At age 100, Bob Hope has left this world. Presumably he is entertaining all comers on a new, and higher, stage. He made it there despite the moral strictures that my mother, along with some other like her, leveled against his moral standards.

My mother was not one of Bob Hope’s fans. In fact, she would not allow me to see his movies.  To her, they were too sexy, though she would never have used this word to convey her objections. However, she gave no explanation of her reasons for trying to keep me away from the comedian’s films.

But I knew why. The way Hope joked about women and girls as alluring to males was enough.  Add to that, the sight of Dorothy Lamour wearing a sarong, as often happened in the famous Road films, was too titillating for me to be exposed to.

Sex was in Hope’s face, especially his eyes. He would look at women with a comic leer that indicated a lustful appreciation of them. When not explicit, he was suggestive, a word that the Legion of Decency, the Catholic film review agency, used in finding a film objectionable.

The Pilot, the weekly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, went further. As Boston Globe writer Martin Nolan recently recalled, in 1943 the Pilot criticized Hope for endangering the very salvation of the GIs to whom he had told filthy jokes. It would prompt them to go into battle and perhaps die with impure thoughts in their minds, thus exposing themselves as unprepared for God’s judgment.   

As noted, I largely escaped contagion by humor coming from America’s most famous funny man. Of course, I did not miss Hope altogether – no one could in the 1930s and 1940s when I was growing up. But when I did see him in a movie or hear him on the radio, he was someone whose taste my mother had made me feel wary of.

My mother’s hard line about Hope and some other entertainers came from her belief in the teachings of the Catholic Church. She took seriously its doctrines on sexuality, the way fewer and fewer Catholics seem to today. It wasn’t only the church that laid down her attitudes. Growing up in the backwash of the Victorian era, she inherited rigid attitudes from her family about anything to do with sex.

Her church taught then, as it still does now, that the least indulgence in sexual thoughts or actions on the part of an unmarried person is, in itself, seriously sinful. Yes, there could be mitigating circumstances, and less than full consent to venereal pleasure diminished the sin, but sexual activity of any sort was forbidden to anyone not married. And even if you were, there were strict limits as to what you could do, especially if you enjoyed it.

It could not have made my mother happy to serve as an ever vigilant sexual traffic cop, always ready to intervene for my protection and that of my brothers and sisters. She would seem also to have invested much energy into fending off “suggestive” incursions on her own psyche, from Bob Hope as well as others who failed her standards.

How my father felt about Bob Hope I never discovered. Since he did not take the role of prime moral arbiter in our household, his views about sexuality did not matter. Judging from the one time he spoke to me about the subject, very briefly at that, I assume that he shared many of my mother’s inhibitions.

Long since, I have felt free to laugh at Bob Hope’s jokes, even those formerly considered off-color. One of the many benefits of growing old is perspective. So many of the taboos of the past now seem trivial, not worth the effort that went into supporting them.

I now appreciate the man who, as cultural critic Roger Rosenblatt has said, “could turn an ordinary line into a howler.” Extending his praise, Rosenblatt adds: “He could do everything, like a con man should.”

Count me now among those who give “thanks for the memory” of this joke teller, singer, dancer and entertainer extraordinaire. When grown up, I had only one quarrel with him-his apparently uncritical backing of the Vietnam War. Though I can appreciate his sacrifices and courage in traveling far to entertain American troops, I saw him as supportive of our government’s determination to pursue a misbegotten war.

Even there, however, I appreciate some of the jokes he told: “I was on the way to my hotel,” he informed the soldiers, “and I passed a hotel going in the opposite direction.”

This fabulous man, a native of England, reportedly has 56 American streets named after him. His mark on the American experience of the twentieth century, though not profound, will endure in history. Even my mother, were she still in this world, might now forgive him for having posed a danger to my youthful morals.

Richard Griffin

“I would not wish to be a burden to my children.”  This was reportedly said by a woman about to enter the hospital for a series of tests. It was her rationale for keeping from her adult sons and daughters news of her health crisis. She did not want them to know of her health crisis.

The identity of the woman is not known to me, only that she is a retired person living in Florida. But she could be a whole lot of people because her underlying attitude is shared by many Americans. They think it unreasonable, even wrong, to expect their younger family members to take responsibility for their care.

You can understand some reasons for this attitude. Parents in the older generation may wish to respect the freedom of adult children to live their own lives without being inhibited by burdens imposed on them by others. These children may have children of their own who need their constant care and attention and may be pressed by work responsibilities.

Members of the older generation may feel it only fair to give their daughters and sons the same scope to find their way through early adulthood that they themselves had.  They may also remember how, in the old days, it used to happen often that women, especially, would lose marriage opportunities because their parents expected them to take on their care.

As the father of a young woman searching for her life’s work, I recognize this impulse in myself. I would not relish having my daughter’s family life or her career diverted by her feeling the need to take care of me. An only child, she might feel obligated to respond to me at a time when important opportunities lay before her.

In some instances, relationships between adult children and their parents are often troubled. Unresolved family tensions dating back many years may have reduced confidence on both sides that care giving could work. People may fear it a source of possible damage to the family at large.

And, still another reason, some parents may have reason to fear their children taking advantage of them. Personal history can have taught them to be wary of the motives of their offspring. Long experience of selfishness and self-seeking may justifiably make them suspect what their children might do to them.

And yet, when you look at the situation critically, you wonder how much American individualism is mixed into the attitudes indicated here. Does not the retired woman’s withholding of information about her health crisis come from her seeing herself as a person appropriately left to her own devices? Is that not often the impulse behind the move to retirement communities in Florida or Arizona, to get away from dependence on others?

In many other countries of the world, the issue would not exist. There, members of the same family take it as normal and natural to assume the burdens of one another. I allude to this different approach, not to portray it as the Garden of Eden, but rather to suggest that the typically American attitudes toward independence are not a universal norm.

My basic attitude toward parent care may be thought counter cultural or, perhaps, just old fashioned. However, I like to think of it as grounded in sound anthropology and in enlightened spirituality. Care of other family members in general and parent care in particular, I am convinced, expresses the vital connection we have with one another and can offer precious opportunities for personal growth.

Among my favorite writers on the subject is Mary Pipher. Her insights in “Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders” continue to inspire me. Here’s what she says about taking care of her own parents: “Helping parents get through these hard times is one of our best chances to grow up. We are no longer helpless children; we become truly helpful. If we say no to this challenge, a part of us stays forever young and helpless. Our  own growth is truncated.”

Pipher scores a direct hit, spotting the best reason why parents should go slow in refusing to be a burden to their children. You may be depriving them of a fine opportunity to grow and develop into mature persons. If you deny them care giving opportunities, you may also be giving up the opportunity for yourself to become a more loving person.

Admittedly, the situation is often not as straightforward as I have presented it here. But my main point is to hold up for examination a set of attitudes that frequently work against our own best interests. Interdependence, I am convinced, is the most ennobling approach to life. We need one another, and in the same families our welfare often lies in finding ways to share one another’s burdens.

Richard Griffin

Donald Hall is a writer I can identify with. Not because of literary talent, which he has in abundance, but for other reasons. He is my same age; he gets up early in the morning; and, most of all, he loves his work.

This year he issued another edition of his book “Life Work,” first published in 1993. Since that time, his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, died at age 47, and he himself has survived cancer that seemed sure to kill him.

For five years after his wife’s death, Hall was not able to write in his usual range of forms. Even children’s literature in which he had excelled –  –  “The Ox-Cart Man” being his most celebrated book –  –  no longer stirred his creative powers. Nor could he find any pleasure in the essays at which he also excels.

As his grief diminished in intensity, he rediscovered the satisfactions of daily work. Some of that work includes tending to the farmhouse and the yard in Wilmot, New Hampshire where he has lived since 1975. To him, gardens are important; so is walking the dog and daily dealings with his fellow townspeople.

This balance of activities seems ideal to me, a contented urban dweller far removed from frequent contact with the good earth. At least in theory, I recognize the therapeutic benefits of chores outside the house that keep a person in contact with bedrock reality.

I strongly identify with Donald Hall’s vibrant sense of family members, some of them long gone. The farmhouse in which he lives was bought by his great-grandparents in 1865. There his mother and grandmother were born, and there were other family members living in the area. The church that Hall attends, some two miles away, was the site of his grandmother’s organ playing. She played for an astounding 78 years, starting at age 14.

Many of Hall’s activities evoke the presence of these ancestors: fixing things in the house, doing chores in the yard. They summon up the memory of family members who came before him, and continuity with them remains important to him. He knows a lot about his forbears and relishes much that he has learned of their accomplishments.

The stories told of his family members form a precious legacy for Donald Hall. Of them, he says: “I repeat stories I grew upon, stories that created me.” This is a man rooted in family history, much to the benefit of his own psyche.

But back to his main work, writing, I take inspiration from what he says about it. For him, “work is my obsession but it is also my devotion.” He gets out of bed at 4:30 or 5:15 in the morning, reads the newspaper during breakfast, all the while feeling excitement building in anticipation of turning to his writing projects.

But he is not an intellectual detached from the world. Every evening in season he watches the Red Sox on television. In the winter, he watches the Celtics’ play basketball. While following sports on screen, he writes letters to his friends, pays bills, shuffles through magazines, and prepares his tax returns.

Of all the insights Hall shares in his book, I like best those shared with him by the sculptor Henry Moore, expressed at age 80. “The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is –  – it must be something you cannot possibly do!”

To me, this statement suffers from exaggeration but, still, it expresses a vital ideal, namely being passionate about something. Yes, it is easier for artists than for the rest of us to commit themselves entirely to one quest. But, those elders among us who have found such a similar ideal in whatever they do are indeed fortunate.

Hall also caught my attention when he wrote about a byproduct of work: “Contentment is work so engrossing that you do not know you are working.” And he adds: “You are only content when you have no notion of contentment.”

In my working life, there is nothing that pleases me more than getting lost in a project. Forgetting about myself, becoming wrapped up in what I am doing, losing all sense of time – these are my most precious experiences in work. Unfortunately, they are altogether too rare.

Would that more of us in later life – – yes in retirement – – could find activities that can bear this kind of meaning. Many of us, to be sure, have learned to reshape retirement to make of it a time of flourishing, in both our inner and outer lives. Work may mean something quite different now from what it meant when we were paid for the job we did: it may even have more significance for our lives at this point.

Richard Griffin

All during his growing-up years and well into his adulthood Sherwin Nuland tried his utmost to get out from under his father. Even in his 70s, however, when writing a memoir, Nuland has not entirely resolved his problems with this parent. As he says: “I am writing this book to help me come to terms with my father. I am writing this book to finally make peace with him, and perhaps with myself.”

The book is entitled “Lost in America: A Journey With My Father” and ranks among the most compelling memoirs I have ever read. Its portrait of a Jewish immigrant family in the Bronx during the early and middle years of the 20th century fascinated me throughout, with the agonizing relationship of father and son at the heart of the story.

As a person given in later life to frequent reflection on my problematic relationship with my own father, almost 50 years after his death, I strongly identify with Nuland’s account of his struggles with his father.

His father’s name was Meyer Nudelman, as he was known when he first came to New York from Russia in 1907. At age 16, Sherwin changed his own last name to Nuland, largely in an effort to ease assimilation to Gentile society. On this occasion, ironically, his father also wanted to adopt the name Nuland, an action that would have defeated part of Sherwin’s reason for changing. Only vigorous protests from Sherwin and his older brother Harvey staved off their father’s action.

The small South Bronx apartment which the family occupied resounded to the words and phrases of the Yiddish language. Only the two boys learned to read, write, and speak English. The others – Meyer and the boys’ mother Vitsche, their maternal grandmother whom they called Bubbeh, and their aunt Rose – in effect remained inhabitants of the old world in Russia. Even though Meyer went to work every day in the garment district, he spoke a brand of English that was his own, mixed in with often bizarre dollops of Yiddish words and idioms.

Sherwin, called Sheppy in the family, was only 11 when his mother died, a crushing event for the boy and one that left him more than ever under his father’s influence.

Normally theirs was a turbulent family atmosphere. Even in religious practice, there was tension. When Meyer presided at the Sabbath and holy day rituals, he would rush through the rites at what the son remembers as “express-train speed.” He could discover precious little spiritual content in his father’s observance.

His grandmother, or Bubbeh, on the other hand, practiced a religion of some depth. Her relationship with God was personal and familiar, so that “she often addressed Him in the diminutive, as did other shetl women of her generation. He was Gotenyu, ‘my adored Goddy,’ as though she were speaking directly to one of her beloved grandchildren.”

Sherwin Nuland does not now believe in God, he reveals. In later life he sees the legacy of his family’s religion as negative. “It has been for me like the song of the Lorelei,” he writes,  “trying to lure me back to the destructive reefs of obsessional thinking, guilt, and depression. This is the heritage I have carried, the legacy of the formalized religion of my father, and no doubt also of the superstition of my Bubbeh.”

Despite what he describes as an agonizing struggle to become free of his father, Nuland’s life story leads to successes that make his father feel proud and fulfilled. After doing well as an undergraduate at NYU, he was admitted to Yale Medical School, his expenses paid by a family friend, possibly a cousin. On the young doctor’s graduation, his father’s face shone with pleasure and the son for the moment was able not to feel embarrassment at his presence.

Sherwin Nuland’s next professional success was being chosen as chief resident in surgery at the Yale hospital, only the second Jewish person to be so selected. When he broke this news to his father, the latter’s feelings went beyond words. “My triumph,” Dr. Nuland writes, “was his reward for all the bitterness he had suffered over the years, for the hours of despair and for enduring in the face of sickness, pessimism, and even death .  .  .  This news of mine was testimony that he had not failed in America. It was his affirmation as a man.”

The effects of the author’s long struggle to come to terms with his paternal heritage remain with him. A severe bout with depression ultimately resolved by shock treatments witnesses to the continuing impact on him of his inner torment.

And yet, he concludes his memoir by saying this about his father: “In seeking to escape him, I have drawn closer, and now at last I know that the closeness can be good. I have been trying to find his way in America for him, and for me. There is no end to it.”

Richard Griffin

What a pleasure to visit a country where every meal is an event! I refer, of course, to France, the land of esthetic eating and drinking. It tempts me to feel envious of the older people I observed in that country where nourishment has long been a fine art.

Among such elders are Georges and Liliane Hue, a long-married couple who live along the banks of the Eure River in a town in Normandy called Pont-de-l’Arche. After striking up conversation with Georges about his house, framed by a brilliant display of roses, and the experience of World War II, I saw his wife returning from the bakery with a fresh baguette in hand. If only we Americans could experience the daily pleasures of such bread!

The Hues seem happy in their retirement years, finding special pleasure in their grandson and the peace and quiet of their river site. They showed themselves warmly receptive to this brash stranger and his family members. As citizens of Normandy, they remember with appreciation the role of Americans who came to liberate their country in 1944.

Almost everywhere you go in France, memorials to the dead of two horrific world wars attract your attention. In Paris, my eyes fixed on a tablet marking the death of a 28-year-old freedom fighter, Georges Loiseleur, who was killed on August 19, 1944 , the day I was peacefully celebrating my 16th birthday.

And in every village and town, one sees stone tablets mounted in churches, commemorating those killed in the two great wars. In one of them, under the heading 1915, the list began: Irenέe Bisson, Cέsar Ambroise, Henri Ambroise. Even after all these years, the pity of all those young sons of their families and country lost in such a foolish enterprise still strikes my heart.

These evidences of loss help one sympathize with France recently leading the “coalition of the unwilling” in the face of a new war. I feel myself an honorary member of that coalition myself, an affiliation strengthened by the encounter with these memorials so widespread in the land of our traditional ally.

Other elders caught my attention. I stopped to talk with Madame Alleaume, an 80-year-old resident of the charming port of Honfleur. She lives next to the hotel where we stayed.  She and I chatted one evening about our lives. Her only complaint was her knee, still troubling her after recent surgery. Like many elders everywhere, she put this trouble in perspective and smiled as she talked.

In a Paris park, my wife and I chatted with a woman who had come there to meet her sister-in-law for lunch. This woman, whose name we did not get, recalled with pleasure spending a year in Washington D.C. in the 1950s. Like just about everybody encountered on this visit, she feels appreciative of us Americans, though some of them strongly disapprove of policies pursued by our federal government. For instance, the van driver who took us back to Charles De Gaulle airport was eloquent in his denunciation of the George W. Bush and the people around him.

Speaking of De Gaulle, while in France I read a biography titled “The Last Great Frenchman.” Of course, the dramatic moments leading to the liberation of Paris fixed my attention as I recalled reading about them when I was a teenager. By force of character and sometimes sheer orneriness, the General moved boldly in the midst of turmoil and seized the dominant position as head of state.

As always in biographies, I also took note of the subject’s final years and the appraisal given the man by the writer Charles Williams. “The essence of Charles de Gaulle remains clear,” Williams writes. “Colombey, his home, of a very affectionate, emotional and private man; France was the home of a very cold, ruthless and proud public man. The contradiction between the two sides of his character has yet to be resolved.”

I also read the gripping popular history “Is Paris Burning?” This book recounts events first threatening, and then averting, the destruction of this fabled city. This saga retains its power as you read about the German commandant, von Choltitz, in his back-and-forth struggle not to carry out Hitler’s orders to blow up the 45 bridges across the Seine and the great buildings that contribute so much to Paris’ beauty. Though we never discover exactly the commander’s motivation, he seems to have lost confidence in Hitler’s wisdom and perhaps doubted his sanity.

Back to eating and drinking, I will not forget sitting along the Seine in sight of Notre Dame Cathedral and the Sainte Chapelle while eating a simple yet altogether delicious open-air lunch. A salade mixte and a small pichet of vin rouge followed by a petit cafέ were the only items I ordered. But this combination proved scrumptious.

What more could a rapidly aging man like me possibly need to advance his continuing pursuit of happiness?

Richard Griffin