Miracles of one kind and another

This photo was taken yesterday of me and three of my cousins. Two years ago we didn’t know of one another’s existence. Their father and my mother were first cousins. Their grandfather, and my grandmother were brother and sister. The last previous contact was in 1965.

I discovered yesterday that my grandmother and her beloved older brother died within weeks of one another in the late winter of 1968.

My family is one that suffered many drifts and rifts over the past century. Over the past dozen or so years I have worked on finding relatives and piecing together family history. I have had the very real pleasure of connecting with people with whom I share a deep bond. I have been learning that I understand the causes of many of those rifts, but those old hurts are not my own. I love that my family is now so much bigger than it was when I was growing up.

I’m sure that it’s easy for you to see how dark haired Leslie and I are related. When I look at my cousin Susan standing to my left I see my grandmother’s face, and my mother’s. A happier face than my grandmother’s to be sure, but it’s my grandmother’s face.

And now, a new topic. My husband often reminds me that I switch topics without warning. This is a new but tangentially connected topic. My husband is a thrifty man. The toothpaste tube that other’s might see as empty, for him is a treasure trove of at least another week of use. Underpants or undershirts that other’s might see as too full of holes to wear are for him perfectly fine , except that there are some holes. I take a new toothpaste tube for myself and give my husband the pleasure of eking out the last droplet of paste. I let my husband decide when an undershirt is ripe for the trash.

A few weeks ago we were supposed to get a new fridge. The new one was supposed to arrive July 3. the driver arrived late and insisted that the new fridge couldn’t fit into our apartment. We cancelled the order and duct taped the the gasket which was draped on the floor back into it’s channel.

We then spent the next few weeks trying to sort out my health issue. The fridge could wait.

Last night, after we came home from spending the day with my cousins, my husband opened the fridge. The door came off in his hand. My husband said that we needed to buy one immediately. We did.The new one is arriving on Thursday.

And the cloud of health crisis that has been hanging over my head all summer is over. None of it is cancer. All of it is fine.

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

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