My mother smiles back at me,
from the photograph in the database, Sweden,1946,
after the war.
Where is, I wonder, her pain and sorrow I knew later.
Were they folded like eyeglass, and put aside until the shutter fluttered shut.
Or did they creep later into her life
as she cradled us and looked into our eyes calling us with their names
Note: I found in the Yad Vashem database a picture of my mother isn Sweden, smiling, afew months after the destruction. Smiling? Perhaps it is instinctual response to being photographed or perhaps one takes life seriously once one starts a family, then the reality of losing a family takes hold fully.
I remember the ceremony, as a child,
in the lengthening shade of the mulberry tree,
as the Kibbutz elders read the names.
Their names,
names that were now ours.
Names like a breeze
that wafted upwards through the tendriled
green mulberries.
Names like the shadow that grew long
with day’s end.
Late that summer I would return to the tree
to pick these mulberries from the ground
their sweetness bittered with dust
unaware of the names that had lodged in my soul
like the tiny hard seeds of a mulberry.
Note: I heard a story from a Holocaust educator, Moshe Shner from Lochamei HaGetaot which was established by Survivors about hearing his name being called at the Holocaust Remembrance ceremony and then how it took him a moment to realize that it was the name of his grandfather they were reading. The story illustrated for me how for 2g’s our lives are not completely our own to live.
I have no need for love,
my father tells me in variant ways.
But I hear him say that he cannot love me.
Our souls too fragle for risk,
sheathed within barrier, ensieged.
Embraces more object than flesh,
the caring that seeps through feels too tenuous
to be called love.
I have learned from my father to fear the uncertainty of love.
Note: My father was left behind by his parents in Europe at his grandparents when they left for America. Communication and expressing of emotion has never been his strong point.
My mother fed me out of love.
Out of love she clothed me,
Tucking my shirtail in my pants.
Out of love she first showed concern,
then tried to transform,
and when that failed she sent me away out of love
so that elsewhere I might grow.
Once away I would never return to her
For while she acted out of love,
I have never felt within her love.
And since I have known but amplitudes of love,
Weaving in and out of intimacies,
Cresting up then down,
Turning back then away
Note: Is love that seems to evaporate, truly love?
Love should stay and not disappear.
Does all love come and go, weave in and out.
I would hope not.
Jerusalem after the snow,
almond trees blanketed in frost.
I watched their branches swirl in the gusts,
showering petals that could not hold fast.
It is cruel to bloom in the winter,
When one’s sap is turgid and sour,
translucent petals exposed to the shivering sleet.
What fruits will be brought forth from these,
thick husked and bitter no doubt.
And when stillness comes, of what do thes blossom dream?
Of warm summer breezes and shimmering red flowers,
and hummingbirds craning their sparkling neck
to sip of their fragrant nectar, perhaps.
But theirs is to bloom while the hummingbirds huddle,
impelled by some impassive force of nature, bent on renewal,
to put forth these tiny pale flowers,
in the midst of the maelstrom
Note: Were our parents courageous to procreate so quickly after the trauma of the Holocaust or foolhardy because of the trauma’s attendant emotional damage? The question is moot since almost all survivors did not make a conscious decision were driven by a psychological need. Children of the storm.
When I was a toddler,
two and a half or so,
I learned about a room fan,
As children left alone tend to do.
Sixty –seven stitches later
The back of my left hand
Has been inscribed with pale runes,
Glyphs by which I guide my life.
Deciphered:
Do not need,
Do not want,
Do not love too well,
And you will not be wounded.
Note: I see the stitches on the back of my hand a quiet testament to the emotional hunger of a 2g. I learned not to want.
When I was five I was afraid that the Snow Queen,
whiteness and ice,
would kidnap me to her Arctic castle.
While other kids feared vampires and monsters
that howled and roared,
all violence and blood,
I was terrified of her cold blue eyes and her kisses of frost
That froze my heart.
My sister would say if she’s made of ice, then she’s the Ice queen.
Ice queen , ice cream ha, ha, ha.
But I still wouldn’t let myself sleep,
and looked out the winter window
waiting for her to fly by,
and steal me away
Note: I was truly terrified of the Snow Queen after I saw the movie cartoon. Now as I think of it the terror of abandonment was greater than the terror of destruction.
I wake from my Friday afternoon nap,
my mother beside me, weeping silently.
She leads me by the hand.
“Come, Tati has gone to shul,
it is time to light the candles”
and wrap me in her shawl,
ss she murmurs,
“One for Tati, one for Lily, one for Mama”
and one unnamed, for the darkness.
Then dabbing away the streaks of tears,
the Sabbath Queen should see no sadness,
we sit on cane-backed chairs at the table
to wait for father to return.
Today I do not mourn.
but some Friday nights I sprinkle a few drops
on my pillow
to lay upon the moistness
and dream
Note: My friend Laurie Sorkin told me a story about lighting Sabbath Candles
with her mom who passed away when she was a child, and this was one
or her strongest memories. About raising the veil on the pain just for a little bit.