In the summer of 1999 my father was dying from various virulent and (then) untreatable cancers. By July we knew the end was near. It was an unbearably difficult time for all of us but he seemed to take everything with great grace and dignity. In early July after frantically looking all over the house I finally found him sitting in a chair in the backyard. “Daddy, what on earth are you doing out here?” He looked at me incredulously, smiled, and replied: “It’s a beautiful day and I’m enjoying the sunshine.” I was hardly able to hold back tears as I sat next to him and held his hand for a few minutes until he was ready to go back inside. About a week later again I went looking for him and again he was sitting outside. But this time there was a gentle but steady late July drizzle. His wet face was turned up to the sky, his eyes were closed, and he was softly smiling. I sat next to him again as he said, “Sylvia, you know, until today I had forgotten how delightful it is to feel the rain on my face, my head. And look,” now he opened his eyes and pointed to trees, the flowers, the grass, “look how they must love this! This life is so wonderful and mysterious and even with all the pain and fear, I am so lucky to be reminded of its magnificence.” The rain covered my tears. We sat there for a few minutes until he was ready to go back inside to his hospice bed. He died the following week. And this morning, more than twenty years later, as I ponder the fear and isolation and worry and pain in the world, I also look at the rain and the sun and a lone flower on my gardenia bush. I think of my dad. Now, I too, awe-filled, marvel at the fragile but powerful beauty of all life.
I had never seen my grandmother Annette cry. “She’s just a little sad,” my grandfather explained. The three of us had just finished dinner and we were sitting at their big dark wooden table where weekly my grandfather would write poems for me on any topic I came up with. It was 1957, I was seven years old, and in a few days I would be leaving my birthplace of Uruguay for The United States. My grandparents had immigrated there from Prague and while they each spoke many languages, my grandmother had never mastered Spanish, my only language at the time. She was a warm, large woman with silver hair, bright blue eyes, and an almost shy smile, who always seemed to look at me with absolute delight. But my grandfather often had to translate for her.
“In a few days you and your mother and your father will be going on a fine adventure to a whole new life in America,” he said. Ever since my mother married Fred Kuhner when I was four, my grandfather referred to him as my father, even though his own son, the scoundrel who deserted his wife and tried to harm his infant daughter (me), and repeated stole from his parents , was my biological father. “Fred Kuhner is a wonderful man and he will always take care of you and protect you in your brand new world. I used to dream of living there when I was younger,” he said with a small sigh and then continued, “I even tried for Annette and me to go after we were married, but we could not get papers.” Then he continued, “But now you, you will get to do this.” “Is abuela sad because we will be so far away?” I asked. He translated for her. She had been clutching a delicately embroidered white hankie which she then used to dab her eyes. She smiled softly and said something, slowly got up, and left the room. My grandfather translated, “Yes, Sylvia, she is sad because she loves you very much and she will miss seeing you.” My seven-year-old mind could not possibly comprehend the vast distances between where my grandparents were and where my future would be. “This is very important for you to remember,” he said, suddenly more somber and serious, “life is a mighty adventure and you never know what will happen. And even the briefest encounter with someone connects you to them somehow. We are all connected in this giant world. We are never, truly alone. So remember to be kind, always.” I understood. Even after the Nazi invasion of his homeland and the ransacking of their house and the killing of many family members and their sudden escape to South America and their scoundrel son’s painful activities, he never allowed me to use the word “odio”—hate. “Hate only kills parts of you, not the other,” he would tell me. “Your father has a father in The United States. Did you know that? He comes from Germany. We never met him, but we have written a few letters. I think you will like him very much. And you know what? We have the same name, Max.” My father had told me stories of his own dad and that of his mother, Wilma who had died just a few years ago. My grandfather continued, “I’m sure he has interesting stories to tell you about his old country. He’s a good man.” Months later I met my new grandfather, Max Kuhner, at his home in the woods just outside Worcester, Massachussetts. I liked him right away. Although he seemed a rather aloof and exacting man—a very prominent engineer by profession—whenever we would visit, he seemed to delight in telling me stories about his life. I was a child full of questions and he was happy to answer. There were walking sticks throughout his house and I asked about them one day. “Ah, I like to hike in the mountains. So beautiful. You know, your grandmother Wilma and I took our honeymoon in a beautiful place, not far from where we lived in Germany. The place was called Neroberg and it was magical.” I had never heard him use that word before. “How was it magical?’ I asked. He replied, “I’m not sure. But when we wandered through the hills and then ate and slept in the town, we both felt almost like there was a special something surrounding us.” Now he shook his head. “The people we met were especially kind. It seemed that everyone smiled. Like we were all connected.” He sighed. “That was the first week of June in 1922. About a year later we were lucky to get papers to come to America. So many tried but could not.” I nodded remembering my Meindl grandparents. But the past had even more surprises. Here I am years later, writing this in a lilac-filled early spring. Life’s twists and turns have led me to many adventures. I took with me the stories from all of my grandparents and have woven them into my own life-blanket which I wrap myself in for comfort and warmth and security. After we left Uruguay, I never saw the Meindls again—they died just a few years later. My grandfather Kuhner died in 1982, at his home in the woods looking out at what he always called the “most beautiful painting of all—the daily changing panorama of nature.” And yesterday, in finally clearing long-forgotten parts of my attic I came across a box from a relative of the Meindls who had sent it to me years ago. In it I saw a familiar photograph of the Meindls, Annette and Max, as a young couple. But this, I had never noticed (How could I haved missed it?) had been turned into a postcard—a common thing for tourists at the time—with my grandfather’s distinctive writing on the back. It was in German and I was desperate to know what it said. A translation group online quickly and generously helped me. It was a simple message of connection, “hope your children are well,” and “It’s hot here. We’ll be home soon.” But suddenly I saw it. Look where it was sent from—Neroberg, Germany. And when? June 5, 1922. They were on their honeymoon. In the same place, at the same time as my Kuhner grandparents. Right before I boarded the plane to America in 1957, my grandmother Annette gave me a doll she had as a child. My grandfather translated for her as she hugged me close, “I want you to have this because, dear child, we are always connected to the past in ways we can’t even begin to understand. And we must pass along not just the stories, but the love and the magic. Life is magic.” “Would ya look at that? Amazing isn’t it?” I was on the front porch, vigorously shaking out a rug that had sat in my entry hall for the past year. The accumulated dust sent waves of tiny speckles into the air as the bold red and green and gold patterns in the carpet rose and fell in the spring afternoon. I had been diligently cleaning all day—scrubbing cabinets, washing curtains, mopping floors, and this was the last piece before dinner. When he called out to me from the street I was startled. “It’s an owl’s nest. See it?” he said pointing up. I focused my eyes skyward and there it was, high in the tree. “Do you see the little baby?” he continued, “right there.”
“Oh, my goodness,” I exclaimed, I didn’t even know all of this was going on just outside my house. I’ve been so busy inside that I haven’t noticed.” He smiled at me and glanced at the rug in my hand. I continued, “I’m doing some spring cleaning. Trying to get this house in order after a year of neglect.” He was leaning on his hastily parked, battered blue Ford truck cluttered with construction materials in the bed. His gaze drifted gently upward again and then back to me. “You got kids?” he asked. “Yes, a grown daughter, and two grandsons,” I answered, “but they live hours away. How about you?” “Oh, I got me two kids,” he said smiling broadly. “I’d like to be a big bird,” he continued pointing up again, “and fly around looking at the whole world. Just free and soaring. You know the story of Icarus?” I did. “Well,” he continued, “when I was in high school my dad, he told me that story when I said I wanted to go to college to be an engineer. I had good grades and all, but he told me how Icarus’s father built Icarus the wings with wax and told him not to fly too high or they’d melt in the sun and then he’d crash into the sea. Icarus didn’t listen and he drowned. He told me that I’d be better off working construction, like he did. He could get me a good job with his company and I wouldn’t have to worry about no college. College—it was too high for me. My wings would melt he said. I was better off.” He sighed and looked up. I followed his gaze and then asked him, “So did you get angry with him?” “Naw. He was doing the best he could. He just didn’t want me to be disappointed I guess. And it’s been a good life. Can’t complain.” “So what about your kids,” I asked, “what are they doing?” He answered: “One of them is in college, graduate school—wants to be an archeologist. Digging up ancient buildings and such. Learning about old civilizations. He tells me all sorts of stories that I love. The other is in trade school—he’s going to be a fine, fine carpenter. My wife and I—we’re real proud of our boys.” There seemed to be movement in the nest and we both looked up, but too late. All was still now. He continued, “I told them that they could be anything that they set their minds to, and I’d help, but they had to do it on their own. I figured out that instead of building them wings, like Icarus’s dad did, I’d help them build their own. That way they’d figure for themselves how high they could fly, and they could adjust them all the time. Wouldn’t have to rely on my design ‘cause they’d have their own. Seems to me, best we can do for our kids is teach them how to fly and be there to catch them if they start to fall so we can help them up again. You know—help them be strong inside themselves.” We both nodded. The sun was going down and a steel gray darkness began spreading in the sky. “Well,” he said, “I better get home soon, and you got your house to finish.” I laughed, “Yes, getting my own nest ready. Our daughter and grandsons will be here soon to visit. The boys have gotten so big this past year—really grown. One is learning to play the piano and the other knows everything about computers now. I can’t wait to see them.” And then, our eyes drawn upward by movement, we saw it: a tiny baby owl slowly make its way onto a nearby branch. We both watched silently, breathlessly willing it to succeed, as it gingerly made its way to the left—teetering—almost tumbling but catching itself and then going back to the right and returning to the nest. An adult owl looked on. “Yup,” my new friend said to me as he doffed his paint-splattered cap and walked slowly to open the door of his truck, “them owls are going to have strong wings. Gotta help them build their own and then they’ll know for sure—for absolute sure—they’ll know that they can fly.” And he drove off—one long arm outstretched from his window waving good-bye, looking, just for a moment, like a soaring bird. I was surprised and delighted when Nancy called me to recommend someone to do child-care in my home. It was 1979, we had just moved to a new town in Western Maryland, and circumstances made it necessary for me to go back to work quickly. It broke my heart to have to leave my baby with someone else, so I was anxious to find the exact match for our family. I didn’t know her very well, but Nancy was a close friend of an older neighbor and she knew of my circumstances. “Ann is wonderful,” she said on the phone, “a very caring and trustworthy woman. You’ll love her.” As I interviewed Ann later that day I found her to be a gentle person. She had grown children of her own and her 30 year job at a nearby clothing factory had suddenly ended. “Factory’s been shut down—bought out. I hear they’re going to tear it down, “ she told me. Very quickly she became part of the family. She cared for my daughter and even made some of her baby clothes. I would sometimes help out tutoring her grandsons with their schoolwork. One day a long time after she started, she came to the house looking very tired. She laughed, “A bunch of us was up all night at Hilda’s house making baskets last night.” When I asked her about this she told me the whole story: Nancy and her husband James had run the clothing factory for 30 years. When the out-of-town owners sold it, they gave only a two-week notice. People needed jobs and the small communities in that part of Maryland did not have any opportunities. Most of the workers were older and they had no chance for income. Nancy and James were devastated. Even though they also, both in their mid-sixties, would lose everything, they set out on a plan. They worked tirelessly to find employment for all 54 workers at the plant. Day in and day out they called, they visited, and they wrote everyone they knew scouring the area for jobs until everyone was placed. “Wow!” I said, “That’s how you came to us!” I continued, “But the baskets…?” “Well, you see,” she began, “every year for all the time we worked there at the factory, Nancy and James made us Christmas baskets . They knew we weren’t making much money and it was a tight time—you know with holidays and kids and all. So they’d buy us things we could use. See, we knew they were pretty strapped too. They had three kids and the factory wasn’t paying them enough to buy their own house, but still they figured out how to give us things to make our lives better. And now—Well now they’re really low —no money coming in and James has bad, bad lungs. So, it’s our turn to do for them. A bunch of us all get together every week and make baskets. Every day someone leaves one on their front porch in the middle of the night.” I listened, mesmerized by this story. Suddenly, as I realized I had to get to work quickly, Ann smiled, picked up my crying baby girl from her crib, gently soothed her and said, “We figure that we all got to help each other in this world, right? We all got to do what we can with what we got. We’re all in this together.” Even after my daughter had grown and our family moved to New Jersey, Ann and I remained long-distance friends. One day about 10 years ago during a particularly sad time in my life a box arrived in the mail. No return address. I opened it. There, placed gently nest-like within scraps of fabric, was a basket filled with homemade cookies and breads. The note said: “We are all in this world together. Today it’s my turn to do for you.”
“Miss Kuhner,” she told me, “I don’t see that you have the makings of a teacher.” It was the fall of 1970 and I was devastated. From as far back as I could remember I knew that I wanted to teach. My future was never in question. My senior year student teaching supervisor and education professor, Dr. McHugh, was delighted to place me with a very experienced teacher, Mrs. C. who I would follow throughout the day for a while, and then slowly I would take over one class for several weeks. I sat in the back of the room and took notes as she taught remedial 12th grade, advanced 10th grade, and intermediate 9th grade English. I watched as she exacted responses from the students and reminded them of the daily quizzes. There was no discussion about the material. In the 12th grade class I had little use initially for taking notes since the lessons were very rote and, frankly, boring. Instead, my papers were full of details about the kids in the class—all of whom were frozen in their seats. “Donna looks scared again today. She’s biting her nails a lot. I wonder if she’s having problems understanding.” And, “Jeff keeps hitting his leg like it’s falling asleep. I’ve noticed that he limps a lot. Maybe he needs some help.” And, “Marcie has been wearing the same clothes for three days now and she looks so tired.” About the second week I saw some of the 12th grade students at lunch time and I began to talk with them and offered to give them extra help if they wanted it. Several were grateful and took me up on my offer and I began to get to know them a little bit. Carol, it turned out, wrote amazing poetry so I taught her about the sonnet form to try. Jeremy, I discovered, had terrible eye-sight but no money for glasses. I talked to the school counselor who directed him to an organization that would help. And when shy Sara , who was born in Cuba, discovered that my first language was Spanish, she was elated. “This means I can be something too!” she gushed. A few days later Mrs. C. met with me after school. “You should not be helping those students,” she informed me. “They need to know that they are not really high school material. They should just drop out and go get jobs.” I was stunned. “I don’t understand,” I said, “Shouldn’t we be trying to give them the best we can so that they can be the best version of themselves?” Her sudden piercing laugh scared me. “Have you taken a good look at these children? They will never make anything of their lives. Now the ones in my Grade 10 class, they are worth helping.” I was shaken. This was not really teaching. It was something else, but it was not teaching. When it came time for me to lead a class, Mrs. C. assigned me the 12th graders. I tried several different methods to engage the students. I told stories; I asked questions; I pointed to passages in the texts that were interesting and showed details about characters and ideas. They were not all successful lessons. Some were total flops. But I went back day after day determined to help them discover ideas in literature and in themselves. And at the end of my 8-week student teaching stint, Mrs. C. sat with my professor and me and gave me her assessment. “You simply don’t have what it takes. You have to face it. Find something else to do.” She pounded the edges of the papers she was holding on the dark oak table between us and started to pull her chair back to stand. Dr. McHugh stopped her. “Mrs. C. can you please tell me why specifically you think this?” And she was more than happy to detail all of my “silly” attempts at engaging the students and all of my naive notions about learning abilities, and my useless waste of time trying to get “those ignorant children” to understand. Dr. McHugh then thanked her for her time and very courteously walked her to the door. They spoke in hushed tones for a minute before she left abruptly. His dark brown eyes were flashing with rage by the time he faced me across the table. I was limp—a diminished young girl whose dreams were crumbling. I felt my entire existence to be a sort of sham. If I couldn’t be the one thing I felt in the very marrow of my bones I was meant to be, then who was I? He looked me squarely in the eyes. “You, Sylvia Kuhner,” he said, “are a teacher. You always have been you always will be. It’s not what you do; it’s who you are. Trust yourself. Mrs. C. has a very narrow view of the world. We will not be using her as a model again.” Then his gaze went to the window for a moment and back to me. “Every single child has dignity and deserves a chance to succeed. Every single child should be honored and supported and celebrated. And I know, I know, you feel the same way.” I nodded in full agreement. For days I went over and over the events, unable to reconcile the pieces, but delighted at Dr. McHugh’s assessment of my teaching potential. About a week later I talked about this with my friend Clara, a cafeteria worker at the college and a local town resident. “So who was this teacher you were workin’ with?” she asked. When I told her she laughed. “Oh, Mrs.C. Why everybody knows about her. She only likes the rich kids—she doesn’t think the rest of the kids should even be bothering with school.” She yelled over to Johnny who was sweeping up, “Hey, Sylvia here was told by Mrs. C. over at the high school that she’s never gonna’ be a good teacher. What d’ya think about that?” Johnny chuckled, “Well, I think that makes Sylvia about the best teacher in the whole world.” All three of us burst out laughing. “You know,” Clara said, “you can learn a lot from people like Dr. McHugh about what you want to be like, but you can also learn who you don’t want to be—like from Mrs. C. . Everybody can show you something about life.” I agreed. The following September I began my first job as a teacher to my very own 7th grade class at Lower Regional School in Cape May NJ. On the first day of school as I looked out into the sea of anxious, eager faces I knew I was in love. There was nothing else in the world that I wanted to do—nothing else that felt so meaningful or was so much fun. As my work continued, I reveled in my students’ successes and really worked to help them learn about the material, about life, and about themselves. I helped and prodded and nudged and played every single day. I loved each and every one of them. When our class picture was taken in October there was much giggling and twisting about as the photographer and I tried to produce an orderly portrait. Finally, to create a more somber tone I said to the class: “Imagine looking at this picture way in the future—maybe fifty years from now. You’re going to be so amazed at who you were in 1971. You’re getting this picture taken for the you of 2021.” This worked. Later, as we were adjusting ourselves into our normal classroom configuration, I asked them to think about their future selves and what they would be proud for having accomplished. There were all manner of responses. One girl wanted to cure cancer so no one else had to lose their mom to it like she did. One boy wanted to go into the Coast Guard like his dad and protect our coastlines. Another boy wanted to drive a giant truck all over the country. A girl wanted to be a hairstylist and have her own salon. And then Billy asked me, “So what do you want to be proud of in 2021, Miss Kuhner?” My answer was immediate, “Having been caring and helpful and inspiring to years and years and years of students.” And although the formats have changed in unimaginable ways, and my age-range shifted a long time ago from 7th grade to college, this September 2021, I am humbled and proud and delighted to say, I will start my 50th year as a teacher. I was 12 years old when at lunch time I just raced out of the school building (PS 63 in New York City), ran across a highway, over a busy avenue, rounded the corner, and breathlessly entered the lobby of my apartment building. I knew it was foolish at the time, but my overwhelming fear and anxiety just took over. It was mid-October, 1962 and our country was engulfed in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Our teachers had been drilling us for days on various survival techniques, mainly “duck and cover” and “hide under the desks”, because it was widely assumed that nuclear bombs were aimed at New York City as the first line of attack. We all felt powerless. To add to the sadness, my father recently had serious surgery and was home languishing in pain, and my mother spent her days fretting over his slow recovery and also the panic of what most believed would be imminent bombings. On that particular day we had a drill in the hallway of our school where over a loud speaker the principal urged us to keep our backs to the wall as we all sat cross-legged on the cold, tile floor. Probably seeing the terror on our faces, our teacher, Mrs. Rothman, spoke to us in a quiet, but firm voice: “Shortly after we were married, my husband fought in World War II. After it was over and he came home he didn’t talk about it much, but I knew it had been horrible for him and others. He still had some shrapnel in his chest from a particularly dangerous mission which I knew caused him a great deal of pain. But still, I would see him really enjoying a simple slice of pie or a brightly colored bird on our window sill in ways I didn’t see before. Every day when he left for his job as a bus driver he would hug me and say what a beautiful day it was—even if it was raining. One day I asked him why he was so…well, so appreciative of everything. So many others were angry or distressed. And he told me: ‘After I was shot I figured out that things like this—like this terrible, terrible war—either make you better or worse when you come out of it. I set myself on trying to come out of this a better person. I decided that I was going to really enjoy life because this experience would teach me a valuable lesson. So I was going to be better for it.’ “ As we sat there scared and shivering I hung on her every word looking for some balm to fill my fearful heart. She finished, “So, when this ordeal is done and we all go back to our regular lives, think about whether this will make you a better person or a worse one. Decide that now inside of yourself because it will matter for your whole life.” And as she finished, the bell rang for lunch. Kids scampered to the cafeteria, but I bolted out the door and home to my parents. I found my mother crying in the kitchen and my father on the couch listless and very pale. “This will make us stronger,” I vowed out loud. “We will get through this—all of it—and it will teach us how much we love each other and how strong we can really be.” Of course they were shocked by this, but I had a very firm resolve. Even though I loved being at school, I stayed home to help and to be with the two people I so dearly loved. Several days later the missile crisis was over, my father’s health began to improve, and my mother’s panic began to abate. And, indeed, we really were never again the same as before the crisis.
We were better. “Mom, I’m going downstairs to tell them about the dance practice.” It was 1962, and I was 12 years old and living in an apartment building in New York City. My friends were coming over tomorrow after school to practice some new dances we’d seen on American Bandstand—especially “The Mashed Potatoes”. We were a noisy bunch and generally gathered at Ruthie’s house. But tomorrow was my turn. I thought the polite thing to do was to let Mrs. Green, who lived directly below us in 5L, know ahead of time. I didn’t know her or her husband very well, but I had met them in the elevator a few times. Mrs. Green with her thick German accent, curly gray hair, and bright blue eyes, looked and sounded a lot like my grandmother Annette who I had left behind in Uruguay when my family moved to The United States 4 years ago. She died two years later, and truth was, I still missed her. And my grandfather, Max. When Mrs. Green opened her door, she looked scared and shaky. “Come in dear,” she began, “I’m just waiting for an important phone call.” I walked with her to the big yellowish armchair with doilies barely covering its worn arms and back. I sat on the floor next to her. “What happened? Are you OK?” I asked wondering if I should call someone for help. “No, I’ll be fine. I just need to get my mind off of it until the call comes. Tell me something about yourself. Tell me a story,” she pleaded with her voice and her eyes, and continued, “Did you ever have to wait for news?” I hung my head down and began, “I can tell you about last week.” And so I explained how by accident I learned that my beloved grandfather had died a whole year ago and no one ever told me. How I searched the mail for weeks for a letter from him and none came. And finally, my parents gave me the letter from our relative in Montevideo explaining it all. “I was so angry,” I said looking up at Mrs. Green’s eyes, “because he died, because I didn’t know, because they kept such a big secret from me.” She looked down at me and said, “Ay, schatzi,” she began with a sigh, “sometimes things are kept from us because others think it will be too much for us. Sometimes they think the truth is so big that it might swallow us up.” I nodded in agreement and I continued, “my mom told me that after my grandmother died I was so upset that she couldn’t stand to tell me about my grandfather.” Mrs. Green sighed and swept her hand about the room, “Look around here.” I suddenly noticed the faces and hands and landscape paintings jamming the expansive whiteness of the walls. She continued, “I painted all of these from my memory. It’s all I have—my memory—of my homeland and my family.” She told me the story of how in Germany as a young woman she saw children and families herded into trucks and trains. She asked her parents what was happening, and they did not tell her. She saw her father taking down all symbols of their Jewish religion—the mezuzah by the door, the menorah on the mantle—but they did not explain. When the banging on the door came and she, her baby brother, and her parents were shipped to Dachau and separated, no one said what would happen. Now she looked up at her paintings, “They divided us up—sent me away again. They found I could paint and draw, so I worked in a big room making Nazi posters. Nazi posters. My art talent saved my life but look what I had to do with it to survive.” Now she was in tears, but she continued, “When the tanks rolled in and I saw that American flag I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. People had come to save us. To save us. That’s when I met Jimmy.” “Oh,” I interjected, “Mr. Green!” She smiled. “Yes. It was the worst time of my life and then it became the best. We fell in love. He brought me here.” “What happened to your family?” I asked, hopefully. “They were all killed right away. No one was left but me. And so I started painting my memories as soon as I could. It was all I had, but it was a lot. The more I painted the more I could bring them all back to me.” I looked around. Even my own 12-year-old eyes could see the vividness of the colors, the clarity and precision on the hands, the hair, the eyes of the people on her walls. “Ay, Liebchen,” she said, “art saved my life many times. It saves me now.” The sudden ringing of the black phone by her chair started us both. She picked up the heavy receiver and nodded as she listened. I stood up and walked around the room looking at the memories and remembering my own grandparents. When she hung up the phone, I went back to her. “Is it OK?” I asked. “No,” she stated frankly. It is not. “The results of the tests are not good. My health is not good.” Right then Mr. Green came through the front door jauntily and stopped suddenly when he saw his wife’s face. “Gertie?” he asked—he pleaded. I knew I was invading a private moment and quickly left. Ruthie agreed to have the dance event at her house the next day. I stopped in frequently to see Mrs. Green over the next few weeks. By the end, she could not leave her bed. A month after her death Mr. Green began moving out of apartment 5L. “I will go to Michigan to live with my sister and her family,” he told me when I saw him in the elevator. “I’m packing all of those paintings so carefully. I want my nieces to know these memories—these stories. Did I ever tell you how I met my Gertie?” We were now on the 5th floor and both got out and walked to the apartment where movers were wrapping and storing things. He began, “she was Dachau concentration camp. When our Army Division arrived to liberate them, the people there looked like ghosts. They were so thin and weak and afraid. Many threw themselves on the ground and wept. We gave them food and they took it and hid it in their shirts or pants—afraid it would disappear. But not Gertie. I saw her, a woman who could barely walk and was carrying paint brushes in her hands, take the bread, smile, thank us and break it in two pieces, giving half to some small child who was holding her leg and crying. I had never seen such kindness in my life.” Now Mr. Green was crumpled in a lone chair by the door. He continued, “She never spoke ill of anyone. But she wanted to keep the story of her family alive, and she wanted to remember beauty, and kindness, and humanity, and love. So she painted. What art do you have in your heart, Sylvia?” he asked. No one had ever asked me that before. “I can’t paint, I can’t sing, I can barely dance. I don’t think I have any.” I answered sadly. And then I brightened, “I love words. I can paint with them and tell stories!” He smiled. “If you give life to people you love, people you meet, people who you care about, the stories will give you life. Art keeps the world alive.” He was right. “It’s time,” he said. “I’ve had it long enough.” My father motioned to his trumpet case sitting in the middle of our living room floor. “I turned 50 this week, and I haven’t played in years.” He was right. In truth, I only had very vague memories from when I was a young kid of him raising the trumpet up to his lips and holding it skyward as his fingers pressed keys and loud jazz music came tumbling out. The sounds seemed to enclose me and at the same moment make me feel giddily free. In high school and college he had played in bands, mainly dance bands, and then for a few years was the leader of two of them. He played off and on since then, but by 1977 it had been many years. “It needs to be heard,” he said to me, and then continued, “The instrument isn’t meant to sit in a closet idle—it needs to be shined up and be taken care of and make sounds. It was created to make music, not live in darkness.” Later, after a local man stopped by in the evening and, frayed hat in his shaking hands and a bit of cracking in his voice, thanked my father for this gift, and left, I became sentimental. “Daddy, how can you just do that? How can you gladly give up something that valuable to you?” “Well,” he began, “I guess it depends on what you call ‘valuable’. See, I love music. Love it with all my heart, but that trumpet sitting in a case isn’t music. It needs to do what it was meant to do—make music. That’s when it becomes gold.” More than twenty years later, I fully understood. I learned that the man who had come to the house had a teen-age son who loved playing but the family could not afford a trumpet so he borrowed one whenever he could. My dad heard about him from a friend. Once the boy had my dad’s trumpet in his hands, and realized it was fully his own, he hardly let it go—took it with him everywhere. It helped him get a scholarship to college which gave him openings into a career he dearly loved. I learned this after my father died when I got a long condolence letter with an enclosed photo from the boy—now man—my dad had given the trumpet to. He wrote of how that simple gesture taught him a lot about life and people and the meaning of generosity. “It really comes down to being willing to give parts of yourself to others—Your dad gave me the gift of his music and the gift of learning I could make my own. And, see, my son Jason is next.” The photo: A young boy—maybe 9 or 10— holding a gleaming, giant-seeming golden trumpet in his small hands, grinning widely, with my dad’s beaten-up instrument case proudly set up right beside him.
“Sylvia you are an absolute mess. You’re dripping water all over the floor.” My mother was not happy. It was July 1966, I was sixteen years old, and we were at our beach house in Cape May, NJ. “I know, mom, but I just had to get back home. I don’t know what happened.” Now she harrumphed at me, narrowing her eyes as she looked askance at my sea-weed-like hair plastered across my forehead and down my back. In contrast she stood before me perfectly coiffed, make-up expertly applied, jewelry carefully chosen, and a soft-blue caftan drifting feather-light over her slight frame. These ramblings of mine around our small town mystified her. Life in The United States was still quite new to her and to make matters worse, she had only lived in cities her entire life. The world of a beach community was foreign territory and she did not yet have the language for it. She had never ridden a bike and when my father, Fred, taught me how when I was 6, she was terrified. “Fred, she’s going to hurt herself,” and “Fred why are you not holding onto the seat she could fall? She’ll get a concussion.” When I inevitably did fall, there were great recriminations. Even hopscotch was problematic for her, and jump-rope was not to be done when she was around. Skinned knees were the stuff of great drama and try as I might to hide them from her, she would see. So, now, at 16 every time I left the house on my bike to go to the beach or to visit my friends, she would warn me of imminent disasters. “Watch out for cars! Children play in the street—don’t run into them. Keep your balance.” But on this day in July, as I stood before her disdainful eyes, something was different. I was not dismissive or teasing with her. I was confused. She noticed. “What were you doing today? You were going to Bobbie’s house, right?” Bobbie was my friend who lived on the harbor. Her house had a long pier off the front where her brother and cousins (who were our ages) would dock their boats. She and I would watch the boys dive into the water or push each other off the dock in raucous horse-play. Sometimes they’d take us out on boat rides where one or the other would water ski. I sighed as I began to explain things to my mother. “Today I asked to try water skiing,” I began. She gasped and sat down. I continued, “It looked like so much fun, and the idea of gliding on the water seemed wonderful.” Her face looked horrified, but I continued, “One of the guys said that girls were never good at this, but Bobbie’s cousin Scott told him to be quiet and that he was sure I could do it. He explained things carefully to me: ‘adjust your life jacket like this; hold the rope with both hands on top; get in the water and have just the tips of the skis jutting out; and when we start to speed up, bring your body up to the surface. And then just glide along.’ He also told me that most times people don’t get up the first time. It’s really hard.” I put some towels down on a chair, collapsed into it, and continued: “So I did it. Jeff laughed and reminded me that girls were terrible at this as I lowered myself into the cold water. But I followed directions carefully. And the boat started to speed up.” Now my mother reached for a glass of water and gulped some aspirins as I continued. “It was amazing. I got up on the very first try! I thought about everything I was doing and my strong legs and arms worked to hold me up. It was glorious. I could feel the water sliding under me and the wind blowing my hair back and I thought that this is what birds must feel like when they take flight.” Now I hung my head. “What happened next?” my mother asked. I continued, “I don’t really understand it. I was holding onto the rope and I looked at the kids on the boat in front of me cheering me on and I looked down, and suddenly I just let go. I just let the rope go and I slowly drifted into the water. As soon as I got back on the boat and then back on land, I jumped on my bike and came home.” I continued, “I kept thinking that it was just luck. I saw Jeff on the boat and thought that maybe he was right. Maybe girls can’t do that. It all seemed improbable to me suddenly. And really, almost no one gets it the first time. I was just lucky. So I just let go.” My mother stared at me a minute, told me to go change into a clean bathing suit, and shooed me into my room. This made no sense. Half an hour later, my mother, who was afraid of all sports, who was against my participation in anything vaguely adventurous, had me in a car on the way to the harbor. There she had arranged for Gus and Kathy at the small local yacht club to fit me for skis and to take me out on their boat. “Mom, I don’t understand. You hate this stuff. You don’t want me to do this. Why are you having me go out there?” She looked at me defiantly, “I never want you to believe that your hard work and your effort and your ability are all just luck. Yes, you are lucky in many ways, but when you try hard, you need to know it was you who did it. Never let anyone—not even your own self—disminuirte (diminish you). Now go back out there.” And so it was that my perfectly manicured mother in her floral sheath dress and white heels, who disapproved of all my shenanigans, watched me soar and skim across the bright blue water, whooping and hollering as I jumped some small waves. Once or twice I looked over at her standing on the shore and I could see her clapping. She never fully understood my quirkiness—we were always differently wired, but she clapped for me. Years later, when I graduated from college and earned one master’s degree, then another, then my PhD, my mother clapped. My mother, who had dropped out of medical school because she thought she wasn’t smart enough—who had given up and gotten married young because the world around her told her that she needed a man to support her—who had to find her way after her first husband tried to kill their baby (me) and then disappeared—my mother put her white-gloved hands together and clapped for me over and over and over. I was horrified. “How could it just…vanish? That’s not possible.” It was 1959, I was almost 9 years old, and four weeks earlier we had moved to San Paulo, Brazil—the fourth country I had lived in. My father, just 31years-old at the time, was starting a new enterprise: a textile factory. I had gone with him during the machinery installation and loved sitting on a high perch watching it all come together and listening to the language I was just beginning to learn—Portuguese. The men had books with instructions and suggestions for how to make it happen and slowly the design took shape. But today when I came home from school, I found my parents talking animatedly about what happened that day. My mother was waving her arms about in a state of near panic, and my father was trying to console her. “Sara,” he began, “these things happen. It’s not too bad. We’ll fix it soon and we can get back on schedule.” There had been a small fire in the back warehouse of the factory and while some inventory had burned, the machinery was fine, he explained to me. I nodded in understanding, and remembering the large concrete partition between the front and the back, I explained to my mother that it would be just fine. “It’s not like the library of Alexandria disaster,” he said off-handedly. Confused I asked him what that was. “It was a very ancient library that held much of the knowledge of the world. Great writers and philosophers and thinkers wrote on papyrus scrolls—what they used before our modern paper—and stacked them in this huge and beautiful library. Being a librarian there was a very prestigious position which came with a great deal of power and honor. And then almost two thousand years ago the entire library was destroyed by a giant fire. And by neglect. The whole thing was gone.” “None of it was left?” I asked in horror. “No. Nothing. Imagine all of that information and knowledge of the world and of people gone,” he explained. I grabbed my light jacket, told my parents where I was going, and ran down the block to our local library. No matter where my parents moved us to, I always found the closest library and made it a kind of home. I loved sitting on the chairs or comfy couches, surrounded by hundreds of books, and leafing quietly through one or two or three. Sometimes I would walk around the stacks and just run my hands along the book-spines and then let my fingers feel the embossed titles on the sides or the fronts of the covers. My problem came with the language. I had learned my first language, Spanish, in Uruguay, and then learned my next language, English, when I was seven and we moved to my father’s home country, The United States. But now Portuguese was a new challenge. The library clerks were at first surprised to see an eight-year-old who couldn’t speak their language showing up several afternoons a week. They would smile at me welcomingly as I bounced recklessly up and down the aisles. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not yet read any of the books. “No English?” I would ask. “No…” they would respond sadly. But I was not deterred. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I would still show up. We started learning each other’s language. “Book” I would say pointing. “Livro” they would respond smiling. “Pencil” I would say; “lapis” they would answer. And so it went for several weeks. They would sometimes have picture books or art books for me to peruse when I came in. But just walking around in the midst of all of those words between covers waiting for me to discover their secrets was enough of a joy for me. On this day, though, I needed to share this horrific new knowledge about the burnt library. I burst into the San Paulo library and kept repeating that the Alexandria library burned. “Tragedy—tragedia—Alexandria biblioteca,” I blurted breathlessly as I ran into the marble building with socks slithering down my skinny legs, jacket half off my arms, hair tumbling out of my normally tight braids. They looked confused and dismayed. The head librarian came out from the back room and I repeated the words to her. “Ah, si,” she said, shaking her head and sighing the expiration I myself could feel. “Tragedia. Grande tragedia.” And then in Portuguese I could see and hear her explaining to the women about the ancient library and its demise. I didn’t understand most of the words, but I could read the women’s faces clearly. “Tudo?” (everything) one of them uttered in disbelief. “Tudo,” explained the head librarian. And they looked at me, an eight year old disheveled girl whose place of happiness and comfort was where they worked day in and day out; a little girl who could not yet read the words in this world of theirs but somehow understood their power; a little girl standing before them feeling her first encounter with the immensity of loss—and they all reached down to hug me. One by one, with tears in their eyes, they hugged me. And for that moment, on a Wednesday afternoon, in San Paulo Brazil, no words were necessary. Within a month the textile factory was running smoothly. I would visit with my dad and see the weaving of the lined-up threads somehow magically finding their ways through metal to come out changed into cloth. One time I took samples of the various woven fabrics, and over the weekend made bookmarks for my librarian friends which I stored carefully in my pockets. But when I walked into the library that Monday afternoon, they were lined up waiting for me and giggling with anticipation. I was confused. Then three of them pulled out books they were hiding behind their backs. One excitedly said, “We buy books for biblioteca—library.” And they handed me three books in English. The books were about Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. I jumped up and down. “I can read these. I can read these,” I chanted with glee. “Thank you!” And immediately I plunked myself down on the nearest couch and read. When I looked up I could see them beaming. Before I left I remembered to give them the bookmarks I had made which they delightedly accepted commenting admiringly about the different patterns and colors. Every time I went to the library for the rest of the year they ceremoniously and with great joy brought me those three books. And even if I didn’t re-read them each time, I carried them about proudly as I wandered—and sometimes skipped—down the aisles. When I was almost 10 we moved away from Brazil and back to The United States. The day before we left I said good-bye to my librarian friends. “Nos sentiremos sua falta,” they said in unison. I smiled, “I will miss you too,” I answered hugging each of them. One of women solemly continued: “Alexadria not gone,” she said, “it here always,” and she pointed to her heart and her head, and then to my heart and my head. And as I walked out through the large wooden door, they waved good-bye using the multi-colored woven bookmarks I had given them like signal flags on passing ships. Many years later I learned that the government in Brazil during that time had no money for library books in foreign languages. And that these women who had to commute several hours a day to their jobs for very low pay, lived in small homes in the back-country with little running water and electricity. And I learned that for months they had saved small amounts every week so that they themselves could buy those books so that I could read in their library. |
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