whether to look or turn away

I am named for a man I never met. I have seen pictures and I look nothing like him. His background was Austrian upperclass but the rest of my heritage is pure shtetl. He was blue-eyed and fair and I am Tevye.

I have his cufflinks and I have his cholesterol.

My six year old nephew was just found to have high cholesterol. He's not one of those fat kids you see on Rikki Lake, either.

They didn't test back then, but my guess is that I would have tested high at six too.

I can ride my bike and take my little pill every evening but I can't change what my blood is made of.

I used to walk with my grandmother between services during the high holidays. To this day, if the leaves aren't changing and it isn't windbreakerish sort of weather, I want no part of the holidays. I remember walking in our neighborhood on a street called Dunford. There was a street that looped off of Dunford in a crescent and met back up with it about a quarter of a mile later.

That street was Milford. My grandmother wouldn't walk on Milford because in 1965, my grandfather collapsed on a street called Milford and died.

I will do what I can to avoid that. But I can't change my blood. Milford just keeps looping back to Dunford no matter what you do.

But I know a family whose struggle isn't with blood. Their struggle isn't silent and the losing isn't a quick heap on the street but a slow turn on a spit. I know this family through its only victor.

Her trophy is that she gets to watch from a distance as the others skate around the brink.