Fall 2012

by Lynne Schmelter-Davis

Don’t you love the cookbooks that are as much autobiographical as culinary? The family cookbooks that describe relationships as well as recipes? Where food is simmered with love and served with caring? My family cookbook is more likely to be a pamphlet than a book. But I would like to share my childhood memories of home cooking back in the day when fast food meant your brother gobbling everything in sight and reservations were something you had about a person you didn’t like.

My mother was known as the “Turkey Lady.” This came about because she was agoraphobic and refused to leave the house for a holiday dinner. So everyone came to our house. I learned from my mother how to make a turkey with all the trimmings. For twenty people, it was necessary to buy the biggest, most monstrous piece of poultry that could be found in the supermarket freezer. The directions said to defrost the bird in cold water so our twenty-five-pound gobbler was placed in the bathtub for two days to thaw out which meant no baths or showers for us. Next, the thing was placed upside down in a huge roasting pan, sprinkled with paprika and salt, and placed in an oven. At this point, one had to be cautious. First, one had to turn on the oven. We forgot this once and after six or so hours, when the oven door was opened, there sat a pale, sprinkled, cold mass. We had cheese sandwiches for supper.

Okay…say that the oven is nicely hot. Hopefully, someone has removed that bag of giblet stuff that is packed in there because, if not, it will sort of cook with the turkey but the cooked paper is useless and the innards in the paper are worse. Now, remember, the turkey must be upside down in the pan so the breast meat will not dry out. After a few hours, the bird must be turned. I well recall the day that my father grabbed the legs, flipped the turkey in mid-air, and it jumped out of his hands and skidded across the floor. He was left holding the leg bones, one in each hand. The dog ran over to the turkey but my father was faster and he hoisted that hot bird with his bare hands and threw it back in the roaster. My mother cried. Somehow the turkey cooked the rest of the way and we ate it without legs.

While the turkey cooked it was time to make the trimmings. We always had the same sweet potato side dish. This was made by mixing a big can of Bruce’s Sweet Potatoes with a small can of Dole Crushed Pineapple (drained) and then placing the mixture by spoonfuls into paper cupcake holders in a muffin tin. On top were cut up Kraft marshmallows, (this was pre-mini-marshmallow days). The cups went into the oven to bake. At the last minute, before serving, the muffin tin went under the broiler to brown those marshmallow pieces. One time we saw flames when we opened the oven door—the marshmallows had caught fire. My mother blew and blew on the flames, causing her teeth to fly out of her mouth onto the marshmallows. I was shocked because I thought she had blown her real teeth out. I cried. So did my mother. My father grabbed the hot, sticky teeth and ran out of the kitchen, my mother following. Later they scraped off the black marshmallows and we ate the sweet potatoes. The last side dish was, of course, cranberry sauce. I liked to watch the cranberry sauce trick. My mother would open the can of Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce on both ends and then push one end through causing a solid cylinder of sauce to fall onto the plate. There it sat, beautiful and dark red and kind of moving in a sensuous way.

My mother made one other main dish that I remember watching her do. It was my father’s favorite. He called it “feesnuggit” and she called it “petchah”. I’m sure other ethnic groups have other names for this delicacy. It is calves’ foot jelly. You have to first get a foot of a calf. You put the foot in a pot with some greens and lots and lots of garlic. You cook it for a long time until the house smells really awful. Then the foot is removed and the meat is chopped up. The meat is very sticky and hard and almost impossible to chop. Then you do some other stuff and strain it all into a pot with whole hard-boiled eggs (no kidding) and place the pot in the refrigerator. The thing will jell and look exactly like grayish-green cloudy Jell-O with a very garlicky smell. This is cut into squares and vinegar is poured over the top before serving. I never tasted this dish so I can’t comment on whether it was worth all that work. I also never came across it anywhere else so maybe she made up the whole thing.

I hope that my children will have different memories of Mom’s cooking, but I wonder.

Lynne Schmelter-Davis: I have kept a journal through my life. My mini-memoir is taken from that and every word is true. Every life is interesting but I think mine may have been funnier than most.

by Carmen Mason

My tall, handsome Abuelo, my mother’s Catalan father, Jose Sala Corriols, had jackets smelling of faint cigar residue, although he had not smoked in twenty years. He was opposed to the chemicals in dry-cleaning, and I believe that’s why he lived so long. He was dignified, suited always with vest and high-top black leather shoes he laced through hooks, not holes. Everything in moderation, Cita, he would say to me, everything in moderation. I did not listen and was secretly excessive in most sensual matters for most of my life. But how I loved him – his serious solidness, his patience, his lack of bitterness. And most of all, his overlooking of many family assaults on his – I guarantee you – fine character. How could I hold him in contempt for all the things my mother said he’d done before I was born? After all, perhaps he had been as arrogant and stubborn as she herself had been, but he’d never been that way with me.

Almost every week-end starting when I was seven or eight, he would take my sister, Melisa, and me downtown to Manhattan, that is, whenever he was living with us in Parkchester in the Bronx.( His two daughters and one son would share him during the year.) We three would go to the movies at The Little Carnegie or the Fifth Avenue Cinema where I can only remember two films from all the many we saw. One was Marcellino, Pan y Vino, a thrilling Italian film about a little farm boy who discovers a bearded and scruffy vagrant (looking like a brooding rock star) in his father’s falling-down barn filled with straw and sun-lighted rays of dust. I loved the way Marcellino would slide bread and morsels of other foods down along the dinner table into the folds of his clothes and then ask to be excused. He would slip away to the cold barn and Jesus (Marcellino doesn’t know he is JC but in time we do) would look deep into his eyes and say very serious things to him, and Jesus was filled with thanks and concern.

I wanted always to be like that Marcellino, and for years after that I would filch food from the table, pocket it and wrap it in a napkin-lined basket I kept in my bedroom. I would eat it slowly and covetously, although no one ever interrupted me or seemed interested in what I did in there. I liked to be alone in my room, move the furniture around so that when I awoke the next day I’d be surprised by all the changes, and I liked to eat those smuggled bits of food and pretend I was very, very poor.

The other film was The Fallen Idol, based I discovered years later on a story called The Basement Room by Graham Greene. (At seventeen I let out a sigh of joyful recognition while reading it for a lit class at Hunter College, recognizing it as that childhood film I had adored.) In this movie, a young boy lives in a large house peopled only by servants, as his parents are seldom there. I remember two scenes: one, where he hides a snake behind a brick in his bedroom wall and the other, when he is sleeping and his mother ( I think it’s his mother) decides to come home and wants to see him although it’s so late. She bends over his bed and her black hairpin drops on the still white pillow next to his ear and he is startled awake. I can still feel the stunning terror of that scene. I begged Abuelo many times to take me back to see it again and he did finally, right before it closed.

These movies and yes, three others, The Red Shoes, Samson and Delilah, and Bill and Coo were the all-time film greats of my early life. They were shown at the Loew’s American in Parkchester, a local theatre where the ladies’ room had a separate rose-colored powder room circled in mirrors and was almost as big as the theatre itself. Abuelo might have taken me to these, too, but I know he took us to our first 3-D movie where they handed us each a pair of cardboard -framed plastic glasses to put on. Everything became three dimensional: the letters of the stars’ names zoomed out at us and then in this now nameless cowboy and Indian movie, every stampeding horse and long-horn cow charged right for us. When the avenging Indian let out a cacophonous battle chant and threw his tomahawk, Abuelo cried out something in Spanish and lurched to the side of his seat, almost dislocating his shoulder. I grabbed his arm, laughing with joy at the child who was such a friend to me, and whispered, Abuelo, it’s the glasses! The tomahawk’s not real. It’s the glasses! That afternoon, when he treated me to my usual Good Humor orange creamsicle, he had one, and then, to my shock, bought us each another. So much for moderation.

Abuelo never insinuated himself into our lives other than to be there for us. He didn’t criticize or censor the films we saw. He was content – or so it seemed – to just be with us, listen to our chatter and excited stories, allow our silliness, lame jokes, petty squabbles. He was a seasoned man: a man expelled from Spain for publishing an anti-Catholic book who eventually came to America to marry his adored but never adoring first cousin ( she had fled from Barcelona with a jilted heart two years earlier), taught languages at Duquesne University under the chairmanship of his wife, reared three children, and become the vice-consul to Spain from Pittsburgh. He was not extravagant, avaricious or boastful. After retirement, he loved to drink a single cup of coffee for hours, read numerous newspapers in English and Spanish, razor out articles about any new building or bridge going up in the city he was living in, and walk to and from these structures to witness their weekly (often daily) progress no matter how many miles it took.

His week-ends at the movies with us were perhaps his attempt to stay connected to a world that had lost all importance once his beloved Maria died. Every night when he stayed with us I would look in on him before I went to bed. There he was with his tiny gold-framed picture of the Grandma I never knew next to a small, half-filled glass of whiskey. He would toast her and then turn out the lights. Those were the only times I saw him drink in the thirty years he was in my life.

 

Carmen Mason: She has been writing poems since she was six, has won poetry prizes throughout the years, has been published in small magazines and enjoys sharing her poetry at open mikes. She writes short stories and memoir, but feels her most intrinsic ‘voice’ is a poetic one.

by Alix Kane

I am a seasoned traveler: France, England, Spain, Germany, Morocco, Thailand, South Africa, Cambodia, Peru, Costa Rica – these destinations in just the last ten years. Oddly, I have had no desire to visit Israel, despite my Jewish upbringing. In fact, I judiciously avoided Israel because of pre-conceived notions that Israel would not want me. I am not a religious Jew. I was not spiritual, despite a longing to be. My deceased brother-in-law, Abraham, was an orthodox Jew and told me countless times that I could never be considered a Jew by any normal person’s standards. For him, orthodoxy was the norm. I had become, in some way, a product of his perceptions.

Nevertheless, a nagging sensation had begun in me about a year ago. Perhaps I needed to visit the Jewish homeland once in my lifetime, while I still had the energy. This is not an easy trip. Israel is about the size of New Jersey. If I was going to visit just once, I wanted to see everything that was important while I was there. This meant visiting at least six major cities, walking countless miles, and packing and unpacking every two days. My husband, who shared my indifference, was having the same feelings at about the same time. If he hadn’t, I doubt that either of us would have made this trip.

I had no sense of sweet anticipation or excitement. This was a responsibility we were fulfilling. A necessary one. We were met by our guide, Reuven Solomon. He had sent a photo to us by email, so we immediately spotted his white hair and long white beard. Oddly, Santa in Israel. He took us to our hotel in Tel Aviv and then on a tour of the old city before returning us to the hotel to rest before dinner. We were both already exhausted and the trip had barely begun.

Our first week was a pleasant surprise. Tel Aviv, Haifa, Cesearea. The ruins were spectacular. It’s difficult to imagine entire Roman cities uncovered after being buried in sand for thousands of years. The artifacts, many unblemished, were extraordinary: temples whose mosaic tile floors were as untarnished as when they were built. Some devastated by severe earthquakes, but still wondrous to see.

And then we arrived in Jerusalem, the religious heart of Israel. My husband and I renewed our wedding vows at the only part of the Western Wall where men and women are allowed to mingle. At our request months before, Reuven had arranged for a conservative rabbi to officiate. If only for this, our trip was well worth it.

We then went to the main section of the Wall. Men and women cannot be there together. There is a large section near the old temple that is reserved exclusively for men. Next to it, and separated by a wall about six feet high, is a small section for women. There were women standing on chairs to look over the wall to see their sons and grandsons becoming b’nei mitzvot. Anger boiled up inside me. Why did these women put up with being second-class citizens?

My husband was ready for something special. He anticipated a religious experience. I expected nothing. We went our separate ways. I had to push past women praying, crying, tearing their clothes, sitting on chairs in front of the great wall. As I had planned, I folded my vows and tucked the paper into one of the hundreds of tiny crevices meant to receive prayers, requests, blessings. I then leaned fully into the Wall and gave myself up to it.

And then G_d appeared and spoke to me. It absolutely shocked me that G_d was a male figure. He closely resembled Reuven with his white hair and beard. My husband and I had always referred to G_d as a she. That was my first surprise. As I put my full weight against the Wall, he spoke to me. “You will never, ever be cold again.” He spoke slowly; his voice was deep and reassuring. I waited for more, but of course it never came. That statement, spoken with such assurance, was all I was going to get. But it was enough. Anybody who knows me well knows that I hate to be cold. The word cold changed for me that day.

That evening, I related the experience to my husband. The nights in Jerusalem in late November are quite cool. Ever consistent, I was bundled in warm clothing topped with a down vest. Of course, I was cold. And yet…inside I was warm, protected. I realized then that G_d’s statement had nothing at all to do with temperature and how it affected my body. I had received his assurance that I would never be without him again, as long as I was willing to let him remain. And remain he has. My journey to Israel had led to yet another, more meaningful journey. For someone who had never been spiritual, I had suddenly and finally experienced what it was like to have G_d inside.

Alix Kane: Writing brings me great pleasure and introspection. Although I’ve been writing short memoir pieces all of my adult life, it was only through reading them aloud in Carmen and Leyla’s Memoir study group that I discovered my life experiences were interesting to others as well. 

by Carol Grant

From 1964 to 2000, I was identified by the US government as an Alien. Granted they gave my title a flourish by graciously adding “Resident“(aka legal) to that designation but I was identified by that stigma for 36 years. Compared to many other immigrants to the USA, the process by which I had attained this status was fairly uncomplicated. As a graduate of a rigorous nursing training program in Canada, mine was among the desired professions, and I was approved for admittance to the US without much hassle. In another important way, I was far from the proverbial immigrant to the USA. I had not spent years dreaming of coming to “the promised land”, was not escaping hardship or harassment and in all honesty, was not even planning to stay very long. I was young, adventurous and loved to travel. I always planned to return to Canada for my real life, but the fates intervened, and I met and married the love of my life who also had wanderlust. We have lived in the USA ever since interspersed with periods of extended travel and also experienced living in Europe on fellowships on two occasions.

People ask me why I waited for over 35 years to apply for American citizenship. I had the treasured green card which identified me as an alien; one would think that I would be as anxious as the rest of the world to have the cherished US citizenship. Well, I admit that I was and am very chauvinistic about Canada and was very reluctant to break that tie with my homeland. As I looked into the process for becoming “naturalized” I read the USA citizenship oath with shock and amazement. The opening sentence of the pledge states:

“I hereby declare on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.”

How could I utter such archaic and drastic words? I love Canada; it is a country with wonderful resources, values and beauty and it will always be my motherland. Like many of my Canadian compatriots, I remember being very critical of American policy in those turbulent years of the 60s through the 80s. These were not the most stable or admirable years in US history. We were living through the Vietnam War morass, the assassinations of political and civil rights leaders followed by the divisive political years of Nixon and Reagan. My husband and I talked seriously about moving to Canada during these years, and he even had an interview at a Canadian university in Toronto. Many times we said to each other: “Well, if “so and so” (insert here Nixon, Reagan or Bush) gets elected, we are moving to Canada!” My husband never expressed any disappointment that I had not “converted” and seemed to understand my resistance. However, I had one problem with my alien status: I was a woman without a political voice because I was not eligible to vote in either country. Canada allows absentee voting only for members of their diplomatic corps. I was always very involved in US politics but I did not have voting rights.

I was able to apply for dual citizenship for our three children after the Canadian Government passed a law granting citizenship to children born abroad to Canadian mothers. We projected that our children might choose to go to university in Canada where the tuition is a fraction of the U.S. schools or if there was ever another Vietnam- type war, they would have options. Of course, the USA does not officially recognize the concept of “dual citizenship” so they travel with US passports. Whenever I returned from travel abroad, I had to join the long line of Non-Citizens at Immigration while my family breezed through the Fast Lane.

The years passed by and I lived my busy life as an alien who had strong bonds to both countries but felt I was an active citizen of neither one. Fast forward to pre-retirement discussions with tax accountants, investment counselors etc. and the reality of my dilemma became clear. I was informed that if I remained a Resident Alien, I could lose certain essential privileges in the future. For instance, the US Government could alter at any time the eligibility of legal aliens for Social Security, Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid and other benefits for which I had contributed during my working years. If I survive my husband, I would inherit our estate but when I die, our children would have to pay a much higher rate of estate taxes to the Federal Government than they would if I were an American citizen. I now have to admit that this prediction was the driving force behind my decision to finally seek US citizenship. Hardly a noble reason but being a frugal Canadian mother, I was going to look out for my family even after my death…that is, assuming any money was left.

So, the citizenship application ordeal began. Everyone assumes that the process for someone who has the precious green card (which is BLUE, by the way) will be efficient and speedy. The reality is far from that and the length of time it took for this law-abiding, hard-working Caucasian woman to become a US citizen was over three years! My application forms and photos were submitted and several months went by. I eventually received instructions that the next step would require official fingerprints to be taken at the Hartford Federal Courthouse which meant I was required to take a half-day off work. Another long wait ensued until eventually an official brown envelope arrived. The enclosed report stated that my fingerprints were not readable and that I would have to have the procedure repeated. Their next feedback was that my fingerprints could not be read even by the FBI since I had apparently worn them off! I have never been accused of being an obsessive housekeeper and I didn’t do intensive manual labor in my lifetime so how had they disappeared? Here’s a hint for all “older” thieves; no evidence can be gathered from your old fingers! So, now it became my responsibility to prove that I did not have a criminal history, and I was required to appear at the Police Stations of any town or city I had lived in during the previous 10 years! How demeaning to go to two police departments and ask them to “do a search” on me. I submitted these completed forms and again after many months, another Department of US Immigration envelope arrived. This time, the unbelievable news was that since my original application had been sent in more than two years previously, my photos were outdated and I would have to submit new ones. At this point, I was more than ready to remain a Canadian until I passed finger-printless into the next world. I was fed up dealing with stone-faced, rude bureaucrats who seemed to delight in putting up barriers to anyone who dared to join their privileged ranks. I felt great empathy for all the folks from foreign lands who sat next to me in these drab rooms also missing work while waiting hours to have their numbers called. Maybe it was their great desire to be accepted for citizenship which finally encouraged me and so I persevered.

Finally, all my paperwork was apparently in order and I was assigned a specific time and date for the dreaded interview and test. I had studied the required information about the US government and Constitution and entered the unwelcoming and intimidating waiting room apprehensively. I could not believe the starkness of this windowless room; there were rows of metal chairs, bare dirty beige walls, one closed door with a DO NOT ENTER sign and one slot into which you were instructed to slide ALL of your precious identification documents. I could only imagine how frightening it must have been for most of these non-English speaking immigrants to give up their papers after the struggles they had been through to obtain them. Fear and apprehension was palpable in the room. A few people whispered to each other nervously but most of us were unaccompanied as no relatives, friend or lawyers were allowed. We waited. We had been given a very exact appointment; mine, for example, was 10:20 am. Every 20-30 minutes, the door would open and a very stern looking official in an Immigration uniform would mutter a name. With the many nationalities represented in the room, it was often difficult for the person being called to recognize the pronunciation of her name. With great exasperation, the official would repeat the name and some poor soul would disappear into the void beyond. Lunchtime came and went with the intervals between door-openings getting longer.

Eventually, my name was called. The officer did not introduce himself, led me to his office where he handed me the “exam” and promptly made a personal phone call. I handed him my completed test which he reviewed and then without a smile or even “Congratulations”, he said: “Your date for swearing in is June 20th in Bridgeport, CT at 9 am.” I gulped as that was the exact day we were relocating to Vermont from Hartford and I didn’t know how I was going to be in two places at once. When I asked him if there were any alternative dates or locations closer to Hartford, he answered me with disdain: “Be there or you start this process over!” I stumbled out of his oppressive office and as I was leaving the courthouse, I realized that I had left my jacket behind! Not knowing his name, I had to go back into the dreaded waiting room and wait for almost an hour until he finally opened the door again to call another applicant. When he saw me approaching him, he snidely said: “Did you forget something?” As we went down the hall to his office, he muttered: “Well, this must be your lucky day because after you left, I found a cancellation for a space in Middletown next week. Do you want it?” I was elated as I worked in that city and could go to the courthouse easily from work. I guess his lunch had made him a little more humane.

The date of my citizenship ceremony happened to be June 14th, National Flag Day, and I discovered that it was to be a special event. There were about 30 other applicants dressed in their best finery and most accompanied by family members or friends with cameras. Each of us was given a small American flag to hold. There was a feeling of great anticipation and excitement in the air. I had declined offers from family members and friends to come with me as I was still bitter and exasperated by the process I had endured. It was just something I had to get through.

The judge who was going to administer the oath and welcome us as new citizens was a Greek American woman who managed to change my mood and attitude with just a few words. Those words were personal and moving. She shared with us that she was a daughter of Greek immigrants who could never have imagined that their daughter would someday be a lawyer let alone an American judge. She talked of their struggles to immigrate and their hard work after they had come to America. She did not usually officiate at these ceremonies but had requested to do so on this day as a gesture of gratitude to them. She listed the 11 different countries we applicants came from and said that after doing the group pledge of allegiance, she wanted to do something untraditional by coming down from the bench to congratulate each of us personally. We were welcome to have a family member or friend take a photo of that encounter. When I had my moment in her sun, she asked me where in Canada I was from and then told me how she loves Montreal and visits often. Unexpectedly, I was extremely moved by this ceremony and so grateful that at last as a newly minted Canadian-American I could feel pride in my adopted country.

In November 2000, I voted for my first time in Vermont where I was elated to cast my votes for Democrat Al Gore for President, Republican Jim Jeffords for Senator and an avowed Socialist Bernie Sanders for Congress.

Carol Grant enjoys life as a Canadian American in two contrasting locations, rural Vermont and New York City. The fact that the Vermont border touches Quebec, her birthplace, pleases her. As another important American election draws near, she will visit Montreal this autumn to checkout available Real Estate…just in case.

by Annette Fidler

“You can never go wrong with a little black dress,” declared my cousin Norma, the person I called for advice on what to wear to a party I had just been invited to. This wasn’t one of those dreary beer and pretzel events at House Plan, City College’s egalitarian answer to fraternities and sororities, which were banned on our campus. This was a gathering in David’s parents’ house in Great Neck for David’s fraternity brothers from Syracuse and their dates.

I had met David a few months before when he came to visit his aunt, who owned a summer camp where I worked as a counselor. David wasn’t particularly handsome or interesting, but he was a senior at Syracuse and he had singled me out of all the counselors. To a shy, unsophisticated sophomore at City College, this was big time.

Norma, six years older than I, was the family’s fashion arbiter. Tall and curvaceous, Norma wore her skirts short and her sweaters tight and tottered around on strappy high-heeled shoes. When asked what she did, she would reply, “I work in fashion,” and you can’t deny that being a receptionist and all-around go-fer at Missy Modes, a mid-level dress company located in the garment district, was indeed working “in fashion.”

“You’re in luck,” Norma continued. “Klein’s just placed a really big order this morning and Mr. Melnikoff is in a great mood. I’m sure there’ll be no problem getting you into the showroom tomorrow. And I know just the dress for you. “ “Don’t you love it?” Norma exclaimed the next day, as she pulled a black taffeta dress off the rack. “It’s our hottest number, a knock-off of a dress they’re selling at Saks for at least three times what this costs. “ Taffeta? Orange velvet trim dusted with rhinestones around the sweetheart neck? This wasn’t my idea of a simple little black dress. “Oh, don’t be so conservative. Break out a little,” said Norma, sensing my hesitation. Norma never had a problem breaking out. She had already met three of the goals she set for herself before she reached 21: finish high school, get a job, and save enough money to have her nose fixed. Moving out of her parents’ house, getting her own apartment, and marrying a man who would indulge her passion for shopping? Those goals were a little off schedule, although there was some gossip among the relatives about Norma providing Mr. Melnikoff with more than just secretarial services, and you never know where that could lead. I was disappointed when David came to pick me up on Saturday night. Not a word about how I looked. Was I over-dressed?

At the end of a long tree-lined lane, perched on a bluff overlooking the Sound, stood David’s house. Tara, I thought, noting the white columns that reached the roof. I could picture the door being opened by a dignified elderly black man who would greet us with “Good evening, Massah David”. Entering the house, I could hear music and the tinkling of ice, the buzz of conversation and someone laughing, and then a hush as David and I entered the living room. The eyes of six women dressed almost identically in pleated skirts, cashmere twin sweater sets and pearls, some sporting their boyfriends’ fraternity pins, were all on me.

I knew immediately that the little black dress was a major gaffe. It screamed in letters nine feet tall ”What are you doing here? You’re not one of us!” How was I going to get through the evening? David, oblivious to the smirks and stares, said “Hi guys, I want you to meet Annette. She’s a sophomore at City College.” From deep within one of the sofas where she was snuggled against her date, one of the women called out “Well, good for you, Annette!”

Did she mean “good for you” because you had to be smart to get into City College or “good for you” for mixing with all those lefties and taking the subway to school and living at home with your parents and not in a dorm?

I felt sick and humiliated. Even beer and pretzels at House Plan would have been better than this. At least the conversation would have been more interesting. Not this frat-boy “Syracuse is a shoo-in to beat Cornell next Saturday,” and “What do you think of Josh being suspended for cheating on his bio exam?” Where was the talk of Camus and Sartre, existentialism and Freud?

I smiled gamely through the evening, sneaking peeks at the antique grandfather clock in the hallway. Finally it was time to leave. So nice to meet you, hope to see you again, a ride back that seemed twice as long as the one out, a peck on the cheek, will call you, and David was gone.

I left the dress in a heap on the bedroom floor, burrowed deep into my down quilt and softly cried myself to sleep.

The ringing phone roused me early the next morning. “So, was I right? I bet you were the center of attention.”

“More than you can imagine, Norma,” I replied, “more than you can ever imagine.”

Annette Fidler: With thanks to the Memoir Writing Study Group, whose smiles, chuckles and laughs at The Little Black Dress encouraged me to share it with a wider audience.

by Nadine Cowen

We had come in search of a tiny denizen of Georgia’s tidal marshes. When we found the white periwinkle snails encased in their protective spiral shells, our guide asked each of us to hold one close against our throat and softly hum to it! As a lifelong city dweller quite ignorant of periwinkle personalities, I was skeptical, perhaps fearful of being duped. “Just do it,” I said to myself. After humming to what appeared to me to be an inch long dollop of whipped cream, we were asked to turn our marsh dweller upside down; a circular plug at the opposite end swung open. Then a gelatinous brown round head gracefully emerged. I was transfixed by this tiny being’s quiet presence. I had been granted an audience with one of God’s smallest creatures. It was love at first sight. I burst into tears. As I collected myself, we were instructed to tap the outside of the periwinkle’s shell after which he disappeared back into his shell, his “door” closed behind him.

Many of the other periwinkles chosen could not be coaxed out of their shells. So the tiny being I met for a moment was handed round and upon request amazingly repeated his awesome performance. Perhaps he was one of a few Southern periwinkles willing to entertain Yankees that morning. To this day I take pride in my ability to hum a snail out of its shell.

Nadine Cowen: I’m delighted the coordinators in the writing study group inspired me to capture one unforgettable moment to share. The process of my first attempt was really challenging, but the result was well worth it!

by Ivy Berchuck

Religion: or God and Florence

I hated Florence. She was everything I despaired of in myself. I was chubby, but she was fat. My hair was too curly, hers was frizzy. She bit her nails, I chewed the skin around the cuticles; but worst of all, she was the only other fifth grade girl to go to Hebrew School. I tried to keep a low profile about this, but Florence would call across the schoolyard during recess, “Itah, do you want to walk to Hebrew school together? Itah was my Yiddish name. She knew what my American name was, but she never understood that Itah was something to be uttered only behind closed doors.

“You go to Hebrew School?” the girls asked incredulously. ”What do you do that for?” To the girls, the reason for a religious education was to prepare for the bar mitzvah when you were thirteen … and only boys were bar mitzvahed. There was no way to explain to them that my parents, somewhat observant, felt that anything their boy could do, their girl could do as well. I would have preferred a less controversial way of demonstrating the principle, but I accepted the plan that I would study prayer and language and then go through the ceremony and have a bat mitzvah, a daughter of the covenant..

For most people this was unheard of in the late 1940’s, even though today an over the top celebration for a girl can be equal to any party thrown for a boy. I wanted to keep it a secret because it was so strange and hard to explain and anyway, I wasn’t sure if I really believed enough in God

I did like the study of the language, the Bible and the prayers. I could participate in the Shabbat service with my father and grandfather and I wallowed in their pride. I felt connected to the people in the synagogue and put the God thing in back of my mind.

The biggest problem was it left me no time in the afternoons to hang out with girlfriends, and it pushed me in the direction of Florence. The more Florence liked me, the worse I felt. She hooked arms with me as we walked to our lessons, and I hoped that no one in the schoolyard saw us. She was studying as hard as I was, but her parents had told her it was a sin for a girl to have a Bat Mitzvah so she was excused from the class when we learned the prayers required to conduct the service. Then I became the only girl there but it didn’t feel special … I could sense the boys smirking.

The year that my group reached the age for the ceremony, we were required to participate in every Saturday bar mitzvah service. The boy’s guests were there too, including the popular girls in the class who just stared at me knowing I wasn’t invited and would certainly not be at the party that followed. One said, “Oh I guess you can walk home with your friend Florence.” It was beyond humiliation. Now Florence had acne and anytime a pimple emerged on my forehead I would cry and see myself becoming a clone of my nemesis. She had persisted in calling me Itah through the years so I made up my mind I had to change the name. I wanted to get away from Yiddish anyway. Hebrew seemed to look to the future, not to the Holocaust past. I looked up plant names in the Hebrew-English dictionary and sure enough, ivy had a Hebrew word for it, Irit … I loved it and told my parents and the rabbi that I wanted my name changed…Florence now stopped calling me by any name, because changing your name was guess what? … another sin.

The girls in school were intrigued and asked if I was inviting friends to my bat mitzvah. I began to feel more comfortable with them. They were invited and they did come.

My dress was no longer from the chubby department and my voice rang out. My speech was about strong women in the bible and the power that girls should have in religion and in the world. I looked out at my friends and was happy that Florence was sitting with them. I was even happier that I would never have to be with her again.

A few years ago I saw her in the street when I was visiting my mother. She was still dumpy, but her hair was coifed and her suit was stylish. ”Itah, Itah” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around me. ”Do you remember what fun we had walking to Hebrew School?”

Ivy Berchuck: I have been writing short memoirs on and off all my life. Thanks to Carmen and Leyla’s writing class at IRP it is now a more consistent effort bringing me unusual pleasure and self-awareness. I now seem to be remembering more than I am forgetting

by  Ivy Berchuck

I scrape my toenails against the cool sheets and listen to the sound. It is the only sound in the room, and it makes me feel cool like the sheets. I keep on scraping my toes, because there isn’t anything else to do. Outside I’d be busy with games and school and fooling around down at the corner lot, but I haven’t been there for a long time.

And this morning, because the doctor said to, they took all my books away. I think it was this morning, but I’m not sure. The doctor smelled like the square bag he carried and he unbuttoned my pajamas and said, “And how are you this morning?”

Does he expect an answer? It hurts my throat too much to say anything. And now he has that cold metal piece on my chest, and the wires are coming out of his ears, and I breathe in and out because he says to. The room isn’t right side up, I think, but that is silly so I won’t say anything. “Keep breathing,” he says, patting my back, but I didn’t know that I had stopped.

The wallpaper glares at me. It has little lambs and they are dancing around a maypole. “I am too old for this paper,” I try to say, but only a gurgling sound comes out. I think about the new wallpaper I’d choose, while that cold metallic coin presses against my chest.

I want to tell the doctor that I don’t name the lambkins anymore. I touch his hand near the place where a wisp of hair peeks from the cuff of his shirtsleeve.

“I can almost do multiplication.” He smiles and says, “That is really splendid.” He doesn’t care, I think, and I look back at the lambs. Now they are upside down, the lambs are upside down and I feel so dizzy. I’m sure that’s the right word, dizzy, but I’m not going to tell him because he didn’t care about the multiplication.

And then I hear him tell my mother, “Keep up with the fluids” and I know that the fluids are juices that aren’t cold and trickle down the throat softly. He pinches me on the cheek like I knew he would do, but I am too busy to escape his reaching fingers.

When they walk out of the room he says again that there better be no more reading and the blinds should be drawn, but I know that the blinds can’t chase away all of the sun. He wants to lock me away like the English did to the little princes in the Tower of London, but the sun creeps through the spaces in the blinds and plays on the ceiling in little slanty lines. The lines come everyday, just as they are doing now.

I can hear my mother in the kitchen. The pots are clanging and she must be making supper. I know it is supper, because the lines on the ceiling are moving away from the window getting ready to disappear for the day. I won’t be eating with my mother and father and Mark, but she will feed me in bed with a funny, curved spoon that holds the food so it won’t spill. Then the room will be quiet again, but she might tell me a story or sing one of the songs she likes from when she was a girl during the great world war. My favorite is “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag.” If I try to sing with her, she says I sound like the Billy Goats Gruff. It is spooky to lose my voice before I even start.

I look over to the porcelain tabletop where the bottles are standing. The medicines are for every four hours, even at night which is silly because it is better to sleep than to taste the burning liquids. Sleep is better than anything. I leave the room and I’m back in the schoolyard, playing jump rope with the old frayed washline. I wait my turn to jump. The rope goes around fast, slapping the concrete pavement, and I jump in: onesie, twosie… .

In the kitchen, my mother cooks, and I scrape my toes against the sheet. The slanty sun lines are gone from the ceiling, I’ll eat from the funny spoon and listen to her song and go to sleep, and tomorrow the doctor will come again.

Ivy Berchuck: I have been writing short memoirs on and off all my life. Thanks to Carmen and Leyla’s writing class at IRP it is now a more consistent effort bringing me unusual pleasure and self-awareness. I now seem to be remembering more than I am forgetting

 

by James A. Avitabile

A lot happened that summer when I turned four. I heard talk about the upcoming wedding of Commare Gigi. I didn’t know that Gigi was her nickname. She was baptized Louise. Why do parents do that? They give you a fake name and they call you that all your life. Look at me, I was baptized James, but for a good part of my life, they called me Juny. It was OK with me until I went to kindergarten. Mrs. Quintavalli would call out ‘James’. I didn’t know she was calling me so I kept on playing. She thought I might have a hearing problem. One week I had to write My name is James 100 times. So now I had two names: James in school and Juny at home. My parents should have been writing: Our son’s name is James, not me. I guess learning is for kids, not for grown-ups.

One night Gigi and her boyfriend, Vincent paid us a visit. My mother knew they were coming. After all the hugs and kisses, Commare Gigi sat me on her lap and bubbled:

“Juny, Vincent and me would like you to be the ring bearer at our wedding.”

My mother cried; my father, being hard of hearing, missed what she was saying. I didn’t have any clue of what this meant.

“Juny, say thank you to Commare Gigi and Compare Vincent.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, I’ll make black coffee. I baked some fresh biscotti.”

What was I thanking them for? What’s a ring bearer? As they sipped their coffee and dunked their biscotti and talked amongst themselves, I soaked up more information. Joanne, Vincent’s niece, was going to be the flower girl. My imagination wandered. Was she going to be dressed in flowers? Why couldn’t I be dressed in flowers too?

As the biscotti melted into mooch in the delicate demitasse cups with gold dragon heads, Commare Gigi gave us details about what me and Joanne were going to look like.

“Joanne’s gown was going to be hand made. And she’ll carry a bouquet with flowers that will match the flowers on her gown. We’ll rent a tuxedo for Juny. He’ll carry a heart with rings sewn on it and little red ribbons will stream down the sides of the heart. The rings will be fake.”

I hid my feelings of disgust behind a goofy mask. So Joanne would be dressed in something new and made especially for her and she’d carry a bouquet of real flowers. I would be wearing something that someone else had worn before me and carry something that was fake. Would these rings be like the rings that you find as a prize in a Cracker Jacks box? Why didn’t they ask me what I wanted? I guess flower girls are before thoughts and ring bearers are afterthoughts.

After they left, I asked my mother: “What’s a ‘tuckseato’, mommy?”

“It’s what daddy wore when we got married, Juny. Go look at our wedding picture hanging over our bed.”

Whenever I looked at that tinted photo of them, I really never saw my father and what he was wearing. I obsessively gazed at my mother and how beautiful she looked. I dreamed that someday I would be wearing a white lace dress with a long flowing train and a veil that was nineteen feet, yes nineteen feet long. I wanted to look like her and not him. If I was going to look like my father, then a ring bearer doesn’t wear white; he wears black. He doesn’t wear lace; he wears wool. He doesn’t wear light; he wears heavy.

Their big day came. The sun got up before me. I awoke in a pool of sweat. Oh boy, I could already feel that this was going to be a boiler of a day. As I rubbed lingering sleep out of my eyes, I looked up at the black suit with the shiny lapels hanging on the closet door. Eerily, it became alive and leered down at me with an evil smirk.

“You’re not going to like this scorcher of a day, kid, or me.”

I already knew that. We had met a few days before the wedding, when I had to try on the suit to make sure it fit. I was pushed and pulled into it. I felt the scratch and weight of the wool. We didn’t like each other from the start. What bad thing did I do to deserve this kind of thermal punishment? In those days, except for a scattering of movie houses, the relief of ‘air cooled’ was nearly non-existent. The air was going to be ‘as is’ that day.

My father took great pride and care in dressing me. He glowed. He had been a marathon tango dancer during the depression. He knew what went where and in what sequence. He checked and double-checked that everything was in place and I was ready for my marathon. He took a daub of olive oil and gently rubbed it through my curly locks with his leathery hands.

I remember walking slowly down the main aisle of Sacred Heart Church. Joanne and I led the procession of six bridesmaids and six accompanying ushers. Some off key soprano was singing an ‘avay’ to Maria from the choir loft.

I heard onlookers whisper: “Oh, aren’t they the cutest little couple you’ve ever seen.”

I may have looked cute; but I didn’t feel cute. The ‘tuckseato’ controlled my every painful movement. The uncomfortable day seeped into a stagnant and stifling night. There wasn’t even a hint of a breeze; it hadn’t been invited. I wanted the celebration to end so that I could get home to peel off the soggy somber suit and the limp ‘Fruit of the Looms’.

Finally it was over. I was exhausted. I had wilted; Joanne hadn’t. She looked as fresh as she had at the beginning of that blistering August afternoon. All day I had imagined how beautiful I would have been as the flower girl; how comfortable I would have felt with the air breathing freely underneath my gown.

When we got home I unglued myself from the used suit that terrorized me all day. I dumped the punishing munchkin costume on a heap of light and lacy curtain panels waiting to be hand washed in Ivory Snow Flakes and Niagara starch. The newly weds were going to honeymoon at Niagara Falls. How fitting that these ladylike and delicate panels lying listlessly on the hall floor would soon be going to their Niagara too.

A wisp of a breeze teased me with a refreshing thought. I’m too tired to think about it right now. I hugged my pillow of feathers and floated into a dream of flowers and lace.

James A. Avitabile: Thank you, Carmen for encouraging me to find my ‘Voice’. If it wasn’t for you, Leyla and our class, I might never have found it.

by Tom Ashley

I’d be willing to cut him a little slack, now, because I was a hyperactive kid. But I never got along with my father.

A lot of people did, however. He was a man who was devoted to charitable causes, forever organizing fundraising events and attending dinners. His primary devotion was to his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame to which he gave so much of his time that he was elected President of the Alumni Association one year. He loved the football games and was on a first-name basis with the college’s gridiron stars. He dragged me to endless games where I stood aside as he drank and cheered with his friends, one of whom was Jim Donnelly, Class of 1933.

Half Cherokee and half Irish a good football player but a better – indeed, a great – baseball player, Jim stood six-feet, three-inches with a chiseled frame but his demeanor was that of a gentle giant. After Notre Dame, he had declined an offer by the Yankees and chosen instead to pursue a career as a missionary priest in the remote hamlet of Lampasas, Texas. In order to support the needs of Mexican families and migrant workers, Jim would make annual trips to major cities in the mid-west and northeast. My dad would play host to Jim when he trekked to my hometown of Detroit.

The Detroit of the 1950’s was a prosperous city by anyone’s standards and proved to be fertile fundraising territory for Jim. The powerful gathered at the London Chop House or Caucus Club, and Jim would leave town with a thick stack of envelopes filled with cash and checks.

On one trip to our city, Jim saw how poorly my father and I were getting along and learned that I had been put into triple lockdown for getting in late: I was grounded, given no allowance, and assigned basement cleaning chores. Jim pulled me aside and asked if I would be interested in spending the summer in Texas.

Would I! Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the Lone Ranger! I had seen all of their movies and TV westerns—I’d even shaken hands with Gene Autry at a live show.

Jim worked on my father and in early June, 1954, aged twelve, I flew out of Detroit’s Willow Run Airport. It was my first airplane flight but that wasn’t what made my heart pound. It was the thought of Texas. At Love Field in Dallas, Jim threw my suitcase in the back of his big station wagon and headed towards Lampasas. I don’t recall much of that drive through the open fields. During the previous week, in anticipation, I’d slept only a couple of hours a night. By the time we reached Jim’s house I was fast asleep within an hour.

With the first signs of daylight I headed outside to explore. The land was hardscrabble – grey, pink and dusty. Small stucco houses surrounded the white stucco church that stood at the edge of the village where fields began. Out in the distance an occasional horse grazed.

About fifteen minutes into my walk, I spotted a herd of twenty of the famed Texas Longhorned Cattle! I ran at breakneck speed towards them and, as they are a gentle breed, was able to get within a few yards where I could then stare at these beautiful imposing creatures, their hulking brown and white bodies and huge heads supporting horns that extended more than three feet on each side.

As time went by, I had my own animals. I’d catch horned lizards along the dusty roads and keep them in a little fenced compound I built where they camouflaged themselves in the grass. I fed them ants from the anthills in the dirt. I also had pet jackrabbits and a young fox, Reynard.

Jim knew everybody, and so soon everybody knew me, the kid from Detroit. People were generous; they would offer me cold drinks and food. They taught to me ride their horses and how to rope. One day we rode for a few miles to a watering hole where some cattle had been attacked by prairie dogs. Two cows had been killed. Three had been badly injured and had to be shot in the head. I couldn’t look. Fifty-eight years later I think back and realize how hard life was for those ranchers.

Owners of the big ranches drove Cadillacs. They got a kick out of me, the kid from Detroit who knew more about cars than they did: which features the next year’s models would have. They wanted to know all about Detroit and I lapped up their attention. One of them, Vern Perryman, had a pretty eighteen-year-old daughter named Susan. I fell in love with her and would turn crimson whenever she entered the room. Of course, just like in the movies, her boyfriend was a handsome cowboy. He played football for the University of Texas. Damn!

Jim took me to Austin and San Antonio. We visited the Alamo. I bought yellow cowboy boots at Joske’s Department Store. I loved those boots. I kept them in my closet back home long after my feet would no longer fit inside them.

By the end of August it was time to leave. I hated the thought. I built a cage for Reynard and a contraption for about a dozen of my lizards. Back to Detroit I went with them. But not long after, I came home from playing with friends and found that my father had taken Reynard and released him into a big wooded park, Sherwood Forest. A few months later, I gave my horned lizards to the Detroit Zoo.

Jim Donnelly and I wrote each other over the years. After college, I sent him a small check every Christmas to help with his missionary work. He stayed on in Lampasas for the rest of his life, working among his beloved poor. In the years since then, I’d occasionally get to Texas on business but never went back to Lampasas.

***

This year my partner gave me a birthday trip to Marfa, Texas. I have been a long-time admirer of the artist Donald Judd, who moved to Marfa in the 1950’s and bought an abandoned U.S. Army fort and turned it and the town into an artist’s mecca. It’s located in a you can’t-get-there-from-here place, seven hours from the Austin airport. Only 65 miles from Austin is Lampasas.

As we drove through the tiny towns, things didn’t seem to have changed much. What could have changed? The ranches, cattle in the fields, the single antelope, the Rio Grande Mountain range 100 miles south, and the Needle Peak Range 50 miles off to the northwest – all this had stayed the same. As we drew close to Lampasas, I warmed inside myself, recalling that summer.

Once in town I spotted the Chamber of Commerce immediately. I went in to find out the location of Jim’s old house and church, and the center of town – the courthouse square. The church and house had burned down and been replaced over twenty years ago. But Jim’s good works had continued. There was a very busy food pantry and a clothing dispensary filled with sweet-faced young Mexican women, most with a child or two in tow. No one at the church seemed to know anything about Jim or his history. I found that disturbing. I met an old woman in the parking lot. She only vaguely recalled Jim. Disappointed, I moved on to the courthouse square.

There I was astonished. The square was intact. The buildings sparked my memory. The Lampasas County Court building was exactly the same, surrounded on all four streets by one- or two-story buildings, which in 1954 had been dry goods, feed, and general stores. The outside of each store back then had had a hitching post. Those had all disappeared and the stores now had names such as Rite Aid and Dairy Queen. It was okay though. There hadn’t been a new structure placed on the square since my summer. I loved just standing there, remembering that short, extraordinary part of my life. I bought an old cowboy rope as a touchstone of those times.

As we left and Lampasas slowly disappeared in my rear-view mirror, all I could think about was the time I got to play a kid cowboy. It seems like a dream, but I lived it. Jim Donnelly and Susan Perryman have vanished from people’s minds. But ranching continues on Vern Perryman’s old spread and Jim’s good works continue in the hands of others.

There is still a certain elegance to it all. The respect that people seem to have for each other, how well they treat one another, and the role that nature plays in their lives.

In his novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe wrote: “This is a man, who, if he can remember ten golden moments of joy out of all his years, ten moments unmarked by care…has the power to lift himself with his expiring breath and say, ‘I have lived upon the earth and known glory.’”

I lived those ten golden moments of carefree joy. Fifty-eight years ago.

Tom Ashley: Too busy protesting during college in the 60’s, then caught up in a whirlwind career in television, I didn’t settle down to study until I joined IRP. Thank you, fellow classmates, for the opportunity to grow, and happy 50th anniversary IRP. We wouldn’t be the same without you!