When a Jewish kid turns 12-13 they usually have a Bar (boy) or Bat /Bas(girl) Mitzvah, a rite of passage from childhood into adulthood.  It's a big deal.  It's the Jewish equivalent of a confirmation, except with better food.  It's a culmination of many years of study.  Not only do you have to learn to read and write in a different language but you are expected to stand up in front of hundreds of people and warble song after song out loud in your pre-pubescent squeaky best.   I would expect most Jewish adults look back on their Bar/Bat Mizvah with fond memories, a tremendous amount of pride and an album of professional photos sitting on their parent's coffee table. Now let me tell you about my Bat Mitzvah.

I started Hebrew school when I was 4.  I barely knew how to read English but here  I was trying to learn this weird new language that made some of the same sounds my Grandpa Hy made after too many Camels.  I hated it.  It was boring, the school smelled, the water out of the drinking fountain (or the "bubbler" as we called it in Milwaukee) smelled like rotten eggs. The boys were mean and the girls were meaner.  I had to go two days a week after school and Sunday mornings.  I was so envious of my Christian friends who only had "Sunday School."  It was one day a week AND in English?  Wimps. The worst was the two days after school.   I desperately wanted to quit but I stayed all those years because it was really the only time my dad paid attention to me.  He would pick me up after Hebrew school and that was "our time."  We would drive home his Volkswagon Rabbit in an uncomfortable silence, both of us biting our nails making strained and awkward converation.  It was really nothing but it was better than the 'nothing' I got the rest of the time.  On the Continuum of Nothing this was 'less nothing' and I treasured it.  My Jewish education was our "bond" our "connection."  My mother grew up eating shrimp cocktail under the Christmas tree (although Jewish by birth) so I was my father's best and only shot at having any Jew karma in the  family.   I felt honored he wanted to share something/anything with me and it was something other than his usual complete dismisiveness so I stuck it out.

In 7th grade everyone had their Bar /Bat Miztvah.  7th grade is already brutal for everyone.  Any 7th grade girl is already walking the Emotional Tightrope of Sanity.  Additional stressors are not needed nor are they warranted.  Most of the kids I went to Hebrew School with had more money than we did and were actually quite wealthy.  I never fit in with these girls who wore monogrammed shetland sweaters, Papagallo flats and had lots of gold jewelry.  (The irony was that to be a popular Jew you had to dress like a WASP.) First to be Bat Mitzvah'd was Debbie Siegel (the real names have been changed to protect the bitchy) but Debbie was actually quite nice.  She lived in a sprawling ranch house in Bayside the size of a Best Buy. She had her Bat Mitzvah in Israel.  I think it was even held at the Wailing Wall.  It must have cost an absolute fortune.  If you were invited you were obligated to spend thousands of dollars to watch Debbie become a woman.... in the spiritual sense, of course.  It was all very impressive and seemed really "authentic."

The other kids may have had theirs in suburban Milwaukee but don't worry, it was always a party.  The food was incredible and it was then I learned what "coffee service" meant.  There was always entertainment, too.  The DJ was obligatory.  Whatever.  One kid's family had an artist do cartoon characitures for everyone like it was a theme park.  It was glued to felt paper and I took mine home, put it on the wall and it stayed there for years curling at the corners until it came down to make room for a Police poster.  One kid had his parents rent roller skates and we turned a non-descript banquet room into a roller rink.  Now I know these days a Bar/Bat Mitzvah costs as much as a wedding and it's really gotten out of hand but this was the early 80's and in those days when they wheeled out the ice sculptures at Mark Reznik's Bar Mitzvah you should have heard the gasps.

In June it was my turn.  When the caterer came to the house to discuss the menu my father immediately informed him he "wasn't going to spend a lot of money."  By the time the poor caterer left the house he had secured a small "thing" after the religious ceremony on Saturday morning called an Oneg.  It wasn't even a brunch.  It was....a table with a big bowl of cottage cheese, some pastries and a bottle of Schnapps.  We didn't have much family (only one set of grandparents came and everyone else either lived too far away and/or was too disinterested) so it obviously it wasn't going to be a huge blowout but I was hoping for at least a bowl of herring like everyone else had, not cottage cheese.  The caterer must have taken pity because I think there was no extra charge for the lettuce leaves that decorated and garnished the bowl.  He tried to make it  look pretty as it sat perched on the table more like a centerpiece than an entree.  I would estimate the number of guests at about 30 and the "party" lasted probably all of 12 minutes.  I opened the few presents I had, my mother ingested the 54 gallon carafe of coffee and in the end the bathtub of cottage cheese remained untouched.  I was so incredibly relieved when it was over.   Back home the festivities continued and I distinctly remember my mother at some point screaming at my grandfather, "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE WEATHER!!"  My grandmother nervously smoked 3 cartons of Pall Malls and I have no clue where my father was.  Typical.  Within a few weeks my parents and I embarked on my celebratory vacation to Disneyworld.  Orlando in early July, it was beyond hot and humid.   My father would make us take these salt pills throughout the day which we washed down with Pepsi so we wouldn't get heat stroke.  At one point while we were at Busch Gardens my mother insisted on being wheeled around the park sitting on top of a child's stroller which my dad dutifully pushed because she had "flat arches" and her feet hurt.  I sensed that no one else's Bat Mitzvah celebration was this bizarre.  I'm sure Debbie Siegel's mom wasn't pushed around Jerusalem straddling a baby stroller.

I  can now look back and see how my family's dysfunction just rolled out and and poured and spilled and soaked into every facet of my life.  How nothing was ever about me.  How joy and happiness were threatening.  How it was unnecessary to project oneself and the family in a dignified manner.  How on the biggest day of my life I could still feel so isolated and alone.  My father's Big Experiment failed miserably.  I never practiced Judaism as an adult and I am not raising my children as Jews.  However, my Bat Mitzvah still has meaning for me.   It really was a moment of individuation.  It was a small first step instigated by this ancient right of passage towards growing up, moving on and making my own life.  Although my daughters will not have Bat Mitzvahs I can promise them with every fiber of my being that whatever celebration we have, whatever milestones we recognize, whatever days we single out to honor them there will not be a bowl of cottage cheese in sight and I will buy all the herring available within 3 states just because they deserve it and I love them.

Heaven is in Queens

By the time I was in middle school we had seemed to settle permanently in the midwest and every summer for 2 glorious weeks I would go to New York to see my grandparents.  It was equivalent to a Beatles reunion concert and my Bat Mitzvah rolled into one in that it was a personal and cultural juggernaut.

My grandfather would send a check and within a few weeks I  was placed on a TWA flight from Milwaukee non-stop to La Guardia.  (It wasn't until much later I realized it wasn't "La Gwahdia" but there was actually an 'r' in there.)  Back then, flying was kind of a big deal and I would put on my white high- heeled sandals and some pink and green patterned skirt with a Gunny Sack blouse and off I would go.  The airline attendant (back then we called them "stewardesses") would hand me a Coke and my kosher meal and my heart would soar like the plane with what was to come.

When I was 9 my grandfather had re-married the greatest woman in the entire world.  Grandma Rita was a widow who had no grandchildren of her own.  Except now me.  She worked on 7th Avenue as a bookkeeper at a furrier.  She smoked Pall Malls non-stop and wore blue eyeshadow up to her eyebrows.  I adored her.  My grandparents would meet me at the gate with huge smiles, hugs and the faint scent of bagels.  We'd all pile into the Chrysler New Yorker and head home.

Their apartment was on the 8th floor of a non-descript post-war high rise in Queens on Parsons Blvd.  I had a great view of Lower Manhattan (and the Twin Towers) from their balcony.  The place was filled with all my favorite foods;  bagels, lox, cream cheese, Breakstone's butter, Frosted Flakes and cookies from the bakery.  To this day, if I see a white box with red and white string I have a very strong emotional reaction.  There was unlimited amounts of Coke and iced coffee (when I got older) to go along with the unlimited amount of affection and attention.  It was Heaven.

Sometimes we would take the subway into the City but for the most part we spent the days at "the Club" which was a pool club smack in the middle of Flushing.  Club membership consisted of grandmothers playing mahjong in skirted bathing suits and grandfathers sleeping in lounge chairs.  There was a small snack bar with hamburgers and italian ices.  Ashtrays were coffee cans filled with sand and they were scattered everywhere.  They were filled with bright white cigarette butts shining in the sun stained with red lipstick.  We would arrive in the late morning and leave around dinner time.  The club was also conveniently located next to a Chinese restaurant.  (The city planners must have been Jewish.) At night, we'd go back to the apartment and watch t.v.  My grandma would come in before she went to sleep in her house dress smelling like Pond's cold cream and kiss me goodnight.  I  would stay up for hours eating black and white cookies watching t.v.  "DO YOU NEED A WAWTAH HEATAH?  COME TO VINCELLI'S, YOUR WAWTAH HEATAH SUPERSTORE." I'd fall into a blissful sleep on the pull-out sofa bed. I'd never be so happy my entire childhood.

My yearly visits ended after I graduated high school-my Grandma Rita got colon cancer she and died the next summer.  I went back a few times while in college and graduate school.  By that time there was a newer model Chrysler New Yorker that I would drive up and down the Long Island Expressway.  The membership at the club slowly dwindled as everyone either moved to Florida, died or both.   My grandfather passed away 5 years after Grandma Rita.   What happened in apartment 8H and the people who lived in it will always be my most treasured childhood memory.  It was the only place and time where I experienced true unconditional love growing up.  I think of my grandparents every single day and I miss them desperately.  I miss New York bagels, too.  Possibly even more.

Anatomy Class

                                                           Image subject to copyright



When I was about 7 I started asking questions.  According to family lore when I was 3 I asked my mother what store she bought me in.  Pretty cute.  By 7 though the questions were becoming more sophisticated.  Like any kid I wanted to know how babies were made.

My mother was a guidance counselor in an elementary school.  Her room was the quintessential 70's feel-good room. There were posters of smiley faces and kids in bell bottoms playing.  She had chairs arranged in a circle and a shag carpet that was burnt-orange and it reminded me of vomit.  I loved going to school with her because I got to hang out a lot in the copy room and the smell from the blue paper from the ditto machine made me unusually happy and light-headed.  I think my mother thought herself extremely progressive and open-minded.  So it was during this era I became curious about sex.

I don't recall where the conversation took place but it was probably at a Coco's where we sat across from each other in a booth with vinyl seats and my mother ingested 472 cups of coffee while I ate a piece of french silk pie.  My mother spoke in her best guidance counselor voice about the physiological engineering of sexual relations and at some point got to "a man's penis."  I must have, at that point, looked completely confused and stopped shoving my face full of pie.  I had no idea what she was talking about.  I didn't have any brothers or boy cousins.  I saw my father in his Fruit of the Looms once before my mom shoved me out of the room and slammed the door in my face like I was about to witness a murder or something.  So there was the conundrum.  I had no idea about The Penis.

Soon after that on a sunny day my mom picked me up from school and we went to Osco Drugstore.  I stood behind my mom as she pointed out a magazine from behind the counter which was then paid for and put in a brown paper bag.  A jar of Sanka was purchased, too.  While we were walking back to the car my mother told me she bought me a magazine so I could see what a penis looked like.   Even though I was only 7 there was a part of me that was already extremely uncomfortable.  When we got back to the house she handed me the paper bag  and I went to my room.  I pulled the magazine out of the bag and there, in all it's Glory, was a Playgirl filled with penises.

The magazine fell out of the bag and opened to the centerfold.  There, with 3 staples holding him together was this guy with a mustache and a smile.  He was the hairiest creature that wasn't a dog I had ever seen.  I felt baffled, yet intrigued, a little nauseous and very alone.  I began to look through the pages and noticed that some looked like pigs-in-a-blanket which I had once at a friend's house (we didn't have them because we were kosher) and some didn't.  I was so confused.  They looked like huge hairy worms.  I didn't know what to do.  I was scared.  My mother didn't discuss it with me at the time.  There was no question and answer session.  I didn't get a counseling session on her vomit colored rug surrounded by smiley faces posters like her students.  I was alone, in my room, listening to songs from Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" on my AM radio, paging through this magazine trying to process these visuals.

Years later my mother told me how impressed with herself she was.  "I thought it was very creative."  She was unaware I had been traumatized.  She didn't care.  She was too busy being self-congratulatory.  Images of fuzz and enormous caterpillars stayed with me for years.  Eventually I recuperated and (ironically) became a sex therapist and sex educator.  When I told this story to Dr. Masters while I was doing my internship at the Masters and Johnson Institute he semi-jokingly asked if I had any questions and concurred a homoerotic Playgirl in the hands of a 7 year old girl might not have been the best learning tool ever.  (This was from a guy that passed out vibrators like they were candy.)   Recently, I read Playgirl was ceasing publication.  That gives me a sense of closure, I suppose.

Camping

Bibi and Mani were friends of my parents.  They looked like they just stepped off the kibbutz in Israel- they were true hippies and I have no idea how this friendship originated.  We used to go over to their house for dinner and I was supposed to play with their daughter who didn't speak and eat their weird food.  I hated it.

One evening Bibi and Mani were extolling the wonders of camping.  I don't know how it happened but somehow my parents felt it would be a good idea to borrow Bibi and Mani's tent and go camping, too.  We were living in Milwaukee at the time so at some point that summer we piled into the Oldsmobile with the black vinyl seats and no air conditioner and headed north to the Wisconsin Dells.

When we arrived at the campsite my father immediately set out to put up Bibi and Mani's tent.  It was paper bag brown and it smelled.  It smelled so bad we had to open all the flaps and air the thing out before we could sleep in it that night.  It took my father hours to put the tent up.  I remember a lot of swearing.  Finally, he got the thing up and my mother began to make dinner on a hibatchi stove.  I was bored out of my mind.  I had with me some Nancy Drew mystery novels my aunt had sent me but there was way too much noise and distraction going on to read.  Instead of the sounds of nature I had my Dad screaming, "Mother-fucker god damn shit fuck" as he set up camp.  I'm sure the people around us were scared to death and wondering what the hell was going on at our site.   I was a bit nervous myself.

At some point, the tent's stench was reduced and it was time for bed.  The tent was not very big to begin with.  We slept on top of army cots in sleeping bags my father had rented that smelled, too.  Inside the tent was a "porto-potty" which was a plastic white toliet seat with a plastic bag attached to the bottom for midnight pees.  I thought it was weird we had the toliet inside the tent and I'm sure my mother insisted on it so she wouldn't have to be inconvenienced in any way.  There was also a space heater inside the tent because it would cool off at night and it would be unacceptable to be chilly.  My parents wanted the low cost of camping to include all the comforts of the Holiday Inn or another AAA approved motel.   So in our smelly brown tent with a toliet and a space heater we all drifted off to sleep.

At some point we were all awakened by another smell.  Something was burning.  It was the tent.  It was on fire.  Somehow my father managed to put the fire out but it was terrifying and I already wasn't having a  good time.  Honestly, I don't remember if we went home or if we stayed.  I didn't realize at the time how close we all came to something really tragic happening.  The truth is we had no business camping.  My father was much too concerned about my mother's comfort and convenience to consider basic safety.  Bibi and Mani were compensated for the destruction of their tent and we continued to camp for the next few years in our own tent and rented pop-up trailer. Thankfully, there was never another fire but there still always a lot of yelling and swearing and nobody ever really had a good time.  After a few years the tent was put up in the attic and we didn't camp anymore.  By that time we never really went on vacation  anyways.  I think the tent got thrown away during one of my parents many moves.  I don't think the friendship with Bibi and Mani lasted much longer either.  They were probably afraid of my parents and fearful of further destruction and ruin to their property or selves.  To this day I hate camping.  My husband loves it.  We've been together 17 years and we still haven't gone.  I consider this a success.

Hallway

It even started out badly.  It's not like it started out great and got worse because at least that would mean that at some point in the history of my life things were normal.  That if time randomly stopped, there would be a possibility that out of every second ever to pass it might stop on the one second in which my life was normal.  No, that wasn't the case.  It was always weird.  There wasn't even a "honeymoon" period.  My childhood was an immediate 7 year itch.

 I was born in Houston in June.  It was hot.  I know this because My parents brought me home from the hospital and already they were incompetent.  They lived in a one bedroom apartment and my crib was placed next to my mom's side of the bed where I was to be nursed, loved and nurtured.  The first night my parents decided I was to be wheeled out into the hallway outside of their closed door due to my mother and father not getting enough sleep.  I had the audacity to require feedings in the middle of the night.  I also may have needed to be burped and had my diaper changed, too.  So the obvious solution was to wheel me out into the hallway.  Soon it became evident that even though I was in the hallway I still required their attention so they hired Bertha.

Bertha was a hired baby nurse paid for by my grandmother to assist my parents in caring for their one perfect healthy newborn.  Bertha was paid to sleep on the couch, snore loudly and every few hours attend to me.  My parents then complained that Bertha's snoring was keeping them awake.  They were truly screwed.  Perhaps my mother had postpartum depression but I highly doubt it.  I think she was overwhelmed by the fact there was someone else in the world who might need something from her and  might require other people (my father) to pay attention to someone else.  I'm sure they were both thinking they made a terrible mistake and they should of just stuck with the cat.

There are no photos of Bertha, no evidence she really existed other than the fact that I'm still not sleeping in a hallway in an apartment in Houston.  Wherever you are, Bertha, thank you.  You were my first angel.  I wish you had stuck around for the next 18 years because things didn't improve all that much. Well, to be fair, I did eventually get upgraded to my own bedroom but that was about it.

No Miracles on W. 102nd Street

copyright 20th Century Fox

My mother lived for the first 12 years of her life on the Upper West Side.  She and her fraternal twin sister  had piano and cello lessons, they saw shows at Radio City Music Hall and they shopped at FAO Schwarz.  To me, it always sounded quite glamorous like something out of the movie, Miracle on 34th Street .  The reality of it was very different, however.

My grandfather was born in Brooklyn in 1914.  He was an only child and, according to my mother, adored by my great-grandmother  and resented by my great-grandfather.  He didn't go to college but he was a hard-worker.  His problem was he couldn't hold down a job and got fired from everything.  He loved football, the Republican Party, his pipe and women.  Lots and lots of women.  My mom always talked about him like he was some Jewish "Don Juankowsky" mixed with a little Jewish "Al Caponowitz."

My grandmother was born in Brooklyn to a very wealthy family.  She had a brother and a sister and two insane parents.  My great-grandmother was institutionalized many times throughout the course of her life, suffering from depression.  I have a lot more information about my grandmother because I was lucky enough to of spent time with her older brother (my great-uncle) before he passed away.  The family originated in Spain, migrating to Russia after the Great " Kick-Out -the -Jew Festival of 1492."  The family owned land which was unusual for a Jewish family but life in Czarist Russia became brutal with the onset of the progroms and everyone moved to the U.S where fortunes were made.

My grandmother didn't go to college.  She was a "party girl."  She met my grandfather at a resort in the Catskills.  So here was another maternal figure in my family not going to college, marrying "beneath her" and spending the rest of her life angry, resentful, depressed and ill-equipped to raise her own children.  My grandmother died when I was 7 after a short yet difficult bout with cancer.  I have very few memories of her.

I look back on these family histories and I am amazed.  It wasn't until I met my husband that I gained a true appreciation for it's dysfunctionality.  As I've gotten older and had a family of my own I feel more and more distanced from all that came before me.  Really, it's hard to imagine 2 people less equipped to have had a child than my parents.  They had to give their cat away before I was born because it was too much for them and they couldn't handle it.   I have no idea why they thought they could raise a human being.  As for my parents cat, it went to live with my grandparents in Yonkers and spent the rest of it's life under the kitchen table hissing at everyone.  It's no wonder why.

Soap

My father grew up in Yonkers in a very poor part of town. His father, my grandfather, worked at the GM plant and my grandmother did a little bookkeeping .  She also washed every piece of fruit with any kind of skin:  apples, pears, peaches with Rokeach kosher soap.  For those not familiar, in a kosher kitchen all meat and dairy is separate and cannot be mixed together.  There was a red bar of soap for the "meat" dishes and pans and a blue bar of soap for the "dairy" dishes and pans.  I'm not sure which one she used to furiously wash the fruit.

My father grew up in an orthodox Jewish family.  They were modern in their style and dress but the house was strictly kosher and all holidays and days of observance were strictly enforced.  My dad had a brother, 5 years younger.  My grandfather would get up very early, go to work, come home, eat and go to sleep.   When he was awake he would often be in front of the television smoking Camels watching, "The Little Rascals."  He and my father had a barely-existent relationship.

My grandfather left school after 3rd grade to be a "runner" on Wall Street.  He would run messages and papers from one building to another.  His father was born in Poland and came through Ellis Island in the late 1890's, escaping the extreme poverty and anti-semitism of the time.  Since my grandfather was not a man of many words I don't know much else.  I remember him being quiet and kind.  He would run to the store to get me Cocoa Puffs when I came to visit   He died on his son's (my dad) birthday when I was 12.

My grandmother was a much stronger presence and I know a lot more about her.  She was born in Lithuania and came to the U.S. when she was 2. She grew up in a middle-class home and came over through Ellis Island in 2nd class-not steerage- like most immigrants.  In 1920 my grandmother was offered a scholarship to Columbia University which was unheard of for a Jewish woman in those days. She declined the offer and spent the rest of her life blaming everyone else for her decision.

I can see how my father came to a place in his life whereby he would become a husband to a domineering and depressed woman as well as becoming a neglectful and absent father to his child.  So many patterns repeated.  So many lessons never learned.   I can say, however, that the fruit in my house growing up did not taste like soap.  So maybe some lessons were learned.