I have always enjoyed the complexity of an eyeball. I love the Iris pattern, the color and the reflection on the eye. I created these bizarre “eyeball” people plus an additional weird portrait of what I suppose are eyeball “tonsils.” LOL. Enjoy.
Updated: Sep 15, 2023
It was a beautiful Saturday in June. As my Father drove his Cadillac on Dundee Road, I gazed out at the sun shining on the passing trees making them a rich green that reflected on the windows.
I had come down from Minneapolis for Memorial Day weekend. In the car, my Mom sat in the front passenger seat and like two kids, my older sister Lynn and I were in the back seat. We were on our way to The Moorings, an independent Senior living facility. My Grandparents had lived there for several years in a cute little apartment. It was a great place for them to live. It didn’t have the same vibe as a retirement home. It wasn’t a sad place at all. They had their meals down in a lovely dining room, my Grandpa shot pool with his buddies and my Grandma enjoyed the friends she made.
My Grandparents had lived there for several years and after my Grandfather died, alone for the first time in nearly 72 years, my Grandmother was in the hospital wing, suffering from dementia.
“Does she know we are coming?” I asked.
“Probably not!” My Dad said.
“I’m afraid she doesn’t remember much of anything,” my Mom added.
“She remembers her songs!” My sister defended.
My Dad started to sing, “When you’re smiling, when your smiling, the whole world smiles at you…”
Lynn laughed. “That’s her favorite.”
“You should sing it to her.” My Mom said.
I was suddenly lost in thought. “Maybe…” I said.
I was remembering how in Florida, visiting them so long ago, every restaurant we went to seemed to have a piano. Not only that, there was always a pianist who was always ready to play for anyone who wanted to sing.
“Come on Robbie, go over to the piano player and tell him you want to sing.”
Once this started, it wouldn’t stop. She always insisted and persisted.
“No, He doesn’t want anyone to sing.” Should I hide under the table?
“Sure he does!” Grandma said, “I already asked him and he said he would be happy to play for you.”
I continued to resist, wishing I was the type of person who could jump up at any time and burst into song. I loved to sing, I loved Broadway musicals but I just didn’t like to be told like a robot to go and sing. It was a quality I wasn’t proud of. But none the less, I always resisted.
My Grandma reminded me of the character Mama Rose from the musical Gypsy.
Mama Rose was the classic overbearing stage mother who pushed her daughters to perform, even when they didn’t want to. A famous line from that show is Mama Rose (played by Ethel Merman) bellowing, “Sing OUT Louise!”
“Sing out Robbie!” I could imagine my Grandma saying.
Grandma loved to hear me sing. She had studied music and wanted to be a professional singer but having a family came first for her. It was back during the Depression and I am sure that had something to do with it too. But she still loved to sing and unlike me, she was someone who would get up and sing at any moment. When we would visit her at their home in Trout Valley, the evening wasn’t complete without Grandma Frieda sitting down at an ornate wood carved table, play her beloved zither and sing.
No-one seemed to take her singing seriously and my Grandpa Fritz would start clucking like a Hen
I felt bad for her. I could see the disappointment on her face when he did this.
“Sing “Memory” from Phantom of the Opera!” My Grandma called out.
As I took the microphone, I said, “Its not from Phantom, its from Cats.”
“Come on Robbie, sing!”
Her relentlessness paid off because in the end, I always got up and sang for her.
The pianist began the opening chords and off I went.
“Midnight, not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone….”
When it was over, I sat down, smiling, yet embarrassed, annoyed, yet happy to hear the applause.
“See! They love to hear you sing. You have such a beautiful voice.” Then she began to warble the song until my Grandpa started clucking.
As we pulled up to the Hospital, I asked, “How bad is it?”
“Her dementia?” my Mom replied.
“Yeah. Can she remember anything?”
“Sometimes. It depends. It comes and goes.” Mom undid her seat belt prompting all of us to do the same.
Lynn opened the door on her side. “She can hardly remember peoples names. Last night we came over and she didn’t know who I was. Once we showed her pictures and I talked with her, I think she started to remember me.”
“No,” my Dad said, “She doesn’t even remember me! She doesn’t remember anybody anymore.”
It started with my Grandma forgetting that Grandpa had died. Every time my Dad would visit her, he had to break the news to her that her husband had died and she would cry. Each and every time he visited her he had to go through the same thing. How awful to have to go through this over and over again. One time when my Dads sister, my Aunt Marlene told her that Grandpa had died, Grandma looked away sadly and just when Marlene thought she would start crying, Grandma turned to her and with a wry smile and asked, “Am I seeing anyone new?”
I got out of the car and my Dad winced, “You don’t have to slam the door so hard. The sun was hot now but a wind was blowing. I loved the first warm breezes of summer.
I had visited my Grandparents several times at their condo at The Moorings but had never been to the Hospital. I hated Hospitals. They were so depressing. My Grandma lived in a room with another woman with Dementia. They had no idea that they had something in common, let alone each others names. As we walked in, my Dad told us how crazy Grandma had become.
“One night she went around and collected as many lamps as she could to bring to her room.” My Dad said. “She told the staff that she couldn’t read her magazines.” He rolled his eyes.
As we got in the elevator, he told us how old she looked. She was in her 90’s and I thought she looked great for her age.
“Really?” I asked. “She always looked so much younger than she was.”
“Not any more,” my Dad said pressing the button to the second floor. “She’s not the same.”
“You’ll see,” my sister said sadly. “It broke my heart when she didn’t know who I was.”
The elevator door opened and we were on the second floor. Everything felt cold and sterile. Brick walls painted a light creme color.
“I have to go to the bathroom.” I said.
“Ok.” My Dad said.
“Its to the right. So you go that way” my Mom said pointing. She and I were so much a like. We always made jokes in serious situations.
“Grandmas room is to the right. We’re going that way” she said, pointing to the left with a goofy smile. Then she was serious. “ We’ll go get her. Meet us in the family area. Its just past the Nurses station.”
They started down the hall and I watched them for a moment. On holidays when everyone was together, I always liked retreating to my room. I could hear my family laughing down in the basement den. It was far enough away. I liked to take breaks. Now, I was nervous and my need to go to the bathroom wasn’t just nature calling, I needed to step aside for a moment to collect myself. I felt stupid for living so far away and not seeing her more often. When was the last time she was herself? When was the last time she annoyed me, with her persistence, trying to get me to sing.
As I came down the hall, I could hear my sister talking to her. In a loud and enunciating tone she said, “Hello Grandma Frieda! This is Lynn. I’m your Granddaughter, Lynn.”
“What?” I heard my Grandma say. “Who are you? Do I know you?” she said.
As I approached I could see my sister turn, take a few steps away and start to cry.
The Grandma Frieda we all knew and cherished was gone. No more playing her zither and singing. No more making Beef Stroganoff on Christmas Eve. No more silliness and party hats and even though I acted like it bugged me, no more bragging to everyone in ear shot that I was her grandson, the singer. “Come on Robbie, sing something. Sing a song!”
Lynn was crying harder now. My Dad was saying hello to her and she didn’t know who he was.
“This is Gary, Mom. Gary and Elsie. We are here to visit with you.”
I could see Grandma from behind sitting in an overstuffed, comfortable chair. My Mom stood back, she seemed to be able to detach herself from the sadness. My Dad looked frustrated and tried to hide how sad he was. This was his Mom. Gone. His Mom had faded away.
I walked into the family area and started to come around the chair. My Dad was right. She looked old and frail and grayer than she had been the last time I saw her. I wondered if, despite the dementia, I would still be able to see her in there, see my Grandma Frieda in her eyes? Would I be able to see any tiny trace of who she once was?
When I came around to stand in front of her, I saw her full on in her rose pink track suit. She was lost and vacant. Then, she looked up, and saw me, her gray eyes were suddenly blue. She stretched out her arms. “Robbie!” She said.
My Dad gasped. My sister stopped crying. My Mom smiled and I started to sing.
Charles Schultz is one of my heroes. I, like so many others grew up with the Peanuts comic strip, the Charlie Brown television specials and the comic digests and anthology books. At an early age, I admired the simplistic style and the honesty of the humor. It was at times heartwarming, witty and modern like no other strip, at times snarky and off the wall and absolutely hysterical. I loved Linus and his blanket and I identified with Charlie Brown as the ultimate underdog.
I had the "Peanuts Treasury" growing up. An anthology of strips spanning the scope of an entire year. From this book, I learned how a strip reflected real life and how it in some ways was a way for Schultz to express his daily thoughts, moods and ideas almost like a daily journal. I saw hundreds of ideas and scenereos. All of this sprung from the book and into my heart.
I had always wanted to do a strip among so many other things. Those "other things" seemed to keep cutting in line and for years and years, I worked as an actor and singer, toured the country with musicals and singing groups and all the while, I kept drawing. I rarely made any income from my drawing work aside from the random contract job one off.
For five years, I worked full time at IBM as a visual designer but was laid off in August of 2018. My original plan was to remain at IBM, retire in my early 60's and then begin working on a new career as an artist and illustrator. But not everything always goes as planned.
As bummed out as I was that the stability of my full time job had been pulled out from under me, I decided to think of it as a gift. I wasn't entirely happy working full time. It was difficult to do my own work and there always was the notion that I wasn't allowed to DO any outside work or that I was "owned" by "Big Blue."
I have no regrets about my experience in Corporate America. I made some great friends, had some amazing projects that included a big one with Apple, designing 99+ icons for a collaboration they did creating suites of business apps for the iPhone.
I had always been curious about that world and I was open to having the Corporate America "experience." I was proud of the fact that at 50+ years of age, I landed such a gig. Looking back at those five years from being hired to being laid off, I really DID get the experience I asked for.
So suddenly I was without a job and I knew it was time to cut to the chase and pursue what I really wanted to do. Illustration was something I had been doing practically since birth and I had a passionate life long love affair with it. I would be happy doing nothing but drawing every single day for the rest of my life.
When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with comic books and magazines like "Creepy" and "Eerie." I had a whole row of "Famous Monsters of Filmland" on my shelf next to my row of Oz books. I was obsessed with "The Wizard of Oz." I bounced back and forth creating both bloody horror comics and a desire to do a comic book version (pre-graphic novel) of "Oz."
So now in my post 50 years, I wanted to begin drawing as a profession. This was my new career. I wanted to draw Comics and Graphic Novels.
My debut graphic novel was going to be an adaptation of a one man show I had written called, "BobFred." An autobiography, it told the story of my life by all the variations of my name, "Robert." There was Robbie, Bobby, Bob, Rob, Bert and on and on. What glued the show together was the fact that I had BEEN each an every one of those names at one point in my life.
As I began to adapt the story, I decided to begin posting vignettes about the process of creating the graphic novel. I decided to make it a comic strip with my cats observing, asking me questions about the project and giving an audience the opportunity to get to know me. I wanted to begin building a following.
After the first couple strips, I found myself enjoying the cats and my interaction with them so much, that the strip took over. The name "BobFred" seemed perfect. It was semi-autobiographical and it was quirky and catchy.
And so, BobFred was born and I set out with the ambitious plan to try to do a daily strip. I knew that I would be developing the strip in real time with each daily comic. If you were to compare the first ones with the strip today, you can see that it has evolved. The characters and the format are more streamlined and where I would bounce from stories about the cats, stories about my childhood and offbeat quirky stories about eyeballs, I have put the focus on my life in Chicago with my two cats, a dog and a coughdrop.
With this strip, I feel I can do anything, tell all sorts of stories and tap into a bottomless well of ideas. I love doing it, I love the characters, I love the challenge of telling a story in a limited number of panels and I love editing the dialogue to it's purest form. You don't have much room to tell a story and so the telling of the story needs clarity and honesty. Simplicity is key. I also love the idea of spreading a story out over several strips as Schultz did. Sometimes a story about Linus and Lucy would stretch out over a week or more.
So challenge accepted. I want to do a daily strip and I want to create spin-off comic books and graphic novels. I would love to see someone wearing a BobFred t-shirt and I would love to see my characters continue to grow and reach out to a wide audience.
