Bucket List July 22, 2022

My number one bucket list goal has always been to live to 100, with brain intact and walking upright.

Will I someday have a serious problem with my knee? I tore the meniscus climbing down the rocky outcroppings at Zion National Park when I was 75. I wore a brace for six weeks, getting wanded at the airport before  x ray surveillance was in place. But the pain subsided and I've been able to walk amazingly well since then. Every once in a while, I have a flare-up. A few years ago, I had a cortizone shot into the knee, but from then until this morning, I have been fine.

Wednesday evening, after dinner and a theater performance of Chains w ith my friend Carol D., we walked home from 42nd St , me to 86 and she to 90 and Riverside.

Yesterday, I rested, not attending my NIA class and this morning I woke up to a really sharp pain, which has by now subsided.

This event has not however, put a damper on my great news of the week. After my successful yearly physical, I have been kvelling over my height measurement. After years of diminishing height plus covid restrictions and months of inaction left over from my bout  of pneumonia, I have now measured 154 centimeters on the height scale.

Having reached my tallest at 5'1 1/2", my height had been diminishing yearly . The conversion makes me 5 feet tall once more, thanks I think, to my hiring Domni in February in Arizona to work with me and returning to the JCC since the end of May.

I had been worried that I've been "slowing down." My recall for names and faces, even for the main idea of books I've read or movies I've seen when asked by others at the spur of the moment, has definitely declined. I now understand a bit better what I have known all along. As we develop from infancy, each at different rates and to differing ability levels, we continue into old age, growing and developing, but also diminishing, each at different rates. Acceptance,  resistance and resilience are key.

My Father's Birthday July 15, 2022

My father was born 109 years ago in Brzozov Poland, in German speaking Galicia. He was the fourth child, the youngest, in awe of his older sister and brother 9 and 11 years his senior and a bit contemptuous, even as a child , of his father's favorite, his next brother Julius, two years older than he. Everyone coddled my father since he was four and survived scarlet fever and a pogrom, in which he had been placed on the bed covered in quilts and bolts of cloth as the Cossacks ransacked his parents' fabric store and the rooms behind it. When they went to uncover him, the boy was blue and had to be revived.

His sister had been hidden under the bed as the maurauders raped nubile girls and were known to kidnap young boys.

A few years later, the family experienced another pogrom, Polish youth the perpetrators then and Wolf, the oldest boy had gone into the street to protect the neighborhood with a group of Jewish youth. It was 1918 and his grandfather had recently died, leaving the family an inheritance and a larger fabrics business, which gave them the capital they needed to move from Poland.

Where did they go? As they spoke German, it was reasonable to expect them to move to Germany. Why Frankfurt?

I have only surmises. In Poland, Krakow was a center for textiles. My grandfather began to specialize in suit lining materials which were made of silk. These were delivered to Frankfurt from the east. Perhaps the shipping costs were less and the arrival of the goods was more dependable.

By age seven, German children began school which was free until age fourteen. I know nothing of their public school years, but I do know, as soon as Jewish fathers were successful, even modestly, in business, they opted to choose a Jewish private school for their children's secondary school experience.

Since  the oldest son was fourteen and was graduated from primary school, he was involved with politics in Frankfurt as he had been in Poland.  He was also studying the violin.When Hitler came to power in 1933, Wolf had to flee Frankfurt. He went to Paris, ostensibly to continue his violin lessons. He had a job playing violin in a cabaret.He may still have been working to prevent the brown shirts, or the Nazi party, from gaining power.

Friedl, the only daughter went to Vienna, lived with extended family members and pursued training as an actress, achieving a level of success and acclaim, playing on stages all over Europe with a travelling performance troupe.

By then, only Julius and my father, Max, were at home. Julius began to help his father in business and in politics. Only Max applied, and was granted admission to the Philantropin, the prestigious Jewish Lyceum, or secondary school. It was by then 1927. From what I can piece together, my father had several peaceful years from then until 1933, enjoying high school and college , already deeply connected to his one and only girlfriend, our mom.

Atachment Theory and Children of Holocaust survivors July 4 2022

Two disparate events set me to thinking this morning about memory and attachment. The first is my continued reading of Philip Roth's Operation Shylock and a poem by Nancy Ludmerer about missing her deceased cat.

I happened on another Philip Roth novel after many years. I read his contemporary novels. This is one set in 1988  and published in 1993. I found this one through a series of talks by JTS, the Jewish Theological Assn webinars on Stories and Storytelling. I watched  the last one entitled Not All about Eve, about Genesis and I started the series because of my studies about the Noah chapter in Genesis for my talk in October. One thing leads to another. 

The remorse poem about the cat's death was on Facebook this morning.

By the time I set the stage for this story, I am afraid I'll forget why I am writing it. I am getting texts from Linda intermittently and she is so unhappy.

Philip Roth grew up in Newark, living on Leslie Street where my Grandma Rosa rented a room and I went to visit her in the afternoons when I had no Hebrew school or on the weekend, from like ages 10 to 15. Then we moved to Millburn and I saw her less often and never alone.

Philip Roth went to Chancellor Avenue School as I did,, which is also mentioned in this book. He had Mrs. Duchin for fourth grade. So did I, seven years later! In another of his books, he mentions the gym teacher whom he calls Mr. Kantor, but his name was Mr. Keniwoth. H e was also my gym teacher during the years when I had terrible nighmares of Nazi soldiers in jodphers , carrying whips as they marched us around the gym and made us climb the ropes and the horses and the parallel bars.

Of course I was unable to tell anyone about my Nazi nightmares because my parent s and grandparents did not know I understood all the horrid stories the grandparents told over and over again to their friends and relatives who had survived the war, safe in the US as I had. I guess I felt guilty about that, too.

I also know that my mother told me so many stories of her dog Toddie, whom she had to leave behind in Germany when my parents emigrated in 1937. She missed him so much during the war years when she walked us to the park in the afternoon. Rita was in the stroller and,  as I often quote, my mother wanted me to hold on to the stroller when I wanted to walk alongside her without holding on.

We children always wanted a pet, but I was 15 before we moved into our own house and we got Friskie, a wire-haired fox terrier. I left home for college soon after Friskie entered our lives. I remember he ate Sharyn's unwanted food from the floor where she secretly gave it to him, but I do not remember being especially attached to him. We had a parakeet, who my Oma tried to teach to say "Pretty blue boy" unsuccessfully and chicks at springtime one year  who were sent "to the farm" when they became chickens or ducks, whatever they were destined to be. 

I soon married, had children and pets of all kinds..I loved them, cared for them, but I don't remember any of the strong feelings my contemporaries have for their current and lost pets.

Why?

My cousin Carol once described me dismissively, as a "specist." She said I put people above plants and other animals. Indeed I do, although I never understood that as a flaw before she kind of accused me with it.

And I think that, too, is a result of my being the daughter of the Holocaust. Although surely Toddie died in Germany, my  mother was so much more distraught over the imminent loss of her parents during the years when she knew not where they were or if they lived, she could not give equal weight to the dog she left behind. Her gratitude when HIAS informed her that her parents had contacted the agency and were once again in Frankfurt, Germany was overwhelming.

The idea, when a pet died, that it was "only a pet" was born then. A pet could be replaced. Family members could not.

Mood Lifters July 1,2022

After watching the House Internal Committtee on  the January 6 attempted coup on our government plus the outrageous rulings by a 6-3 Supreme Court, it was difficult to rejoice in our first female Black Justice taking the oath yesterday. It is difficult each day , even with the sunshine and warm weather to rejoice in nature, to feel the gratitude for good health and increasing stamina, to enjoy the studying I am doing in researchhing Noah and getting lost in the commentaries of the the first part of Genesis, Barashit.

My daughter's stepmother who had been sick for many years, causing Linda so much divided loyalty feelings added to her grief at losing another parent, died this week. My feelings were complicated. I want to be supportive of my daughter, but there is so little she can accept from me. I settled for sending a long email about how she needed to act as Power of Attorney and spoke only words of love .

I could only focus on getting to the gym, adding a yoga class each week to my two dance classes, and almost getting my 7500 steps in every day.

I, who have so much, drowned for a while in self pity, upset that my old friends are less available to go and do and my new friends have other, younger companions to spend time with. My peers with whom I volunteered last Friday packing food for the poor, bickered with each other which was not pleasant. One woman who was not there, told me by email afterward that she broke her back and was staying out of the city for a while to recover. I ws upset that I had not inviited Steve to come to the city to share my birthday and to share my reminiscences of Bob on today, his Yahrzeit, the death aniversary I commemorate each year. Seven years ago today and Steve was by his side, not me.

I thought I was past the stages of grief and mourning, but my mood  reflected my memories of the wonderful times we had, overwhelmed by his suffering and mine through his many years of Alzheimer's.

Where did the mood lifters come from? One friend invited me to dinner tonight. Another accepted my invite to spend time tomorrow. I purchased tickets to a play for next week and Naomi will have dinner and see another play with me on my birthday. I will not be alone.