This is for my newly found cousin, Andrew, a 25 year old with a keen interest in genealogy who knows more about my grandfather Julius's family than I've ever heard.
I had one grandparent for 22 years. My grandmother Nellie died years before I was born. My grandfather David Edward, known as Teddie and Eddie, died when I was 6. That left me with no maternal grandparents. I was lucky, however, that I still had a whole bunch of great-aunts, great-uncles, and many of my mother's 25 first cousins. My mother still has two aunts - her aunt Lena just celebrated her 100th birthday last week.
I've always known a lot about my mother's family, helped by family genealogists such as Herbert, z"l, and his wife Rosalie, and now my mother's cousin Lola. Then last year we happened to find online a connection to someone here in Israel who is married into my mother's mother's family. We were able to supply him with details and he told us things we didn't know about the Diamonds, my maternal great grandmother's family from whom I took my last name.
Meanwhile, back to the paternal side. My Grandpa Julius, z"l, died when I was 11. My Grandma Zena, z"l, lived another 22 years. And though she died 15 years ago, most days it still feels to me that she lives in my house. That's partly because her furniture is in our living room and bedroom, items from her home hang on my wall, and just a few weeks ago Alen knocked down a picture of her at 13 or so with her own mother, Pearl (Antine) Pezrow, my great-grandmother.
But the other way Grandma lives here is inside my head. Two weeks ago Alen was frustrated by how our kids write on the walls, break things and lose things. Not to mention the moms who, while we don't write on walls, still manage to do our share of damage around here. We were looking for the thing that fits inside the top of the food processor to push down the vegetables onto the grater for making latkes. It was a stressful Friday as we tried to get ready for my brother and his family to visit - clearing out two guest rooms, tidying, cleaning and cooking. Alen said, "We need to take better care of our things." What I heard her say was, "You are completely worthless" or something along those lines. It's a voice I hear pretty much every day, the voice of Grandma's disapproval echoing off the walls as I look at any item of clutter or dirt that I find here, or when the kids misbehave.
It's worse than that though because were I to become a tidy, uncluttered person, I would be betraying my mother and father, as in the statement of Grandma's I remember best, "Your father was always a tidy person; I don't know why he married your mother."
I lived the first 33 years of my life in that middle space, balanced between my grandmother, the consummate homemaker, and my mother, her unacceptable daughter-in-law, and my father, who believed "the modern woman's dowry is her earning power," and supported my mother in her quest for a PhD, tenure, all the way up to her deanship.
When Grandma died, I felt something loosened, and I spent 15 years trying to honor her memory, acknowledging openly the positive aspects of her legacy - her homemaking, her sweet tooth, her love that I felt very strongly when I was very small, the many gifts she gave constantly. See how she looks in the photo above. She was a charming woman who cared deeply about others.
But at Hanukkah dinner I decided enough is enough. Through tears I told my brother, "I want Grandma to move out of this house. It's been 15 years. I want her to go."
Later that day I saw her picture with Grandpa on the refrigerator. I wasn't sure what to do - take it down - leave it there?
Then this Friday my father sent me a message he got from Andrew. We never talked much about Grandpa's side of the family. It wasn't a pretty story and we never knew much. With few descendants, the Burstyn line seemed to have faded away other than us and our first cousins. And there wasn't anyone holding up that end.
So I figured Andrew finding us is a message. Grandma isn't moving out. Grandpa is moving in. I have a chance to learn a whole lot more about him, his family, where he came from. Maybe through this blessing I will find some balance. Stay tuned.
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