Read The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead for Free Online

hammock in our backyard, drink lemonade, eat sugar cookies, and measure my accomplishments against the fellows featured in the just-arrived issue of
Sports Illustrated.
Christ, I remember thinking, how could life possibly get any better than this?
    A little too often my father likes to quote the line “Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, / Make me a child again just for to-night!” Here he is, turning backward: “School always excited me. Easy to understand why: I was a pretty good mixer, had few ‘bad’ days. I knew how to read when I entered first grade; my three older brothers, especially Phil, a columnist for the
New York Sun,
had seen to that. Learning how to spell was a never-ending source of delight and wonderment; it still is. And I did well after school on the running track and the softball diamond. I got a big charge out of competing against—and usually beating—my fellow students. Soon, I had friends who wanted to bask in my reflected glory.”
    When he was in his mid-20s, he attended an open tryout with the Brooklyn Dodgers and lasted all the way to the final round, when someone named Van Lingle Mungo hit every pitch my father threw—onto Bedford Avenue. Undeniably, I inherited my athletic genes from him. When Natalie assisted on the goal that won her soccer team the city championship, he crowed, “The Shields bloodline!”

Bloodline to Star Power (i)
    My father’s birth certificate reads “Milton Shildcrout.” His military record says “Milton P. Schildcrout” (he had no middle name; he made it up). When he changed his name in 1946 to “Shields,” the petition listed both “Shildkrout” and “Shildkraut.” His brother Abe used “Shildkrout” his sister Fay’s maiden name was “Schildkraut.” Who cares? I do. I want to know whether I’m related to Joseph Schildkraut, who played Otto Frank in
The Diary of Anne Frank
and won an Academy Award in 1938 for his portrayal of Alfred Dreyfus in
The Life of Emile Zola.
    I grew up under the distinct impression that it was simply true—the actor was my father’s cousin—but now my father is considerably more equivocal: “There is the possibility that we’re related,” he’ll say, “but I wouldn’t know how to establish it.” Or: “Do I have definite proof that he was a cousin of ours? No.” Or: “My brother Jack bore a strong resemblance to him; he really did.” From a letter: “Are we really related, the two families? Can’t say for certain. What’s the legend I’ve fashioned over the years and what’s solid, indisputable fact? I don’t know.” “We could be related to the Rudolph/Joseph Schildkraut family—I honestly believe that.”
    In 1923, when my father was 13, his father, Samuel, took him to a Yiddish theater on the Lower East Side to see Rudolph Schildkraut substitute for the legendary Jacob Adler in the lead role of a play called
Der Vilder Mensch
(
The Wild Man
). Rudolph was such a wild man: he hurtled himself, gripping a rope, from one side of the stage to the other. After the play, which was a benefit performance for my grandfather’s union—the International Ladies Garment Workers—my grandfather convinced the guard that he was related to Rudolph Schildkraut, and he and my father went backstage.
    In a tiny dressing room, Rudolph removed his makeup and stage costume, and he and Samuel talked. According to my father, Rudolph said he was born in Romania, and later in his acting career he went to Vienna and Berlin. (“Schildkraut” is of German-Russian derivation. “Schild” means “shield” “kraut” means “cabbage.” We’re protectors and defenders of cabbage.) He and his wife and son, Joseph, came to New York around 1910, went back to Berlin a few years later, and then returned to the United