Art By Barbara Kiwa k
LOOKING BACK
A Glimpse Of The
Past And Future
Visiting Rose in an old age home
speaks to the novel in our lives.
DAVID MARGOLIS
n
Special to The Jewish News
ose is 75 years old and
widowed. Small and
birdlike (Jewish
women, remarks a friend, end
up either like grand boats or
tiny birds), she is a feisty and
energetic woman who lives at
a residence center — what
used to be called an "old age
home" — on a busy street in
a Jewish neighborhood in Los
Angeles.
Soon after I met Rose,
she told me her dream: that
the story of her late husband
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FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1990
Sid's life and all her treasured
memories of him would turn
out to have value not only as
lives lived, but as a "proper-
ty" as well. That is, she hopes
for a producer or publisher —
and to make some money on
the deal.
It is one of the great human
fantasies that somehow we
will find a way to save our
lives for posterity while we
get paid for them in the here-
and-now. Most people, how-
ever, never pursue the idea of
a movie or book based on
their lives. But Rose is a
go-getter.
Last year, she taped her
story, had it typed — 17
single-spaced pages — and
sent it out to one of the local
Jewish weeklies. It came back
with a kind letter explaining
why they couldn't use it:
much too long, not quite in-
teresting or original enough,
not really organized or
pointed.
The problem is that Rose,
like most of us, doesn't
understand her own story.
She concentrates on telling
Sid's story, as if she can't
place herself fully in her own
life. And her story has no
theme, only a chronology: Sid
immigrates from Russia,
spends his boyhood in an
orphanage, has a brief career
as a boxer, works in ethnic
ward politics —
I sit with Rose in her room
while she recounts her story.
The room is decorated in
shades of orange, an odd in-
stitutional attempt to be
cheerful, perhaps. The whole
building smells slightly
sweet, the way hospitals
sometimes do — like oatmeal.
Everyone here is old. They
take day trips or socialize,
watch TV or wait for visitors
or meals. They play cards,
write letters, participate in
planned activities. Segre-
gated by age, they are most-
ly invisible in the larger
world.
When we are 20, we can't
imagine 40. When we are 40
.. I am only just beginning
to be able to imagine myself
physically shrunken, my life
contracted, worried about
falls, monitored regularly by
doctors, full of general
achings and tiredness and
perhaps more serious illness,
knowing I am soon to depart
while the world goes on
without me.
Maybe I'll become wise by
then. Somehow I doubt it.
And yet the ego, that
triumphant muscle, apparent-
ly doesn't weaken with age.
Rose is still working at her
plans like a person half her
age — she still wants and is
trying to get.
She knows her story needs
work. But she believes it is a
good story. (And she needs
money.)
I am moved by Rose as a
writer partly because I share
her plight. What to tell, what
to leave out, what the point of
the story is — these are ques-
tions that I, on chapter 12 of
a novel-in-progress, am also
dealing with every day, for as
many hours as I can find.
It is easier to help Rose
than myself. Her story, as I
see it (but she doesn't), is
about the degeneration of a
Jewish family and of the
Jewish community in general.
It's about how Rose, who has
two grown daughters and
who used to have a husband,
a home of her own and some
money in the bank, is now in
a "residence," dependent on
handouts from her sister. The
story is ours, not Rose's
husband's.'
And it could be a colorful
and compelling story — the
young boxer, the teeming
neighborhood, the city
politics. Sid is a tremendous-
ly likable and popular guy.
But there are weaknesses in
his character and great
stresses in the family's life,
culminating in a car accident
on a rainy night, when he hits
and kills a neighborhood
woman. The politics of the
neighborhood turn against
him, and afterward he suffers
a nervous breakdown — re-
fuses to come out of his room
at first, then sits frozen on
the curb outside.
The two daughters are 12
years apart in age, hardly able
to be friends, the elder
already out of the house while
the younger is still growing
up. After the accident, the
younger daughter must be
pressed into helping her
parents earn a living. She
grows up amid the guilt, the
grief, the fearful dislocations
of a shattered family life, feel-
ing trapped and taken advan-
tage of as the father develops
the chronic diseases that will
end his life 14 years later.
And all the themes of dis-
sension and insufficiency
despite tremendous effort
flower into this: a birdlike old
woman in a "home," her elder
daughter distant, her
younger — so the mother
claims — having wrested
away her life savings and the
deed to her house, leaving her
dependent on handouts and
the high ambitions of the ego.
Boyle Heights, the original
Jewish neighborhood in Los
Angeles, is no longer Jewish
— that time is past — and
Jewish institutions perform
the duties that families once
shouldered.
A final scene: After she
tells me her story, Rose says
she loves to sing. Would I like
to hear her? Yes, of course.
She is very pleased. Laughing
and crying at the same time,
she sings "Oh, How We
Danced on the Night We
Were Wed," the entire song,
chorus and verses. Her voice
is scratchy and gropes in and
out of the tune, but there is
evidence of the warmth and
range it had in the earlier,
happier time. Perhaps she
sang this song for her hus-
band, when he was alive. I sit
near her in the orange room
and listen, keeping her
company.
Yes, there could be a novel
here. Not too sentimental a
novel, though. Rose can weep
for herself, but she doesn't
feel sorry for herself. She is 75
years old and still calculating
how to make some money out
of the story of her life. ❑
David Margolis writes from
Los Angeles, where he is a
Contributing Editor of the
L.A. Jewish Journal.