He paused, looking like a person who was calculating an age difference or trying to recall the age of consent.
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He left school at the age of fourteen, and though he can lay brick, overhaul a transmission, frame a building, tailor jeans, pull a lamb, lie under oath, move a piano, weld steel, grow vegetables, jackhammer pavement, shoe a horse, steal a car, take down a tree, drink God into oblivion, and kiss like the devil on LSD, he has never taken Intro to Psychology.
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Readers of Retrospect may recall my maternal grandparents from two other stories, No Way To Say Goodbye, about my grandfather’s death, and Which Side Are You On?, in which I discussed their flight from the Cossacks and their search for the American Dream. They were a significant part of my childhood, living with my parents, my sisters, and me in our big red brick house in New Jersey. We called them Nana and Papa. (Interestingly, one of my sisters now has two grandchildren, and she has them call her Nana too.)

Both of them arrived at Ellis Island sometime between 1905 and 1910. I believe that Bertha came from Kiev, in what is now Ukraine, and David came from Pinsk, in what is now Belarus. However, when I was growing up, it was always just Russia. Borders were pretty fluid in those days, but they certainly considered themselves Russian rather than Polish, Ukrainian, or anything else, and the language they spoke (in addition to Yiddish) was Russian.

Bertha came to America with her parents and a brother and sister when she was probably around 10 or 12, and they lived on the Lower East Side of New York. Her name in Hebrew was Basya (which would now be Batya under modern Israeli pronunciation). When she wanted an American name, she chose Bertha, which I always thought was an unattractive-sounding name. Maybe she thought it sounded less like an immigrant than Bessie, which would have been the obvious choice. She worked in a garment factory, like all the young immigrant girls of the day. When I learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in history class, I was very thankful that she hadn’t worked in THAT factory! Her father had been a merchant in the old country, and they brought some diamonds with them when they left, sewed into their garments to avoid detection. The diamond ring I wear is one of the diamonds they smuggled into the US, and I treasure it for that reason. I gave my oldest daughter, Sabrina, the Hebrew name Batya in memory of my grandmother.

David came by himself to join two of his brothers, Abe and Pinchas, who were already in New York. His parents and other siblings stayed behind. His story of being smuggled over the border in the bottom of a hay wagon was exciting and terrifying to me as a child. He must have been about 17 years old, and traveled halfway around the world on his own. His name was David, so no Americanizing was required. He and his brothers started an independent painting and wallpapering business.

The story of how they met is a bit vague. Apparently Bertha’s parents had a store — or maybe it was a pushcart — on the Lower East Side, and David saw her there and was interested. He started coming around frequently, and invited her to take long walks across the Brooklyn Bridge and back. And then they got married. David was about 7 years older than Bertha. At some point after they married, they moved to New Jersey, where they could have a house and a yard for their children. They never had a car though, which must have made it hard for him to transport his painting and wallpapering equipment and supplies to his various jobs. They both took great pains to get rid of their accents, and they succeeded. Listening to them speak, you would not guess that English was not their native tongue.

Politically, they were Socialists. I remember learning from them about Eugene Victor Debs, who ran as the Socialist Party candidate for President five times. David and his brothers went to meetings of The Workmen’s Circle, an American Jewish organization formed as a mutual aid society to help Eastern European immigrants. It stood for socialist ideals, promotion of Jewish arts and music, and the preservation of the Yiddish language. It also came to be very influential in the American labor movement. I was taught from a very early age never to cross a picket line!

Bertha and David lived in the same house in Jersey City for many years. It was a duplex, they lived upstairs and rented out the downstairs. They had two daughters, and were so proud to be able to send them both to college. And then after finishing college, both girls married doctors, every Jewish parent’s dream! When my mother (their younger daughter) got married in 1943, she and my father went off to Indiana where my father was stationed at a military hospital. After the war they came back to New Jersey with an infant and a toddler, my older sisters, and lived with Bertha and David until they were able to buy their own house. Then at some point, after they were settled in a spacious house with a medical office attached, Bertha and David sold their Jersey City house and moved in with us. This may have been around the time I was born, because my sisters (who are 5 and 7 years older than I) remember going to visit them in Jersey City, but I do not.

Having my grandparents live with us had many benefits. My sisters and I never had a babysitter when we were growing up, because if my parents were going out, my grandparents were there to take care of us. Although Nana never learned to drive, Papa had his license and was available to take us any place we needed to go. Papa was also very handy – not only did he do any painting or wallpapering that was needed around the house, he could fix anything that was broken. He was warm and loving, and more like a father to us than our father, who was working all the time. Nana made the best rice pudding in the world, which still makes me salivate when I think about it. They were both very musical too, and passed their love of music on to us. Papa played the clarinet, and Nana sang.

Nana loved cats, which is probably how I learned to love them, since my parents were opposed to any kind of pet that was bigger than a goldfish. She would often manage to entice neighborhood kittens or cats into our backyard, and she and I would play with them. However, we were not allowed to bring them inside the house, so I was never able to have one to keep. One of the best photos in my very sparse baby book (classic third child baby book) is this one of Nana and me playing with a kitten in our backyard.

My favorite memory of Papa was that every Sunday morning, while the rest of the household was still asleep, he and I would walk down the street about a block to the delicatessen to buy lox, and then another block to the bakery to buy fresh bagels, still hot from the oven. We would usually buy a cake at the bakery too, if there was one that looked particularly delicious. Then we would go back home and have lox and bagels for breakfast. We would have the cake for dessert after dinner. Gastronomically, that was the best day of the week!

Papa died in 1962, and Nana in 1977. Democrats were in the White House at both of those times. I am sure that if they were alive to see what is happening in this country now, they would be even more shocked and terrified than the rest of us.

I first published this story three years ago, on the prompt New Beginnings. Since it only got 3 comments, I’m thinking most of you never saw it. So here it is again. I’m feeling a little more optimistic now about 2020 than I was three years ago about 2017, but our country is not out of danger yet!

New Year’s Eve is one of my favorite times. Saying good-bye to the old year, however good or bad it may have been, and ushering in the new one, with all of its promise. Making resolutions, and possibly even keeping them. Drinking champagne and watching the ball go down in Times Square. (For years I wanted to go to Times Square for New Year’s Eve instead of just watching it on TV, but I never made it, and now that my blood has thinned from living in California for so long, it looks much too cold to be appealing.)

One of my favorite things about New Year’s Eve now is the fireworks. I don’t remember fireworks being associated with New Year’s Eve when I was a kid. Back then it seems as if they were reserved for the Fourth of July. But now it has definitely become part of the New Year’s Eve tradition. In Sacramento, they have two fireworks shows, a shorter one at 9 pm for families with children, and a longer one at midnight. Truth be told, we generally go to the 9:00 show, because the parking and the drive home are easier then, and that way we can still watch the ball go down at midnight.

The best fireworks I ever saw were on a New Year’s Eve about a dozen years ago in Ixtapa, Mexico. We had gone there for a weeklong vacation with my sister’s family and two other families. Everything was amazing that week. The weather was perfect, the food was delicious, and the resort we were staying at had three pools, including one with a swim-up bar. It was right on the beach so we could swim in the ocean as well.

On New Year’s Eve, there was a particularly elaborate dinner and a show, which was great fun. There were musicians, and magicians, and an audience participation bit where my husband was called up on stage to perform. After the show ended, around 11:00, we wandered over to the beach. I think we must have been told there would be fireworks at midnight, so we were just hanging out on the beach enjoying the night air – some of us may have been a little tipsy – and waiting for them to start. Suddenly, with a boom, there they were, exploding directly over our heads! We stretched out on our backs in the sand and looked up above us as magnificent explosions of color appeared one after another. It was the most beautiful and mesmerizing thing I have ever seen.

Undoubtedly it was unsafe, and would never be allowed in the US. Some flaming bit could have fallen down right on top of us. But the danger made it even more exciting and memorable. The arriving year was off to an amazing start, and I knew it would be a good year!

I only wish I could feel as optimistic about the year that is about to come. Even those Ixtapa fireworks would probably not be enough to make me feel good about 2017. This will be a new beginning certainly, but it may be a pretty terrible one. Or it may somehow turn out okay. I only hope our nation makes it to 2018.

If I were struck dead right now, how many years would the insurance buy for Beth and the kids?
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We’re Americans. We don’t float no stinkin’ boats.
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My head snapped back and hit the wooden booth.
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I’m writing this on the day after the Electoral College met and actually, officially, chose that awful man to be the next President of the United States. In the six weeks since the election I have been wishing for something to happen to prevent this from occurring. First I wished (and confidently believed) that the recount in the swing states would show that Hillary had won them, and give her the electoral votes she needed. Then I wished for 37 faithless electors who would change their votes to Hillary. Neither of those wishes came true. There are still four and a half weeks until the inauguration and I can wish for a miracle to happen in that time. But I am losing whatever faith I had. I don’t even have the energy to circulate any more petitions, because I no longer think they will do any good. I wish I still believed this would turn out okay.

• * * *

Thinking back through my past for wishes that did or didn’t come true, I keep coming back to Woodstock. This was not something I wished for, rather it was the opposite — something that was offered to me and rejected by me, and then afterwards I wished I had gone.

As everyone undoubtedly knows, the Woodstock Festival occurred in August 1969 on a farm in upstate New York. This was the summer after my freshman year of college, and I was living in Washington D.C. and working at the national headquarters of Planned Parenthood. My boyfriend from high school, Jeff, called me to say that he had bought two tickets to Woodstock, and did I want to go with him. I never knew until today how much he paid for those tickets, but according to Wikipedia (that fount of all knowledge) they cost $18 apiece. I don’t think I knew very much about what the plans for the festival were, and certainly NOBODY knew that it would turn out to be one of the defining events in the history of rock and roll. But I did know that it was three days camping out in a tent, that it was likely to rain, and that it was going to be a little bit of a hassle getting there, as I would first have to get from D.C. to New Jersey to meet Jeff, and then drive in his old clunker car up to Bethel, NY.

Probably the most dispositive factor was that I didn’t really want to spend three days and nights with Jeff. He had been a good boyfriend for my senior year of high school, but nothing more. He was from my town, but two years older and we had gone to different schools, so our paths had never crossed. We met when the youth group at my temple had a Chanukah party and invited all the local college students who were home for the holidays. He was a sophomore at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, which was about an hour away. Our first date was on New Years Eve, and we both had a nice time, going to a party, and then sitting in my driveway talking for hours. He went back to school, but started coming home to his parents’ house every weekend to see me. We dated for the next six months, until I went to D.C. for the summer to work for the McCarthy campaign. When that was over, I was off to Cambridge to start college, and the social whirl there left me not a moment to think about Jeff. When I came back home after freshman year, he invited me to spend a day with him in New Brunswick, where he now had an apartment, so I did, for old time’s sake. It was a little awkward, I wasn’t attracted to him any more, but we ended up getting really stoned and having sex — something he had never been able to get me to do while we were dating, as persistently as he had tried. The sex was not great for me, and I didn’t relish the idea of having to do that for three nights (we didn’t know back then that we could say no), and in a tent in the dirt, no less.

So I didn’t go to Woodstock, and ever afterwards I wondered if I should have gone. I have twice seen the documentary that was made of the festival. The first time was in 1970, and I was tripping on acid, and thinking that I saw little green men running around on the screen. The second time was in 2015, with my husband and kids, totally sober. Watching the movie (both times), most of it looked pretty amazing, and made me regret not going, but there was also a lot of rain and mud, which I would not have liked. My hair would certainly have been frizzy, which would have made me unhappy. But I think it would have been worth it for the music!

[The story’s title is from the lyrics to the song Woodstock, by Joni Mitchell]

You could relax there, she thinks. You could get away from it all.
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