Trauma Transmission Redux March 23, 2023

I and many others, including a study by Mt Sinai hospital, heve experienced personally and have seen in my friends and patients the  occurrence of anxiety related to past trauma experiences, their own, or that of their parents, and grandparents, significantly for me, during the Holocaust.

In my story, I experience this body-shaking, sweat=producing  anxiety whenever I am confronoted by authority. When a police car behind me engages a siren or bright lights as I am driving, I immediately worry that he wiill stop me and I plan what I am going to say.

One day, as I was driving my then new hybrid car, I was trying to stay within the speed limit that would allow the car to remain in electric drive mode. I heard a siren behind me, and through a megaphone, the policeman ordered me to "Pull over!"

I panicked. "What did I do wrong? I wasn't speeding, for sure, but I wasn't paying good attention either. Was there a stop sign I missed? 

I opened the driver's  side window.

"License and registration, please."

Ok,  but I need to reach into the glove compartment to get the registration,I mumbled. but having short arms, ,I couldn't reach to open the glove box from behind the wheel.

"I need to exit the vehicle in order to retrieve the registration," I said formally. The police officer shrugged, but moved away from the door. When I got out, I was even more afraid. This man was huge. I had heard a story of a police officer trading a ticket for sexual favors and I thought to ask him to meet me at the police station, but I was too scared and I walked around the car to get the paper he needed. Finally, I was brave enough to ask, "What did I do wrong?"

"The frame on your license plate  is obscuring the  number. Your license plate says you drive a 1989 Oldsmobile."

I hadn't thought about that story since 2012, when the car was new.

Until now.

I have recently returned from the Montgomery Alabama Lynching Museum where I read all the reasons a person of color, including women and children, as recently as the 1960's were lynched.

And considering the number of black men being killed every day as they drive their cars, it continues today. 

All four of my grandparents were born in the 1880's, in Galicia, a part now of Poland, which had been ruled by Russia and Germany before the end of  the First World War. During that time, there were many violent attacks on Jewish people, plus rules on where they could live and how they could earn money. They were not allowed to own property.

 One grandfather left in 1906 for Germany, partly due to a violent outrage against the Jews because a Christian girl was killed and the Jews were blamed. He sent for his sweetheart whom he married in 1910.

He fought in the First World War from 1914-1918 on the side of Austro-Hungary because that's where his citizenship was. He was awarded an Iron Cross. 

In 1938 he and his wife had to board a cattle car which took them from their home with just one suitcase each, and dumped them on the Polish border. They tried to walk out of Poland to Romania but were stopped and jailed, accused of smuggling. They were freed in late September 1939 when the Russians invaded Poland. They spent the next four years walking and hiding in Ukraine, Russia and finally arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan where they spent the rest of the war.

My other grandfather tried to flee the Nazis also by walking, but he walked east to Austria, then south to Croatia, which at that time was a neutral part of Yugoslavia. He was captured in Zagreb and shot in Jasenovac concentration camp in November 1941

The survivors carried the scars of trauma ever since. I felt I really understood the fears Black parents and grandparents have for their children, living in a hostile environment all their lives. When one woman claimed, "I am color=blind. I don't see color. I treated all of my schoolchildren the same," I overheard a woman of color whisper, "Yes, she's white. She doesn't have to see color every day."

Anti Semitism hasn't ended since the war and it most likely never will. But aside from mass murderers and terrorists who want to use the Jews to further their own political agendas, we are safe in the United States. All people of color are not.

I have worked among people of color all my life. I was a volunteer teacher for migrant children in New Jersey when the children were here as their parents harvested tomatoes and other foods. I taught first grade in an inner city school in Newark, New Jersey. I supervised the social workers who counseled the children at a Coney Island day care center. I ran a mother-toddler group in the center. I took playground duty, making friends with the children who were there for a few years until first grade. But I have no friends of color. I do not know as much about any person of color as I have revealed here today. The opportunity for that kind of friendship has not presented itself for me so far. I hope that will change. As W.E.B.Dubois said "Get to know one person so you ca see they suffer like you, they laugh like you, they breathe like you and you cannot hate someone you know."

Poop Progress Report February 8, 2023

Part of the reason for sharing this blog is to note the progress of aging on my body, in the hope of providing a guideline of sorts for others who follow me.

Everyone has some ailment or other, especially after we reach eighty. I am fortunate not to take any prescription medications and not to need surgery on any part of my body. My only difficulty has been, since I was fifty years old, problems with digestion, which was diagnosed as lactose intolerance after two years of  eliminating foods and adding them back into my diet.

Last week, I just started taking the stronger probiotic and I was having no diarrhea, but lots of flatulence. The Garden of Life company reassured me that they are not physicians and are not prescribing, but the product is reorganizing my gut and it will take time for the good bacteria to overcome the bad bacteria. Only folks who also have this problem will be interested in this description, but I find it fascinating to watch. The stool is getting more organized and the flatulence is decreasing, day by day. I did not increase the dose of one capsule per day of 80 billion CFU's and 15 strains.

I have a normal full movement in the early morning and a process after lunch and/or before noon . Then nothing for the rest of the day or evening, no matter what I eat for dinner.

I am not letting this process interfere with my activities, but I am constantly aware and wary. I have no pain or bloating and no change in my weight. I am drinking lots of water. No more halitosis either.

I watched the State of the Union speech happily last night and I have invited people from the Reconstructing Judaism group who are going with me to Alabama in March to watch a film here tomorrow evening. I hope I do not embarrass myself!

Journal or Blog..How are they different ? Feb 3, 2023

The difference for me is that a journal entry is for me.. to remember thoughts, feelings and events so I will be able to recall them when needed. The blog is for publication , an attempt perhaps to inform, to teach, to share my feelngs with others, who may identify or benefit in some way from my thoughts, feelings and life cycle events.

Today it seems to be both. I am lactose intolerant, and so is at least one of my grandsons. They may someday benefit from what I write. Maybe there will be advances in microbiome studies which will resolve the issue for them before they are inflicted with this embarrassing problem in the future.

Right now I need to vent.  Ihesitate to get medical advice from folks who know less about a problem than I do. But first, the primary care md has to run the tests she knows on how to eliminate more serious issues. The blood test results are negative. I still don''t have the stool sample results, but they may not find anything worthwhile as Dr. Astor once expained to me. The gut bacteria die soon after they are removed from the body.  The stool n eeds to be examined shortly after production which no one does anymore.

When I was in Florida, Ted fouund a new probiotic that, instead of 50 billion cfu's has 80 billion. Instead of 10  strains, it has 15. I started taking the new ones this week and for the third day, I have had no explosive diarrhea. But I do have smelly flatulence! From oatmeal, salmon and tuna salad! I now need to search for a homeopathhic md. They are hard to find!

New Year Anxiety January 5, 2023

Yesterday I began to sort out the piles of unopened mail and credit card bills to read before paying,  The AMEX card finally entered correctly into the computer, etc. These are not New Year's resolutions, merely doing what I usually do every month but have been procrastinating. Why?

I know I  worry about Teddie. When I shared with my sister Rita, she actually called Ted and listened to him for an hour. Now she sent him a check for a thousand dollars.

Yesterday he accepted a menial job at a donation center, checking donations from the trunks of cars that drive up. This is not what I want for my son. It's another hiding job, as he had in Arizona when he worked for a cleaners, sitting there taking in and giving back laundry.

I can't fix him and he won't go to therapy.

He has befriended three Italian fellows who live in his trailer park. And a few neighbors who are helping him fix his house.

I am going there next week. I thought I was going to help him sort out FEMA stuff, but now he will be working. Why am I going?

The NOKBOX I ordered has been delivered but not opened. It is my resolve to open it and fill each section with my records so that my next of kin will  have access to everything when I am no longer able to show anyone where everything is.

Can I be supportive without being critical or controlling? The weather will be in the 70ies, which is soothing but I am okay here in NY . I bought myself a new longer down coat so the 20's were bearable for a short while, enough to get me to where I wanted to be.. and home again. 

I have paperwork to do to get ready to have Joanne do my taxes. I need to have a tooth capped, I need to have my hearing aids recalibrated, I want to do these things in Arizona when I move my stuff out of storage and give most away ,but save some for Steve's house. I wrote an email to Linda and Steve but Linda is ignoring it so far. I am not  doing well today. Maybe after my Jazz it up class I will feel better.

Trip to Lviv in 2013 December 29,2022

WQXR is playing Carmina Burna which I am listening to on my new Bose radio as I spend a few hours resting between fun events. This morning I shepherded seven other SAJ retirees to visit an art exhibit at the NYPL on Broadway and 113 St. We had lunch at a French-named restauant which had a Frenchified menu but only croque Madame and tuna Nicoise were at all French. The food was fine; we treated the artist. My watch recorded a round trip walk total of 9750 steps. Later Marilynn and I will have diner at Cafe Arte and attend a performance of Rigoletto at the Met.

The first time I heard Carmna Burano was in Italy with Bob or was it in Switzerland, sitting outside a church where the piece was played completey by percussion instruments. But today, I am remembering how my guide in Lviv who met me at the train station at 6:30 AM, drove me to a restauant, left me so he could do hs radio  broadcast, retrieved me and drove me all over the ocuntryside so i could trace my grandparents' escape from Poland through Ukraine. At 4:30, he said he had another show to do, so he purchased a ticket to the opera and I sat in this red velvet covered theater with gilded seats , gold tasseled curtain and heard a full orchestra playiing Carmina Burana.

The music has such an old world feel to it, it surprised me when the announcer stated it had been written in the 1930's. I love my Bose radio.AndSteve for caring for me enough to know what I wuold really appreciate for a lasting Bat Mitzvah present.

Post Pandemic Revelations December 16, 2022

Minor things, nothing profound here today, at least not yet. As I settle in to spending the winter in New York, I notice several changes in myself that remind me of the passage of time. The winter trousers in my closet are now too long. They are of denim strength cloth created before spandex was added to everything, permitting us to purchase smaller sizes, more form-fitting pants. I remember last time Madison Avenue( my shorthand for fashion pressure from manufacturers to increase our discontent with ourselves) wreaked havoc with me.

My friends were wearing Ann Fogarty dresses which were size 2. The girls were not midgets, but the sizing of the more expensive couture dresses was different! We all wanted to wear size 2 also, or maybe size 4. Certainly not 10 or 12, which my clothing  was. My shape had not changed!

So okay, my size 6 pants from long ago still fit, snugly, but the pants zip. Good for me. All are too long. I haven 't shrunk THAT much. So yesterday at the gym, I noticed a woman slipping out of a pair of clogs. Aha! We wore clogs, not sneakers. So this morning, I fetched my black clogs out of the bottom of my closet. I will wear them to shul this morning and see how that feels.

I am daily grateful to Steve for buying me a Bose radio this week. The music sounds SO good. So once again I realize things about myself.. I could have bought myself an Alexa, and "told" the electronic voice to "Play WQXR." But I resisted, like I am resisting a new air fryer. I have a feeling these new inventions are too self-indulgent. I recognize my privilege in life but I feel a bit uncomfortable adding new products. Also I fear always that I will not know how to operate them. As with my watch. A seatmate at the theater asked me to turn off the light my watch makes when I clap. Now I learned how to shut the watch off, how to do it, but last night I forgot to turn it on-- or off, as the case may be.

Why Do I Do What I Do? December 8,2022

Once again, my reason for choosing an activity varies from the established benefits. Generally, my health patterns fit the prescribed. I eat moderately, hardly ever drink alcohol, sleep well, walk a lot. I am at the gym every weekday morning. I take the classes offered at the time I want to be there. There's an exercise class on Mondays, using weights, good for upper body strength, which I am not quite interested in. I exercise to prevent upper arm flab from getting worse and for maintaining the strength I have. Generally, I am pretty strong. I can carry two heavy shopping bags full of food six or seven blocks. I also try to improve  my posture. I have rounded shoulders and my head tips forward of my torso. Although I do try, there is little I will be able to accomplish with the one hour exercise class each week. I would have to work out with the machines, which I don't do, mainly because I am afraid of hurting myself.

I dance because I love it. The instructor tells us to listen to our bodies. If something doesn't feel good, don't do it, try something else. I love the camaraderie of the dance classes. Folks smile; so do I.

Yoga class is a struggle for me. I cannot do some of the asanas and the instructor corrects our poses. "You will get better" is a sentence I don't believe any of us wants to hear. This is not pt. We are not rehabbing after surgery. Today we were advised that perfecting the asanas leads to mindfulness, the peace that yogis ascribe to reach.

My mind is present whatever I do. I just want to move and have fun.

I adore the teachers at the JCC. They are dedicated, professional, always learning something new to impart to us students. I feel as if I am four years old again, going through a stage of mild rebellion. 

I have struggled to feel good about myself. I have given up the fantasy of being able to control my children's lives. I cannot help them, except by giving them money. The stock market was good to us all for the past years, but not so much now. So my balances are dwindling and I need to reduce my withdrawals from capital so I will have enough money to care for myself as I age.

I have given up the prospect of foreign travel for several reasons, the financial being one of them. Loneliness is another. I feel lonely in a group of people who are connected to each other, but not to me. I have decided not to go to Chacala for the NIA retreat next year. It, too, is getting too expensive.

I am not retaining learned information as well as I used to. My Hebrew classes are on hold for the holiday and I am unsure if I want to continue them, although I enjoy them very much.

As you, my reader, can see, aging isn't always fun. But I really try to control my anticipatory anxiety and only worry about what is coming up soon.