Making the connection

It was easier, oh - so much easier, to see him as a relative living in a faraway land. Not that he isn't still living far away, but he's becoming so much more to me.

In a more and more insistent manner my family history is pressing itself into my life. Actually, maybe I am seeking it out, becoming more aware of the little signs in my everyday life. Who knows how these things happen.

My family's history has always been something of which I was proud - the diversity, the amazing stories of exotic places, adventures, and survival. My grandparents have lived lives that are inspiring in so many ways, and their stories have never seized to amaze or enthral me. I have listened to endless repetitions of journeys to China that took months, life in suburban Long Island, and once in a rare while second hand stories of those moments that are too tough to be spoken by those who experienced them.

The history that has been nearing my consciousness is the life of my maternal grandfather. Granpa's is perhaps the most difficult to deal with and understand, and I have a feeling that the signs I have been sensing over the last while are sparking some kind of consciousness within me, pushing me to, if not be able to understand, then at least reflect on the importance his life holds over mine.

Since moving to the UK three and a half years ago I have learned of a distant relative. I am sure my mother or aunts have spoken of her before, but she never registered in my world until my mom arranged for her to meet up with the whole family, who had come to London to visit me. She seemed lovely, a bit feisty, and certainly a very self-confident woman who rested in an awareness of herself. I was going through personal issues at the time, and was in no way interested in taking up her friendly offer of coming to stay with her in Devon. "What, me, visit some woman I've just met in the middle of nowhere? I don't think so. I don't care that she sees some obscure family link. Besides, I'm upset and confused and hurting right now."

Over a year later my mom came to visit and arranged for us to go to Devon to see her in the countryside. It was lovely. I then realised that my mom's side of the family are her only surviving family. My grandfather's cousin was her mother, which I think means that she is my second cousin once removed. The vast majority of her family succumbed during the second world war, which makes sense. So did most of my Granpa's. This link is seemingly obvious but never the less to me this link was hard to make initially. She is family. I just didn't know her.

We had a lovely time, and I have stayed in touch with her since, visiting her a couple of times. I like to think that we are building a warm relationship. I appreciate her a lot. I even dreamt of her and my granpa recently. Since then I have finally managed to join her for a meeting of the group of second generation holocaust survivors she attends. I snuck in as a third generation, as I had been hoping to over the last year.

Two days later Granpa had a stroke. The frequency of connections made in my head to my grandfather and to the hardships he has endured are becoming denser. I wonder if it's because I am "ready" now to deal with this now, or it is because he is getting older. Or because the very presence of her in my life is a reminder of the preciousness of family ties, and she sees the connection between the holocaust and our family's development. It's horrific to finally be opening up to realities my grandfather faced, only to realise how vulnerable and fragile the memory of it is in his hard worn body. Who will know his hardships when he has passed?

Today is Holocaust Memorial day. I have never observed this before, but it strikes me and strengthens my feeling that I am pursuing something of great importance to me. My family history. A history that reaches beyond me and you, and touches on something deeper in all of us. I'm sorry to say it, but it's love, darling, and hope.

Link - family stories

An amusing link that somehow reminds me of when my mom with a laugh says 'let's hav sum kwa-fee!' in a thick new-yorkan accent, reminiscing the time she lived there with her parents. In a modest light blue house, in West Islip on Long Island, with apple and plum trees in the well-kept garden laden with heavy vegetables resulting from the labour of my grandfather, and thick beige carpets and dark wood furniture, lace curtains and a little collection of jewellery and other trinkets my grandmother had found on the way to work in the cafeteria at a local school.

The stairs led up and doubled back on themselves, turning the corner to the children's section; two smallish rooms filled with the wonder of memories of my mother and her sisters' lives as children, in a dusty, heavy air somehow permeating the house even though my grandmother went to great extents to keep the house airy and clean. That was before she fell ill, of course, before her diabetes and other ailings made her bed-ridden, before they sold the house and moved away from her beloved ocean. Before she passed away.

In her childhood space, the story of how my mother as a child collected baseball cards with gold markings emblazoning Joe DiMaggio and all the other heroes of that time spilled from her lips in an impassioned whisper, the story of a treasure collected and expanded over years and years and stored in a shoe box in the depth of her room. Once, when my mother returned as a grown woman, the shoe box was no longer there and it had been given to the son of family friend.

My grandfather would take me shopping, we got into the car and turned down the quiet suburban street and the local mall of shops would appear, one-storey buildings along a way too wide road. Or we would go to the large supermarkets to buy dinner, to buy the few things that my grandmother would eat, after her operation. No cheese, not even on a pizza. And still, she'd pick at what was on her plate, seemingly not interested but knowing that she should, she really should.

White and blacks and primary colours were restricted in the paintings my grandfather produced, an extreme geometric tightness of circles and squares in harmonious compositions. Grandma painted in naturalistic style, soft, warm, intense colours, and often with the seagulls that for her personified freedom and liberty. She painted my mother on several occasions, and on one occasion she let me bring home with me a painting of a woman in a green dress, seated in a warm orange and red tableau with a cup on a table. My mom wasn't sure, but it is a picture of her. Grandma has included some of my mom's facial features, and to me there can be no doubt. Grandpa wrapped it in bubble foam, one, two, three layers, wrapped it in brown paper card and secured it with a coarse string, holding the painting in its wrapping and providing a well-thought handle for the long transportation across the ocean to its new home.

They would sometimes go to the sea promenade, with grandma painting and both selling their paintings, or so my mom has told me. I can just imagine them in the crisp sunshine, carefully crafted paintings in hand, near the sea, seagulls soaring over their heads as they gently speak to people browsing their paintings. Grandpa does the negotiating while grandma, perhaps, simply continues painting.