Night, Redux: Hold the Pierogis

A teacher sent this text response to a group of college students studying abroad:

A teacher. An educator. In Poland. Poland. Where a Jewish community of three million was all but obliterated during the Holocaust. In a world where precious few remain to bear witness, fewer still since the death of Elie Wiesel last week.

The activity that had been prepared was a cooking class. Had my friend told me his niece opted out of a tour of Auschwitz to attend a Polish cooking class, I would have been surprised and, yes, a little sad. It was the other way around though. She and her friends had passed up the once in a lifetime chance to stir up some Polish delicacies and chose, instead, to visit the Nazi death camp, stirring up something a bit less palatable.

Less than a week ago, I quoted Elie Wiesel, a teacher as well. An educator, a scholar, a survivor against all odds, long gone from his homeland, where his mother and sister were killed at Auschwitz, where, as a teenager, he listened, helpless, as his ailing father was beaten at Buchenwald. Like so many survivors of the Holocaust, like so many survivors of humanity's greatest atrocities, Wiesel could not speak of his experience for years. Survival, for many, seemed a fate at least equal to death.

It is because of Elie Wiesel, and countless other survivors, that we have any hope of doing better. It is because of their bravery, their willingness to confront their real life nightmares and break their silence, that we have any sense of what happened there, all those years ago. Night, Wiesel's widely read account of his horror, is an abridged version of the first memoir he wrote. It was called And the World Remained Silent. It's what we humans tend to do.

The thoroughly modern Polish teacher was sad, she said, that a small group of students would choose remembrance over pierogis, the kind that would no doubt forever ruin, for them, American made pierogis.  Don't get me wrong. I'm all about the food when I travel. Real Parisian French bread has ruined, for me, what passes for French bread at home. When in Rome, I happily eat what Romans eat, and you'll rarely find me hunting down a good old fashioned American hamburger when I am somewhere else. But this was a bit of authentic cuisine I could easily pass up.

I suppose I get why she was sad. It wasn't the Polish people who killed the Jews. And, even though lots of them remained silent or looked the other way, many more risked their own safety to protect their Jewish neighbors, or at least not betray them. Certainly, Jews are not massacred in modern day Poland -- in part because few remain, and in part because, at least I hope, evil is the exception, not the rule.

But history repeats itself, and holocausts keep happening -- maybe not on such a grand scale, but that's beside the point. I have two left feet, but I'd much rather dance the polka or bake pierogis than tour the Nazi ovens and imagine the stench from those smokestacks. Like the Polish teacher, I prefer not to be sad.

We all need to hold the pierogis, though, especially these days. Evil may still be the exception, but it is persistent. We need to stop looking the other way, stop being silent, start paying better attention. Modern day Poland, like modern day anywhere, is what it is because of what it once was, and its future depends on the choices people make today. My friend's niece chose Auschwitz (described by her father as "the opposite of Disney World") over sweet smelling Polish delicacies. A hard choice, but not really.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

Elie Wiesel, Night. 

Night. There and Here.

He said he belonged to a traumatized generation, and he wondered if the world would ever learn.

Yes, he did belong to a traumatized generation, and the jury is still out on whether the world will ever learn. By his own admission, up until the moment Elie Wiesel and his parents were rounded up like cattle and shipped off to death camps, they had no idea. Nazism and Fascism were certainly not new, nor were the yellow stars sewn to their clothing. But they, like most of us, could never have believed, in their wildest nightmares, how inhuman humans could be. And they, like most of us, could never have believed that it could happen to them. Happen to us. Happen here. 

Even the wisest among us are slow learners. On September 11, 2001, I watched in horror, from my suburban Chicago kitchen, as a familiar landmark from my childhood crumbled. I watched lower Manhattan go up in smoke as I dictated the scene by telephone to my brother, a doctor at St. Vincent's, only blocks away from the scene. They had been herded away from windows, left to bear witness with their noses and ears. My two older children were in middle school; the principal had assured them they were safe. Something bad had happened, but not here. 

Wrong. Even for the kids who did not have relatives in New York, who had not been there only months earlier, 9/11 was here. What happened that day has shaped our world, here, on what we all liked to think was the safe side of various large ponds. Rudely awakened from our fantasy of geographic isolation, we pulled together and we rebuilt and we grew accustomed to long security lines at airports and waited to buy our water bottles at the gate and we gradually returned to our fantasy. Again, we believed. Not here.

Not here, but in offices and restaurants and cafes and, yes, airports, in Paris and Brussels and Istanbul and Bangladesh and the skies over the Mediterranean and even right around the corner from  Disney World. Oh, but that was an LGBT club, so still, not here. Right.

Last night, I fell asleep half listening to a CNN series about the '80's. The decade of AIDs. I was reminded of the early days, when a mysterious strain of contagious cancer appeared to be killing gay men. Them, not us. I vaguely recalled that fantasy of "sexual orientation isolationism," the comfort so many of us took in knowing we were safe as long as we steered clear of seedy bath houses. That is, until Rock Hudson emerged from his well-heeled closet and Ryan White and all the others who didn't do anything "wrong" (or foreign) caught the bug.

We are learning the hard way, Elie Wiesel. Not first hand, maybe, the way he had to learn, but we are definitely learning. There will always be humans who are inhuman, and there will always be atrocities, and they will happen everywhere, including here.

We belong to a traumatized generation, and we are learning, but, like Elie Wiesel, we are left mostly with questions, not answers. At least we are all paying closer attention.

Overcoming Handicaps, Here and Abroad

The financial wizard who only weeks ago did not recognize the term Brexit was wicked quick to recognize the opportunity for self congratulation brought on by the Leave, even more wickedly quick to recognize the opportunity for personal profit at the expense of, well, just about everybody.

As markets plunged and Scotland contemplated their own Scexit, he snipped ribbons and touted the sprinkler system and the other world class amenities at his Scottish links, congratulating the Brits on the disuniting of their kingdom -- both from within and without. If there is a silver lining to turmoil, it  can be found in Trump's pockets.

Tearing myself away from the latest apocalyptic news cycle -- in and of itself bad enough, made worse as it morphed, like everything else does, into a publicity stunt for Trump -- I went for a bike ride. I needed to put me first, take my sanity back.

About ten minutes in, I passed a one-legged rider.  He pedaled by as if nothing was amiss, propelled with perfect speed and balance by a spandex-clad muscular right leg and a phantom left. I hoped he didn't notice the somewhat impolite stare that  accompanied my standard polite nod.

I glanced back as he glided past, and, not surprisingly, I veered off the path. I fought with every fiber of my being -- which is essentially intact except for a bunch of brain cells I never used anyway -- to stay upright. I have yet to master the art of unclipping from the pedal in time to prevent a bruising fall. Somehow, I didn't go down.

I thought about the one-legged rider, who must compensate, always. In his deficit he has found strength and determination, not to mention balance and grace. He has made the best of what some might see as a bad situation. Kind of like Trump and Brexit. Not.

Well, I suppose there's some similarity. The buffoon who could very well become our next president has a few deficiencies, not the least of which is a complete absence of principles. Unless we consider self-aggrandizement to be a principle. And racism. And xenophobia. And stuff like that. It's not surprising that he was able to express great faith in the ill advised referendum, and take full credit for, if not predicting the outcome, not getting it wrong like his "pathetic" opponent did. He has compensated, yet again, for his phantom principles with remarkable bombast. His ignorance is his bliss. And everybody's loss is his profit. He is, come to think of it, the paragon of overcoming adversity.

I don't pretend to be a graceful bike rider; nor do I pretend to understand international currencies. Conversion factors and devaluation confuse me, and, ultimately, one more country without euros won't affect my behavior. As far as I'm concerned, if it's not a green back, it's Monopoly money. Kudos to Trump for his acute understanding of how all this can benefit him.

And, I suppose, kudos to Trump for giving full faith to and taking full credit for what appears to be a global campaign for hatred and exclusion and the dismantling of mosaics and the return to a bunch of warring master races. Kudos to over-compensating for a phantom moral core.

YES!!!!

Brooklyn, circa a lifetime ago

Years ago, I said "no" to wedding dress shopping at Kleinfeld's, back when it was still the venerable old shop on a street corner in Brooklyn. My mom had little interest in participating in my "marrying out" -- both in terms of religion and geography, and I had even less interest in having an audience while I stuffed my less than svelte body into Cinderella style gowns that had never really been the stuff of my dreams.

If I ever had any regrets, I've long gotten over them. My guess is it wouldn't have been all that much fun anyway. Certainly not as much fun as watching my own daughter try on wedding gowns yesterday, at the Kleinfeld's of Say Yes to the Dress television fame, the Kleinfeld's that eventually outgrew its gritty Brooklyn britches and settled into a glitzier Manhattan address.

Reality can often suck compared to fantasy, but the reality of wedding dress shopping at Kleinfeld's with my daughter was at least as good, if not better, than what reality television had led me to expect. The website had warned against an entourage larger than three, and we were a little nervous about showing up as a pack of five (plus the bride). As it turns out, we were not the only ones bucking the rules, which were apparently more soft plea than hard and fast. The lobby was abuzz with small crowds, all at least fifteen minutes early for the first appointment of the day.

I admit I was a bit starstruck as the consultants appeared, one by one, the ladies I had gotten to know so well from many guilty hours spent binge watching Say Yes. Nobody seemed shocked by the oversized entourages, and the greetings were the same as they were on television: Where's my bride? Who did you bring with you? My daughter picked her sister to head back with her for the initial chit chat -- tell me about the groom, how did you meet, where will the wedding be -- while grandma, future mother-in-law, honorary other mom, and I sat in our assigned chairs and gazed at the glittering gowns and chatted with the other spectators.

We voted on each others' daughters, we nudged brides-to-be we had never met toward our own preferences. We shared joy and did the best we could, all of us, to bury any sorrows we brought with us. It was a morning of optimism and magic, more than we could have imagined. I've launched all of my children many times, and have repeatedly endured the odd combination of thrill and abject fear. I thrill for them and fear from them every day. That's just how it goes.

But tough feminist independent me, the chubby and insecure girl who passed up a lot of the ritual all those years ago, felt nothing but joy yesterday. I want everything for all my children, but yesterday, all I wanted -- and what I got -- was Cinderella.

Soft Targets, Hard Times

I spend my days, as most people do, moving in and out of soft targets. Still, I don't give it much thought, not even as I trudge up to my seat after a cursory bag search and a swift trip through a metal detector that would have to emit a ridiculously loud beep to penetrate the din of the crowd.  I am plagued more by feelings of discomfort about my advanced age and decidedly non-edgy outfit (not to mention sweltering heat) than by fear of becoming a sitting duck in a concert venue turned war zone. 

Which is not to say I don't worry. Every morning, I turn on the news with half averted eyes and ears, startled more by an absence of tragedy than yet another "Special Report." And with each new breaking news cycle of breaking spirits and breaking hearts, I take a quick mental inventory of my children and their whereabouts, assuring myself they are out of harms way.  At least this time around. 

We all wonder where we can go in a world where there is no longer such a thing as a safe haven. We can think twice all we want about our next trip to Paris or Brussels or Tel Aviv, but how do we think twice about simply staying home. Has the world really become such a place? 

Trump's incoherent rant on CNN this morning about all the haters out there and about how there will be even more haters if Hillary gets elected (that was his answer to the policy question) notwithstanding, I like to think the world is not such a place. I like to think our country certainly is not such a place. I know, for a fact, that when I walk out my door each morning with my dog, Eli, my corner of the world is anything but. 

My corner of the world. Eli's world. Where people of all ages and a startling variety of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds stop to greet us and play. Eli's world, a world where an unpredictable and, let's face it, bizarre looking creature gets everybody to stop and smile and have a conversation with a complete stranger. Eli's world, where everything is a soft target of aggressive love and affection. Eli's world, where, despite constant rebuffs, he even reaches out to cats. 

Yesterday, as I sat getting to know the women on my summer tennis team, laughing off our scores and appreciating the post match goodies, we discussed an upcoming gathering. "I'll be there, as long as my Alaska cruise ship doesn't become the next target," said the woman next to me. We all assured her she'd be fine. Just as fine as we will all assuredly be, right here at home. Finer, probably; a cruise ship is hardly a soft target. 

In Eli's world, and in the world I like to think still exists, it is our softness that makes us human, not targets. It is the outpouring of love and solidarity after tragedy that reminds me of that, and gives me hope. 

Barbie with the Bad Hair

My first Barbie doll was my only Barbie doll.

Barbie and I were both born in the late 1950's. Barbie and I both had lots of clothing. My mother loved to shop, and Mattel had not yet figured out that it was far more lucrative to switch out Barbies than simply change their outfits. If I wanted my Barbie to look serious and smart, the best I could do was pull off her slinky dress and stuff her into a pair of seersucker shorts and substitute her red high heels for basic black. Barbie in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around her neck had not been packaged.

Stripped down -- as she usually was -- my Barbie had an idealized body - long lean legs, made longer by pointed feet propped up at a steep pitch by flexed toes, (flointed, as phrased by a favorite yoga instructor), narrow hips, an anatomically impossible tiny waist, and nipple-less boobs raised in a permanent salute. I could only dream of the day when my skinny-limbed, pot-bellied frame would morph into something Barbie-like. Fifty something years later, notwithstanding lots of morphing, I'm still dreaming, still waiting.

My Barbie had a particularly hideous hairdo, coarse and bouffant-ish, which I credit, in part, with my early decision to give away most of her clothes and abandon her naked and partially limbless body, along with my girlish Keds, for books and Mets games and boys' Adidas and unkempt hair in a long, stringy pony tail. Envy about her perfect, nipple-less and orifice-less body aside, my self-esteem remained in tact largely because her hair looked, and felt, like a Brillo pad.

Well before Dr. Barbie and Astronaut Barbie and Attorney Barbie burst onto the shelves, I had fantasized more about becoming a doctor or an astronaut or a lawyer -- or President -- than a woman who could look great in white tee shirts without a bra. Even in my fantasies, I was a realist. Still, I spared no expense on Barbies when my own daughters were little. Like my single Barbie with the bad hair, most of my daughters' Barbies landed in a trash heap, naked plastic amputees with flointed feet (or foot), stripped of their clothes and, with far more to lose than their original counterparts, their  professional credentials.

The wildly gay man who cuts my hair collects dolls, and Barbie and Ken make up a good part of his menagerie. He has promised me a vintage Barbie, one with the coarse bouffant hairdo that he picked up downstate for under fifty bucks. He wants to make her more presentable for me first, to smooth out and restyle her hair. I have to admit, I am looking forward to seeing her, all these years later. I know she hasn't changed a bit, but I wonder if she will look different to me, through my beholder eyes.

Will I still envy her long lean limbs and her impossibly small waist and her nipple-less boobs while I comfort myself with her imperfect hair and the notion that I, unlike her, can be anything I want to be, whether I change clothes or not? Will I resent her for her absence of back fat, her flawless, unwrinkled complexion, her factory original parts all still where they began, defying gravity and time?

Barbie, circa nineteen sixty-something, might be exactly the same, but Barbie (the brand) and I have been through a lot of changes and, kudos to both of us, we are still standing, and I imagine her ankles hurt, just like mine, from years of high heels. We have become, in our own ways, women to admire, whether it's because of the outfits we wear or the diplomas we hang, or the dark circles and wrinkles and back fat that may cover, but never obliterate, the dreamers we have always been.

Bringing the Mountain to . . . the Donald?

Welcome to the friendly confines!

The greeting was repeated over and over on banners hanging end to end over the row of metal detectors slowing admission into the old ball park to a crawl. Even in the rain, nobody seemed fazed, either by the inconvenience or the paradox. Baseball, post 9/11 style.

Nothing surprises us these days. A three hour wait in the security line at the airport is par for the course. A guy in khakis and a Cubs polo doing a full body screening with his buzzing wand on an already tipsy baseball fan in tight shorts and a ripped jersey. An insult hurling, racist, and mostly incoherent buffoon sailing past the conventional old candidates in a sort of bizarre POTUS pre-check where regular old rules simply do not apply.

I vaguely remember when Cassius Clay became Muhammed Ali. He was big, black, and a boxer; had he appeared in my predominantly White middle class neighborhood back then -- even in notoriously liberal mosaic-y Brooklyn -- my mother would have gathered us close and feigned mama bear style fearlessness while, beneath her designer pants suit, she shook with fear. He was different enough, to someone like me, as Cassius Clay. The conversion and the name change were just icing on the cake.

Though I admit I was never much of a boxing fan, I have known for some time that Ali had long ago transcended what brought him into the public eye in the first place. The glitzy, telegenic, trash talking fighter fought his toughest battles outside the ring. Battles that were not about his own medals or the size of his crowds or blood drawn from his counterpunches, battles that were not, by any stretch, just about him. The boxer laid down his gloves and fought with words and deeds for things that really matter. Peace, respect, standing on principles -- not crushing them.

Talk about a paradox. We watch through half spread fingers as Donald Trump turns his bully pulpit into a bloody ring, punching and counter punching and bouncing around like a rabid animal with bloody foam dripping from the corners of his mouth. Nobody even tries to wrestle him back into his corner. He is anger and irrationality and spite unleashed, and when he climbs through the ropes, he will never lay down his gloves. He will never fight for anything that really matters to anybody except himself.

Look at my African American over here. His version of some of my best friends are black. Or his take on beauty and brains: Those guys know even less than that beautiful young woman over there. There's nothing wrong with being born with a silver spoon in your mouth; it's just that his somehow got wedged in his brain. He identifies people by color or by place of birth or by gender or by girth, but as far as he's concerned, they are all the same in that they are not him and therefore they are beside the point. Who woulda thunk it? Donald Trump -- the greatest equalizer.

Had Muhammed Ali not died this week, he may well have been deported next year. The worst that can happen now, with a Trump administration, is a bit of turning in his grave. I don't know why I was so surprised by the metal detectors at Wrigley with the happy signs above them welcoming everyone in to the friendly confines. I don't know why I was surprised that none of the folks waiting in the rain to pass through seemed fazed. Hey, some of my best friends are Cubs fans.