorrow, to joy, to trauma. Two accidents and surprises to disappointment and expectation and grief and excitement. Everything in all and more and more of everything. My legs get moving and fast forward until I get it. The golden dress for twirling. I think they deserve it. After all, it's what my father promised me.

spk_2:   26:10
That is a beautiful poem that is absolutely gorgeous. I can see her. I can see Edo, I. I can see the whole thing and it's just so out there. And so everything about the relationship between the daughter and her father, it's really she's special. She really is.

spk_3:   26:27
Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Now we have from the

spk_2:   26:32
grandfather and we have a poem from the granddaughter. And in between there's a poem that you wrote.

spk_0:   26:40
There actually isn't I couldn't find it. It was in the

spk_3:   26:42
poetry dirt old, but I couldn't find it on mine. It has been called in the event of your death. I No, no, no. Because also, I

spk_0:   26:54
think it was too sad and I don't want toe I I don't want Teoh

spk_3:   27:01
to mark this up

spk_0:   27:02
with too much sadness. This is about celebrating life. It was about it was after my father in law had seen, had had nursed his wife until her death. And, well, it is a part of life. I I preferred my daughter's phone because it's much happier.

spk_2:   27:19
What I see is a very interesting line that goes straight through the generations. You both right, and you both paint and I I know that you're very creative family. So to sum up now, let's give me one last thing that will just celebrate your father. And we can go out of here feeling even more uplifted because it's just so fascinating that he's gone. He's ripped through the generations, and he's still there is still there with you.

spk_0:   27:47
Um, I could have looked at, uh I had a little poetry journal that he Yeah, that he that he gave me, he would he would publish them because I think he felt that his books were kind of It wasn't a very serious literature that he wanted to do

spk_3:   28:05
some of the more, but it

spk_0:   28:07
wasn't very serious literature that he wanted. Um, I'm not quite sure what else I can add to it. Other than that, uh, I hope the creativity is our like, it's his legacy. It really is. Whatever else there, waas, whatever meandering and, uh, mysterious connection there is here that was so fragmented. Creativity of the legacy.

spk_2:   28:35
Very nice. Very sweet. And that concludes the heart with Michael. I want to thank Rachel Greenbaum for sharing her father tm right with us. And I hope her memorial has inspired those of you who are listening. Please join us at the beginning of the month

spk_1:   28:49
for a brand new podcast. I'll talk with you soon, but until then, remember, our loved ones are still with us as long as we keep their memories alive. Thank you.

spk_4:   29:00
Thank you again for joining us. We hope you have gained strength from listening to our program. Heart to heart with Michael could be heard every Thursday at noon Eastern time. We'll talk again next time when we'll share more stories.