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. “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.
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. “No. Marta Sanchez isn’t coming. She wasn’t invited.” It was May of 1958, I was 8 years-old, and at Susie’s house, three doors down from mine in Passaic, NJ. We were talking about an end of the school year party at her house this coming Saturday. Susie’s house was the biggest and most perfect one in town with a pool in the backyard (with a slide!), a treehouse for her brothers that was off-limits to girls, and a permanently set up croquet course where we were right now. “But she has to come. I thought everyone from our class was coming,” I blurted out while banging my mallet against the wooden ball sending it precisely through the hoop. I continued, “Her mom even made us matching dresses.” Marta’s mom was known to be an excellent seamstress. Her work on wedding gowns was in constant demand. She would sometimes show me how to stich around a button, or under a complicated pleat, or behind an intricate embroidered area and tell me, “it has to look like it’s floating. It has to look like angels made it with magic.” Then she’d smile, look through her thick-lensed glasses, and get back to work.
“My mom says that she’s Puerto Rican and they don’t belong at our parties,” Susie continued as she took her turn, hit the ball, and missed the hoop. Suddenly Mrs. Tannor appeared holding a tray of lemonade and cookies, her heavy, gold charm bracelet clanging as she walked. “Are you girls having fun?” She set things down on a nearby table, smiled and was beginning to walk away when I stopped her. “Susie says that Marta Sanchez can’t come to our party next week because she’s Puerto Rican. I don’t understand. She’s really nice. Everyone likes her. She says she’s going to be a doctor one day.” Mrs. Tannor sat down on a nearby chaise lounge, her soft yellow dress rustling around her, and motioned me to stand before her. With great solemnity she took my hands and looked me in the eyes. “Sylvia, dear, there are things in this world you just don’t understand yet. There are people we simply can’t be seen with. There is such a thing as a reputation and if you are with the wrong people…well, it’s shattered. You have to be very careful in this world. And she will not be a doctor. She’s a girl and look where she comes from.” I stood frozen with my wooden mallet in my hand as she stood up quickly, patted me on my head, told us we only had a few more minutes to play, and went back to the house. “Come on, Sylvia, we’ve got to finish. You’re beating me. You always beat me,” Susie giggled. The situation troubled me, and I thought it over and over in my mind as I trudged solemnly home. The next day at lunch I talked to Marta about this. She didn’t seem surprised. “My mom says this happens to us sometimes. But she tells me not to worry because when someone doesn’t like you even before they know you it’s not you they don’t like. It’s something in themselves that they don’t like but they have to find an outside place to put it. How can anyone really not like you when they don’t know you? She says, ‘Don’t listen to hate when it talks, Marta, because it will stop you. You are made of star light, so just shine and the whole world will see you are magnificent.’” “Magnificent” became my favorite word for the whole day. That night at dinner I told my father about the problem. His face was red with anger, but his words were controlled and clear, “ Well, you know how your mother and I feel about justice. You know how we feel that all people deserve dignity and respect and equal chances. There is a great deal of unfairness in the world. But this is becoming your world now--how do you think you should solve this?” I was confused. The party would be so much fun, but how could I enjoy it without my friend Marta there? And the matching dresses were beautiful. I came up with a plan. I told Susie I was really sorry, but I wouldn’t be able to come to the party. I asked Marta to come to my house for an adventure on the party day and that we needed to wear our matching dresses. My mother called her mom to get her approval and when they arrived, as Marta and I twirled around in our fancy white dresses with pale blue lace trim, I saw the adults talking but couldn’t hear any of the words. And then all of us climbed into my parents’ big black Buick, drove over the George Washington Bridge into New York City, and on to The Plaza Hotel for afternoon tea. We ate cookies and scones and whipped cream (right off the spoon!) and cakes. Then Marta and I were allowed to wander through the lobby by ourselves. We hid behind the huge potted palms and scampered and slid on the shiny corridors. Someone stopped us and asked if we were twins and we looked at each other and burst out “YES!” at the same time. On the way home we sang songs in the car and the adults told stories about when they were kids. The sun was almost setting as we drove west over the bridge on the way back to New Jersey and when we said our goodbyes, we all declared it to be “The best day ever!” I yelled loudly as they drove away, “It was magnificent!” We moved away the following month and continued move after move for many years. As happens, I lost touch with many of my childhood friends. But by chance I ran into Susie at an event almost thirty years later. We didn’t recognize each other at first but small talk about backgrounds quickly sorted that out. I asked about her family. “Well, I married a lawyer—he specializes in civil rights lawsuits. He and my mother barely talk to each other. I love her, but I just can’t agree with her ideas. It took me too long,” she looked down with sadness and continued, “but I did finally realize that people need to be treated with dignity. I remember listening to Martin Luther King’s speech and his line about basing your opinions about folks not on the externals but on the content of the character of the individual.” She went on, “My father died a few years ago. Heart attack. And my mother…Oh my…” now she chuckled at some long-held internal joke, “she had breast cancer.” I looked confused, but she continued, “so her doctor sent her to the best specialist and meticulous surgeon in New York.” At this point she was laughing so hard that she wiped tears from her eyes. “I went with her for the examination and imagine both of our surprised faces when we were greeted by Marta Sanchez!” Oh my. Now I burst out laughing. “My Marta?” I sputtered, “Marta? So, what happened next?” “Well, she had the surgery and it was successful. Marta saved her life. And while my mom was in the recovery room and Marta came out to talk with me, I listened carefully to all instructions about after-care, thanked her, and then I asked her how she could put aside such anger and obstacles that she was faced with. And know what she told me?” Now I was listening very intently as she continued, “She said you just have to love the world. You have to make things better that you can make better. That you just have to harness your internal star-shine and glow brilliantly, and eventually everyone will see your magnificence—that her mom taught her that.” “Come on, hurry up, she’s just being rude and stupid. But what can you expect?” My friend Pamela was urging me away from Carrie Kavanaugh on the playground. It was March 16th, 1959 and I was 9 years old and once again in another new school—after five others in three different countries and languages. I had never before, however, encountered a demand by anyone that I must wear green. Carrie had approached me at the swings and said that I had to wear that color tomorrow because it was going to be Saint Patrick’s Day. As I began questioning her on this Pam pulled me away to play jump rope with a bunch of other girls. Our dresses twirled and billowed as we jumped double-Dutch—my specialty—and we giggled at the entanglements that kept happening as the cords twisted or we lost rhythm. Carrie came over and wanted to loudly remind us again of the impending green requirements for tomorrow. The other girls laughed derisively as she walked away, but I was stumped. So, I asked about this. “Well, she's Irish,” Sally said rolling her eyes. Cathy then continued, “My mother says that all Irish kids have dirty blood and we have to stay away from them. There are even signs that warn us about them.” I had seen those “Irish Need Not Apply” signs downtown, but I didn’t understand why. Cathy continued, “They have a holiday where they’re supposed to wear green to honor this Saint Patrick. They think it’s good luck or something.”
I didn’t understand why they seemed against her. She was a smart girl and a whiz at arithmetic, and her beautiful crisp white dresses with lace were the envy of all the fifth-grade girls. So I asked. “We’re just not supposed to be around ‘that sort’—but I don’t know why,” was Karen’s answer as she shrugged her shoulders. “Come on,” she continued, “we’re going to be late for lunch.” I needed to know more. To everyone’s surprise, I went over to sit with Carrie at the long table where she was eating almost by herself. “Hi,” I began, “can I sit here?” She looked up in astonished and nodded a yes. “I’m sort of new here and I don’t understand about green tomorrow. Why is it so important?” She looked at me wearily and softly said, “Do you really want to know?” When she was sure I was sincere she explained to me why it was so important for her and her family to celebrate the day and why she just wished everyone did so they too could all have good luck. She told me about her grandfather who had been beaten up badly when he first came to America years ago, just for being Irish. And she talked about her mother whose red hair and freckles were the stuff of such mockery through her school years that she quit after grade 8 and helped her own mother take in laundry. Having been new in so many places myself, I quickly understood how difficult this must have all been. “Do you know about John F. Kennedy?” She asked. I did not. “My folks say that he’s a real ‘up and comer’ in politics and he might even run for president one day. He’s Irish. And he’s Catholic, like us. Maybe if he gets really important then people will stop making fun of us.” I saw that she looked down and was trying not to cry. I knew how that was—hoping that the feelings inside my chest wouldn’t spill out into my eyes. I quickly changed the subject. “Do you like peanut butter?” I asked pointing at her sandwich. “Oh I love it, “ she answered. “Well, everyone laughs at me because I think I’m the only kid who doesn’t,” I answered. “I’m just strange.” We both giggled at this as the end-of lunch bell clanged. Our afternoon classes were long and tiring and after being reminded that the next day we’d have a test on the names of all the presidents (“One at a time, in turns, you will each recite one name in order.”) we were dismissed to walk home. Walking with books in my arms and with all my friends was one of my favorite things to do. On the way I started talking about Carrie and Saint Patrick’s Day. I asked them about traditions in their families. It turned out there were lots of different ones. “So, I don’t understand,” I blurted,” why is it so wrong for Carrie to want us to wear green? Shouldn’t we help her celebrate? And she just wants us to have good luck too. And there’s even a parade in New York. I’m not Irish and I’m not Catholic, but I think I am going to wear green because I want to respect all those people who think it’s important. Why not?” That question stumped my friends. I continued, “Do you know that she likes peanut butter?” At this a great burst of laughter came from them all—my aversion to this food was well known. “See, I am much stranger than Carrie.” They nodded in their hilarity. Cathy spoke, “You know, maybe Sylvia is right. I mean, we’re not that different—we’re all just people. Maybe I’ll wear some green ribbons in my hair tomorrow.” In a rousing chorus of “Yay!” it was decided. The next day, Tuesday, March 17th, 1959, a very delighted Carrie saw a whole bunch of her classmates wearing green hair ribbons as we each stood up during our history test reciting first one then the next of the names of all the 34 presidents. She sat with us at lunch where we talked about scary snakes, and the impossibility of alligators living where there was snow, and if blue was really a color women would put on they eyelids, and if hair-perms were important. The next year I moved to yet another school far away. I understood nothing about politics, but when John F. Kennedy was elected the 35th president that November, I proudly wore a bright green sweater to school the next day. “My great grandmamma gave me this little scrap right before she died. She come up from Georgia –escaped an old mean master—with her two bitty babies. Twins. My grandmamma was the girl. They was no more than a year and a half. The boy—he died one night in the corner of an old barn someone let ‘em sleep in along the way. Not enough food. My grandmamma grow up strong. She and her mama built a little house just off in the country. They sewed and cooked for the white people in town. They were so happy when my momma was born—named her Miracle. Years later when my momma died birthing me and then my great grandmamma died, my grandmamma raised me on her own. This scrap came off great grandmomma’s apron. She said it was all she had left of her time in Georgia and she pinned it on her clothes every day to remind herself of how far she travelled.” Eleanor, the cook, told me this story on one of the evenings that I was invited to our philosophy professor’s house for dinner. These dinners, to which only a few were invited, took place weekly in 1971, my senior year at a small college on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I did not have a grasp of philosophy and grew weary of the talk very quickly. My interests ran more to people and stories, but my friend was the top student and he always brought me as his guest. One night I met Eleanor in the kitchen while I was making a wrong turn in my search for the bathroom. She was taking a sweet potato pie out of the oven and her old, wrinkled hands almost failed to hold it. We both giggled at her close call and I told her my relief that my favorite thing of the night wasn’t ruined. “They talkin about great thinkers in there again tonight?” she asked. “Yup,” I replied, “tonight it’s all about Spinoza and how you’ve got to study the past if you want the present to be different.” “Well, Honey,” she drawled, “he ain’t wrong.” She showed me the scrap of cloth safety-pinned to her apron and told me that story of her great grandmother’s escape from slavery. From then on each week I looked forward to slipping away from the heady talk and hearing more about Eleanor’s life. About her work and the people she knew and her family—about her daughter who disdained everything about their meager and hard life and finally ran way to “Californa—imagine that? She said she was going to be a star. Haven’t heard from her since she left almost 16 years now right after her baby, Marilyn, was born. I been raising that sweet little girl all these years.” She reached in the pocket of her apron to show me a tattered photo. “One day she’s going to go to college and learn about these thinkers. I got a bank account and I put money in every week. She gonna go.” No husbands were ever mentioned and one time when I asked she made a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’ve been a fool, but I learned what matters. Ain’t no fool no more. Who they talkin’ about tonight?” “Nietzsche,” I told her, “he says that life is suffering but to really survive you have to find meaning in the suffering.” “Oh, lordy,” she exclaimed, “he ain’t wrong. No. He ain’t wrong at all.” At the end of the year, Eleanor baked me special little pies to take with me on my travels back to my New Jersey home. She wrapped them up and gave them to me on Schopenhauer night. Our professor quoted him: “Every parting gives a foretaste of death,” as we raised our glasses solemnly at our last dinner together. After graduation I moved to NJ for a year and when I moved back to our Eastern Shore college town to start my teaching job one of the first things I did was try to find Eleanor. The professor said she had gotten sick and was too old to work but he gave me her address and I quickly drove out to her tiny one-room shack off a dirt road on the edge of a barren field. I knocked on the door and Marilyn came to the door. “Granny is too tired for visitors,” she said tearfully. “I can’t even get her to talk much. She used to try to tell me stories but I was too stupid and angry to want to listen. Now I ask her but she’s in too much pain.” I left, telling Marilyn my new address in town, respecting her wishes, offering my help, and feeling sad beyond measure. A week later Marilyn came to my door. Sobbing she fell into my arms: “Granny died yesterday. And I never listened and I never cared and now I’ll never understand. But, when she heard you were back she asked for me to get this raggedy old piece of cloth from her apron. She told me to bring it to you. That you’d understand what she wanted,” and with a shaking hand she showed it to me. I held it, sat her down, took her hand, and started: “Your Granny’s, great grandmamma escaped from slavery in Georgia…” In 1957, the day after we landed in Dallas after a 24 hour 2-stop airplane (no jets yet) journey from Montevideo, Uruguay, we began another trip. This time we crossed the country by car—first to California and then across the great continent that I immediately loved. I was 7 and our finances and spaces were very limited so I had no toys. None. The first morning though, brought me a new wonder—with my toast came small aluminum jelly containers (now plastic). After emptying two of them and washing them out in the bathroom, I started creating things with them while my parents finished their coffee. They became tiny boats for imaginary tiny people; And when those people got tired, they became tiny beds. A waitress helped me make a little sails for them by cutting up some napkins. So began my trek across the country. I remember a great deal about that two-month trip, but warmest of all are my memories of waitresses. In each restaurant I entered with my small army of ever-increasing containers, and in every restaurant one or two waitresses would contribute something to my stash. I still couldn’t speak English but my American father would explain that these were my only toys as I spread them out on the table in front of me and began my adventures. One waitress showed me how to make little people out of toothpicks; another made me tiny bananas from Juicy Fruit gum wrappers; another one cut a tiny picture of a tree out of a magazine so they could have shade. And so it went. All across the country—Nevada, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Minnesota, and points east, waitresses helped my collection and my imagination. Years later while wading through my daughter’s toy room, my father and I reflected on my childhood and our adventures. I reminisced about the wonderful waitresses who helped me create my tiny container worlds and how caring they were. “It’s funny,” he remarked, “What I remember is how happy you made them. Some of those stops were run-down and seedy, but you never saw that. You were just happy and thankful. You made those women smile at your little towns and for just a few minutes they had some fun. One waitress—I think it was in Arizona—had been mourning the death of her daughter for months —the manager told us this when she went back to her pocketbook to get you something for your little aluminum town. But that waitress was really happy playing with you—first time they saw her smile in a very long time.” I scanned my memory for what she could have given me. Then I found it: “Was she the one who gave me the lace hankie?” “Yes, that’s it, “ my father continued, “she said she had cried enough and now she wanted that hankie to go on to a happier life. It was her daughter’s.” I jumped in: “I remember she told me that my people might get cold and she wanted them to have something to warm them, so we made it into a blanket.” Warmth. And so, this odyssey—this sharing of joy and grief and hope and loss and resilience was the America I found at the age of seven. It’s still the one I live in today.
“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. “She died of a long illness,” they told me when I asked about my great-grandmother Anna. My mother remembered her from when as a child she lived in Poland. “Oh, she was wonderful. I had typhus when I was six, your age, and she brought me back to health. My fever was so high she had to put me in an ice bath to lower it. They thought I was going to die.” I could not imagine such a misery. It was 1957 and we were sitting around the big dining room table in Montevideo, Uruguay with some of my family’s Polish friends. Even as a young child, I loved their stories and the word-pictures they would paint of that old world they had left. In 1930 my grandmother had managed to escape the horrors of Poland with her two small children in tow, but not before having to say a painful farewell to her beloved mother-in-law. My mother remembered (in Polish) her grandmother’s parting words, “Sara, you be a good girl and listen to your mother. She will help you to a better life. It is not safe for us here. Be very brave.” She knew she’d never see her grandchildren again.
The 1940s brought horrors to the extended family in Poland with many killed in concentration and labor camps and many others simply murdered in their homes. All communication had stopped. It was not until many years later, the early 1950s, that several of the remaining relatives and friends were able to emigrate and some came to Uruguay and now, here they were, sitting around the big wooden table talking and laughing. “Remember that time Solomon was so full of beer that he couldn’t get up the stairs and Herman tried to help him but they both ended up rolling down? Achhh, what silliness that was, they chuckled. And then, “We didn’t know how bad it was going to get later. No one really knew,” as they grew suddenly solemn and quiet. I took that lull as an opportunity to ask about my great grandmother and was told of her death. And then they continued, “But it was an amazing thing when she died. Back then, in 1939, it was instructed that Jews were not allowed formal burials. They were just dumped into graves. But not your great-grandmother.” “Why not?” I asked. They continued, “Because all of her life she helped the poor. If she had one piece of bread left she would give half of it to the poor and half to her family and she herself would eat nothing. If she had two pieces of cloth she would sew a dress for a desperate child.” “So, she helped the Jewish community,” I mused. “No,” I was told, “Not just that community. She helped everyone who needed her help. The poor people of the village of all religions loved her so much that when she died, they found a way to buy a coffin for her and then they carried it in a long procession to the cemetery. There must have been more than a hundred people walking together. Even the soldiers on watch did not disturb the ceremony. No one had ever seen anything like that before. A Jewish woman carried with so much dignity! We knew, all of us, we knew that this was the last moment we could all honor goodness in the world.” And then these old Polish people, survivors of unimaginable suffering and grief, cast their heads down with long, heavy sighs. Even as a child I felt their sighs in my bones. I feel them still. |
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