Lucille Aviv Blog

One night while visiting Buenos Aires nearly five years ago, my best friend Blue and I came home from a night of joda to find my 80-year-old abuelita missing.

It was 12:30 a.m. She wasn’t reading the paper or watching Benny Hill reruns on her little TV. She wasn’t watering her jungle of flowers or cooking knishes. Her small, two-bedroom apartment that she had lived in for nearly 30 years was empty. And I started to freak out.

I called my mom in LA.

“Guille’s not here!” I shouted into the phone. “Blue and I came home and she’s missing!”

“What? Wait,” my mom replied, “what time is it there?”

“It’s 12:30 in the morning!”

“Oh, she’s probably out.”

Out? My petite, sweet, widowed grandma? Out? At this time of night? I don’t think so. People MY age go “out”; my abuelita is supposed to be home when it’s dark and night has already started to creep into the next day.

I made some te con leche to calm my nerves, sat down at the kitchen table, and waited up like an anxious parent. At 1 a.m., I heard the keys rattling outside the apartment. The door opened and in walked my abuela, furtively stepping into the kitchen like a teenager sneaking in after prom night.

“Where have you been?” I asked her in Spanish, standing with my hands at my hips. “I was worried.”

She took one look at me, smiled, and in heavily accented English said, “Oh, oh! Busted!”

This, to me, is my grandma. Mi abuelita. Guille (an affectionate nickname her brother gave her when she was a little girl that stuck throughout her life). So full of life, energy, and silliness.

Guille and me, New Year’s Eve 2006
When I saw her while visiting Argentina last month, she was still the same, fun grandma who let me stay up late watching TV with her when I was a boy, the same grandma who hugged me when I was sad and scolded me when I was being petulant.

Now 85, she’s smaller in stature and she can’t walk far without her legs feeling like they’re on fire. Walking down Avenida Cabildo one morning, I teased her that if she walked any slower she’d be going backwards. She laughed, squeezed my arm, and gave me a kiss.

On a different morning, we discussed the principle of marriage and family over medialunas.

“When are you going to give me great-grandchildren?”

“I don’t know, Guille, not for several more years.”

“When?”

“Let’s say five years.”

“Five years?” she replied while belting out a mocking laugh. “You think I’ll be around that long?”

“Yes, of course, you’ll only be 90.”

Only 90. I swear, if you knew my abuela, you know she could live to be 120 if she wanted. She’s obstinate and difficult to sway, a trait that has been passed down to my mom, my siblings, and myself. She likes things her way and no one’s going to change that.

“Guille, it’s so hot in here, can I turn on the air conditioner?” I asked her one day as I suffered through a record-breaking Buenos Aires heat wave.

“I don’t have an air conditioner.”

“What? Why not?”

“I don’t believe in it.”

My grandma can be so eccentric sometimes it defies logic. During my visit, she gave me a bag full of underwear Blue had left here accidentally during our last visit. She had washed, folded, and saved his underwear for nearly five years, waiting for the day I would visit to return it.

I asked her why she kept it and didn’t just throw the underwear away, and she said, “Why would I throw underwear away?”

Hermano, abuelo, me, Guille, and Hermanita, 1982
A running joke with my grandma during this last visit was that she was constantly drunk. When she told me something irrational like “walk on the floor softer” or “don’t touch my plants”, I would tilt my hand to my mouth and mime the act of drinking. Once, she thought I was just thirsty and brought me water.

When Guille was a child, her parents fled Poland for Argentina, seeking to escape pogroms and anti-Semitism sweeping across Eastern Europe. She grew up in Buenos Aires and lived there her whole life. She was married to my grandpa Meir for 40 years before he died in 1983 of cancer. She smiles when I talk about him and has dozens of framed photos of him around the apartment.

A few years ago, thieves broke into her friend’s apartment while she was playing cards with her friends and stole her wedding ring at gunpoint. She pleaded with them to take anything but the ring, explaining that its only value was purely sentimental. They took it anyway.

“Why don’t you move to the U.S. and live with Mami?” I asked her once. “Argentina is so dangerous.”

“No,” she said. “I grew up here and I’m going to die here.”

No problem, abuela. But I’ll see you when you’re 120.

I had just walked into the house after playing a round of golf. Mom hollered “Elvis is dead!”

There was no need to ask Elvis who. There was only one Elvis back then, and many say feel the name should be retired, like Jackie Robinson’s number.

Elvis Aron Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi on January 8, 1935. While no Boomer himself, there’s no estimating just how great an effect he had on our generation. More’s the pity he was robbed of the chance to completely own the music business, instead being coerced by his controlling manager into appearing in a long string of cheesy movies through the 60’s, wasting time that should have been spent in the recording studio.
Elvis exploded onto the scene with hit singles released by legendary Sun Records. His career was launched into overdrive by triumphant (and controversial for the time) appearances on Ed Sullivan. He truly was rock and roll to a generation of Boomers a bit older than me.

Then, Uncle Sam called. On December 20, 1957, Elvis opened his mail to find a draft notice. We didn’t know it then, but the King of Rock and Roll would never be the same.

Serving in Germany, Elvis discovered amphetamines. They would keep you going when you were short of sleep. Elvis was an instant fan, and they accompanied him right to the grave, along with a host of other prescription drugs obtained for him by Colonel Parker.

But it wasn’t the drugs that took Elvis’s brilliant edge off that was so cutting from 1955-1957. It was his greedy manager, who saw more cash flow from Elvis the actor instead of Elvis the rocker. So he convinced Presley it was in his best interests (it was certainly in Parker’s) to back off of cutting records and spend more time making movies. Songs like Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog, and Love Me Tender will endure for the ages. Movies like Charro!, Tickle Me, and Kid Galahad won’t.

But in 1968, Elvis, dissatisfied about his downhill career slide, signed a deal with NBC to produce a television show called simply Elvis. It later came to be known as the ‘68 Comeback Special. The King, whose record sales and movie receipts were way down from previous highs, wowed TV audiences with a smash hit show that was also artistically praised by the critics. Elvis was back.

He went on the road, playing all over the country, but performed numerous times in Las Vegas. His later career was marked by his white outfit onstage at the big Vegas casinos. As Neil Young sang in He Was the King, the blue-haired ladies screamed.

But the whole time, he was on a veritable cocktail of uppers, downers, and everything in between that was available at the local pharmacy. Colonel Parker might have slowed down the flow of drugs if he had envisioned the early death of his cash cow, but he kept Elvis richly supplied with everything the King asked for.

On August 16, 1977, it all caught up with him. He was found dead in the toilet.

I wish I had known Elvis the rocker. Jailhouse Rock, one of his few cinematic jewels, gives me an idea of how this man turned the world of music upside down. So does footage of the Sullivan appearances. But, sadly, the Elvis I remember was the one who sang those bad songs in those bad movies, and who died at the age of 42 looking like he was twice that old.

I blame a sponging, dominating, self-centered agent, and Elvis’s poor judgment in sticking with him.

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