Ajoyous part of my life in the 1940s was summertime in Chicago, where my grandparents, my cousins, and my aunt Ethel and uncle Bob lived.
I had occasion to speak of my grandfather, who was a Talmudic scholar, many years later when Ellis Island opened its new computer center. One of the other speakers was Irving Berlin’s granddaughter. She said when her grandfather came to this country he was so impressed he wrote “Blue Skies.” Joel Grey then got up and, accompanied by a piano player, sang “Blue Skies.”
When my turn came to speak, I said, “When my grandfather came here, he wrote ‘Green Skies,’ but it never really clicked with the public.” The audience laughed, but my son told me the man behind him sneeringly said, “This guy— always with the jokes!”
Spending over a decade of summers as a kid with my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and cousins was a treat. My bumpy moments with them came years later. Once my aunt Ethel looked up at me and really started to bawl me out about something. Oddly, I was amused, because I couldn’t figure out what it was about. My cousin Fred recently told me my aunt was confronting me because of a hard time I had given some television host she liked. If that’s true, my aunt would be one of the millions who didn’t know I was joking with the hosts. At least the hosts knew.
My cousin Fred also told me recently that my grandfather was widely admired. “Congregants would come from all over to hear his witty interpretation of the Talmud.” I was particularly struck by that when my wife read me something from a journal she had kept when our son, Nick, was growing up.
We had a Brazilian nanny who would come to Connecticut from New York on the train during the week to help look after our boy, who was then three. Nick listened as Regina told my wife that a man on the train had given her his card and asked her to go out with him. She showed the card to my wife, and my wife told her that Merrill Lynch was a financial organization, and according to the card this man was the head of one of its divisions, but Regina declined to go out with him, because, as she put it, “I don’t know him or his family.” Nick at three, listening to all this, asked, “So you’re not going to go out with him?” Regina said, “I don’t know him, so I can’t.” Nick persisted. “So you’re not going to have dinner with him?” Regina again said, “No, I really don’t know him, so I can’t.” Nick then said, “It’s all right. He’s my banker.” Oh, if life worked differently, would my grandfather have enjoyed Nick!
My grandfather worked with me on my Bar Mitzvah, which took place in Chicago. He was then an old man with a long white beard. I will never forget him looking up at me from his chair and saying in appreciation, with a heavy accent, “a nomber von.”
My only other memory of my grandfather talking to me was when he sat on the edge of my brother’s bed in the bedroom we shared trying to convey to me that I should work harder to please my father. He pointed to his head and said in a deep, guttural voice, “Your father—his head is mmmmmmm,” as if to say my father already had more than enough on his mind without having to deal with any problems with me.
As I recall, his crucially important words went right by me because I was so struck by the sight of this elderly Talmudic scholar with the big black hat and long white beard sitting on my brother’s bed.
Even though my father and my uncle Bob gave them money, my grandparents had to take in boarders to help meet the bills. For a small fee, my grandmother would wash the boarders’ clothes in the bathtub with a scrub board. Clotheslines were stretched across the back porch.
The boarders were not allowed to prepare food in my grandmother’s kitchen. She was, of course, strictly kosher, as was my mother. I never understood the purpose of keeping a kosher kitchen, yet I who never stopped asking questions never asked why we separated meat from dairy. I’m sure it was explained to me at one point, but I forget, because I never had any interest in ritual. I’m only interested in character and behavior.
My grandmother Jennie Singer, along with her daughter, my mother, were my angels of goodness in childhood.
My female role model was my cousin Phyllis, who was warm and friendly and quick to laugh. When she was dying of cancer, I was going to fly down to Florida to spend some time with her. When she said, “My stomach is filled with cancer,” she amazingly expressed no self-pity. She said to me, “Everyone wants to see you, but I’d rather see you alone.” Before that opportunity presented itself, sadly, she died. When Phyllis had had her first child she named him Ted, after my dad, maybe because my dad helped support Phyllis and her younger brother, Fred, after their mother died and their father abandoned them.
This one ranks with my favorite memories of Chicago. When Phyllis’s son Ted was about five years old, he spotted my great-uncle, Chiel Flassterstien, who he thought was his recently deceased great-grandfather, or Zadie as we called him. Ted said, “Zadie! I thought you died!” Without missing a beat, my great-uncle Chiel responded, “I came back.”
In my early twenties I went to my cousin Fred’s wedding in Chicago. My grandmother was in the hospital. I went to see her. She was her usual cheerful self with me. From my earliest sight of her she filled my heart with love that never wavered. I don’t remember her ever looking at me without a smile on her face. After our visit I kissed her and left. Halfway down the hall, I remembered something I forgot to tell her. I turned around to go back to her room , but when I got to the door, I didn’t go in, because of what I saw. Jennie Singer didn’t see me, because she was convulsed with sobs. She knew she had just said goodbye forever to her grandson.