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.