Tuesday, December 11, 2007

December 11 2007


The last night of Hanuka, the eighth candle lit. On this very night 94 years ago my father was born. I wonder, more now than ever, how it was for my grandmother, his mother, giving birth to her fourth child in what surely was a bitter Polish winter. Was my grandfather there, or was he in America? I never thought to ask Dad, and now of course there is no one to ask. I think of my father's family as I knew them, not as they were, and cannot stretch my imagination to see a youngish woman, very Orthodox, very quiet, giving birth to her last child, her only son. Was it a hard labor, or easy? Was she frightened or prepared? And who helped her? Certainly medical care was not readily available in the dorf in which my father's family lived. Were pogroms active then, or was the night quiet? I know from my studies that frequently on Christmas Eve, in Poland and elsewhere, a rousing pogrom and the beating and killing of Jews was part of the celebration. But as the Jewish calendar is lunar, and the one by which I've lived my life is not, I don't even know if in the year of my father's birth Hanuka was as it is this year, well ahead of Christmas, or during it. I only know for sure that whatever else happened that year, they all six survived and made it to America by the time Oscar was six.

In one of the very last coherent conversations I had with my father weeks before his death, he suddenly remembered so many details of that little shtetl. There was a canal running in front of his house, and he and the other little boys urinated in it, even though they were told not to. That boats came up that same canal, that his mother's father was something like the mayor of the little town, and that's why they had such a good house. He spoke for about 45 minutes - I wish I could have recorded it all, as I am forgetting much of what he said. But at the time he was telling Mom and me, it was like watching a movie. I could see the grey streets and sky, feel the cold wind, and best of all, got a glimpse of young Oscar in the smile he smiled when he told me about peeing in the canal against all adult orders.

It's been nearly five months since he was buried, and since then two more beautiful children have been added to our extended family, and both of Brian's daughters are expecting a child each early in 2008, so Brian, along with my sister, will be a grandparent of four. I am curious to see who each of these tiny people is, and will become, and in my blood relations whether I can catch a glimpse of Oscar in any of them. So here along with this year's holiday card is the addition of several views of my dad, from the single treasured shot I have of his childhood, through his very last year. I hope he is pleased with the family's growth; I know he is missed very much by us all, especially tonight.