She grew up loving animals. She trained guinea pigs to jump over DVD boxes set up steeple-chase style. She was central to the training of our two poodles. Now she is an office manager training people. Her biggest challenge to date: Trying to train her boyfriend to eat healthfully. Will she succeed?
When Star Wars debuted in Cleveland (Star Wars: A New Hope), My husband and I were in the midst of moving from our delightfully cozy world to a new one. He had been offered a job in Washington, D.C. This was a difficult move for me, as my family was in Cleveland, and I had never lived anywhere else. We had a two bedroom apartment in an old but tony suburb. It was large and spacious, with wood floors and a fireplace. The ceilings were at least ten feet high, and the place was within walking distance to Shaker Square, home of the Shaker Rapid Transit. The Rapid still had its 1930's cars with windows that opened. It went straight down to the Terminal Tower, now known as Tower City in the heart of downtown Cleveland. We had many friends from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and from Trinity Cathedral where we were paid soloists. Our situation was as perfect as possible. My husband received an offer he couldn't refuse, so we prepared to move. The night before we drove to D.C.,...
She started crying two weeks ago and couldn't stop. So she wouldn't go down to meals at Sunrise because she'd cry, and "people would be annoyed". "How can you tell they are annoyed, Mom?" "Because they ignore me." "Maybe they are ignoring you because they don't know what else to do?" "No. They are annoyed. I'll stay in my room." She stopped eating, and called my sister over and over. She cried, sobbed and gulped like an abandoned child. She wouldn't watch TV because, "I used to watch TV with Gordon." She wouldn't read because, "I read when I was with Gordon". Gordon, her husband of 28 years, died in March. She went to Sunrise directly from a stay in a nursing facility where she lived while Gordon died slowly, with much struggle, and a conviction that he'd make it, and take care of her again. He promised her. She believed him whole-heartedly. She misses him dreadfully. But she won't...
Mom as a child. My Mother had a secret war. She didn't take it to the streets, or join with others to wage it. In her heart she held beliefs that were mightily opposed to the popular opinion of her time. She taught me that African Americans were not N****s, as the neighbors said. They were "colored people, or Negroes". They were people like us. But she taught these things quietly, as if fearing someone would overhear. The most powerful, long-lasting oppression she held within her was the oppression of Anti-Semitism . She falsified her applications for work after she quit high school because they asked for her religion. She wrote, "Protestant", instead. In one of her first jobs she was routinely called the "Jew Girl" . This she wanted to avoid in the future. When I was small, she counseled me to never tell anyone I was half Jewish. We lived in a second-generation Roman Catholic neighborhood in Willowick, Ohio. I told, anyway. I thought, if ...
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