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.” “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. “Oh, I see that Mrs. Leary was in today,” I exclaimed delightedly as I entered the store underneath the big ‘Patrick O’Toole’s Shoe Repair Shop’ sign. “Is her daughter doing any better yet?” Mr. O’Toole cut two slices of the homemade Irish Soda bread on the counter, shook his head a sad ‘no’ as he buttered the thick slices with creamy yellow butter and handed me a piece. While I ate he explained, “She was especially downcast today. Doctors don’t think she’s going to ever be able to walk again. Such sadness it is.” It was June of 1960 and I was 10 years old and living in Passaic New Jersey. My dad had sent me to Mr. O’Toole’s shop back in February with a pair of his damaged wing-tipped shoes to be fixed. I intended to just drop them off but instead got intrigued by some of the equipment in his shop. I asked a lot of questions and while I was in there Mrs. Leary came in with a child-size shoe in a brace and a round loaf of bread which she placed on the counter and said, “Patrick, would you mind adjusting this for me please. Little Rose just can’t manage that wobble there.” “Sure enough, Mary. Just let me get my tools,” he responded. She looked over at me anxiously and in what seemed no more than a minute, he was done. “That’ll hold her in tight. Thanks for the bread, Mary. Tastes just like me mother’s it does!” he exclaimed. She smiled broadly and left into the cold winter afternoon. “Mr. O’Toole, I think she forgot to pay,” I helpfully pointed out. “No,” he answered, “she paid me in bread. See, her daughter got polio a few years back and needs those braces. They don’t have money for much these days, so she pays what she can.” I responded, “My grandmother did that at her store too. She made the most beautiful hats anywhere. People came from far away to buy them. But sometimes when someone really needed one and they couldn’t pay, they would pay with something else.” Then I giggled and told him the story of the live chicken Mrs. Tambores brought one time that chased my mother all through the store, out the door, and into the courtyard. After that day through the winter and spring and into summer, I stopped in to see him every few days. He loved telling me stories of his childhood in Ireland and of his dangerous and difficult voyage to America when he was only fifteen years old. “Aye. Lucky for me I learned this skill outside of Dublin. The whole family lost everything and my father apprenticed me when I was just 12. Danny MacCarthy was a good man he was. Taught me everything.” And then Patrick O’Toole would tell me stories of the people he met and the lessons that Danny taught him. “Aye, one time a man, all raggedy and dirty, comes into his shop. I was ready to throw him out, I was, but Danny shakes his hand. ‘Mr. Connors, how are you this fine morning?’ he says to him and then continues, ‘I see you be limping a bit. Can I have the honor of fixin’ that shoe for you?’ And wouldn’t you know it, the man takes off his shoe and Danny takes care of it right there and gives it back and says, ‘thank you for coming in. See you again soon. Top o’the mornin’ to ye.’ And I turned to Danny and I asked him what that was all about. He told me Mr. Connors had been down on his luck since his wife died and slipped more and more into another world. No one could help much, but Danny says, he says to me, ‘Patrick my boy, you got to do right by the world. You got to mend the world. Mend it one shoe at a time.’ He taught me everything that man.” I loved hearing his stories and being in his shop. Sometimes his little girl would come in from upstairs. I took to helping her with her kindergarten work. She was often coughing and tired and had missed so much of school that she was far behind. Her mother had two new babies to tend to and didn’t have much time left for Katherine. I would sit with her on little benches in the corner of the store and teach her to sound out her letters and words. Sometimes I’d come with little stories I wrote using her new vocabulary. Mr. O’Toole would look over at us delighted with his daughter’s smiles and laughter and progress. He would tell me how she looked forward to my visits. “She’s a smart one, you know. She’s going to make us proud. She’s getting stronger every day now.” The school year was almost over and at this point in our fifth-grade classroom Mrs. Jenkins was teaching us about different careers. This posed a great difficulty for me. I had no real skill or talent that I could measure. Like Janet, who was a wonderful dancer. Or Patty whose mother made delicious homemade pasta and was teaching her that special skill. Or Ruth Ann who could add and multiply and even divide in her head! I mused about my dilemma with Mr. O’Toole that afternoon. “I have no talent that I can think of,” I told him while finishing the buttery bread. But I want to do what your Mr. Danny McCarthy said. I want to mend the world. But I have no tools,” I sighed. Just then Katherine came bounding in and our afternoon of reading –she could read easy Golden Books now—and giggling began. As I left the store later, Mr. O’Toole told me to be sure to come next week on my very last day of school for the year. He wanted me to have something. When I walked into his store the next Monday Mr. O’Toole and his whole family were there to greet me. Katherine jumped up and down with excitement. “This is for you,” she shouted handing me a box. And beaming with pride she added, “I wrote the card all by myself!” Even the two babies were gurgling happily. Her mother hugged me and thanked me for helping out. “Katherine is so happy now. Her asthma is almost cured and she can sit and read on those days when it’s too hard to play outside. It makes my heart so pleased to see her like that.” The note on top from Katherine said “Thank you. I Love You.” I tore the newspaper wrapping paper and string off and found a beautiful brown box. Carved on the top it said, “Sylvia’s Tools.” I opened it to reveal pencils, a pen, and some chalk. “That’s how you will mend the world, Sylvia,” he said smiling, “With stories and teaching and kindness. One shoe at a time. One shoe at a time.” “I guess it wasn’t too unusual for an only child, but still it bordered on obsession.” From the time I could talk I would ask my mother for a baby brother. In the early 1950s in Montevideo, Uruguay one of the ways to deflect discussions about where babies come from was to tell young kids that mail-order like, babies come “from Paris.” So, I would ask if my baby brother had come from Paris yet. I was really insistent about this point. “What about a baby sister?” people would ask. “No, a brother,” I would demand. A few years after my mother was divorced from my biological father who had deserted us when I was an infant, she married Fred Kuhner who I immediately called my real father. We moved to a house in an area called Carrasco, Uruguay, and at age 4 I started school. Senora Gonzales was a particularly beloved teacher. While the other kids took naps on floor mats I helped her sort materials. If anyone awoke upset or fearful I would run to their side to talk to them and make them feel better. Nap time was my favorite part of the day. Sometimes during that time I would be allowed to wander down the hall to the school library. That’s where I saw it—evidence that my parents were totally ignorant about conception and birth. “Senora Gonzales! Look, look what I found!” I called to her in as controlled a whisper-yell as my young mouth could produce. “You need to tell me the absolute truth. Do babies really come from Paris?” Well, dear readers, she felt she had no choice. The book detailed a lot and she knew I was desperate for facts. So she explained, in what I imagine must have been rather ambiguous terms, how pregnancy happens. Apparently I was not shocked about the process—but I was shocked at my parents’ lack of information. “She called us from the school before you came home. She warned us about what had happened,” my mother told me years later. “You came in the house, threw down your sweater and demanded that your father and I sit down in the living room the instant he came home. Then you went to your room and slammed the door shut. Slammed it. I couldn’t imagine what was next. I called your father to warn him and we decided what our approach would be with this situation. But I underestimated you.” She sighed. She always sighed when she told this story and always emphasized how she underestimated me. I’d heard it many, many times throughout my life, but the last time she told it was in 2001, three years before she died. Then it became different. But now she continued the often-told story, “When your father came home and we settled ourselves on the sofa I called to you that we were ready. You came out of the bedroom with a book, some paper, and some pencils. There was barely controlled anger and disappointment in your face. You were always such a sunny child that this took us by surprise. And then, putting the writing materials in front of us, you began your lesson. ‘Babies do not come from Paris. You have been doing things all wrong. You have wasted letter after letter sending for a baby. Let me show you what needs to happen.’ And then you began drawing and explaining.” At this point she always stopped because embarrassed laughter would overtake her and anyone else listening. She then continued, “You asked us if we had any questions. When we shook our heads with a ‘no’, you said you expected that this knowledge would lead to a baby brother, and you pivoted and marched resolutely back to your room.” When my own daughter was 3 years old, in 1981, my mother was visiting us during a particularly cold day in February, and she once again over tea and cake told the story. I then asked a question that had not occurred to me before. “Mom, when did I give up this quest for a brother? I must have given up at some point.” “Well,” she began, “it was really very strange. For most birthdays or holidays when asked what you wished for you’d say a baby brother. But several days before you turned 6, you asked for something else. It was odd. ‘You don’t want a baby brother anymore?’ I asked you. And you answered in the strangest, most eerie way, ‘No, I don’t need to ask anymore because he’s already born.’ So strange, Sylvia. So strange. But then, children say such strange things.” My mother and I laughed about this as we sipped some tea and watched my daughter, her granddaughter, play with dolls. Twenty years later, to the day, (pre-internet, pre-social media, pre-easy international communications) my half-brother who—completely unbeknownst to me—searched for me most of his life, contacted me. He was currently living with his wife and three young children in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he was born on January 21st in 1956—one week before my 6th birthday. I’m not a tattoo person. But, I find some of them really beautiful and lots of them come with interesting and meaningful stories. I enjoy asking my students about them and seeing them delightedly telling me the background of the design. So it was a strange sensation when today my hand surgeon (routine checkup) asked me about mine. I asked him what he meant. “That spot on your pinky finger is a tattoo. Well, we call it that. It came from a pencil point. You must have had it for a long time because it seems to be fading a bit.” “Yes! I got this in 1961.” Wow! I have a tattoo. And really, I have often looked down at that spot and fondly remembered the time I absolutely realized I was born to be a teacher. I was in 6th grade in New York City, and one day in the spring I came across a first grade girl in the bathroom crying—sobbing. She couldn’t write, she told me, and her teacher said she was stupid and would not be promoted to second grade. Her name was Marina, she said, and her parents didn’t speak very much English so they could never help her with her work. Somehow, I sensed I could be of use to her. I told her I’d help her at recess. So, after lunch we sat down on the cold asphalt play yard and I asked her to show me how she made her letters. She was really shaky and her first attempt with a very sharply pointed pencil stabbed me in the pinky. I wrapped it in tissues and just kept going. I recognized the problem right away—the pencil was too thin for her hands. I arranged to meet her the next day and came equipped with a fat pencil, crayons, a notebook, and several books from the library. It worked! From then on we would sit almost every day and write or read. Soon a few more kids from her class started to join us and we had quite a gang together writing notes and reading stories. And I realized: this is what it meant to be a teacher—to not only have skills, but to share them to help others become stronger. And to realize that everyone has different needs and sometimes just a small adjustment in materials or attitude can make a huge difference. At the end of the year Marina was promoted. Her parents came to the school to pick her up and they asked to meet with Miss Sylvia. No one had any idea who this was. Finally Marina saw me in the hall and waved me down excitedly. Her mother, with tears in her eyes, handed me several loaves of freshly baked bread. “So kind. So kind,” she kept repeating. “For you. This bread it rises in the right temperature. So my Marina. You give her the temperature she needed. Thanks you.” And she hugged me. And I knew (I KNEW) this was my life’s calling. And now in my 48th year of teaching, I still know what a privilege it is to empower others with whatever skills and knowledge and warmth I can bring. See my tattoo? It’s who I am: a teacher.
“So much destruction—I can’t bear to look at it. My heart hurts.” My father’s parents came to The U.S. from Germany in 1923. Transatlantic travel being much harder back then, their first trip back to their birth country for a visit was in 1938. He spoke often of the visit and the realization of what their country was becoming. “So civilized a place—great philosophers, composers, artists, scientists—now it turned to brutal ideas. A great place torn apart.”
The next visit was in 1951—a few years after the end of WWII. I was surprised to learn that my grandfather, Max, kept a meticulous journal of that journey. I read it recently having been given a box of mementos rescued from his attic’s eaves by a kind neighbor and by the demolition company tearing down my grandparents’ house (after it had changed many hands). In the writings, Max recounts the ocean voyage, the changing colors of the sea, the anticipation. And then, when in Germany, he writes of the horror and sadness of his wife’s first sight of her old neighborhood. “All of downtown destroyed! Can’t find way around anymore—museum damaged—destruction—ruins throughout—most houses burned out…Wilma too shocked to cry.” He writes this not in his native language, but in English, as if, I thought while reading, he was communicating these things to me--his only grandchild and someone who did not speak German. I put the journal down, so saddened by the vivid descriptions. Then, this afternoon, I got a text from a kind friend: It was a photo he took this very morning of the home my parents had lived in from the early 1970s until their deaths 30 years later. It was being bulldozed to make way for new townhouses. So much upheaval. So much destruction. How much, I thought, do we tear down in our lifetime? Not even buildings with solid foundations survive. Not human lives. Way leads on to way. So what lasts? What can we count on in this ever-changing world? Where are humanity’s struggles and joys and loves and angers and fears and sadness and transcendence? Maybe—maybe— it’s all in the telling of its stories. And in the listening. |
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