Too proud to go on welfare

It's hard to believe, but there was once a time when people refused to take charity, public or private. Despite Mitt Romney's belief that 47 percent of Americans are on the public tit, there once were people like that, too proud to go on welfare.

My mother-in-law was one of them.  She was a proofreader, working in the printing trade, but she was not allowed to join the union, which at the time did not accept women.  So when the Depression hit, she lost her job, and was unable to get another.  She was a single mother of three children at the time and the sole support of her widowed mother.  She scrubbed floors.  She took in laundry.  But she would not go on welfare, then known in New York City as "home relief."

Don't think the family did not suffer.  My husband, who was born in 1931, was the baby.  Too young to understand what was going on,  he cried because he was hungry.  His older brother stole bread in the early morning hours, when bakeries delivered bread and pastries to retail stores.  When he could get any.

Eventually, she married a man who had several children of his own.  Her family was fed, but the marriage was a disaster.  I don't know the details of either the marriage or the split-up; but eventually the marriage ended.  She was supporting  herself, her mother, and her youngest child by freelance proofreading.  The older two grew up and married and moved away.  She died of a heart attack at 54.

I by no means support her views; if my kids had ever missed  a meal I would have been first in line at  welfare headquarters at the opening of business.  But I admire her integrity and the steadfastness with which she lived her beliefs.

Three grandparents

When I was quite a small child I didn't know who everyone in the family was.  I thought I had three grandparents, courtesy of my mother:  Bubbe, Zayde, and Rosie.

Rosie was my grandmother's helper; what used to be called a"maid" or "girl" in polite society.  In short, Rosie was a black servant.  The fact that I have never mentioned  her astonishes me.  Must be racism.  Of course.

My memory tells me that Rosie was at my grandparents' house every day.  She and Bubbe were always working.  I can't believe the ordinary household required so much housework, but they always seemed to be busy doing something.  In those days, dishes were washed by hand.  And laundry was done on a machine with a wringer.  The wet wash --remember that expressions?==was wrung out by the wringer and then carried up the basement steps and hung on the clothesline.  When it dried it was brought inside, trundled down to the basement again, where most of it had to be ironed.  The only items that did not have to be ironed were   underwear, as I recalled.

And then there was kashrut, a form of organizing food and dishware and pots and pans which Rosie had not learned growing up in Savannah, GA.  She understood it very well by the time I knew her.   A novice could not work in a kosher environment; it was too complex.  The kosher housewife needed someone who understand how a kosher kitchen worked.  It governed almost everything that went on in the household where food was concerned.

On special occasions, known as Spring cleaning, carpets were taken out to the back yard and hung over the clothesline, where the dust was beaten out of them with a carpet beater.  The curtains were taken down and stretched on huge stretchers that looked like a bed of nails.  Everything was out of its proper place and children needed to disappear or be scolded for getting in the way.

I loved Rosie,  She was not too busy to tell me stories about growing up in Savannah, a place I always longed to visit.  I finally went there when I was in my 30's and loved it.   And she told me about her husband, who was named Blue, the only man I ever heard of with that name.  Rosie governed by threats.  Little girls who did not behave would be locked in dark closets.  And if we were not careful, we would get shot by needles which Uncle Moe carried in his doctor's bag.  I was so frightened of Uncle Moe, one of the gentlest of men, that I hid under the dining room table when he was expected.  No wonder I grew up to be crazy!

Oil glut

My father and my brother the genius were so alike it scared me.  The first word ever applied to either one is "brilliant."  Both of them spent enormous amounts of effort on some cause.  My father spent four years trying to invent a sewing machine which would sew the toe of pantyhose invisibly.  He turned my brother's bedroom into a machine shop, surprising my brother when he came home from college  and had to sleep on a sofabed in the living room.  Dad had scores of patents on this machine, which proved difficult to design.  He became the world expert on pantyhose and was about to cash in worldwide when all the women of all  nations simultaneously decided they hated wearing pantyhose, discarded them, and started wearing trousers or going barelegged..  Even Anna Wintour.  And when you've lost Anna Wintour you've lost everyone who counts.

My brother the genius has a scheme for extracting energy from seawater.  Don't ask.  If he were rich he would devote all his time and resources to the project.  He also has lots of patents.  Needless to say, after the spectacular failure of wind and solar power nobody wants to listen.

When my mother was alive, he was convinced that all the natural gas in the world was going to be used up imminently, maybe within a year or two.  He actually ordered an oil burning furnace for her house.  When the installer came, the cleaning lady warned mother in time and was met with armed resistance and was forcefully ejected.  Thank heaven she caught him before the backhoe was applied to her rose garden.

It didn't take much acumen to consider him mistaken.  Just because someone is brilliant doesn't necessarily make him right.I felt in my gut that sooner or later,  there would be an oil glut and I was right.

Car trouble in the family

I don't think dad actually found his car missing at the curb when he left the house, but he came close. Mother had a habit of lending his car to one of her brothers when either of them needed it. She didn't discuss this ahead of time with him, as he would only have made a fuss, which would have done him no good because she had determined that whichever of her brothers needed the car needed it more than dad, being as they were doctors. So she informed him around the time he was putting on his coat, preparatory to getting in said car. He was hopping mad, only partly because her brothers were such awful drivers. Uncle Moe was the less dangerous one, as he drove cautiously and timidly, knowing he was not a good driver. Uncle Doc, however, was a terror behind the wheel. He would change lanes by turning on his turn signal and then changing lanes without looking in his mirror to see if there was anyone already in the lane, among other little peculiarities pf his driving style. That was probably why whichever brother who had borrowed the car had taken it to the body shop, having had an accident. But he was a doctor and had patients to visit, not to mention his patients in the hospital he needed to see, and dad could just as well take the bus as he was only a lawyer, like her, and the bus came to a corner only two blocks away and the weather was not that bad. Dad was actually a good driver who enjoyed driving until he died at 99, despite some sourpusses in the family who wanted him to give up his car.

Family obligations

Mother was totally devoted to her family of origin. It was one for all and all for one, though this was never expressed in so many words. Words were for fighting with each other; you could never guess how close they were if you listened to them argue.

My father experienced this solidarity up close and personal. He would get ready to go to work in his car only to discover that mother had loaned the car--at that time their only vehicle--to one of her brothers, whose car was in the shop. Mother decided not to inform him of this before the fact, reasoning--correctly, as it turned out--that he would strenuously object.

Mother could not understand the fuss. After all, Moe was a doctor, and obviously needed the car more than he did.

Sibling rivalry

I'm always writing about my mother's family, which is understandable because we lived near them and we saw more of them. Maybe a little too much.

But fair is fair, so I want to direct your attention to my father's side of the family. The cast of characters:

Grandma, who spent her final 40 years of life in bed;
Grandpa, rabbi and sometime streetcar conductor;
Helen, oldest child and only daughter, who took over the household when her mother went to bed;
Al, oldest brother, of whom I know nothing except that he had perfect pitch and played the drum;
Ed, next brother in line and the family black sheep;
and my dad, whom I will call Nat, the baby, continually striving to measure up to Ed.

Ed and N had a fairly fraught relationship. A lot of it was about sports--who could pitch better, who could hit the ball farther, who could beat who in tennis, and so forth. Nat was puny and small, and Ed picked on him, even breaking his arm in a dispute over a baseball game. When they grew up, they stopped plotting to kill each other--Nat got old enough and big enough to defend himself-- but still had a fairly intense relationship in which each tried to outdo the other.

When they visited each others' homes, they tried to outdo each other in hospitality. You were sure to get a good feed at Nat's house when Ed was in town. Upping the ante, Ed would take everybody out to a trendy restaurant, sparing no expense on food or wine. Ed's daughter got into a good college. Nat's son, who was about the same age, got into a better one.

When Nat was about 89 he had a heart attack and was hospitalized. He left the hospital against doctor's orders so he could host a party for Ed and show him what nice friends he had. After the party, he went back and had a bypass.

Ed lived to the age of 97. I knew Nat would never let that record stand. Undefeated, he has made it to 98. So Nat won.

About my mother

 

Since Mother's Day is coming, I thought I would reminisce about my mother.

I've written about mother's law practice elsewhere. Now I want to mention another idiosyncracy of hers.

Mother hated bad news--no, she didn't believe in bad news, and felt that if she didn't share it, it didn't count. So if anything bad happened, she never told me. This was particularly annoying, as I lived out of town, and depended on her to keep me up to date on family news.

Once I was visiting her, and noticed that my cousin Bernie's wife was not present on a family occasion. Mother had to admit that Noreen and Bernie were getting divorced. Instead if mentioning it, mother disappearated Noreen. She became a non-person. No grudge, she just was never mentioned. It was like those group pictures of Soviet leaders, where the unfortunate one who had fallen from grace was simply edited out of the picture.

She handled her own divorce differently. She couldn't disappearate dad, because we two children were evidence he had existed. She simply ignored the divorce. His name was listed in the phone book as long as she lived. When she moved, the new phone was listed in his name, even though he had not lived with her in years, and she was still mad at him.

One reason for her anger was that he had left her for a woman who was not good-looking at all. She found this insulting. She might have handled the whole thing better if my stepmother had been a beauty. After all, who could hold a grudge if her husband left her for Ingrid Bergman? Mother felt she might have kept her own options open if Clark Gable had come calling.

When bubbe, her own mother, was sick, mother insisted on being upbeat. Every time I called, she told me bubbe was "a little bit better." These improvements continued until bubbe improved into another state of existence.

If I called mother and she bitched about her aches and pains, I knew she was okay and enjoying life. It was when she started feeling better every time I called that I really got worried. Toward the end, she was hospitalized frequently, but she never informed me when this happened. She didn't want to worry me. So I would call and listen to the sound of the phone ringing in the empty house.

Then I would call my brother to find out what had happened this time.

Get ready for Passover

It's not too early to be thinking about Passover.

When I was a child seders seemed to last for eons. All my mother's family, my parents, my two uncles and their wives and children were always present, because anything bubbe hosted was a command performance. The good linens, china, and silver made the table gleam under the light of bubbe's two candelabras.

We children were excited beyond hysteria until the ceremony began, and we were forced to come to the table and stop hanging upside down from the sofa, climbing the walls, and knocking down the furniture. I particularly enjoyed the presence of my cousins because I was an only child at the time, and lonely. My eldest cousin, three and a half years older than me, was a goddess of sophistication to me; her brothers were rowdy playmates. Uncle Doc's little girls were too young to play with but they were mighty cute and dressed to the nines.

Once the youngest child present had recited the four questions the prayer competition began. Both my uncles and my cousin Bernie read the haggadah aloud --individually--in Hebrew as quickly as they could. The conversation went like this:

Uncle I: It's time for the first (or second, third, or fourth) cup of wine.
Uncle II: I haven't gotten there yet. You read too fast.
Uncle I: It's a long service.
Uncle II: All right, all right. Come on everybody. Drink the fourth (or third, or second) cup. Where's the bottle? Pass me the wine, somebody.

They raced through the prayers and then had to stop and wait impatiently for the others to catch up. It was rather like riding in a car that alternately speeded up and stopped dead, causing you to lurch forward and back.

Meanwhile, my cousin Sam and sometimes one or two of the other children would drink too much wine and slip quietly to the floor. It taught me the meaning of drinking yourself under the table. After a brief nap the culprit would re-appear, refreshed.

The two little girls were too small to read, so they raced around the table fighting with each other until Uncle Doc started yelling at them and threatening to spank them. My aunt, his wife, would burst into tears because he had shouted at the girls. She would threaten to leave. They would yell some more until he calmed down and apologized to the girls and gave them some candy or gum he just happened to have in his pocket. The girls, of course, would stuff themselves with sweets and would not eat the festive meal when it appeared.

The festive meal! Chicken soup with matzoh balls. We called bubbe's matzoh balls cannon balls. They were heavy but nourishing. Then we had chicken. With the chicken came potato kugel and chopped liver. Gefilte fish. Someone probably slipped a green vegetable in there somewhere, but I don't remember it. Bubbe didn't hold with all this greenery anyway. Her idea of a salad was: take one cucumber; add pint of sour cream; eat. And we couldn't have that, this was a fleisheke meal.

Bubbe would heap each of the children's plates with massive portions of food and then bawl them out for not eating it all. We were starved and ate voraciously. If someone had thrown one of us into the river we would have plummeted to the bottom and sunk without a trace.


Dessert featured, but was not limited to, Manischevitz macaroons, served in the can. The featured wine was Mogen David.

After eating, there was a timeout while the children searched for the afikomen and the adults sat still and burped.

Since I was not used to staying up late, the remainder of the seder was one big blur to me, except for opening the door for Eliyahu hanovi. Then came Chad Gadya, which meant the end of the service and blessed release.

And then we did it again the next night.

(Recycled)

Little apartment of doom

When my kids were little, Mr Charm determined to finish his PhD, which meant we had to move back to New York City. I made the foolish mistake of trusting him with the task of finding an apartment. He found one out in the far reaches of Far Rockaway. It was Farthest Rockaway, because it cost two subway tokens to get there.

It was hard to believe you were still in New York City--it was about as un-urban as it could get, without being in any way rural.

Our apartment was on the second floor. As we drove up, we caught an unwelcome glimpse of the downstairs neighbors. Mom was an enormous slattern, one son looked like a thug, and another was clearly a little bit wanting in the upper storey. They were arranged all over the front of the house, wearing wife-beater T-shirts (Mom wore a stained housedress), drinking beer, and playing the radio at a deafening pitch. Apparently the first floor apartments in this neighborhood were very difficult to rent as they were prone to flooding, and so attracted undesirables. We nicknamed these folks the Jukes family, but they could as easily have been the Kallikaks.

In all but the worst weather, the Jukes held court in front of the house, playing music, eating, and throwing food wrappers all over the sidewalk. We got to consider them something of a conversation piece after a while.

After meeting the Jukes, we had another surprise in store, but that one had to wait until we went to bed. I was exhausted, and dreamed that a railroad train was running over me. It wasn't a train--we were directly under the landing approach for Kennedy Airport. Every night, all summer long, planes flew directly over our heads, making television watching, conversation, and for the matter of that, coherent thought, impossible.

My family members decline to be amusing...

so I am borrowing people from other families, for the time being, until they get their act together.

A friend of mine worried about her parents, who were living atop a steep hill in Vermont. When it snowed it became impossible for them to get out or for anyone else to get in. This would not have been a big problem except he was 90 and she was 86.

Apparently they had been engaged in a power struggle for about 65 years. She got her way in one respect, choosing to live on a remote inaccessible hilltop which had once been her family's farm, even though he despised the country and wanted a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. On everything else, he bullied her until he got his way.

For instance, he hated cigarette smoke, so he made her quit smoking. He made life unpleasant for visitors, including their three children. But most important, he refused to have a heating system installed. They relied on a wood stove. If she insisted on living on her hilltop, she had to chop wood, and did.

Well, at last he died, at about 92. Almost immediately after the funeral, she had a heating system installed and resumed smoking cigarettes--after a 60-year-long hiatus. The last I heard, she was still on her hilltop.

I guess the person who stays in the game the longest wins.

A new washing machine

My washer dropped dead last week, fortunately after all the visitors had gone, but before I had washed their soiled sheets. Naturally, I bought another. It doesn't pay to have a repairman come to the house, not that they would come this week, of course. If past experience is any guide, they would set up an appointment on the 21st, keep me waiting all day, declare the washer beyond repair, and charge me $79.95 for the consultation.

When the dishwasher went, I had hopes of fixing it and called a repairman. Several days later, the repairman came, pulled the dishwasher out of its niche, and declared it not worth fixing, $79.95 please. He then kindly pushed it back into its spot under the counter. For the food disposer, rinse and repeat.

So when the washer went, I skipped the intermediate step and ordered a new one, which was not as easy as it sounds. Costco had one I liked, but they do not deliver. They deliver if you order online, but do not install, and as for getting rid of your old machine, you're on your own. Sears had one in stock, if I wanted to go and get it. I didn't.

Mother would have been appalled at the casual way I treated this old appliance. This was not her way. She once had a perfectly good washer, except it didn't work. But she had confidence that it could be repaired. After all, it had worked for five years, hadn't it? Mr Snyder, one of her clients who happened to be an appliance repairman, told her it needed an expensive new part, a transmission maybe. She told him to go ahead and put one in. He said he would have to order it from the manufacturer as they were not making that model any more. She told him to go ahead and do it. He said it might take weeks. That was okay with her.

My brother, who was living at home at the time, wanted to do his laundry, so he ordered a new washer without her knowledge. When it arrived, she refused delivery. This went on for a while, with dirty clothes piling up on the basement floor, until the manufacturer informed all concerned that they could not supply the part. The new part, if it could be obtained, would cost $100, plus labor. A new washer at the time sold for about $200.

Mother, who had grown up dirt poor, abhorred waste. She wasn't stingy; she was actually very generous. But her cars were of the same vintage as the washer, held together (by a client who was an auto mechanic) with spit and baling wire. I remember getting into one of her cars and putting my foot down all the way to the road surface. The bottom had rotted out of the car. But it was a perfectly good car. It ran. Buy a new car? Oysgevarfene gelt!

Mother really hated to get rid of anything. She had an enclosed sun room which she converted into a downstairs bedroom and bath (she had a client who was a contractor) when my grandmother grew ill and came to live with her. After bubbe died, it became a repository for everything that needed a bit of work but might come in handy one day. Three-legged chairs, a sofa that was losing its stuffing, a crib without slats, a vase with a crack in it, all these and more found a home there. Dead potted plants were added to the mix. A few old magazines. A shoebox full of papers someone should really sort someday. We called this room the Batcave. It got so crowded we couldn't get in to use the bathroom.

Family story

This (reprised)story is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

When my Uncle Doc got out of medical school and finally had two pennies to rub together, he bought his mother a fancy watch. I believe it was a Patek Philippe. None of us ever saw her wearing or consulting the watch, which really didn't go with Bubbe's style, which was that she didn't have any.

Bubbe was of the old school which believed that when a woman got old she was, for all ornamental purposes, dead. She had long grey hair parted in the middle and pulled into a bun in back. Her closet contained three dresses, one black and two navy blue. One of the navy ones had little flowers on it.

She had a couple of housedresses for daily wear. Housedresses are to dresses as paper plates are to bone china. She owned a cardigan sweater, navy blue. Sturdy shoes with one inch heels that laced up completed the ensemble, along with some industrial strength underwear. Her stockings were made of something called lisle. With this wardrobe, Bubbe was good to go to anything from a bar mitzvah to a coronation.

So anyway, she had this fancy Swiss watch, which no one knew about but Uncle Doc. It was too good to use.

Picture a calendar with pages falling from it, indicating that thirty years have passed. Bubbe dies. My mother, who owned her mother's house, was in no hurry to clean it out, sort everything, etc. So eventually Aunt Rose decided to go over there and see what was what.

At that point, Patek Philippe re-entered our lives. Seems Aunt Rose discovered the watch and gave it to her daughter, Esther. Without even consulting Uncle Doc!

Esther even took the watch back to Pittsburgh, where she was living. And when burglars broke into her house and stole the watch, Esther put in a claim to the insurance company.

Uncle Doc told me this story in a tone of high dudgeon. Apparently he felt a bond to this timepiece which not even death could sever. He considered the watch a permanent loan. You know, like when a rich person gives something to a museum to display but keeps title to it. Apparently he thought the watch should have reverted to him and felt ill used.

When he told me this story, I suggested he should have told Rose, or Esther, that he wanted the watch. He was unwilling to come off his high horse, but started treating Esther with cold formality whenever he ran into her, which was often, since this branch of the family are in each other's pockets and scarcely a day goes by when they are not communicating with each other.

So Esther innocently started to wonder what she had done to make him mad. But she wouldn't ask, and he wouldn't have told her anyway. And so it went, until Alzheimer's took over Uncle Doc's memory and he mercifully forgot all about the watch, along with a lot of other things.

The family creed

(recycled)
My coastal relatives believe they are atheists, but that's not really true. Leftism is actually the family religion, along with getting good grades in school and getting into the right college. They are smart people, truly. And nice. So how can they parrot "Bush lied"? Typical exchange:

Beloved relative I: Capitalism is inherently corrupt.

BR II: (Pained look) But what is there that's better?

BR I: Communism!

BR II: But--I mean, look at Russia...it didn't work for them, surely?

BR I: It's never been tried.

BR II: ? (Silence, look of disbelief)

This sort of thing is what I had to contend with, when the discussion turned to politics. In the hopes that other topics would be explored, I walked as through a minefield.

Some tenets of the creed:
Drug companies are greedy and bad. Big corporations are greedy and bad. Anyone with more money than me is greedy and bad, and probably stole the money anyway.

The un-health-insured are many, all of them sick with potentially fatal diseases, and are being turned away daily from the life-saving treatment they need by hard-hearted capitalists, mainly George Bush. Many of them are little children, by the way.

More money is needed for public transportation, whether anyone wants it or not.

The environment is in imminent danger. We might wake up tomorrow to find we have been globally warmed to death. Or frozen by nuclear winter. Bad either way.

If the environment doesn't get us, the pollutants currently being poured into the rivers out of sheer spite by evil manufacturers will poison us all.

The Christian right has taken over the country. Our civil rights have been trampled. Anyone who speaks his mind will probably disappear into a secret prison, never to be heard from again.

Bush should be impeached, censured, or at least sent to his room until he learns to behave.

The Iraqis were happier under good old Saddam Hussein.

Odd couples

(recycled)

There are two kinds of people: people who like to be prompt, who would show up for their own hanging ten minutes early in case there is some last minute paperwork; and the other sort.

I myself am a promptie, as you can guess. My son-in-law is a promptie, too. My daughter, his wife, not. This leads to some interesting exchanges.

My mother was definitely of the non-prompt sort. My Uncle Moe, her brother, was compulsive about being, not on time, but early.

So Moe would tell my mother to be ready by say, 7:30. He would arrive at 7:15, to find she had just gotten into the bathtub. The more he fumed, the slower she got, as she stopped getting dressed to discuss the subject with him. Then she would have to: leave a note for the cleaning lady; find her glasses; find her other glasses; find her purse; and call my brother to tell him she was leaving now. Then she got into the car, but discovered she had mislaid her keys and rushed back into the house.

This sort of thing only went on for about 50 years. Neither one adjusted or compromised. He was early, she was late, until she died

Daughter with hair

 

This was an elementary school class photo, maybe 6th grade. I just want to show what thick, wavy hair the people in my father's family have. We all have lots of hair, but this one has the most of all.

Raising children properly

Uncle Doc, at the time a bachelor, didn't approve of the way my parents were raising me. My hair needed combing, my face was dirty, my toys should be put away, in general I made too much noise. At one point, he examined my head and chastised me for not washing behind my ears. I was five years old, and I still feel embarassed about it. Every time I wash my face I make sure to wash behind my ears.

Uncle Doc informed my parents in no uncertain terms that when he had children, a different regimen would be in place.

Well, he got married when I was six, and in due course had a family of his own, three fiends from hell who came to live at his house. Up and down the stairs they chased each other, screaming. One of them had taken a dictionary belonging to another. Uncle Doc alternately promised new dictionaries for everyone and yelled at them loudly to stop that meshugas. But he could have yelled twice as loud and they wouldn't have paid attention. They considered his protests background noise, like the radio.

Eventually, when his face was bright red with veins popping out of his forehead, they sensed he had started to mean business. He would threaten them with dire punishment, and they would start crying. This called for hugs and chewing gum all around. My aunt would go to bed with a migraine. Even I, a mere observer and a child myself, would have a headache.

But Uncle Doc and the girls seemed, if anything, refreshed by all this activity. A good time seemed to be had by all, except those of us with headaches.

Such was Uncle Doc's reasoned philosophy of raising children.

The girls actually grew up to be (relatively) sane, graduate from college, and stay out of jail. So Uncle Doc's child-rearing methods worked. And my aunt stopped having headaches and took up canasta.

Yom Kippur report

Wilmington, DE. Your reporter has gone through another Yom Kippur service, and has a few remarks from the field.

The cantor was superb. Her voice was strong and pure, and her pronunciation--well, I don't know how Hebrew is supposed to be pronounced, but I followed her more or less successfully from the prayer book, something I find difficult when the rabbi is doing the leading. Of course, all I know of Hebrew is what I puzzled out for myself since my grandson's bar mitzvah, and one short course which never reached the end of the alphabet. I did not go to Hebrew school as a child, as I was too busy being trained to be a good little Communist.

I loved the melodies. Every cantor sings different ones, and hers were generally quite showy and theatrical, which I like. Some of the melodies were almost too jolly to be taken as supplications. I almost believe we should be called People of the Song; the music makes the service much pleasanter, and I like to sing, particularly with a whole bunch of other people so no-one has to listen to me. It was something like attending an--admittedly long--oratorio.

The rabbi's sermon was interesting. He started out strongly on the theme of L'dor Va Dor (meaning from generation to generation), a popular theme among Jews. It is continually surprising that we have survived some of the stuff we went through and are still here. What do you suppose became of the other ancient peoples? You never hear a peep out of the Sumerians, for instance. The Persians are still around, but that's about it.

Anyway, the rabbi started with L'Dor Va Dor. But somehow he got sidetracked to social justice and never got back to that topic. He touched upon the theme found in Isaiah, "Is this the fast that I have chosen?" in which God complains that Jews are paying lip service to piety, while kicking sand in the face of their neighbors and other bad stuff. The rabbi thought we should volunteer in day care centers and do our civic duty. He may have a point there.

The Yiskor (remembrance) service was deeply moving, as always, for those of us who have lost dear ones. I especially remember my mother, of course. But I also think of her two brothers, my uncles. And my grandparents, her parents. But most poignant of all, my cousin Sam. He was the youngest of three siblings, and he never got his act together. He was devoted to his parents, and though he had several degrees including a law degree, he was never launched. His mother died when he was in his mid-fifties, too late for him to make a new start. So he lived in a big house, all by himself, with several cats. He became increasingly isolated. He had been friends with my brother, but for some reason, which was never explained, stopped seeing him. He skipped my brother's son's bar mitzvah which was rather shocking when you realize how my family felt about family occasions. He lived alone and died alone.

We went to visit his grave the last time I was in Columbus. You may know that it is a custom among Jews that when one visits a grave, one leaves a stone in remembrance. His grave was a veritable rock pile. Many of the stones had messages, the gist of which was, "from your girl, always." So maybe Sam had someone, after all. I hope so.

My father's will

My father's will is very much on his mind. On one occasion he took my brother and me out to dinner and handed us each a copy. We were to be executors.

A couple of days ago he informed me that I would be sole executor, because my brother, hotshot millionaire lawyer that he is, was too busy. So I read the damn thing.

My father has three children, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Thirteen heirs, to be exact. Although he has sliced and diced his estate several different ways, essentially it would be a thirteen-way split. Then there's my stepmother, who gets his condo for as long as she lives.

The other thing he has is not much money. Not much divided by 13, subtract the condo, is very not much. So every one of his heirs and assigns would receive the price of a round-trip ticket from Newark NJ to Newark DE. Or maybe a little farther. Possibly they could make it to Maryland and back.

I just know that some day this is going to bite me in the butt. Money stuff always makes people crazy.

Bubbe Mieces

If Bubbe had a blog, what would she blog about? She was not a person who shared her innermost feelings, unless contempt for stupidity is an innermost feeling.

Perhaps she could have told us about her early history, about which little is known. Unlike the cliche yiddishe mama, she did not grow up in a shtetl, but out in the country. I know nothing of her mother, whose name was Leah Fagel, or her father, sisters or brothers. She told me instead of living on or near a river, and how on nice days she and her friends would row down the river, singing songs. It sounded like an idyllic childhood. She learned to read and write at a Russian school.

My mother told me that my grandparents had lived a comfortable life. (Of course, mother would never admit having been born in Russia. She felt she was American through and through.) Uncle Moe did remember being a child in Russia. The family left Russia because my grandfather, then the father of two children, and having already served one term in the army, was about to be compelled to serve another four years.

Where did they live in the old country? Somewhere that was constantly being disputed by Poland and Russia. First the Russians would invade and conquer, then the Poles. My grandparents found themselves living first in Poland and then in Russia, without moving an inch. Consequently they were fluent in both languages. My uncle told me about living across the river from, I believe, Pinsk. The river fits what I know about her. When my mother and her siblings were small, she would take them on a streetcar from their home on the South side, to the North side, to rent a rowboat. My grandfather stayed home. "Papa was afraid of the water," according to my mother.

My grandfather had a promise of employment in Columbus, at the Hebrew school. Either the offer fell through, or he became ill, because it didn't happen. However, the family found themselves in Columbus, OH, in a place called Will Alley. The place was still there when I was a child and was a squalid slum. Eventually, like most of central Columbus, it was torn down and replaced by a highway, to no-one's regret.

My grandfather earned money by rolling cigars at home. This is confirmed by the US census, which also lists a son named Jacob. They had five children in all, two of whom, including Jacob, dropped off the face of the earth. They were never mentioned and as far as I could tell, no tear was shed for them. Being a parent myself, I am sure that plenty of tears were shed in private over losing two young children. But the only evidence of their existence was the occasional yahrzeit candle commemorating someone's death.

We never knew what happened to most of bubbe's relatives. I seem to recall, as if in a dream, seeing letters with foreign stamps arrive occasionally. These letters stopped coming before I was old enough to ask questions about them. Some of zayde's brothers and sisters had made it to America, mostly to Milwaukee, and another brother ended up in England, where he was a musician. But there was never a trace of bubbe's family. More yahrzeit candles appeared, with no explanations.

My mother also told me of one occasion when the three children shared a can of sardines for supper, along with bread and tea. When she asked what the grownups were eating, bubbe said, "Papa and I aren't hungry," and had plain bread and unsweetened tea.

They survived somehow, and things got better. A piano appeared, and lace curtains, and brass candlesticks. The two older children were excellent students who rushed through their studies at a breakneck pace. Mother graduated from high school at the age of 14 and got a job at the telephone company. Uncle Moe made her quit. She was destined for college.

The man who became my Uncle Doc was another story, always up to mischief, getting into trouble at school, bringing home stray animals. On one occasion he was expelled from high school for letting some white mice loose in the halls. My poor grandfather had to go to the school and beg them to give him another chance.

One of the reasons my family loved Columbus so and continue to do so has to be Ohio State University, which all the children attended with distinction. There was no thought of dorms or fraternities: they lived at home and took the streetcar to their classes. Uncle Moe went there through medical school and beyond; he became a professor of medicine. Uncle Doc also attended the medical school and became a surgeon.

Mother raced through college and law school (Ohio State, of course), passing the bar exam before she was legally old enough to practice law.

But I have strayed from bubbe's story, of which more later.

Half-empty glass

The tragic view of life runs in my husband's family.

Mr Charm has a gloomy world view. Not only is the proverbial glass half empty--it's probably two thirds empty, if the truth were known. And the half that is left is rapidly evaporating. The glass will soon be empty, and probably has a crack in it. And soon civilization as we know it will come to a halt.

I used to attribute his attitude to his obsession with history. He even has a PhD in history, which would give anyone a morbid cast of mind. But, thinking things over, I attribute it to his grandmother, who lived with his family when he was a boy.

Anyone who doesn't think depression is a communicable disease did not know Grandma. At the age of 50, she decided she was too old to go to the movies, and it went downhill from there. Her hobby was sitting all alone in her room, thinking about the days that were dead and gone.

A conversation with Grandma:

Me: Hi, grandma, how are you? I brought you some magazines to read.
Grandma: I can't read magazines anymore, my eyes are too bad. But thanks.
Me: Well, how have you been?
G: I'm an old woman, how should I be? I wish I were in the graveyard with M.
Me: Oh, the baby is crying. I'd better see what she wants. (Rapid exit)