November 3, 2008--The Ladies of Forest Trace Are Resting

It’s 1:30 pm, Monday, November 3rd, a full two hours before they begin serving dinner at Forest Trace, and the ladies are resting. Most are deep into their afternoon nap. Others are just resting, alone with their thoughts.

Some who are napping are dreaming about the election which will be decided tomorrow. At least hopefully. A few, who have lived in this Florida retirement community for more than eight years remember 2000 when the results from Florida wound up in the Supreme Court and how, because some of them had difficulty using their punch card ballots, appeared to vote for the hated Pat Buchanan when intending to poke out the chad next to Al Gore’s name.

As Bertha keeps saying, “It’s our fault that George Bush is in the White House,” and no amount of explaining to her about what really happened, that Republican vote suppressors were the real culprits, has assuaged her. She and others feel they have something to atone for and so for weeks they have been doing all they can to fill out their complicated absentee ballots carefully so they will not again be declared invalid. “We can’t let that happen again,” Bertha mutters, often to herself.

In the dreams of those who are asleep and among those who are merely resting, they are thinking back over the past six tumultuous months—what they debated, struggled with, and for whom they ultimately decided to vote. Not all came to the same conclusion, but all would agree that there had been a no more significant election since 1932 when the nation was experiencing another economic crisis and the winds of war were gathering. “It may even be worse now,” Anna said last Friday at the Canasta table.

Fannie is not sleeping but rather half-lying tipped back in her La-Z-Boy with the TV on, tuned as it always is, with the sound muted, to CNN. As she watches the crawl along the bottom of the screen, squinting to pick up the Breaking News—she has slowly ripening cataracts—she is thinking about her parents and sisters, all gone now, Fannie is 99, who came separately to America and the meaning of their lives. Her father arrived first, in 1913, and immediately began saving money from working endless days as a baker until after the First World War when he had enough to be able to send for his beloved Marta and their children—Fannie, the very middle daughter, and her four sisters.

Once in America, taking its promise of opportunity literally, Fannie became the most socially activated member of her family. At fifteen, already working a 72-hour week at a garment factory on the Lower Eastside, making shirtwaists, she became deeply involved in organizing what later became the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and in fighting to secure for women the right to vote. One of Fannie’s happiest recent memories was celebrating with the other girls old enough to remember the eightieth anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

And she is still, even at her age, among the most politically engaged of the Forest Trace women. During dinners the past nine months she had been the most vociferous supporter of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy; the quickest to resist switching her loyalty to Barack to Obama, smarting in the belief that he had won the nomination because of having run a sexist campaign; the first, she is now ashamed to admit, to be tempted to vote for John McCain after he selected Sarah Palin as his running mate; the quickest to be disenchanted with her candidacy after it became apparent that, as Fannie put it, echoing Lloyd Benson from the 1988 election, “I know Hillary and she’s no Hillary Clinton”; and now, as she twisted in her recliner to get comfortable, the most worried about the outcome of the impending voting.

She said out loud to herself, as she has been prone to do, living alone since Jake died from a stroke more that fifteen years ago, “They have been calling him a terrorist, saying he is not a real American, and that he surrounds himself with subversives. And some in their crowds call him names and shout that he should be killed. Oy vey. What this reminds me of. It is shameful. To see this again in my lifetime after the pogroms and much worse. What they did to my family who were too proud to come to America. I know they are not Nazis but still I worry because I also remember McCarthy and what they did to my Jake.”

Jake had been a teacher in Weequaic High School in Newark and lost his job because he refused to sign the required loyalty oath. To support them he had been forced to give piano lessons to the diminishing supply of Jewish children who remained in Newark as the other fled to the Oranges. And Fannie had to put her dressmaking skills back to work taking in skirts and pants to cuff and alter in order to supplement their income. It had become a struggle then and she thought about all the families who now were faced with similar prospects as they lost their jobs and homes. “Pigs,” she said about those whose greed was responsible for this disaster. “They should all rot in hell.”

“Before I die, which could be later this afternoon,” Fannie added, as she felt her heart fibrillate, “I hope to live long enough, until January God willing, until the Inauguration, so that I can see America again in good hands. This could be our last chance. Then I could rest. They are ruining the America we worked so hard to build and to bring opportunity to everyone.”

While Fannie tried to will for herself 89 more days of life, to January 20th, the CNN news ticker squeezed out the Breaking News that “John McCain . . . claims race . . . is tightening . . . in Pennsylvania.”

“Gefailich,” she sputtered at the flickering image, “They’re trying to kill me.” Pressing the Up button on her chair she reached toward the side table. Rummaging among the clutter of bric-a-brac, family pictures, and medicine vials, exasperated, she asked, “Where’s my Nitro?”

Ruth is napping. Falling asleep is never a problem for her. As soon as she puts her head down she drifts off. Her problem is staying asleep because she wakes frequently with a start as her mix of medications causes her to have nightmares and occasional hallucinations. Her doctors have tried to alter the medical cocktail but with her blood pressure and platelet problems, chief among other afflictions, it is either treat the conditions or risk a stroke. And, they tell her, it could be a big one. So she puts up with the side effects. Her oldest granddaughter is engaged to be married in June, in Connecticut, in Greenwich--her son is a very successful thoracic surgeon--and she wants to be to make the trip there in one piece and be able, with both sides of her body working, to walk one more time down the aisle.

It continues to upset her that her son, Joel that golden boy, is still saying he plans to vote for John McCain. To him it’s all about taxes, taxes, taxes. He makes to her what seems to be enough, a fortune—he lives in a mansion by a lake with a suite of rooms and a telephone reserved just for her when she visits--and he worries that Barack Obama would make him pay more. He claims that Obama then would give this money to poor people. She knows that what he really means, but won’t say it to her directly, that he will give it, his money, to poor people, to minorities.

Though he tries not to upset his mother—he knows as a doctor how fragile her condition is—since she keeps pressing him about his plans, she can’t stop herself from saying to him how this election is less about him than his daughter and his eventual grandchildren and how Obama’s ideas for the future are so much better than McCain’s, when she does this, and she does during their daily calls—he is such a wonderful, devoted son to call her as he does—he presses back on her (he also cannot contain himself, he is after all her son, just like her) and tells her how she and Abe, his father, worked and scrimped so that he and his sister could go to college and then he to medical school and how they helped set him up his office after his residency was over—for which he loves them with all his heart—so that “they” should do the same thing for their children and not expect government to give them “a handout.”

Ruth knows just what he means by his “they” and won’t allow herself to say a word about it. This much control of herself she still has in spite of her age and all the medications. The best she is able to do is to tell him that Obama’s story is similar to his own. That no one gave him anything more than love and support. That Obama worked as hard as Joel and she and Abe for what he achieved and that he too, Obama, like her Joel, has a wonderful wife and daughters. “Did you see them together on TV yesterday? I think it was in Ohio.”

But this morning, which will be the last time they talk before the election tomorrow, she finally said to him, when he again raised the subject of taxes, that though he is a wonderful surgeon and operates in a public hospital one day a week, which is a mitzvah, that like Obama says, those who are doing very, very well, in these times have to do a little more, and won’t he think some more about the grandchildren he will certainly have and cherish before he pulls the lever in the voting booth. He promises her that he will, that he will think about it some more, and she believes him.

He says, “I love you mom,” as he always does; and she knows how much he truly does—almost as much as she loves him in return. But then, after he hangs up, and now as she turns fitfully in her sleep to find a comfortable position, she is happy to know he lives in blue-state Connecticut and not here in Florida where, if he did, she would have had to work on him harder.

Then there is Mary who is staring, wide awake, at the ceiling. Usually she has no trouble napping peacefully in the afternoon while waiting for dinner. She is awake now because she is having second thoughts about the election and wondering if there is any way tomorrow to retrieve her early ballot and vote in person for Barack Obama.

She, recall, was one of the girls who my mother helped fill out her ballot and who confessed that she was voting for McCain; and though my mother, even before Hillary lost the nomination was an ardent Obama supporter, in spite of feeling a personal obligation, like so many of the Forest Trace ladies, to make up for the last two presidential elections, in spite of these powerful feelings, dutifully helped Mary, making sure she filled in all the required information and checked it as carefully as she did for the Obama voters—she knew that Mary’s people also came to America to escape persecution and to enjoy the freedoms America promised and Mary’s vote was thus as scared as her own (in spite of her, to my mother, misguided choice of candidates)—she was tempted, my mother admitted to me, to allow Mary to leave one box unchecked so that her vote might not be counted (my mother reminded me again this morning how every vote counts, especially in Florida, since, isn’t it true, Al Gore lost by slightly more than 500 votes) because isn’t it possible, she wondered, that McCain might this time carry Florida by just one vote, Mary’s, and thus perhaps be elected president?

“Yes,” I had said, he could win by one vote, and confessed that if it were me I would likely not have helped Mary, but if I had I’m not sure I would have checked her ballot so thoroughly.

Mary now, like the other Forest Trace ladies is thinking about her grandchildren. Especially Rosalie, who like Sarah Palin’s daughter is not married and pregnant and considering her options. Including not to have the baby. Mary realized from something she heard yesterday on George Stephanopoulus that the next president may be called upon to name three or even four new Supreme Court justices. Until then she hadn’t thought about that. Nor had she thought about what that might mean for other women’s granddaughters. Rosalie had to make her decision soon and if she decided not to have the baby it would not be a problem—though Mary herself hated the idea, even though her own mother, after having six children of her own, had had a back-alley abortion, as they were referred to in those days, which not only terminated her pregnancy but, because of the infection she contracted, ruined her health.

What was I thinking, Mary asked herself, when I made my choice? I must have been overwhelmed by prejudice. That is the only explanation since I know that Obama has the mind and the energy to be a good president. What we really need. But still it was so difficult for me to vote for him. Being afraid of what some say he really is confused me. I am so ashamed of myself. I must ask if I can take back my ballot. I know they probably won’t let me. But, she realized, I know one of the other girls is voting tomorrow—she wants to do it in person—and I know she is planning to vote for McCain. For the same reason I did. Maybe I can convince her not to make the same mistake I did. She too has granddaughters.

And then there is my 100 year-old mother. This past Wednesday she and one of her friends made the trek to the election office, not trusting the mail—and I suspect because they wanted to do it with their own hands—to turn in more than 100 absentee ballots. Almost all, she trusted, for Barack Obama.

But she is not resting peacefully this afternoon though, like Mary, she is a generally a good napper. She should be at peace after helping dozens with their ballots and persuading many who were tempted to vote in protest for McCain, or not at all, to cast their votes for Obama. She continues to be very aware, and worried, about potential margins of victory. Not only does she remember the election in 2000 and by how few votes Gore eventually lost; but she too, like Fannie, has been glued to CNN, in her case with the sound at full volume, and she too saw the Breaking News about the election tightening in Pennsylvania. She had called me to talk about that and, though I assured her that this was more McCain spin designed to energize his supporters than accurate polling results, I couldn’t stop myself from sharing with her—even knowing it might upset her more--that I also was concerned. That I wished Obama had one more trip to Pennsylvania planned. That he shouldn’t waste money in Arizona when it could be put to better use there. And that . . .

She interrupted me as I rattled on about my fears, reminding me that, as we had discussed earlier in the week, she had helped enough people to change their minds and vote for Obama so that if the race turns out to be as close as it was eight years ago these people’s votes would help close a good portion of that gap.

Reminding me about this had comforted me this morning, but clearly not my mother because later in the same day she was not resting. She was still thinking about Mary and if only she had said to her that . . . .