Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
Someone once said, or I once heard someone say, that you can only know yourself by what you know about your grandparents. If that is the case, then that explains why I know so little. When I was young, I had a couple of grandmothers but no grandfathers. All of these wrinkly old people were shrouded in mystery to me… who were they and what did they actually mean to me? My old grandmother, my Bubi who was around when I was young, had cat’s eyes bejewelled glasses, framing her soft face. In my memory she wore blue rayon tent dresses and had a blue couch with white trim that she covered in plastic. But what do I actually know about her? There were loud tall men around her — turns out they were my uncles. She let me chop liver with this three-bladed device that chopped — something I have since spent a lifetime looking for.
Either they were all so loud, or I am creating a personal history mash-up with a more romantic Woody Allen version of my life. How did my Dad ever cope with this noise? He, who my whole life hated noise, was always telling me to be quiet, who continues this tradition by demanding silence from my two crazy and active little men. Where did that intolerance come from? Couldn’t be from Bubi, maybe it was his Dad? The man I never knew but from a picture. What do I know about him?
He was a mystery that I romanticised endlessly over — didn’t he smuggle people out of war-torn Europe? Didn’t he help refugees find a new and better life? Wasn’t he a hero of some sort? He tried to smuggle himself out and it was that journey, looking like an Italian living in Jamaica (yes, somehow specifically ambiguous, but we are talking about what I know about my grandparents, not about what makes any sense). He got caught, he got himself deported to Canada and from there somehow re-entered the US.
These are their facts as I know it. They lost everyone who wasn’t with them. The family seemed huge to me, and still does, but this is only an indication of the vastness that was lost. Is this why community and family are important to me? They owned a furniture store in Chicago — is this why I have a weakness for mid-century furniture and architecture? What did they think of my Mom? Did I hear, or was that another story, that they didn’t much like her until I was born?
Did my mother’s family feel any better about Dad? I know they thought she would never marry. I knew both of my Mom’s parents, well, that may be a stretch of the language. I share no language, I share no culture and I share no living history with them. This is the mirror of my relationship to my mother, in spite of giving me life and growing me up, she professes no understanding or cultural closeness with me or my choices. This is what I know about them: My grandfather, my ojiisan, he killed people. He did horrible things. Things that I am only now starting to understand – not from him or through him, but from the viewpoint of historical judgment. Ojiisan had bullet holes in his body. Obaachan was considered a beauty and was wealthy until he squandered it all. My mother grew up in the vastness of disappointment, anger and doubt.
This is what I know about me. I find it easier to understand my father and the horrors of his past are more familiar to me. Is it racist that my mother has always been the “other” to me? While his Jewishness has always been a club I have tried to enter, her Japaneseness has always been an inconvenience. As I grow up I am trying to build a bridge back over to her side – but this is not something that she makes easy for me. Perhaps the years that we have spent on opposing sides has left a permanent scar, perhaps she is merely human.
Twitter @noeharsel