June 11, 2018--Ladies of Forest Trace: President Grump

The phone rang as we were in the midst of preparing dinner. 

"Who would call us at this time?" I asked. "Anyone who knows us knows we have dinner about this time."

"Maybe it's a robocall," Rona said. "Check the caller ID."

I did and said, "It's from an unfamiliar area code--123."

"Pick it up. Maybe an actual person is placing the call. Not a computer. We've had an increase in the number we've been receiving. Maybe you can get them to take us off their caller list."

"Forget that," I mumbled. I was just about ready to add the spice mix to the vegetarian chili that was simmering on the stove. 

Rona said, "I thought no area codes are allowed to start with a 1."

"With telemarketing and hacking," I said, "I assume anything goes. So maybe I shouldn't answer it. We don't want to get drawn into anything that will take over our computer or phone."

"Now you have me curious," Rona said, "I wouldn't worry too much about that. I'll add the spices. You answer the phone. Let's see what this is."

"You would think I have all day." On the phone it was a woman's voice that sounded vaguely familiar."

"Who is this?" I asked tentatively.

"Have I changed that much in three years?"

"Who is it?" Rona mouthed.

Shrugging, I shook my head.

"Well, in fact I do have all day," the caller chuckled.

"Tell me what this is about. We're in the middle of preparing dinner. Chili." I was poised to hit the phone's Off button.

"How can I be at rest while that Grump is making himself a king?"

"Is this . . . ?" I began to tremble.

"Who else calls you when you're hiding in Maine?"

"We're not hiding . . . " I couldn't catch my breath but finally said, "Mom?"

"This is not the time to be hiding away. It wasn't easy, but if I could get permission to call you between now and November the least you can do is put down your potholder."

"Is it really . . .?"

"The girls and the people who run this place are very concerned with what is happening."

"In Maine?" I didn't know what to say. My heart was thumping and I thought I was about to pass out or have a stroke. 

I collapsed in a chair and Rona rushed over to see if I needed help. I signaled that I was OK. Just overwhelmed with emotion.

I mouthed, "I think it's my mother."

"How can that be?" Rona said so loud that my mother or whoever was on the phone could hear her.

"Tell my darling I love her and not to worry about me. They take very good care of us here. Even better than Forest Trace. Especially the food. Last night we had flanken with horseradish. It was delicious, I could chew it, and best of all it didn't give me gas."

Rona reached for the phone but I pulled it away. So she ran into the living room and snatched the other one from its cradle.

"Mom?"

"It's so good to hear your voice. I miss you every day."

"I think about you all the time. What an inspiration you have been and continue to be. So now you're here to . . . ?"

"Help with the election. We don't have newspapers or cable so I can't listen to Wolf or read Maureen Shroud. It's been difficult to keep up with the news. But we do know who was elected and can't believe what his people are doing to our  country. The same country that rescued so many of my family who fled the pogroms before the Nazis took over. Today, Grump would want to arrest us and send us back to Auschwitz."

"It isn't that bad," I said, and then after a pause added, "Yet."

"That's what they said in Germany. Things are bad but we will be safe. All we have to do is not make trouble. We're Germans, yes Jews, but we have always lived side-by-side with gentiles and they won't allow the worst to happen." She took a deep breath and said, "And then the worst happened. More than the worst."

"And so?"

"So, we have to make trouble. That's why I got permission to call. To make sure you and your friends--not just your Jewish friends--make trouble."

"Which means?"

"Working every day to make sure good people get elected. If he wins in November I fear for the future. It will say the American people agree with what he has been doing. What a message that will be to the world. And how it would encourage him to continue doing all the things he is doing. What will this mean to young people? I was a teacher and a mother all my life. My heart breaks when I think about what the future will be like for young people. They will lose hope. For the young, that would be the worst thing. Not to look forward to the future."

"That would be a tragedy," I agreed, "But young people are activated and it seems are eager to vote in November."

"They didn't vote two years ago. Not enough of them. They wanted Burning Sanders and when they couldn't have him they didn't vote. And what about women? I remember when we couldn't vote. I was 12 years old when they passed the Amendment. My sisters were suffragettes. They marched and marched and marched. In the heat and the rain and the snow. But now too many women didn't vote for the first woman running for president. Hillary. Not my favorite but better than him, no?"

"Much better," Rona said, "Especially as we see what he is doing. At least with her things wouldn't be this bad. But more than 50 percent of white women voted for Trump. So it was white women and young people more than anyone else who helped elect him. But we are organizing and demonstrating. Just last week we did well in primary voting in California."

"I hadn't heard about that," my mother said, "That is good news but unless Democrats won by big numbers it may not be good enough. And when I think about the demonstrations I am not impressed. How long has he been in office?"

"About a year and a half."

"And what did you have? Two marches? One right after he was sworn in, the Pussy Cat march (I'm old fashioned and hated the name), but it still was good and then there was the one organized by the Florida children after 17 of their friends were killed. Also very good. But I didn't make all this effort to be able to talk with you to pretend to feel good about two marches."

"What would have made you feel good?" I asked.

"A march every week or at least every month. That would be at least 18 marches already. I know the news people would stop talking about it but if it went on and on they would have to pay attention and it could make a difference. It would keep the drum drumming  It would also show that people, including young people, care about the future of America and the world. Their country, their world. Not mine and too soon not yours.

"What do you mean 'too soon'"? I asked, fearing she knew something I didn't.

"Time. Time is marching even if Americans aren't. Time doesn't need to do much or really anything to keep moving along. Time and tide. Look out your window up there and pay attention to the tide."

I glanced at Johns Bay and was about to ask about the tide since it ebbs and flows, first north and then it swings around to the south. I wasn't sure why this was significant to her. But before I could enquire, she told us she needed to pass the phone to one of the Forest Trace ladies who was waiting in line. She promised, until November, to try to call every few weeks. Maybe, she said, on her birthday, June 28th, when if she were still here she would be 110. Not, she said, that they make a big fuss there about birthdays. Or that 110, considering where she is now, is a big deal.

But before yielding the phone, she asked "Doesn't chili give you gas?"

The Ladies of Forest Trace (Mom Standing)

August 9, 2017--World of My Uncles

I've been rereading Irving Howe's brilliant World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life they Found and Made.

I read it when it was first published 41 years ago, but now, at this late(r) stage of my life, it is more meaningful.

My maternal grandparents made that journey in 1913 from Poland to New York City. Years later, still a child I heard harrowing stories about their life of struggle in the shtetl of Tulowice and the bloody pogroms that swept over them and convinced them it was time to leave before it became more than just bloody.

I knew my grandfather came first and managed somehow to save enough money working as a baker to send, two years later, for my grandmother and their five children, including my then five-year-old mother.

I knew they began life in America in a cold-water, one-bedroom apartment in a tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and then after a number of years moved to a more wholesome and spacious flat in pre-hipster Brooklyn.

I knew that two of my aunts were active in the garment workers union and as suffragettes marched proudly and frequently in support of women's right to vote. This finally was possible as the result of the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

I knew that my mother trained to be a teacher and with "Mooney" as her last name (Mooney, substituting for Munya, was assigned to them at Ellis Island by an Irish immigration officer) and with her blue eyes, she was able to "pass" as gentile and thereby find a teaching job in the NYC public school system, at that time controlled and largely populated, again, by the Irish.

But I knew nothing of their inner lives, especially what they believed and hoped for other than that their children and grandchildren would have "a better life." If by that they meant economically, all managed to do so.

But with World of Our Fathers echoing within me, evoking memories I had not for decades revisited, more of those inner realities are becoming clearer to me. Including my own spirit as, I suppose, I too have been passing.

For example, I learned from Howe how most immigrants experienced three simultaneous dislocations--they left their homes and emigrated to new ones in America; they needed to find ways to support themselves--most had lived rural lives and now needed to become viable in a city of strivers; and under pressure to Americanize they largely abandoned religious orthodoxy and over time even the embracing and comforting culture of Yiddishkeit.

And so what were they left with beyond hoping for better lives for their children?

Taking the place of Judaism itself and the security that Yiddish culture offered, they turned to Zionism (calling for a homeland for Jews in Palestine), unionization (to improve working conditions), and then Socialism and for many Communism (to heal the world).

And they also began to shape a new culture for themselves that centered around Yiddish poetry, folk stories, and theater.

On reflection I now understand better what my extended family, especially my Uncle Morty was urging. This was not always easy to infer as he spoke mainly Yiddish, English haltingly, and I spoke English, with a little halting Yiddish.

He would place me beside him on his collapsing sofa and read in Yiddish Sholom Aleichem stories that appeared in the newspaper, the Jewish Daily Forward (affectionally referred to all as the Forverts). He knew of course that the Yiddish was beyond my capacities but I am certain now that he cared more that I absorb the sound and comfort, the soul of that hybrid language than follow the thread of Aleichem's simple narratives.

And then, in his halting English, he would read to me from the other paper he took, The Daily Worker. In this instance he cared less about the intricacy of its Communist orthodoxies than he wanted me to take in some of its fervor.

So now, rereading World of Our Fathers I understand better Yiddish critic B. Rivkin, who Howe quotes--

A huge mass of potential readers was gathering in the cities. Even if they hadn't wished to, they really had no choice but to learn Yiddish. It was the only language that could gradually lead them into the life of the new country. . . . They felt themselves lost in a "desert" where men seemed like grains of sand and the new language, English, was difficult to learn. So they naturally turned back to Yiddish. . . . Even complete illiterates--and there were quite a few among the early immigrants--as well as the many half-illiterates, who could spell out a few words in the Hebrew prayer books, now troubled to learn the alphabet in order at least to be able to read a daily Yiddish paper. 

Even more, I now understand Howe--

Is there anything comparable in the whole modern period? An uprooted people, a broken culture, a literature releasing the crude immediacies of plebeian life, a once provincial in accent and universalist in its claims. As their lives fell into routine, the Jewish immigrants displayed strong if primitive cultural appetites. 

And especially the final word from Rivkin--

Poems and stories helped them to understand their new environment . . . and most of all themselves. They sought in literature the same thing they wanted in a newspaper: a way of becoming somewhat less of a "greenhorn," a way of escaping a little from their loneliness. And when a poem and story gave them a certain enlightenment about mankind in general, the greenhorns began to feel they were becoming a little Americanized.

In a different mode, tomorrow I will post a story I wrote some years ago about Uncle Morty's other life.

November 8, 2016--Ladies of Forest Trace: Election Day

They are no longer with us.

All the Ladies of Forest Trace, my mother and her friends, have moved on. But if there is a way for them to watch from their undisclosed location, through the day today, and especially this evening, they will be tuned in to Anderson Cooper (who they all thought is "adorable") to watch the vote tallies, especially in Florida, because the outcome of the election may again come down to "Florida, Florida, Florida," and some of the Ladies feel they still have some expiating to perform considering it was they as well as many other ladies of South Florida who, in 2000, either mistakenly voted for the anti-Semite Pat Buchanan or hang enough chads on their paper ballots to give the election to George W. Bush.

The rest is history. Sad history.

I know that today, with the opportunity to vote for the first woman to have an excellent chance of becoming our president, that would have been a highlight of all of their very-long lifetimes. My mother would be the oldest of the Ladies--she would be half-a-year more than 108 today--but all of her friends would be old enough to remember vividly when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, August 18, 1920, when my mother was 12 years old. In her day, she and other girls were very much women at 12, in my mother's case having been born in a log cabin in the Polish woodlands.

All of the Ladies were disappointed in 2008 not to have had Hillary Clinton as the nominee, having lost in a bitter primary struggle with Barack Obama, but to a person they all came around to feeling good about voting for him because of his progressive views, his ability to promulgate hope, and not incidentally because he was African American. And most lived long enough to enthusiastically vote for him again four years later.

But today is different, very different.

I know that my mother and most of her friends had some "issues" with Hillary. They may have liked many of Bill Clinton's governing priorities but they thought little about his suitability as a husband. Some of the Ladies had issues with their own long-departed husbands and from that they knew a cad when they saw one.

But sharing this with Hillary they understood the impulse they felt to endure, to put up with what most younger women today would not tolerate. But they all lived long enough to understand the behavior and compromises expected of their generation, Hillary's, and of much younger women, who they over time successfully struggled to feel good about.

They also saw Hillary's flaws in her various official roles as First Lady, senator, and secretary of state.  Most were alive for all of that and had the experience and enough accrued wisdom not to deceive themselves because of her gender or feminism. But they saw the same falabilities, or worse, among Hillary's contemporaries and colleagues. These Ladies were not about gilding lilies or for that matter anything. They may not have had the exact words to express this but they were individually and personally viable in the world of very realpolitik.

And so through the day today, one by one they would have stood in line bent over their walkers, declining the offered wheelchairs or help to shuffle to the head of the line.

They had waited more than 80 years for this.

They had stood on many lines over the many decades--at dockside in Bremen, Germany to board the ship that would transport them to America, on lines at Ellis Island, on lines to file citizenship papers, on other lines when food was scarce during the Depression or rationed during the War, on lines while waiting at their children's schools, on lines at heath clinics, on lines in some cases to secure applications for scarce jobs or to apply for subsidized housing, on lines too many to count that led them to pay respects at the caskets of too-many-to-count friends and family members.

So, I know they would have thought today--"This is one final line I want to stand on because I've been waiting all my life to stand on a line to a polling booth where I can vote to make a woman president of the United States."

Then, after lingering with the ballot on which Hilary Clinton's name appears, with tears and pride, they would cast that magical vote and head home to Forest Trace for a nap so they could stay awake late enough tonight to see Florida, Florida, Florida seal the victory for Hillary.

March 25, 2016--Ladies of Forest Trace: Posthumous Lunch With the Ladies

"We're only here for a few more days and though I know it will be difficult," Rona said, "maybe it would be good, even therapeutic to visit Forest Trace one last time and . . ."

"But with my mother . . . why would . . .  ?"

"Closure, I suppose. We've been in Florida now for almost three months--for the first time with your mother not here . . ."

"Dead. Not 'not here,' but dead because that is what she is. Avoiding saying it that way has not been helpful to me. It's gotten in the way of my mourning because I expect to get a phone call from her and even be able to pop over to see her. Her being 'not here' means she's only away. For the time being. Not gone. Not final. Not dead."

"I get your point, but I think the anti-euphemism business is not helpful. I know what she is but it doesn't feel necessary to say it over and over again. For me . . ."

"For you, fine. For me, I think I need to think in these terms. But I'll try not to obsess about it. I do need to do some more grieving. I've been stuffing my feelings of loss. When we head for New York this time no one will care when we leave or what route we take or be waiting for a call when we arrive safely."

"We're more on our own, that's true," Rona said, reaching out to hug me. When she did I burst into tears. "But we're fine, as fine as we can expect to be right now. And we will be better. These last three months in Florida have been helpful to thinking about what was and what will be."

"It would help if we didn't know so many people in such dire circumstances and . . ."

"That's always been true. We're fortunate to know so many people and that means we'll always have someone struggling with mortality."

"Put me on that list," I said, still tearful, "I'm struggling big time."

"Is there something you're not telling me? I mean do you have symptoms I should know about?"

"None other than a heavy heart."

"I have an idea," Rona said, sounding upbeat.

"I'm open for anything that would help lift me out of this."

"Why don't we call a few of your mother's friends. Some of the Ladies, and see if we can take them out to lunch."

"I like that idea. Maybe to that wonderful dim sum place, Toa Toa, where Mom, six months before she died had her last meal in a restaurant."

"She loved that lunch. We ordered all her favorites from wanton soup to soy sauce noodles."

"She ate everything. So slowly that they had to reheat the food four times and it took her two hours to finish."

"I'll remember that lunch forever."

"Six months later she was gone."

"No longer here," Rona smiled, holding on to me.

So a few days later we were able to arrange for three of the "girls," as my mother referred to them, to meet us at Toa Toa where we ordered up a storm, including a sampling of my mother's favorites.

We wanted to talk about her, and though they were happy to do that, it was clear they wanted to do so for only a limited time.

Bertha said to us, "We remember her with love. She was a remarkable person, but one special thing about her was her not wanting to dwell on unpleasant things. 'There are enough of them at our ages,' she used to so. 'In our lives, in the world. So let's try to look for positive things to talk about. To think about the future, not just the past. Things we can feel optimistic about.' That was her in a nutshell."

"This is not always easy for us," Fannie said, "We all come from Europe from a  time when things there were not good for people like us and then here with the Depression, World War II, and of course what Hitler did."

They all nodded. But perked up almost immediately when the first in a stream of steamed dumplings arrived.

"She wouldn't be happy about the election," Gussie said.

"I thought we were supposed to talk about more optimistic things," Fannie said, at 97 managing her chopsticks quite well.

"We'll get to that," Gussie said, asking for a knife and fork, "We'll get to that. But, like I said, she would not be happy about that Trump."

"Who is," Bertha said. "such a bully. Such a bigot. Who says such terrible things about women. He claims he has Jewish friends and loves Israel, but I have my doubts."

"Though some of the men where we live, the few men who are still with us, some of them like him and voted for him in the primary."

"Did they tell you their reasons?" Rona asked.

"He can get things done, they say."

"Just that?"

"Just that. And most of the men think he knows what to do with the Muslims and Mexicans. I mean, the terrorists and immigrants. They talk as if they're one and the same."

"Did they say what they think Trump will do?"

"No. Just that he's strong and will keep them safe and build that wall."

"To tell you the truth," Fannie said, "These men are lucky to wake up in the morning or even know who they are. They're that oyver-botled. You expect them to know any specifics about Trump or any of the other ones? They get lost going to the bathroom." The ladies smiled and nodded in agreement.

"I love these chive dumplings," Bertha said, "These were your mother's favorites. In the past, when she was better, when she had lunch here, when she got back to Forest Trace she would go down the list of what everyone ordered and gave an analysis of each of the dishes."

Remembering that, when she was fully herself, really until not so long ago, when she was already 105, I began to tear up.

"I'm sure I know what she would be thinking about Trump," I managed to say, "Among everything  else she would have been repelled by his crassness, his crudeness. She never uttered a four-letter word even when that would have been forgivable. She was very proper and held everyone including herself to very high behavior standards. She could be quite judgmental about those kind of things."

"Do you remember the 2008 election?" Fannie asked.

"I think I know what you are going to say," I said.

"How your mother worked so hard to help Obama win the nomination?" I nodded. "How she worked on the three of us and dozens and dozens of others at Forest Trace. Almost all women, many who were born before women could vote, how she worked on us one by one to convince us that Obama would make a better president than Hillary."

"And how at first we all resisted," Gussie added. "It took her awhile but slowly but surely she persuaded almost all of us to vote for Obama. Which we did. She helped 125 of the girls fill out absentee ballots and then in huge shopping bags took them to the board of elections."

"I do remember that," Rona said. "I was so proud of her. She was a feminist in her own way. Very much so. But she put that aside because she saw more potential in Obama."

"And she was thrilled,"I said, "when he not only won the nomination but was elected. Not that she overlooked his flaws as president. She could be very critical. Tough-minded but fair. She never let anyone off easy. I can tell you from personal experience that she had very high standards and it wasn't easy to meet them."

"We held ourselves responsible for Bush," Fannie said.

"How so?" Rona asked.

"Those chads. Remember how in 2000 George Bush won Florida because of those hanging chads in Broward and Palm Beach Counties? That's where we live and I am sure with our shaky hands we by mistake pushed the wrong chads and wound up voting for that Nazi, Pat Buchanan."

"He's just an anti-Semite, which is bad enough," Gussie said.

"Well, your mother wanted to make sure that never happened again. So she had us fill out those absentee ballots. With her checking everything, I'm sure none of us voted for John McCain and that awful Sarah."

"And Obama did win Florida, by a comfortable margin, and of course the election. Your mother was very proud of that."

"So, here's the big political question," I said. They put down their forks and chopsticks to make sure they heard me. "How would she be feeling this time about Hillary?"

For a moment no one said anything. "That would be complicated," Fannie said.

"I'm sure she'd vote for Hillary," Gussie was quick to add.

"But with mixed feelings," Fannie said. "Though there's no one else she would even consider voting for." The other girls looked quizzically at Fannie, who added, "She might have been well over 100, but she had all her marbles and she'd be like all those young women not yet voting for Hillary. The ones interested in Bernie. I think she would have felt that Hillary takes for granted the votes of women just because they and she are women. Solidarity. A word we used to use in the labor movement. You know I was a member of the ILGWU. The ladies' union. Garment workers."

"Say a little more," Rona said, "We can ask them to reheat the food."

"This is more important than shrimp dumplings. For your Mom that would not have been enough. Just being a woman. To her as you said that was important but not enough to vote for a president. As with Obama eight years ago, she was only interested in who she felt would make the best president. If that person happened to be a woman, so much the better."

"Or a black man,"Bertha added with a wide smile. "And I agree, only if it's so much the better."

"She would have understood all these young women," Fannie continued, "How they don't want to feel pressure or obligated  to thank their mothers' generation for what is now possible for young women. Though that's to a large extent true--all the opportunities--these girls, and they are girls to me, are entitled to stand on their own two feet and accomplish all they are capable of accomplishing. And not feel they have to be beholden to anyone."

"But I am also absolutely sure," Bertha said, "that she would have said that it's important not to forget the past and all the sacrifices women made to blaze a path for their daughters and granddaughters. That's only fair. And in the primary we just had and in November, if she had only still been with us, she would've voted for Hillary. And proudly."

Bertha nodding said, "Can you imagine what your mother might have accomplished if she had all the rights and opportunities these young women have?"

"She would have been a school superintendent," Gussie said. "Running all the schools. Not just a first grade teacher. And a good one."

"She wouldn't have had it any other way," Rona said, "Only if she earned it. No special treatment or sense of entitlement."

"I'll drink to that," all three of my Mom's friends said, clicking tea cups.

"Do you think they could bring us some more hot tea?" Bertha asked. "We Polish girls like our tea very hot."