Hanukkah Lights

The light of a thousand menorahs (actually about 20)

This past Sunday was my husband Danny's family's annual Hanukkah party. It's a giant extravaganza that has been going on forever. Early in my husband's childhood, it took place at Aunt and Uncle's homes, and then, as the family grew and grew, in his father's Bronx kosher catering hall.

Since the demise of that, it has continued, every year in varying locations, public and private, the common factors being: large, latkes, and loud.

I married into a BIG family. (Did I mention having come from a tiny one, I had always wanted a bigger family? Did I mention that one should be careful what one wishes for?)

Fortunately they are warm and welcoming, inviting and inclusive. My first experience with the Danny Family Hanukkah Party took place in 1998, the year we began to date. (That year it was in the city, as we took over half of Ben's Kosher Deli.)

It's the tradition in his family for people to bring someone to the party when it gets "serious" because it will be noted that there is a date along and there will be kind-hearted teasing about it. It is also where new engagements, upcoming Bar Mitzvah dates and impending additions to the family will be announced with much joy and congratulations.

As I may have mentioned here before (in last year's Hanukkah party post, as a matter of fact) as we walked to the subway together afterwards, heading back to the Upper West Side where we both lived, I remarked to Dan: "I've never been hugged and kissed by so many people I just met in my life." Like I said, warm and inclusive.

Big cousins = big fun

Since then we have stuffed our faces with latkes in the city and the burbs - both Jersey and Westchester - at cousin's homes, kosher delis, synagogue social halls, seminary dining rooms and hotel banquet halls. This year's constellation was Westchester & hotel. Well suited to the growing cadre of young ones who needed halls to run and play touch football in.

When Ethan and Jake were born there had been a baby lull in the family, the youngest cousin's kid being four, with a huge gang in their late teens to late twenties. But when the boys were nine months old, another little cousin joined the family, and since then every year has seen the addition of one to two new ones.

My estimate is that there were about eighteen in the ten and under crowd on Sunday.

A big part of the tradition is that every family brings a menorah, and they are all lit together at the end of the meal. This year, for the second year in a row, we let Ethan do the actual lighting of ours (sniffle, he's no longer my baby, sniffle).

Ethan chanting the candle-lighting blessing (Hebrew School paying off)

Jacob loves all the lights

There is also an obscenely huge Table of Presents that everybody drops their gifts onto when they come in (not pictured this year, for some reason, my documentary photographer skills falling somewhat short). And the final official event of the party is the present toss, where the gifts are handed out to the (mostly) kids and an unwrapping frenzy takes place amidst squeals of delight.

Presents!

"Thanks, Aunt Patty!"

Jacob groking his Star Wars book

One note of sadness crept into the festivities for me: the absence of my mother. Part of the inclusiveness of Dan's family is that my parents were invited to any and all events. Even though they were from a rather different side of Jewish culture (secular, bohemian) they did often come to the Hanukkah parties and other festivities and were warmly welcomed. 

For the past two years it was lovely to see my mother surrounded by the swirl of family and children, enjoying the scene, even if she wasn't quite sure who anyone besides her two grandsons were.

This year, wheelchair bound and hours of driving away in Long Island, taking her was out of the question. Sigh.

But let's end on a lighter note: Happy Hanukkah to y'all!

90 is the new 90

My mother turned 90 yesterday, and she is finally starting to look close to her age. It's something of a shock to both her and us, who have assumed her youthfulness would go on forever.

This year has been harsh on her. Tough on all of us.

Last year at 89?

Mom & me on her 89th birthday last year

Still going strong. We drove out to Coney Island to visit with friends, made a full day of it, took Grandma out to dinner at a diner near her NYC home when we got back to Manhattan.

But this year?

Wheelchair bound now, post broken-hip fall; sleeping much of the time (her heart not pumping efficiently enough to give her a full day's energy). Living in a nursing home. Still bruised from her latest fall.

Danny and the boys and I came out from the city by train (the car is still in the shop) and my Uncle Walter - my mother's 85 year-old "baby brother" - picked us up and drove us to the nursing home which is just a mile from his house.

We gathered in one of the small lounges, just off the dining room, where there was a table, sofa, chairs.
 

Uncle Walter & Mom

Three generations

Walter brought flowers. We brought a cake (chocolate - is there any other kind?) and candles - nine, one for each decade.

 

We visited for a while, ate cake, interspersed hugs and kisses with stories. Mom napped in her chair, on and off throughout the proceedings.

Birthday kisses from Jake

I gave her a bracelet, a simple string of blue-grey pearls on an elastic cord. Something easy to wear, not too valuable, as things of value are not possible to keep in a nursing home (the sad truth).

I had no idea they would be the exact same shade as the shirt she was wearing today, a bit of serendipity, something cheerful to cut into the sadness that was running a deep vein throughout the afternoon.

Walt told winding stories of their childhood together. Tales of their parents, and the candy store they ran together; of his father's earlier work as a waiter, filling in some details I had not heard before.

(The children were bored. They played video games. Hopefully, someday they will have interest in  the currently unimaginable past.)

I hadn't realized Grandpa Joe had worked in high-class joints like the Waldorf, and been instrumental in founding the waiters union, NYC Local 1.

They talked about their grandfather, their father's father, remembered only as Zayde (Yiddish for grandfather), first name obliterated by time. Walt remembered how harsh and bristly his beard was, like razor blades, and how his father had inherited that same rough stuff.

"You have a beard like none other I have ever seen!" declared his barber when Grandpa Joe went in for his twice monthly fancy shaves, "It's tough as nails!"

Walt doesn't have this. Did it die out with my grandfather's generation, or is a steel wool beard in store for my boys when, in a few years, they sprout facial hair?

(This is why I feel it so important to gather these stories now, while those who lived them first hand are still among us and remembering. That world has long faded away, and yet my children walk into the future carrying the genes of their ancestors with their every step. these are their stories too, even if they don't know it yet.)

We took leave of Mom as dinner was being served, handed out the remains of the cake to the folks at her table.  She looked so sad, sitting there in her wheelchair, dozing off, waiting to be served.

I had to work hard to walk away without spilling over into sobs, remembering my father's bountiful 90th birthday celebration just five years ago, with abundant food, family and friends gathered 'round; not this paltry, anemic thing we had just done, too slight to be called a party.

Mom with birthday flowers and cake

Mom, I know this is not how you wanted it to be, but you made it to 90.

And 90 is still 90, a big deal. Nine decades.

And I know you don't think so, are distressed by how much you now look like "an old woman" but you are still so beautiful, so beautiful to us all.

Happy Birthday Mom! We love you!

Heavy

"I hope I'm not leaning on you too heavily." my mother said, taking my arm as we slowly made our way through the bustling streets of New York City.

I had just brought my Mom to the doctor for an injection to ease the ache of her arthritic knees. "Of course not," I said "I'm a big, strong woman."

But inside I felt her weight; light on my body, heavy on my soul.

She leans more and more these days. And that's all right, I can bear it; am just weighed down by what it presages, that she is moving farther from independence, closer towards an ending.

We were on our way to the hot chocolate shop just around the corner from her doctor's office, a block, a block and a half away. A short stroll. But for my mother now, taxing.

She has been limited for so long it's easy to forget the energetic middle-aged mother of my youth, the athletic young woman I have heard she once was.

I was just reminded of that this weekend. We were all gathered at her brother, my uncle's house for the holidays, and my cousin Jessie had unearthed my uncle's journal from 1941.

Jess had gone down to the basement storeroom, looking for a bottle of seltzer and instead found an artifact from 70 years ago, from Uncle Walter's 8th grade year, from when he was on the man-boy cusp of 14. (I'm going to blink and my boys will be there, too.)

He hadn't written in it much. Noting the significant year, we went to look up December 7th, the day that will live in infamy, and found... nothing. Entries filled January, trickled into February, and then petered out, an undertaking abandoned.

But in those few short entries at the beginning of the book, there lay a treasure trove.

He wrote of his joy at having walked a pretty girl home after school; musings on the nature of love, sports, and friendship.

And then these two entries about my mother, his beloved big sister:

"I feel lost with out my big sister around. I wait in the store every day just to see and speak to her"

(At this time my mother was 19, had graduated high school and was busy working, but she still came back to her parents' candy store in the evenings.)

"My older sister is a swell gal. My ideal. I wish she was born a boy then we could have some real fun."

As we read these journal entries aloud my mother teared up, as did my uncle. He reminded her of how athletic she had been in her youth. What an influence she had had on him.

"I looked up to you." Walter said. "And whatever you did. I did too: ice skating, tennis, track, basketball, volleyball...  I did all that because you did, I followed in your footsteps. I wanted to be like you."  His ideal.

My Mom & her "little brother" Walter last spring

It's so hard to picture my frail, slow-moving 89 year-old mother as an athletic teenage girl, but I know she was.

And wasn't she lovely as a young woman?

My mom, Sylvia, at about 20

Since my mother did not have me until she was 38, I never knew her like this. Thank goodness for old photographs.

And journals, left laying around in basement storerooms near soda bottles, waiting to be rediscovered, words reaching out across decades. Words of love, family, friendship.

As I write this post, my son Ethan is reading over my shoulder. "Let me see those diary pages again, Mom" he says. "Is that really something your Uncle Walter wrote about Grandma, so many years ago? She's really his big sister?"

And he reads them again, laughs out loud at the line: "I wish she was born a boy then we could have some real fun."

The past reaching out towards the future. Words traveling across decades, generations.

Words of love, family, friendship.

My son, reading, leans on my shoulder.

I will probably (hopefully) someday lean on him.

Hopefully, not too heavily.

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Dunia

Asked to picture my grandmother in her vital days, before the stroke that laid her low, creating the shadow who hovers dimly in the background of my later childhood years, this image comes:

Dunia, in her kitchen; yellowed light from an ancient ceiling fixture suffusing everything with a sulfuric glow, wiping her hands on her ever-present stained apron, a cigarette stuck to her lower lip, as if by glue and not mere spittle, the red edge of a pack of Pall Malls peeking up out of the apron's torn pocket.

Moments before, her hands were furiously busy with wooden bowl and gleaming blade, chopping up the eggs, onions and chicken livers whose frying smell hangs close, blends with the cigarette smoke to create a thick haze in the kitchen: the smell of Grandma Dunia's house. (I have that chopper now, passed down the maternal line, its metal handle still retaining a hint of the red paint that once caught my eye, there in my grandmother's kitchen.)

Outdoors the air is fresher though also strange, dank, loamy; her yard deeply shadowed by old tress, old bushes grown tall and feral. The lilac that stands by our own garage door comes from these here, my flower-loving mother happy to have a piece of home with her. But somehow, here, even the lilacs seem dour, moody, menacing as they tower over me, the smallest, palest thing around for miles.

The old swing-set in the backyard is miraculously still standing, and I push the upstairs tenant's twin toddlers higher and higher to their squealing delight. At eight, I am the big girl, enjoy watching the little girls' flashing smiles, marvel at the many tiny pink-barretted braids it must have taken their mother hours to tame their hair into.

I do not know this will be my last visit, that my grandmother's days of independence are swiftly numbered. I will miss spending time with these little girls, the only young, new things in this creaking old house.

Finally the gloaming completely engulfs the yard, a perfect background for the fireflies dancing delight. But it is time to head inside, the night being no time for young girls to linger outdoors in this now rough neighborhood.

Smoke swirls through all the rooms of this house, as my grandmother lights one cigarette off the dying ember of the previous, a chain that will, by necessity, end the soon-coming day she keels over.

My mother, once a smoker too, now quit, waves her hand in front of her face to clear a small circle of air, hoping to breathe freely.  She knows better then to ask her mother to stop smoking, in spite of the wheezing it now brings on. She knows better than to ask her mother for anything, empathy and generosity running decidedly short in this house.

We do not visit often, but when we do I marvel at how different it is here than in my home. Her ancient standard poodle skulks like a ghost from room to room, large and silent, its one eye turned milky strange, a frightening apparition to a child used to frisky cats.

The television is round at the edges, encased in a huge wooden cabinet, almost unrecognizable to me, but for the comfort it provides; the familiar images appearing therein reminding me that I still inhabit the same solid world, though the frame has shifted.

While I watch TV, the grown-ups talk and talk. I do not try to listen in. When my grandmother tells a joke, though the telling is in English, the punch line is always in Yiddish, a language I do not understand. Even the laughter here bears a sharper edge, a tang, is not easy and light. 

When it comes time to leave, my mother comes to sit in the back seat with me, her lap my pillow, a sleepy girl's fondest wish. The car's windows are open, inviting night's fresh air to rush all around us, and we gratefully inhale.

She strokes my head, her hands ever gentle with me, as her mother's never were with her.  And I drift off, knowing I will wake up in the arms of my strong father carrying me from the car, bringing me home.


Curious about my unusual Grandmother? I have written about her before: here, and here.

This post was inspired by a prompt at The Red Dress Club. This week's RemembeRED assignment was to write a post inspired by this photo:

Please click on the button above, go to the link-up and read the other wonderful posts you'll find there.
 

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Y is a Crooked Letter

"Y is a crooked letter."

I have no idea what this means.

But it's what my mother's mother, my Grandma Dunia, would say to my mother when, as a little girl, she asked those ten thousand questions little girls are wont to ask, the ones that begin with "Why...?"

Not big on answers, that one, my Grandma Dunia.

She was not fond of questions, idle curiosity (unless it was hers, about the neighbors), or anything deemed frivolous, extraneous, unnecessary.

She gave nothing away. Played her cards close to the vest.

And drove a hard bargain over everything else. A hard nosed businesswoman, albeit in a stained apron.

Some of it was probably guilt, survivor guilt over the disappearance of her very large family, the many sisters and brothers left behind to perish. She was the only one who escaped Eastern Europe in time, made it to America, outran the Holocaust.

She never spoke of her lost family. My mother never even learned their names, nor knew exactly how many Aunts and Uncles she had once had. Start to discuss it and Grandma would change the subject, walk away, a chain-smoking wall of stone.

Dunia was decidedly old school, a keeper of old world traditions; superstitions, if you like.  My mother had to bite on a thread if Grandma needed to sew on a button, repair a hem whilst a piece of clothing was still being worn. Otherwise my mother was deemed in grave danger of having her brains stitched together.

Salt, spilled, needed to be ceremoniously tossed over the left shoulder, promptly; praises or declarations of good fortune followed immediately by spitting towards the evil eye.

Walk out of the house having forgotten something?  Spin around three times before you head back, or you are asking for trouble and misfortune to follow you in the door.

The rules my mother lived by, and didn't ask "Why?'

Me, Mom & Grandma Dunia, 1974

I don't remember the day my dying father stopped asking and answering questions, I just noticed, eventually that it had happened. He lived in both an eternal now and also a somewhere and when else, simultaneously. No questions needed.

Jacob asks questions, but not that, most crucial one; the most open ended of all questions, the can opener of a thousand worms: "Why?" Another gift of his autism.

He can now answer "why" questions that have very direct, immediate, specific and concrete answers... or else they turn into cyclical, existential round-de-rounds.

"Why are you crying, Jakey?"

"Because I'm sad, Mommy."

"Why are you sad, honey?"

"Because I'm crying, Mommy."

Repeat.

But show him a picture of a very obviously crying boy holding a very obviously just broken toy, direct his attention to the toy in the boy's hands, point out how it is broken, and then ask him: "Why is that boy crying?" And you likely -- if he's on his game, not having an off day -- to get the answer: "Because his toy is broken."

Progress. Of a sort.

I'm not knocking it.

But I still want to know WHY Jake is sad.

And I still want him to ask me why water is wet, why the sky is blue, why birds fly... the ten thousand questions (typical) kids are wont to ask.

And I promise I won't brush him off with that useless nonsense: "Y is a crooked letter."

I will sit and hold his hand, begin with "Because..." as I did (and still do) so many times with his brother.  As I have dreamed so many times of doing with him, opening up the worm can, and feasting on "Why...?"

And, because it makes the "Because..." all the more delicious, fun in the answering?  The crookeder, the better, I say, so bring on the "Y."


Top Photo: "Mama" New York City, 1952, Jim Steinhardt. My mother named this photo, saying the mannequin reminded her of her mother, always wearing an apron, often stained, and with a torn pocket.

This post has been inspired by and linked up to Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday writing meme. And "Y"? What's so crooked about it, really? Maybe it made more sense in Yiddish.


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(Not Really) Wordless Wednesday: Grandma Dunia

Yesterday I told an... interesting story... that took place in my Grandmother's house when I was six years old.

Since I haven't picked up my camera in over a week, and have no new pictures to share, I thought I would show you some old ones, and link it to yesterday's post. Make this a "theme week" as it were.

So here are some photos (and further tales) of my mother's mother, my Grandma Dunia. She was a tough cookie, a no-nonsense broad. Not the least bit sweet and cuddly; I have no idea what that kind of grandmother would be like.

Dunia and Joe, my Mother's parents, around 1920

Grandma Dunia, with her children and their spouses, around 1960.

Grandma, me and Dad, my house, 1967

My father had no great love for his mother-in-law. He said of her: "She has no appreciation of art, not a drop of poetry in her soul. If you can't eat it, make money from it or gain status by it, it's useless to her."

And he was not wrong. She was a survivor, the only member of her family to leave Eastern Europe before the holocaust. She was a shrewd businesswoman. And not a very nice mother. My mother has spent much of her adult life in psychotherapy. Not without cause.

Grandma shortly after her stroke, surrounded by her granddaughters.

Many years ago my mother tried to explain to her mother why she was in therapy. Unable to find the right words, she eventually blurted out: "Because I'm just not happy, Mom."  To which my grandmother replied (just like in the old joke): "Happy? Pffft. Who's happy?"

Grandma was decidedly old world, old school. In her world, people don't go into "therapy," they just go about their business. Unless they don't. Unless they break down.

Then they lie on the living room floor for two months in a semi-catatonic state while their twelve year-old, eldest daughter takes over running the business and the care of her younger siblings. And when they snap back out of this breakdown? They never thank their daughter for holding the family together. In fact, they never speak of it again, because weakness is shameful.

Three generations (Me, Mom, Grandma) 1974

Yes, my mother is the eldest. Her younger brother, my Uncle Walter, is a psychologist and her younger sister, my Aunt Marilyn, is certifiably crazy. Go figure.

Surrounded by granddaughters (Jess, Annette & Me), 1974

Grandma Dunia: businesswoman, candy-store proprietor, poker-player, chain-smoker, bootlegger, the go-to-woman if you were a gal "in trouble" before abortions became legal.

Yes, I may have some more stories to tell.


I’m linking up to Wordless Wednesday at Angry Julie Monday.


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In my Grandmother's House

Memory is tricky.  There is the memory of childhood events and the telling of these events.

The older the memory and the more frequently retold, the less distinction exists between these two, the fuzzier the line between actual, visceral memory and mere story, until I can only guess what was my direct experience and what has been told to and by me and now feels remembered.

But tonight I shall attempt to trick the trickster, to carve back the lacquered layers of an oft-told tale to find the little girl hidden within…

 *****

It is dark.  And I hate the dark.  I find it very frightening, the quiet and the shadows.

I see things in the shadows, always.  The swirling shapes that menace, the snakes under my bed, the things I cannot name, that I know intend me harm.  Light vanquishes them all, and I long for light.

Yet here I am in the dark, forgotten in this forgotten room in my grandmother’s house.  In here, there is darkness, but not quiet, for the sounds from the living room, from the commotion without, still flood in.

When I was hustled into this room and bade to stay still and quiet, the door was pulled closed, but not completely, so there is a slim rectangle of yellowed light brightly rimming the doorway through which the world continues to exist.

As my eyes adjust to the darkness I see that the shape in front of me is an ancient cot, folded up like an inchworm humped in mid crawl.  I crouch down behind it, lean my face in, seeking comfort.  But its sprung wire cage presses harshly into my soft six year-old cheeks, so I retreat, sit on the wooden floor and warily wait.
 
The musty smell of things long unused overlays the cigarette smoke drifting in from the living room, which has itself mixed with the usual scent of the house, a heady blend of fried onion and old dog.  But then a new tang wafts in, tinged with something odd, metallic.

Watching occasional shadows flicker through the yellow rectangle, I listen for clues, cues as to what is going on and why I am here.

First there was a guttural male voice and high pitched female screaming, then police sirens wailing closer and closer, doors banging, more voices, male and female, talking, shouting, talking again.  And through it all, the soft sounds of a woman sobbing.

I almost drift off, but for the churning in my gut, the fear I have been forgotten, will remain here, always. 

Then, eventually, someone remembers - the child! - and comes to get me.

It has been a long time.

It is over.  This is the aftermath.

There is still a policeman, a doctor.  In the alcove, between the doorways of the unused bedrooms I see a young woman in a short dress with bandages covering her legs, arms, face.  She is talking to the police, shaking her head.

The doctor is putting on more bandages.  There are many of them.  They look pale against her warm brown skin, and some are starting to turn crimson as the blood leaks through.

I fall asleep on the sofa, and wake in my mother’s cradling arms, being carried out to our waiting car, their evening out cut short; my father, somber, at the wheel.

I never sleep over my Grandmother’s house again.

*****

This is what I believe I have actually clearly remembered from that evening. The rest of the tale, cobbled together from memory bits and what was subsequently told to me over the years to become part of my memory, is in my repertoire of colorful childhood stories, and goes like this:

When I was six years old, my parents were going out and asked my grandmother, my mother’s mother, to watch me.  As it was Saturday night, the night of a regularly scheduled poker game, she didn’t want to, but reluctantly allowed my parents to drop me off to stay with her for the night. Naturally the game went on as scheduled and I was left to entertain myself, as I saw fit.

When you think of the term “Grandmotherly,” the soft, warm, nurturing indulgent presence that implies?  An image of my grandmother will not come to mind.  She was anything but.  She did not like children.  My mother’s childhood?  Not particularly happy.

On this particular evening the poker crowd was large, so card tables had been erected in the living room, with maybe a dozen players gathered round.  There was much smoking, probably a fair amount of drinking, though that really didn’t register to my six year-old self.

They were having a jolly time.  I was sitting in the pushed to the wall sofa, playing with my etch-a-sketch, oblivious, when the trouble started.

One of the card players was a young woman who had recently broken up with her man, and he had not taken it well.  His mind had turned to a decidedly “if I can’t have you then no one will” bent, and he walked through the front door that evening with a knife, intent on ruining her beauty.

I did not see this.  I heard a door bang open, a male shout, a female scream.  And then I was swiftly picked up and deposited in that dark, musty, unused bedroom turned storeroom.  As it was just off the living room, I heard everything, but made little sense of it, having no context.

They really did forget about me in there for the longest time.  When I came out there were police taking statements and a doctor bandaging up the girl.

I was told what had happened was this: The ex-boyfriend had come in with a switchblade held high.  The crowd had attempted to keep him from the woman, but he got to her and began slashing away.

Someone had procured a baseball bat at about the same time the police arrived.  So whether it was because he heard the sirens or wanted to avoid the bat, he bolted out the back door, vowing to return with a gun, finish the job.

My grandmother got a hold of my parents and told them to come get me, which they did rapidly and with great alarm.

We were told that this man did indeed come back later with a gun, but the police were laying in wait, and apprehended him at the door.

My grandmother continued to live in that house and play poker nightly with that same crowd until she was felled by a stroke some four years later, to live out her remaining years in a nursing home (where she stripped all the other old ladies of their nickels daily in gin rummy).

The stroke came upon her during a poker game, and the rumor was that she finished the round before she keeled over because she had held the winning hand.

Somehow, I believe this to be true. 


This post is linked up with the memoir prompt over at The Red Dress Club.  To see the prompt, click here.  To go to the link-up and read other posts, click on the button below: 

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Here We Go Again

I was going to call this post: "Old People Dying, Round 3" but realized that sounded a bit too... callous? direct? slightly deranged?  I am actually none of these things (well, maybe the deranged label fits a bit).

I am just... weary, resigned, engaging in a little gallows humor to lighten the load; sick of the dying and the caring for the dying, which seems to endlessly go on and on and on this year.

So, here we go again... and no, thank goodness, it is NOT my mother.  That much I could not take.  If it were my Mom this time I would not be blogging, I would be lying curled up in a fetal position on the floor blubbering away.

It is, however, my mother's (80 year-old) baby sister, my Aunt Marilyn.

Mom & her sister, my Aunt Marilyn

Haven't heard of her?  Not surprising, no one has.  My children have never heard of her, let alone met her.  My husband has heard of her, but again, they have never met.  I myself have not seen my Aunt in 8? 10? a dozen years?   Really, it was some time ago, I have lost the count, and then for quite a number of years we lost my Aunt.

And how and why could a family member get so lost?   Well, you see, for as long as I can remember Aunt Marilyn has been lost to herself, too, in one way or another.

Lost how?  Well, let's just say that when my cousins and I refer to her as "crazy Aunt Marilyn" we don't mean wild and fun.  And we're not being cruel, just realistic.  Aunt Marilyn is deeply mentally ill, and has been for as long as we have known her. 

Crazy / mentally ill how?  Good question.  Aunt Marilyn has had so many diagnoses in her long life, but the ones that seem to stick are some combination of severe bi-polar and paranoid schizophrenia.  She lost the family gene pool when it comes to brain chemistry.

My grandfather, her father, suffered in much the same way at the end of his life, the last 10 years of which he spent in a state mental institution. At the time psychiatry and diagnosis were not what they are now.  He was labeled with "severe depression due to hardening of the arteries", drugged up to the eyeballs, and died a ragged lonely man when I was seven.

For Marilyn, it's been a struggle most all of her life.  She held a job until 1968 or so, but that was only due to the kindness and generosity of her employer who treated her like family, put up with much mishegoss, and then, finally, couldn't any longer.

She was never homeless.  A rent controlled apartment was very helpful in that regard.  Although during a psychotic break, when she went missing for a week, she was found, finally, living in the bathroom at Penn Station with her life's savings in cash incredibly still stuffed into the pockets of her overcoat.  The radio that had been implanted in her head had told her to leave home, go there.

The fact that she has made it to this ripe old age is somewhat of a miracle.  A miracle combined with the fact that when she is being less crazy (she is never, truly sane, just more and less crazy) her core personality can actually shine through.  And Marilyn, the less crazy person?  Is all kinds of smart and funny, charming and wonderful, irresistible and charismatic.  Also, in her younger days?  Quite beautiful.

That's Marilyn on the left, with my Mother, Aunt Eva, Grandmother, Father, Uncle Walter.

So when she is being her somewhat saner self, Marilyn gets people to care about her, to help her, to take care of her... until she cracks wide open again and acerbically and emphatically pushes everyone away.  Paranoia manifested big and bold is no fun at all for anyone, deeply destructive of the self and shredding of all relationships; corrosive acid sprayed in all directions.

Which is why I haven't seen her in a dozen or so years.  My helping hand has been bitten too many times, I stopped stretching it out.  Same with my mother (although she has seen her more recently).  She would visit Marilyn, whether in her apartment (while she still had an apartment), or in the hospital (during one of her many psychiatric hospitalizations) bearing gifts aplenty.  A few visits would go well, and then the tide would turn, there would be accusations and bitter words, because nothing was ever enough for Marilyn, whatever you generously gave, you were accused of withholding all the rest.

There would be attacks, usually verbal, occasionally physical, and my mother would storm off, muttering "The hell with her!" under her breath, tears streaming down her eyes; wounded by and hurting for her beautiful baby sister who had come to this, become this wretched miserable creature.  And then some time would pass, sometimes months, sometimes years.  And it would start up again.

But age is not kind to the mentally ill, and in the past dozen or so years there have been very few periods of lucidity, and our last encounter ended quite horribly.  There was violence, we withdrew.  And Marilyn finally lost her apartment, entered into a series of nursing homes, and we lost track of her for a while.

But she is still family, so when my Uncle Walter, her big brother, called me Sunday night to tell me Marilyn was in the hospital and not doing well, and could I please tell my mother (his big sister) about this, and could we go see her and meet with her doctors?  Of course I said yes.

Coincidentally, I had been thinking about Marilyn a lot lately.  Jacob's new school is in her old neighborhood.  On the days when I pick him up, we sit and eat our snack in the square where she hung out, was a regular; one of those people settled in all comfortable on their own personal benches, one of those "crazies" that you avoid because their laugh is a little too close to a cackle, and maybe they don't smell so nice.  I've been thinking I should try to find her again, wondering if she were still alive, thinking my mom would be wanting to see her sister about now.  And then, Sunday, the call.

So today, after going to my mother's apartment and yet again "fixing" her "broken" TV ("Mom, you changed the input again -- just don't touch THAT button, OK?") bringing my mother to the audiologist to pick up her hearing aid (yay!) and having them program it ("Why is everything so loud now?") we headed over to the hospital to visit Marilyn.

I was acutely queasy as we walked down the long, long corridor to her room at the end of the ward, my dread growing with each slow step forward.  I knew she would be in terrible shape, aged well beyond her years by the hard life she had led.

I'd learned she had been hospitalized for a week, transferred from her current nursing home to the ICU with a raging, life threatening UTI gone septic.  Infection vanquished, she had remained nearly catatonic, refusing to speak, refusing to eat.  Feeding tubes had been put in and were quickly pulled out, rejected.  She wanted to be left alone.  She wanted to die.

We tiptoed into the room, she was indeed looking ragged.  My mother started to pass the first bed, head toward the next when I stopped her, recognizing a familiar shape of nose.  Asleep when we arrived, I touched her arm to awaken her.  She stared, startled, but recognized us.  Behind her large eyes, now sunken, the piercing intelligence that has always been there peered out, missing nothing.  "Is it cold out?" she asked, noticing our down coats piled on the chair.  Her voice was a horse whisper, speech slurred by a complete lack of teeth.

We told her we had lost her, but that now found we were here to stay in her life.  We took turns holding her hand, stroking her arm.  I showed her pictures of my boys.  My mother shared with her the death of my father, her brother-in-law. 

She was clearly glad to see us.  But when lunch came she still refused to eat, set in her determination to be done with it all.  Or maybe the senior dementia has overtaken her everyday crazy and she has forgotten how to eat.  Or maybe she thought they were trying to poison her.  In any event, the outcome will be the same, soon.

It was, by necessity, a short visit (I had to return home to retrieve a child) but we reassured her we would be back within a few days.  Her eyes followed us out of the room.  Her doctor arrived just as we were leaving, hurried words exchanged, my promise to return the next day extracted.

Sometime soon I will tell more tales of my Aunt Marilyn, of the years of my childhood when she was a regular part of my life, when the "crazy" referenced more of the zany and wacky, the youthful and fun aspects of her personality, and less of the truly meshuggina. 

Marilyn, my Dad, my Grandma, cousins Annette & Jessie (with cello) & Me

Believe it or not, in our family "Crazy Aunt Marilyn" is a term of affection, of acceptance.  It's just who she is.  And we have always loved her, even in absence, even though when around she often drove us... crazy.

Tomorrow I will meet with her "team" at the hospital and we will decide how to move her into palliative, hospice care; how to prepare for her ending.  Tomorrow we will plan for the final days of a life that unraveled a long time ago, a life that has been hanging in lonely, stringy tatters for oh, so long.

Tomorrow I will again hold the hand of my childlike, wizened Aunt, as she turns her piercing gaze upon me.  Tomorrow I will look back through the tunnel of time to see before me the beautiful girl with the big dark eyes who wanted to be a dancer, my mother's baby sister, my "Crazy Aunt", Marilyn.
 
Update: My Aunt actually rallied, did not die, began to accept some nutrients, she will still eat no solid food, but will drink juice and milkshakes.  She has since moved back to a nursing home, although she cycles in and out of the hospital every few weeks with some minor crisis. My mother and I visit her regularly, and although she never speaks more than a few words to us, is still deep in her dementia, she knows we are there and it means so much to her. 

Wordless Wednesday: Nostalgia Edition

My Mother as a flower girl in her Aunt Rose's wedding, c. 1929

We finally unpacked and hooked up the scanner, and I have gone scan-mad.  My father's recent passing has unleashed a floodgate of photos passing through my hands, and I could spend hours, days, years, just visiting with them. My friend Adrienne is doing the same thing right now, pouring through a treasure trove of memorabilia from her Grandmother (who placed her precious collection in her granddaughter's hands upon moving to an assisted living facility).

So I thought I'd share some of my favorites from the sands of time:

1917 My father as a baby

Yes, all of us grown ups were once babies, much to my kids' confusion and delight.

Mom and Me, 11 days old

You may have seen my young father in my sidebar, remember this guy?

Dad in his early 20's

And now here's young Mom:

Mom in her 20's

Wasn't she a knock out? Since my parents didn't meet until they were much older (Mom in her 30's, Dad in his 40's) they never knew each other like this. I certainly did not know these young people, but it's fun to peek into their pasts.  The mother I knew never wore heels!

Going even further back, my Mother's relatives just off the boat. Literally, that's the boat behind them:

Mom's Aunts, Uncle and Zayde (Grandfather) at Ellis Island

I love the wicker suitcases. Welcome to America, oh Ancestors!


I don't normally like to scare people, but since Halloween is almost upon us... Me very, very pregnant with full term, full size twins:

The night before my kids came out to meet me

Yes, that was as uncomfortable as it looks.  My cousin Jessie called me "The happiest miserable person I know." during my pregnancy, because it was very physically challenging and I WAS just miserable (20 weeks of all-day-sickness, then unbelievable heartburn, for starters).  But simultaneously?  Deliriously, over-the-moon, goofy happy the whole time.  And totally worth it, since it lead to this...

I have always loved this photo:

Ethan, five minutes old (and already dramatic)

Jacob's happy personality really shines through in this one:

Jake at 4 months: "Duuude, let's grab a brewsky"

Our first Family Snow Day:

January 2003

When they were 8 months old, we took the boys to visit Grandma & Grandpa in Florida :

Mom & boys at 8 months

OK, enough with the cute babies.

Finally, I leave you with this one -- Me at 20, about to go out to Studio 54 or Danceteria with my wild friend Lisa, who loaned me her ha-cha-cha red dress and did me up (because really, at that time in my life? make-up not my thing):

Stop laughing, it was the style in 1980. Really. Stop it.

Since I am thoroughly in the thrall of my scanner, and even hijacked Sunday's and Monday's posts to throw some old pictures in, I'm sure I will be dragging you on more walks through time, but for now, have a nice Wednesday.

I’m linking up to Wordless Wednesday at Angry Julie Monday.
I'm also linked to Special Exposure Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Special Needs.