storyteller Posts

1. Travel with Nana’s Kids

Traveling with Auntie Mame

“Auntie Mame”by Patrick Dennis..a travel adventure

The idea of Travel with Nana’s Kids  began 60 odd years ago when “Auntie Mame” the book by Patrick Dennis, arrived on our bookshelf when I was 15 years old, along with my mother’s second husband. While he did not last, once I read “Mame” I was hooked! I knew right then who I wanted to be when I grew up: a woman who adventured all over the world, taking her children or grandchildren, just as Mame did. *see link below

Years passed, I married, had three children, divorced, and  that summer suggested to my kids we rent a camper and tour Europe! Sadly, no one wanted to miss their summer activities or friends.  I consoled myself that someday grandchildren would arrive and my bar/bat mitzvah gift would be a trip wherever they chose to travel.

Sammy Comes of Age

At age fifty-six my first grandgirl was born soon to be followed, over the next ten years,by five more girls and three boys. Although not a wealthy woman I had already decided half my savings were for “Traveling with Nana Kids”. I could hardly wait!

And so when Sammy turned thirteen, the first to celebrate her bat mitzvah– I asked her “where in the world do you want to go?”With out batting an eyelash she chose London and Paris.

Now, while these kids were growing up I was not sitting at home. Travel was/is one of my obsessions. I traveled all over the world. London and Paris were visited often leaving me quite confident  about planning the itinerary. Sam offered the  plays and exhibits she wanted to see. I added these to  the iconic treasures and “must see’s”, on my list! We had two weeks and I filled up every minute.

“Auntie Mame” was born again as Nana and I could hardly wait!

*https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_4_11?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=auntie+mame+by+patrick+dennis&sprefix=Auntie+Mame%2Cstripbooks%2C146&crid=2QNOGHE9BLCDE

 

Chapter 30 “Imagine Me Gone”-a can’t put down read

 

Mental Illness and Family

Imagine Me Gone

“Imagine Me Gone” by Adam Haslett is a novel about love, loss and the power mental illness has over every aspect of family life. It is poignant, terrifying and sometimes strangely funny. Within moments of closing this book I was in tears remembering life with my brother, a man who couldn’t think straight.

At an early age, unbeknownst to me, he was diagnosed as a sociopath, a person without a conscience. He was handsome, charming, smart and funny. He married, had a child, and lived with our Mother. When she died I inherited him and discovered she had used her life’s savings to keep him out of jail. And then it began: he involved our family in a mind bending fraudulent scheme. When he realized the game was up he signed himself into a hospital swearing he was suicidal. Ten days later he was discharged into the arms of detectives waiting next to his stolen car in the hospital lot. He did time in jail. On his release he went to a men’s shelter. When he called I offered to pay first and last month’s rent for an apartment but said he was never to contact any of us again. He assured me I would hear about him but not from him. A few days later he committed suicide.

Reading this beautifully written novel of how a family survives the turmoil when a member has a broken mind speaks to the universal family experience of having illness in the family and how we cope. To quote Tony Kushner: “It is a magnificent work of art that overwhelmed me and broke my heart”.

Chapter 29 Yiddish and The Art of the Schpiel

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After sixty-odd years of an adventurous life those who have spent time with me are quick to liken my communication style to a linguistic minefield: In fact my language has been influenced by the Yiddish language, and its art of the schpiel, which welcomed me into this world.images-2

As a child Yiddish, in all its splendor, was the common language amongst my world of grown-ups. My grandfather came to America to escape the pograms happening all over what we now know as the Ukraine but at that time was part of Russia: Catherine the Great had settled all the Jews of Russia into one vast landscape simply known as the Pale of Settlements, a place where Russian was not spoken: Yiddish was the mother tongue.

The second wave of Jewish immigrants arrriving to my neighborhood were survivors of the Holocaust. Although these people were mainly from Germany and middle Europe, Yiddish was their common language as well, so they fit right in.

Yiddish had no boundaries, rather it was (is) a universal language among the Jewish people. Speech inflections and body language give nuances to simple ideas imbuing a mere word with an entire experience of an idea. Even as Yiddish is less frequently spoken with each succeeding generation so rich are some words and phrases that they are now included in the Webster’s and Oxford Dictionary.

To wit, who has escaped using the word “oy” And what exactly does it mean?  “Oy” is a word that speaks an entire sentence or an encyclopedic reaction to a situation imbued with dismay.  Usually “oy’ is accompanied by the word “vey” as the eyes roll up to the heavens asking for help from the powers that be.

Or schlepp or schmooze? Words that immediately give a visceral sense of what is transpiring!

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And finally, “messuganah’, a word that might be translated as crazy but it can also be endearing. As a youngster I took delight in doing multiple cartwheels in family living rooms and over lawns, anywhere. My grandfather would shake his head even as a smile grew upon his face he would say, “Midgie, you are messugie!”

Whether my conversation revolves around ideas cerebral, political or personal, it is the use of Yiddish that defines my views.  For me Yiddish holds wisdom and truth. It  is warm and loving.  It is my soul music.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 26 In Praise of YoungerMen: Jean Moreau and Me

 

In Praise of Younger Men

Jean Moreau and Me: In Praise of Younger Men

During fourteen years of serious serial dating, after my divorce, I rarely, if ever, dated men my age or older, rather I often indulged in relationships with men sometimes twenty years younger. My son survived this phase by telling me when one of my young men lasted a year I was welcome to introduce him to the family. Not one lasted a year. Still I had a penchant for younger men and struggled with, after the obvious, why this was so, until I read this 2003 NYT interview with Jean Moreau.

Although the newsprint is yellow with age the wisdom of Ms. Moreau remains with me, helps define me, and deserves to be shared .

Ms. Moreau begins, “I’ve always liked younger men. Men my age, except for a few, smell of the indoors. They’ve succeeded and made or lost a lot of money and they have relationships to women based on that. Their ideas are ready made, and there’s a relationship with power, Or else they are hypochondriacal and thinking of their own death. And if a woman is a little intelligent they flee from her as if she had the plague. There is nothing to learn, nothing to teach them, whereas I have the feeling of being a perpetual student.

I have more fun with 20 or 25 year old boys. We talk, we argue. They need something I can help with-a choice of school, or what job to get. “

Moreau stops and lights a cigarette, takes a long drag, and goes on, “Except for geniuses, geniuses or young men”.

By the way, I took her wisdom to heart: my life partner of 25 years is both younger than me, by six years, and a genius!

Him and Me

Him and Me

What Would Happen If One Woman Told the Truth about her Life

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Welsh-Dickey summit ~ Waterville Valley, NH

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open,” wrote Muriel Rukeyser. And I believed this to be true.

Who can say that any single event precipitated my oddesey? Certainly no Bolsheviks came thundering through town threatening to rob me of my life; certainly I was not a victim of the Holocaust, nor was my life anything but one of privilege.

I grew up believing in the virtue of love, and in the responsibility to family and community.

Born in another time my eating issues might well have been diagnosed as a form of hysteria.I would have been sedated, my spirit silenced by a sniff of opium, a spoon of laudunum, or a swallow of a few Milltowns. Born in another time I would have swallowed my rage with my mother. I would have buried my disappointment of being trapped in a dysfunctional marriage.

Luckily, I was born in a time of great social revolution, the Sixties, when the country came together fighting for social change. My husband funded my return to college to get a BS. There I joined the revolution fighting for social justice. I discovered myself among a cadre of women demanding the right to determine their own destiny,

I did not understand it was this seminal event that unleashed my rebel spirit and survival instinct. Little did I know this moment was the beginning of everything I would learn after I thought I knew it all.

I’ve come to the end of this, my second memoir. I am now busy living the third installment!   Look for new blog posts about my wanderlust adventures where I  offer tips on everything to do with traveling.  Also coming are posts of reviews of the arts and literature, and columns about how I see the world: In Praise of Younger Men, to name one!

“To write a memoir is, I think, to be seduced by the idea of persistence, of a single identity. What in me persists?Who am I always? What was my force?”……..Christopher Noel

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