Book Excerpts

The following are two excerpts from the book I recently wrote about my grandfather, Dr. Alvin Cohen, may he rest in peace. The idea for the book was conceived when he received a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Wanting to preserve his memories and life story, I spent many hours interviewing him and rewriting the interviews in story form. Besides for being one of my most favorite people, my grandfather did a tremendous amount for me. Writing his life story and presenting it to him in a professionally typeset and bound book was the first time I could do something for him. The book was completed one week before my grandfather passed away.

Dieting Mania

Spending hours sitting on a chair listening to my psychiatric patients talk, took a toll on my weight. I thought back longingly to the days in the Army when I was too underweight to be drafted into the navy. I meditated for a long time trying to figure out where all the excess weight was coming from. I ate a light breakfast of toast and coffee, almost no lunch, and several portions of whatever was served for dinner. Wandering around the kitchen late one night, a handful of potato chips in one hand, and bottle of beer in the other, I hit upon the solution. It was the late night munching, the handful of this and the handful of that, which was causing the pounds to start climbing and the needle on the scale to start rising.

I rushed into the living room to share my epiphany with Ruth. She was in the living room folding laundry, while she watched her favorite T.V. show. “Ruth, Ruth,” I called out. “I’ve just figured out the secret to my weight gain, and the absolutely perfect way to lose it!”

Ruth looked up with a modicum of interest. “Yeah, what is it?”

I was bursting with enthusiasm. “It’s like this. I realized that it’s the second supper I eat that is causing all the pounds to pile up. So we’re not going to eat dinner at home. Every night we’re going to go to a different restaurant. A restaurant is the ultimate in portion control!”

Ruth’s eyes were already straying back to the T.V. “Whatever you’d like Alvin. Which one do you want to go to tomorrow?”

I was warming up to this plan. “I don’t want to have long arguments each night, about which restaurant we’re going to. Let’s just go to Veterans Highway—that street is lined with restaurants—and just go to them in order.”

It was a few months into my new diet and things were going great. I had dropped a few pounds, because when I came home from the restaurant, there were no seconds of dinner to eat, and as per my request, the cupboards and fridge were bare.

As usual, I parked the car, and Ruth and I walked to the next restaurant in line. But this time things didn’t go according to The Plan. Ruth took one look at the restaurant. “I’m not going into this restaurant,” she said, “it’s filthy.”

I peered inside the window. It was hard to see inside because the glass could use a bit of a wash. She was right. It was a little dirty. But rules were rules.

“We can’t go anywhere else,” I said firmly. “We make an exception tonight, and that will be the end. Every night we’ll have endless arguing about where to go.”

“Alvin, that’s ridiculous,” she said. “This restaurant is dirty. I couldn’t care less about what kind of food we eat each night, as long as it’s clean. I promise you, I’m not going to start arguing each night.”

I stood firm though, and eventually Ruth acquiesced. The food was terrible, the service even worse, and that night Ruth got sick with agonizing stomach pains. That was the end of the Veterans Highway diet.

My next diet was the monotony diet. I figured that if I ate the same food every single night for dinner, I would eventually get sick of it, and eat less and less each night. So for weeks on end, I would eat only tuna fish, hamburgers or gefilta fish. When gefilta fish was the food of choice, I would go to the local store and buy a new jar every few days. As I placed the jar of Manischewitz gefilta fish balls on the counter, the cashier remarked, “It’s funny, we never used to sell much of this gefilta fish. But recently, we have sold so much of it. I guess it’s really gotten popular!” I didn’t bother informing the sweet blonde cashier that the only one buying all this gefilta fish was none other than me.


My last resort at dieting was to pay my kids fifty cents—a princely sum—every time one of them caught me eating after dinner. If I would just avoid the fridge and stay out of the kitchen, I could have saved myself a lot of money. But I had a compulsion that kept on sending me to that fridge again and again. After a few weeks of paying out substantial sums of money, I got smart. I started sneaking into the kitchen when everyone was sleeping and helping myself to the fridge contents. One night I crept out of bed as usual after everyone was asleep and softly padded into the kitchen. Just as my hand was reaching into the pot of cold pasta, suddenly all four of my kids, Jeanie, Diane, Lisa and Larry, jumped out from the corners of the kitchen. “Caught you Dad!” they announced gleefully. “We caught you!” And they stuck out their hands, “fifty cents please.” And that was the end of the Pay-Food diet.

It became a lot easier to just buy my clothes one size bigger.

I’ll Catch You Dad!

I sat in the humid, sultry heat of the New Orleans summer, alone. Around me, young girls and boys and their parents were splashing in the huge pool of my friend. Usually at pool parties I had the company of one of my friends who was almost as terrified of water as I was, but this time, my friend had thrown caution to the winds, and jumped into the water. He kept beckoning to me, trying to induce me to join the fun, but I just shook my head and smiled in refusal. But just then my six year old son called out to me. “Hey Dad,” Larry called out. “This is so much fun! Come in with me.”

I went closer to the pool where Larry was splashing merrily and playing with his friends. “I can’t come in.” I said embarrassed. “I don’t know how to swim.”

“Don’t worry Dad,” Larry said, his deep blue eyes staring intently into mine.
“Just jump in. I’ll catch you!”

I turned away so Larry wouldn’t see the tears that had sprung to my eyes at his heartfelt declaration. Those words penetrated to the depths of my heart.
I never was able to escape the fear that I wasn’t being a good enough father for my son. My son’s words brought all my fears and insecurities to the surface. I wanted my son to be able to depend and rely on me; not for him to assume the role of my protector, touching as it was.

The very next day I went to Tulane University and hired Bob, one of the college students on the swim team, to teach me how to swim. I looked in dread at the huge Olympic sized pool. “Listen,” I told Bob. “I just want to tell you a little bit about why I’m doing this. You see, my father died when I was three and as a result my mother was very overprotective. You can say that I never had a real childhood, she never let me do anything and she made me believe that if I would step foot into the water, I would certainly drown…”

Bob interrupted my nervous monologue. “Doc, you’re not going to learn a thing from talking. Just get into the water!”

It took many weeks to overcome my fear and learn the rudiments of swimming. When I finally swam across the width of the Olympic size pool, I climbed out, triumphant with what I had accomplished. That’s when I suddenly heard the sound of resounding applause. The entire swimming team of Tulane University was clapping and cheering for my achievement. I hadn’t noticed that they had watched my struggle week by week to conquer my fear; now they were expressing sincere admiration.

I celebrated my achievement by building a pool in my backyard. I was very specific with the contractor I hired. The dimensions were unusual and specific- the length of my pool was precisely the size of the width of the Olympic size pool I had learned in.

The many hours I had spent in psychotherapy had made me very aware of why I was stifled and afraid of the world. It was those few words “Just get into the water” that made the biggest impact on me. I learned that action is the essential thing.