Ben Nadel © 2008.
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A Bruce'ism is a story that you hear about poppa and you think to yourself "Classic Bruce! Only he would do something like that" This is a collection of such stories that I have heard over the years. Are they all true? Probably not completely; hearing one of these is akin to playing telephone: the details might change a bit here an there, but the sentiment is right on. Bruce (poppa bear) was a great man, tremendously generous, and very often completely crazy in a way you just have to respect.
When my dad met mom, it was a story of love at first sight. He saw her from across the room at an art gallery party and he knew he had to have her. Over the next few months he courted her intensely (as a friend, she was married at the time). At one point, she had rented a small art studio for herself and a friend. Having not seen the area before renting, she asked dad to go take a look at it and let her know what it was like. So what does Bruce do? He goes and repaints the entire studio, fixes it up, and even installs lighting outside the street door entrance. Of course he then tells her that it's a nice place and she did right by renting it. Classic Bruce!
One night, mom and dad were sleeping on the sailboat at some marina, when mom was woken by the sounds of someone walking around on deck. She woke Bruce to show him feet passing by the cabin's portal. Now, a little back story; Bruce loved this boat. LOVED it! I think the idea of someone else walking around on it felt almost like a personal violation; his boat was his baby. That being said, Bruce, instead of calling the cops or alerting the marina staff, got one of those two-foot MAG flashlights, crouched behind the entry latter, and waited. The man on deck fumbled around with the cabin door, opened it, and came down into the boat. Bruce, came up behind the man and started to beat him with a passion. Mom, fearing for the man's life, started screaming and tried to pull Bruce off. Now, that's younger and wilder Bruce, but it's still Classic Bruce!
When dad was sick (towards the end) the entire family came together to help mom and dad move stuff to their new house. Poppa had always been a do'er and I know standing there on crutches, watching all of us work, not being able to help out, must have torn him up inside. One day, while we were cleaning out the crawl space, poppa announced:
"Thank you so much for helping. When I am over this [cancer], I will take you all to Paris for two weeks."
If you didn't know Bruce, you might brush this off as an empty promise. But it wasn't. Bruce never made empty promises. From picking up a gallon milk on the way home to taking people to Paris, he was a man of his word. The statement above, while simple in nature, demonstrates both the extreme generosity of this man as well as his unending belief that he would beat his sickness.
He never got to take us to Paris. But nevertheless, such appreciation, such warmth... Classic Bruce!
On Mother's Day, poppa would wake up early, before anyone else was awake, and sneak down to the driveway. There, out in the driveway, in his very car, it looked as if someone has set up a flower shop. You couldn't stand on one side and see through to the other; flowers were packed in from window to window. Over the course of what must have been an hour, he brought all those flowers into the house and arranged them in the kitchen. By the time mom woke, the kitchen was a forrest of light, colors, and well mixed fragrances. I am not sure if I could make anyone feel as loved as he made my mother feel, but one think I am sure of is that was Classic Bruce.