Legacies August 22, 2022

My heart and my head are full as I wake up leisurely this morning. We have death anniiversaries this week of our father, who died in 1976 and of our grandmother, who died during this week in 1968.  I have written much about each of these towering figures in our family's life. How my father at the end of his life, at 64, opted for additional surgery which his heart could not tolerate, because he refused to live life as a dependent person. I was quite angry with him for many years, after he shared that information with me. I actually told him he was depriving all of us of him by his choice. I understand it better now. And my grandmother hung onto life so strongly as she became weaker and weaker. Our grandfather had died the previous June 12, just twelve weeks earlier and our Oma wanted and waited to see my sister's second son be born and named after his great grandfather. He was born on July 17, was named eight days later.

Yesterday I met a young family in the park. I can''t quite believe the mom , Stephanie, is already  fifty years old. She is the daughter of my dear friend, Bernice, one of us four women who  supported each other while pursuing our graduate degrees at NYU in the  early 1980's. Bernice, who never smoked, died of lung cancer in 2002, never having met her son-in-law, nor this adorable four year old grandson.

Stephanie's dad died soon after, leaving a lovely house with a huge yard in a cozy town outside the city. Everyone advised her to sell it. She was determined to keep it and to move back into it, one day. In November, they moved back from California, where she had been living all this time. She had found renters, she had paid off the mortgage and they are now modernizing this contemporary style ranch house.

So much strength of character.

Do we All Necessarily Become our Mothers? August 2, 2022

Until now, I think I have created a life very unlike my mother's. My mom, I will have to be careful, as I was never permitted to use the pronoun "she" when speaking of her, was very handy. She cooked, she sewed, she knit, she collected and saved anything that could be used for arts and crafts in her nursery school class. When I was an only child, until age 4, my mom also painted in oils on an easel set up next to her baby grand piano, which she also played.

During the war, coupons were used to ration food. After the war, S&H Green Stamps were awarded for certain purchases. The stamps were pasted in a folder and could be redeemed. So mom collected and used coupons. When she moved to the suburbs and learned to drive,, she had several super markets from which to choose. They printed circulars. Mom cut out the coupons for items we used regularly and went to each supermarket to get the items . We adult kids made fun of her for doing that as the gasoline expended cost more than the savings.

Actually, one of the initial signs of dementia I noted were 2 liter bottles of Doctor Pepper I found in her refrigerator. By then, she lived alone and none of us ever drank soda, let alone Dr. Pepper. When the family was together, before the grandparents died, we had selzer delivered and my dad and grandfather would make spritzzers, Manishewitz wine and selzer with dinner.

Fast forward to today. I had been awarded a five dollar coupon, the first I have ever received, from Gristedes. It is Tuesday when seniors get ten percent off on their orders. I buy very few things at Gristedes, as I also have choices and this market is more expensive than others, but they carry some products the others don't, like Hebrew National salami, which  they seldom have in stock. So I enter the store, look for the salami and almost immediately put plan B into action. I choose a package of frozen strawberries, at five ninety-nine, head to the cashier where she deducts my ten percent and accepts the coupon and I leave so happy I spent only 36 cents for my purchase!