Good Neighbors – for David K 

Writing once about the passage of time, I urged you to seize the day.   (See Time and the Taxi Man)

I thought of those words recently at the funeral of our neighbor David K who had died suddenly the week before.  For decades my husband Danny and I shared the same East End Avenue address with David in a building that was small by Manhattan standards with only 16 floors and less than 200 apartments.   (See  (The Lion, The Witch, and) The Wardrobe ,  Moving Day Blues , A Sign on the Doorpost ,  Kente Cloth and The Elevator)

A happy consequence of living in a smaller building is that we’ve come to know a great many of our neighbors,  some of whom have become close friends.   We and David however,  had been relative strangers who nodded at each other in the elevator or in the lobby.

But hearing of his death we decided to go to the funeral.  There we learned much about David from friends and family who eulogized him.

He had been a physician as we knew,   but we learned he’d also been an internationally known medical researcher and teacher enormously respected by fellow scientists around the world.  Several came from abroad for the funeral and many others sent moving tributes.

David’s niece and nephew spoke of their uncle as the glue that held the family together,  and friends spoke about the memorable meals he cooked and dinner parties he hosted, trips they made together,  his keen intellect and wit,  and his love of art and music.

Leaving the funeral home,  Danny and i remembered the last time each of us had seen David.  I met him in the lobby one morning about a week earlier and we had stopped to chat.  By chance the conversation turned to politics,  our travel plans,  and movies we’d seen,  and as we parted I told him I had enjoyed our talk.  “Let’s not be strangers,”  I said,  “let’s make that dinner date!” 

David had been on his way to get his car,  and by chance in the garage he met Danny.  David said he’d just seen me in the lobby and we’d promised to make a dinner date.  “Yes, let’s do it soon.”  Danny told him as they parted.

But David died a week later and we never had that dinner date.  And regrettably,  we lost the chance for three strangers to become three friends.

RIP David.

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

This was the command from my mother when I was in elementary school. The assignment in class was to speak about our family background. The kids awkwardly told stories about the origins of their grandparents in Ohio or somewhere in California, and then moved to their home in North Hollywood. Their stories were antiseptic, hagiographic, and very American. I knew nothing about my ancestry nor about the lives of my parents. Obeying her command, I wrote a summary of the Kagans in the terms of Laura Engels Wilder.

Her prohibition affected me and my brother, Bob. His adherence to her instruction led him to never divulge the life of his parents. When I visited him for at the hospital he worked at, his staff asked me if my brother had a family: “He never tells us about his personal life.”  I told them to ask him themselves.

In short, both my brother and I were estranged from any sense of family values.

Only after my mother died leaving her autobiography did I learn of her history. Until then, Mother’s Day memories lay in the folds of an envelope addressed to Rose, my mother, and not much else.

After she died at the age of ninety-six, I read her 100-page handwritten autobiography. She recounted her childhood in the Russian held Ukraine which was threatened by pogroms, Germans, and Cossacks.

The Russians protected Jews from these enemies and the Communists offered them a better life than they had under the Czar.

I remember watching newsreels in our living room gloriously revealing Russian bombers taking off to targets in Germany. Only by reading her memoirs did I learn she was a communist.

A brilliant student, her curtailed her education, sent her off as a secretary. Ever since, she had felt squelched from a more creative life.

Rose did not want to marry or have children. After she married my father in Los Angles, she traveled back to Boston to make the announcement in the newspaper. And the picture was of her and her girlfriend.

During the anti-communist rage in America, my mother became frightened to reveal her background. She passed as an articulate woman who did not engage in Jewish activities or political action.

She wanted Bob and me to be doctors. He followed through. To her dismay I became a professor in Chinese studies. When I was awarded tenure with the title of full professor, she encouraged me to apply for medical school. Rose warned me to avoid using my title of Dr. because it would be confusing for the real thing.

Rose wrote in detail about her struggles with macular degeneration, financial losses from bad investment, loss of friends, and years in therapy. She did have some splendid experiences founding a Jewish theater in Fairfax, receiving recognition from the University of Judaism, traveling to Egypt, and working for the liberal Jewish Community Relations Center.

In her last 6 years, she had to move. Bob and Mickey, her stepson, though exceptionally rich with Bob living in a California mansion with a swimming pool, and with Mickey living in a European style villa in Hollywood refused to take care of her after she was twice robbed. My wife, Anna and I invited her to live in St. Paul.

She was glad to be safe in St. Paul but disliked Minnesotans, especially Jews. She often complained that she wishes she could still live with her Jewish friends in California.

Soon, her brain began to deteriorate–believing her nurses were stealing her toothpaste. Most revealing, she witnessed Cyrillic (Russian) writing on the walls. Rose died in her sleep.

I now have her urn in my study. I look at it often. I express my awe for her life’s encounters. I share with her my own history.

My Mother’s Day is not on a day or in a card.

Rose is with me in my study.

Breakfast in Bed

Many years ago we spent a spring weekend with friends at their beach house a few hours from the city.

That Sunday was Mother’s Day and our young son and our hosts’ two young kids had planned a lovely surprise.  Early that morning our bedroom door burst open and the three kids came in, our son balancing a large breakfast tray.

“Happy Mother’s Day!”,  the trio chanted as they approached our bed.

”How lovely!  Thank you!!”  I exclaimed.

But the words were hardly out of my mouth when to the horror of my son and his friends the too-heavy tray he carried toppled, and a sticky mess of juice, tea, toast, and  jam somersaulted onto the sheets.

And as is the wont of us mothers, I quickly turned from a feted celebrant to a consoler of children,  a drier of tears,  and a cleaner of spills.

And despite that minor mishap it was a lovely – and quite memorable –  Mother’s Day!

– Dana Susan Lehrman