My parents' headstones

I was going through some old picture folder.  From 2012.  And found this picture of my parent's grave markers.  My father died in 2007, my mother in 2010.  They are buried in Mishkan Israel cemetery in New Haven CT.  In the newer section where everything is flush to the ground.  I was visiting my cousin Mary Ann; we were doing family history research.  When I go to visit my cousin, we always always go to the cemetery.  This is not optional.

Dennis and I will also be buried in that cemetery.  In the older 19th century part.  Next to my great grandmother Delia.  I'm sure I've told that story here.

This was only two years after we had come to bury them.  We went to the cemetery and it was kind of hard to find them.  14 years ago.  But it gives some sadness and finality to see them here.  They had a good run and led the life that they wanted.

 

Me as a tiny baby

 Picture of me as a newborn (or close) in my mother's arms in 1952 in southern California.  I don't think they had moved to Glendora yet so likely lived in Duarte.  My father worked in Azusa and I was born in Pasadena.

My mother is 27 and I am her first baby.  She looks at me with a loving gaze and I am safe in her arms.

Piano - view from my parent's house (2010)

 A view from my parent's last house shortly before my mother died in 1910.  This piano belonged to my paternal grandparents.  I think they bought it for father to take piano lessons.  The depression didn't hit them very hard (unlike my maternal grandparents)  Mason & Hamlin baby grand.

It came to us when I was in high school.  Every house they lived in hence had to have an appropriate place for the piano.  A friend of my brother's took it when my mother died.  What would I do with it.  I already have a piano I rarely play.  I guess the bench with the needlework went with it.

My father loved to play the piano, played almost every night.  He liked a boogie woogie style but everything he played had its own idiosyncracies like you really couldn't sing to it.  It was an indication of his general health.

This was in Rockford.  My mother had living room furniture put together by and interior designer in 1964.  French Provincial in shades of light green and aqua.  Sounds weird but I liked it.  Kind of low and slung.  I couldn't do anything with it.  Ilana's famous Napoleon lamp was part of that set.

My parents' emgagement picture

 1949 - Engagement picture of Claire Baumann and Allen Ginsburgh.  They look pretty happy, don't you think?  People admired my father's ivy league education and his height (six foot).  My mother is 25, my father 23.  Not that different from the age that I got married (24).  We thought we were plenty old enough and so did they

There must be something special about engagement pictures.....

Two Sacramento Women

Two women born within a year of each other living in Sacramento.  They lived a little over 2 miles apart as the crow flies.  However, especially, at the time, it would take a fairly long ride to get between the two places.  They did not know each other, lived very different lives.  

The upper is Kiyo Sato (portrait date unknown), a respected author and nurse.  We read her book "Kiyo's story" in the Citizenship class I am taking this summer.  The book is a portrait of her family and the hard work they did to develop a farm in the 1930s outside of Sacramento next to the then abandoned Mather airfield.  The book also centers their forced internment 1942-1944.  They came back to find their farm in ruins but, through extremely hard work, were able to restore it.

The lower picture is group picture of my family in 1962.  My mother upper left.  Living the suburban life with her husband and three children.  A committed volunteer and Girl Scout.

The upper picture (without as much detail as I would like) is a map showing where they both lived.  My family had two houses in the Arden Park/Wilhaggin area marked with purple circles towards the upper left.  The Sato's farm is marked in an aqua circle center right.  It was 20 acres somehwhere near there.

I wrote a short essay about this:

Kiyo’s Sacramento

Kiyo Sato (born 1923) was about the same age as my mother Claire Baumann Ginsburgh (born 1924).  Claire moved to Sacramento around 1956 with her husband Allen and two young children, Sandy and Charlie.  I’m the oldest born 1952.  They stayed until 1970 when my father’s job was transferred to Fullerton in Southern California and I went off to college.  I again lived in Sacramento 1974-1977.

Kiyo’s Sacramento seemed a very different place from the place I inhabited.  My parents chose to live in the newish suburbs north of the American River.  They wanted ‘good schools (ie white). My father, an Ivy League trained engineer, worked for Aerojet near Nimbus past Mather Air Force Base on the other side of the river.  Like many of my friends’ fathers.

But not so different!  When I look at the map, Kiyo’s family farm is only 2 miles (as the crow flies) from where I lived.  Though it longer to travel there; the farm was on the other side of the American River.  During my childhood, the Howe Ave bridge (1969) and the Watt Ave bridge (2003) across the American River had not been built yet

The Ginsburgh family 1962 Sacramento

While I grew up nearby, Kiyo’s family returned from the internment camp and was busy building back (at great effort!) their farm near the Mather airfield.

I’m quite sure that common knowledge about the Japanese internment had not hit in 1962 (or even 1972).  I certainly didn’t know about it as a child.  They never talked about in school even though the internment directly impacted Sacramento families.  My parents didn’t speak of it.  I’m sure they didn’t know and likely would not have concerned themselves with it.  Anyway, before their time in Sacramento.  In their 30s, they cared about raising their children and providing for their family.  They loved the suburban life and they wanted themselves and their children to look good.  They knew few, if any, Japanese people.  Nor did they know anybody who farmed in or near Sacramento.

Though before my birth, that Japanese internment took place right there in Sacramento.  Somehow that had never occurred to me.  The government forcibly moved families like the Satos who lived not two miles from the site of my home in Arden Park.  The wartime authorities allowed people to ransack the farms that Japanese had built with great effort, steal their land and equipment, ruin their houses.  The Sato family lost much of their crop-producing plants and likely their dogs starved to death.  They didn’t get any compensation until much later.  And not much respect. 

This mirrors another project I’m working on.  Despite my parent’s denials, we had relatives who died in the Holocaust from 1942-44 in the Auschwitz and Sobibor death camps.  In October, family members and I will travel to Amsterdam to place a memorial (called a stolpersteine) in front of the places they last lived.  Certainly the Japanese internment on the west coast pales before catastrophic fate of the European Jews.  But it’s two sides of the same coin of violence, assault and theft.

Claire Baumann to marry Harvard grad student

From Hartford Courant 4/3/1949.  It's a standard engagement announcement 3 paragraphs long or so.  But it's the head line that keeps coming back to me.  Claire Baumann was my mother.  And she was marrying my father Allen Ginsburgh.  And he was in a Nuclear Engineering masters program at Harvard at the time.

But look what is most important, what was the hot news.  My mother was a professional girl scout in Hartford at the time.  And look at her prize.  A Harvard Graduate Student.  High praise indeed.  And high status.

It was indeed true.  But somehow it didn't seem that way.  To them.  Or maybe it did.

 

My mother about age 20 (1944)

My mother's friend (and my friend too) Sue B, sent me this picture of my mother Claire Ginsburgh (1924-2010).  Sue thinks it was taken in 1944 or 1945.  Likely as part of a scouting adventure as my mother actively participating in attending and running girl scout camps.  I often say that the girl scouts is genetic.  In my case, it skipped a generation.  I, her oldest daughter, would have as little to do with girl scouts as I could get away with.  However my two genetic daughters loved LOVED scouting and participated through college.  Just like their grandmother.  Completely genetic.

So Claire is looking good here, her thick hair that I did not inherit, she's ready for scouting action!
 

Dinner

A phrase has been going through my mind for several weeks.  Especially as I made dinner for Dennis and myself.  

"It's been quite a while since Claire Ginsburgh fixed dinner"

My mother; died almost 11 years ago.  She has not made dinner for a long time.  She did make a lot of dinners in her time.  So have I.  She was a reasonably good cook.  Some things I never did figure out how she made it.  In her later years, she didn't cook so much.  I know when I went there or when she came here, she would have a whole list of things she wanted me to make.  I learned to stir fry in her soup pot.  But making dinner was part of her everyday life, what she did.  Now gone, never to fix dinner again.

Dennis' mother Lanaya had a sadder fate though.  She was always a crack homemaker.  And very proud of that too.  But, in later life, dementia got her.  After my life cleared a little, we invited them over every Sunday night.  As time went on, it became increasingly hard for my father to get her there. I cooked things that could sit awhile.  At first, she knew I was cooking dinner and would try to help a little, bring dishes to the table.  But eventually, she lost the idea of making dinner altogether.  She could sit at the  table and the dinner would be served.  But she had lost the idea of the construction of the dinner, where it came from.  And what she used to do so proudly.

So we all cook dinner, some of us, most of us.  But not forever.

Our dinner tonight.  Tacos. 

Writing the story of our parents

I'm turning my thoughts to a new project (now that I'm done with fundraising fairs.)  Our parents' lives will be forgotten if we don't write them down.  Of course, we don't think of it until they're gone.  My mother's been gone for 9 years now, my father for 12.  But how could we write it when they are there to witness it?  They wouldn't like it; they would tell me I was wrong.  But they could have at least verified it or even maybe told me was important to them.

I've been pondering, should it be the story of my mother ... or the story about Claire Baumann Ginsburgh.  I don't want it to be about me but, of course, it has to be about me.

Here she is, around 1940, in a fancy coat.  She let me know that her social life when she was a teen was much superior to mine.  She did seem to have more fun.  Several reasons come to my mind about why that might be so but I don't want to discuss that here.

If we don't write it, nobody will.  And imagine if somebody were to want my story.  None of my kids seem interested; maybe I will have to write it myself.

1987 Me and my mom

I found this picture in a folder during my cleanup campaign.  Trying to get rid of a tub of stuff every day.  The folder was from the Town Centre Mall in our neighborhood.  The back indicates that the pictures was from August 1987.  Not sure.  Could be.

If so, I would have been 35 and my mother 63.  Or close. My age now.  She sure looks thin in this picture.  That would have been about the time we moved into this house.  The very same one that I'm now trying to dejunk.  At that time, I would have had three kids 1,3, 5.  Before Naomi.  Already I was really deep in it.

They must have had something special set up.  The flowers make me think it might be Mother's Day so I'm not really sure of the timing.  As I've mentioned, I just had a different rhythm than my mom so she was often dissatisfied about how I was running my life.  But, as I eventually realized, I was doing it ok, just different.  We both struggled with this.

Mothers Day 1994

In Rockford Illinois, not here.

21 years ago.

My father and mother stand with my grandmother outside of Wesley Willows.  Probably they've just come to visit.  But my father, especially, is dressed up.  Maybe they had some special luncheon so everybody wanted to look nice.  That's one thing about my family of origin.  You were always supposed to dress nicely.  Very important.

Somehow that message never quite rubbed off on me.  But my mother tried, really tried, always pointing out that I never was dressed nice enough.  Not to her standards, anyway.  sigh.  What can you do with those tapes playing in our head?

We were talking about childhood tapes playing in your head in a team meeting today.  And how powerful those memories and conversations are.

So as I do, how old was everybody in this picture.  My father is 68, my mother 70, my grandmother 94.  Everybody's looking pretty darn good.

My grandmother's 99th birthday

1998 -
Rockford, IL

I was there for a number of these late birthdays, but since the picture has my mother's writing on it, maybe she just sent the picture.  I did crop out a snippet of my sister of the right.  So maybe my father took the picture.  When I would be there, often he wouldn't go unless my mother guilt tripped him into it.  This is his mother but he really did not like going to the retirement facility.  Because it just reminded him of his own age.  And, as far as he was concerned, none of this aging and dying thing would happen to him.  He would have none of it.

My mother always did make a party for her.  The fancy cups and napkins, the wrapped gift.  My grandmother, as usual, dressed rather formally.  And looks pretty happy with what's going on but, if she had her wits about her, she probably would say something unkind to my mother, her devoted daughter in law.

It was at these little parties, that I learned how important it could be to send a card to remember somebody.

But the downside of photos, the farther back in time you go, the better everybody looks so, if you don't watch out, you fear the future rather than embrace it.

My grandmother died in 2001 at age 103, my father in 2006 and my mother in 2010.

I want to write about my paternal grandparents.  Officially they came from that later immigration from eastern Europe.  Technically, they are both children of immigrants.  But my paternal great grandfather came from East Prussia as a child and my paternal great grandparents came early, in 1890 from the Pale of Settlement (Ukraine specifically).  But you could not see any of that immigrant influence in my grandparents.  They lived in Boston, my grandfather attended Harvard and was an insurance executive.  They always dressed formally and only participated in high cultural activities (classical music, etc).

My mother's yahrzeit

Can you believe that it's been five years since my mother passed away?  Wow.

But she died Feb 21, 2010, so there you go.

In some Jewish traditions, the death of a family member is observed as a yahrzeit.  The Kaddush, the memorial prayer, is done at the end of every Shabbat service.  At the end of the prayer, the names of those commemorated are read.  The rabbi usually encourages congregation members to call out names of others.

We will go to a local reform congregation.  We are not members.  However I called the office and asked for my mothers name to be read.  I then will give a monetary donation, not necessary but customary.  My mother would want me to do that.  She always gave money to the rabbi's discretionary fund.  I don't know why.

Sometimes, a yarzeit is also observed by a special kind of candle (pictured) though I don't think I've done that.  Really, it should have been done last week but I had some treatment that day.  My brother and sister were together in the Bay Area, I thought they might do it, but they didn't.  So I will observe it this evening accompanied by my husband, my daughter Susanna and maybe Megan.

I've done it for my mother these last years.  My father died 8 years ago on April 19.  I'm conflicted with that as it's my birthday.  I don't think there was a particular reason or intention that his death happened that day, it just did.  I should probably do it for him also.

New rabbi over at Beth Am.  I would go there occasionally.  They used to have a dynamic married couple as rabbis.  I liked them; I didn't realize how much they added until last I went and they weren't there.  They now have a new rabbi.  Music has always been very important to this congregation.  They have an early acoustic music shabbat....6:15.  The idea is that families would attend a short shabbat service and then go home and have shabbat dinner at home.  That's not going to quite work but an interesting idea.

New Haven 1955

I'm cleaning out my main office; my brother's coming and I've got to make a little room.  Here's a big photo album from the 1950s.  Of course, I have to look at it and pick out a picture before I put it away.  I've used this album for the Glendora pictures.  I joined the Glendora Historical Society btw and get their mailings.  The place is part of the greater LA contiguous city in the San Gabriel Valley.  But somehow it had a small town feel to it when we visited last February.  The Historical Society emphasizes this, July 4 parade and the primo seats in front of the Historical Society which is the old firehouse.

This picture dates from that era but is clearly taken in New Haven, I'm guessing the summer of 1955.  When my mom was older, she swore that she took us to New Haven every summer.  Not true, maybe when I was little like this.  I remember a trip when I was in kindergarten, then one in 5th grade and that was it.  My parents made sure that my grandparents came regularly to visit.  I totally get that, it is very hard to travel with small children.  We didn't!

My mother (of the small waistline) on the left with me in front of her,  She's holding my brother who I am sure is going to take off the minute he can.  Her sister Ruth on the right, with my cousin Mary Ann (a few years older than me, eyes closed) and her son Malcolm (same age as me) on her lap.  Their mother, my grandmother Regina with glasses and big bow maybe kneeling behind us.  And the other lady?  I'm guessing it's my other grandmother Betty maybe come down from Boston.  I've asked Mary Ann (same one) she will know if it's somebody else.  But she's dressed as Betty would with the belted sundress with the understated pattern, matching jacket and the necklace. And she's looking at her grandchildren.

There was quite a disparity at that time between the class status and assets of my grandparents with my paternal grandparents very much better off.  Harvard, insurance executive, etc.  My maternal grandparents had nothing really.  But go back to when my grandmother was young and the situation would have been reversed.

UPDATE: I knew Mary Ann would know.  That's Aunt Dede in the middle.  Gertrude Baumann Kleiner,  My maternal grandfather's sister who was quite close with the family.  Makes  perfect sense.  More sense than Betty coming down from Boston.   She also thinks that the location was the back yard on Foote Street in Hamden.

Lost Grandmothers

I decided to use a personal photograph.  I've got boxes and boxes sorted by year.  And yes, I've put binders and other stuff on top of them.  Dennis often suggests that we 'do something' with the boxes but I won't do it.  And, yes, I also have all of the photo albums inherited from both sides of our families.

But the easiest one to get to was 1997-2000.  This picture caught my eye.

The lost grandmothers.  Picture labeled 1998

My daughter Ilana who would have been 12 or 13 at the time.  My parents or at least my mother have come to visit.  This picture undoubtedly taken at Alki Beach after buying a bunch of fish and chips from Spuds.  My mother loved to do that.  You can see Spuds in the background.

Ilana stands between two of her grandmothers, Lanaya and Claire.   Not such a great picture of her; maybe she wanted to be doing something else at that moment.  Lanaya would have been 72 here and was likely already feeling the effects of the dementia that would consume her.  She would die in 2007 after being in the nursing home for over 5 years.  Actually she died the night before Thanksgiving, maybe that's why I'm thinking of this as we head into that holiday. 

My mother, Claire, would have been 74 and still in good shape.  My father's health wouldn't start to fail until 2001 so things likely looked pretty good then.  She died in 2010 aged 85.

My kids at the time would have been 9, 12, 14, 16.  Whew, thinking about that, good but also hard times.  But we held together.

The more I think about it, the tireder I feel! 

Thanksgiving this year will be fine, just 7.

Not all grandmothers are lost...Grandma Anne is still happening.

Claire and Gayle 1982

Continuing with the beach theme plus I had the box open with the folder of pictures of my parents.

Going back 32 years to 1982; a picture of my mother Claire walking on the beach in Carlsbad, California with her long time Gayle Z.  I talked to Gayle not too long ago; she was a healthywoman in her 90s still running the church bazaar; living with her daughter Linda. 

Good for her; more power.

Claire and Gayle became friends around 1961 when they decided to start a girl scout troop when I was seven.  They both had 3 kids; both had husband who worked at Aerojet (everybody's dad did, didn't they).  They both lived in Arden Park, a middle class development in what was known as the "north area" of Sacramento.  Very white. 

Interesting that this "north area" is now on the southern part of the current map of the city.

The meeting were all at Gayle's house; she had more room.  I tolerated girl scouts; I didn't have the passion for it that my mother and my younger daughters have. They've remained friends though they've moved all over.  That's what you did, when your husband got transferred, you moved.  Gayle has lived for a long time in the Carlsbad area north of San Diego.  I have a friend who just bought a second home there and another friend who just moved there.  Nice area; I don't see us going there.

My  mother must have gone for a visit (she ws 58; Gayle a few years older).  They did my mother's favorite thing, walk along the beach,.

Ginsburgh Family picture 2000

I pulled this out of my six file boxes of pictures.  It took me awhile to place it though the photographer conveniently put the date on their imprint.

Ginsburgh family picture taken in Rockford IL April 2000 on the occasion of my parents' 50th anniversary.  My parents had repeatedly said that they did not want a party for their anniversary.  No, no, no.  Until all of the sudden they did.  They decided just to mark the event at an oneg shabbar (informal reception after Friday Night Sabbath Services) at their Reform Jewish temple.  Maybe we had a cake.  I came from Seattle taking my youngest, 9 year old Naomi.  The other kids we 12, 14, 16 and not very able to come along (and some not so willing).  We did have the little party after the service.  I don't remember much about it though I do remember taking some pictures in the rabbi's office. 

Only 14 years ago...seems longer than that somehow.

We must have all gone for a studio shot (shown).  My sister must have been wearing big time heels as she shows taller than me.  Charlie with his (now ex) wife Sheryl.  Also my niece Teresa.

This was before my father's long period of ill-health.  He passed away in 2007; my mother in 2010.

Photoessay #2872 - The California Dream

I can imagine my proud father staging this picture.  Only in his 20s and he's made The California Dream already!  His slim attractive wife holding their darling baby girl (that's me!) between two TWO late model cars.  In southern California!

What could be better?

Late 1952 or early 1953.  In Los Angeles County, probably Monrovia or Duarte.  Everything spic and span.

The cars had names.  Baby on the left and Junior on the right.

Photoessay #2864 - My mother's yahrzeit

Yesterday was my mother's yahrzeit (anniversary of her death) four years ago at the age of 85.

I wanted to go to services and, as usual, my husband agreed to come with me.  Naomi is living with us and I asked her to come also.  They jokingly said that they would come if we could have pizza.  They didn't mean that but I bought pizza anyway.

We don't belong to a congrgation, currently.  Though we do consider it.  So we went off to the local reform congregation, Temple Beth Am.  When checking out the time for the service, I discovered that the married couple rabbi team who I liked were no longer there.  When did THAT happen?  Almost a year ago, shows how much I'm in the loop.

Apparently they had already hired a junior rabbi, had an interim rabbi and have just decided on a senior rabbi.  The junior rabbi, a young man, led the service.  I was surprised at how keenly I felt the absence of the previous rabbis even though I didn't go very often.  But, by the end, the young rabbi had made it his own.  He did very well; I think he will be a success.

As usual, the service seemed a mish mash to me.  Not that it is disorganized, it's not but there are things from my childhood; things I maybe heard maybe ten years ago, things heard somewhere else, some things new.  As I've written, a whole generation of prayer books passed me by.  And the influential Debbie Friedman?  After my time.

One thing that this congregation used to do, maybe it's left with the departure of their rabbis was a long period of Hebrew spirited singing right near the beginning.  Catchy tunes.  Struck me that the congregation must have learned it when I, as usual, wasn't paying attention.  They didn't do that last night, maybe parts of it.

This congregation usually has dynamite live music.  There were two young people singing with guitars.  They carried the day, for sure.  Again, things may be different when the new senior rabbi comes this summer.

One new thing that I like a lot is the 'new' melody for the shema.  In my youth, it was a flash of lightening kind of melody.  Right out there, loud, emphatic.  This new one is inward, kind of chanty, repeated.  Makes you want to sway and be transported.

You have to understand, Jews are always into the melodies of the prayers.  This way or that way.  My way or your way.  New way or old way.

So the 'mi chamocha' prayer.  Not the traditional way.  Sounded very familiar to me, but not from my childhood.  Must be a Debbie Friedman version, I thought.  But now I realize that Debbie Friedman's mi chamocha was the Miriam song thing.  No, that wasn't it.  I can't quite remember but they didn't sing that.

Maybe, just maybe, that was Robin Taback's version.  And, the more I think about that, it doesn't really matter if they sang Robin's version or even if she had a mi chamocha melody.

I think she did.

Robin Taback was my sister's best friend in childhood.  She went on to make aliyah (move to Israel), marry, have two sons.  She died young (in her thirties) of breast cancer.  She was an influential singer and musician.  My mother and her mother were friends.  My sister made sure that Lou Ann (Robin's mother) came to her daughter Teresa Robin's bat mitzvah.

So, it would be beautiful and meaningful if the young people sang Robins' melody during my mother's yahrzeit.

I will declare it so.

Picture  of my mother with my sister and myself.  This is very near the end of her life October 2009 and she died in Feb 2010.    I decided to use this one because she's having a very good time here.  I made a trip to Rockford and we went to the apple place in the country and, as usual, went out for swedish pancakes on Sunday.  I think my brother is taking the picture in front of the pancake place.

Photoessay #2859 - Those winter olympics

I don't know why I never thought that the Winter Olympics would come around again.  Just never occurred to me.

But here they are, back again.

My  mother died during the last Winter Olympics.  I did some writing about it; probably one of my better memoir pieces.  I built the story of her death (which wasn't so sad really except that my mother died, you know?) around the Winter Olympics.

My mother loved the Olympics.  She just couldn't wait until they came on; she watched as much as she could.  Her last Olympics was no exception.  When I was with her in the Skilled Nursing unit and the promo would come on, she would cry out in delight "They're coming, I'm right here waiting!"

She loved the opening ceremonies with the athletes marching in with their flag.  She loved the closing ceremonies when the athletes all walked in together, all mixed up, the strong promise of world unity.

My sister traveled up the Friday night; she though she would watch the Opening Ceremonies with her.  When she got there, she found my mother in the hospital.  The next Tuesday, my mother decided to end all of her medications and just had IV morphine.  She died on Sunday.  During that week, my brother, sister and I spent almost all of the time in her room.  The Olympics playing on the TV.  We would tell her about the gold medals and the skaters.  It was a good time; my mother feared more than anything being alone.  She wasn't alone; we were with her. 

Who knew when she watched the Opening Ceremonies that she would not live to see the Closing Ceremonies?

I wrote a dynamite last paragraph to my piece.  Really the last sentence.

            My mother feared being alone at the end, but she wasn't.  Her children stayed peacefully with her.  We felt we had all the time in the world.  Along with the ski jumpers blasting down the mountains, soaring into the air, and the figure skaters spinning and spinning.