I finished writing a brief memoir of my relationship with my aunt, Edith Leon. I am not going to give much of an introduction to this piece, but let it speak for itself. I promised her one day that I would finish it and publish it. Today I have done both.
A VISIT TO VERONAChristopher Bogart
Over the years that I have been visiting her, my aunt and I have developed certain traditions. Nothing fancy. Just simple traditions. Like the lunch she makes when I arrive in her apartment. Or the walk we take in Verona Park. Dinner at Meile’s or Caldwell Diner or Linda’s Chicken. Most often at Linda’s. We have at times varied this itinerary over the years with shopping trips into Montclair or the Verona Arts and Crafts Fair or Eagle Rock State Park. But mostly, it is lunch in the apartment, a walk in Verona Park, and dinner at Linda’s Chicken. “Chris.” She says with a big grin on her face as if she is hiding a secret like maybe I won the million-dollar lottery. “They have creamed spinach today!” In all honesty, their creamed spinach is delicious. Spiced and creamed just right. And their chicken! Cooked over an open fire until it is crispy and juicy. Their side orders, like the acorn squash or their smashed potatoes, are equally mouth watering. But it isn’t just Linda’s Chicken or Verona Park that bring me up to the mountains far too infrequently. It is my Aunt Edie.
My aunt and I are not even really blood related. She and my Uncle Sey were friends of my father and mother from before I was born. I was born and raised a Catholic, sent to Catholic grammar schools, Catholic high schools and a Catholic college. My aunt Edie is Jewish, from Polish Jewish stock that emigrated here at the turn of the century. But over the years of shared laughter, shared conversation, shared loss and shared joy, she and I have become mishpocheh. Family.
And well she should be. She has been a constant presence in my life and in my memory. Through old black and white pictures, I have a continuum of images of her in my mind of the beautiful young dark-haired woman of my youth, sitting on a blanket in the park, her hair cascading down her back to the wise little elf with the pixie cut of hair the same color in her seventies as the woman in the park of my youth. Her face still retains that same guileless innocence; her eyes, that same twinkle of mischief and mirth. It is as if she has not passed a single day since the first day I met her for the lines of age in her face merely underline the virtues already present and comfortable in her nature. And the awe I have always had of her, the mystery that has surrounded many raven-haired beauties of history, surrounds her still. On the day my father took me for my first haircut as a very little boy, I lifted my head from my tears to see a picture on the calendar hanging on the wall in the barbershop of a raven-haired young woman sitting on a blanket, her long dark tresses flowing over her naked shoulders, her scarlet lips in a pout. “Look!” I cried out with glee, pointing to the calendar on the wall. “Aunt Edie!”
My aunt is a child of the Great Depression, much like my mother is; and, like all children born during a time when money and jobs were scarce, they learned certain lessons about life. Just not the same lessons. My mother, like other children that had experienced the Depression, came to adulthood swearing that their children would never live the way they had. As a result, my generation struggles with excess weight given us by our parents in an effort to be sure we were never hungry. When my family had company, let’s say four or five visitors, there was food for twenty on the table. I don’t know whether they did it because they could or because they wanted people to believe they could. Whatever the reason, it had the same result- the support of a thriving health and fitness industry from fad diets, great abs, exercise programs and exercise equipment that can be folded up and shoved under the bed when not in use. But that’s not the lesson my aunt learned from the Great Depression.
Frugality. That’s what my aunt learned from the Great Depression. And she learned it the hard way. She grew up in New York City at a time when immigrant families got by on the barest of necessities. She has told me of stuffing cardboard into old shoes to cover the holes in the soles, of wearing two and three summer-weight hand -me-down jackets in snow as a substitute for a winter coat, and of looking at clothing as functional not in a stylistic sense, but as practical necessity. She and her brothers and sisters learned at an early age to become smart shoppers, not by comparing prices to look for the best buys, but when her family was not able to pay their tab at the neighborhood store, of finding different food merchants that did not know them and would offer them the credit that they desperately needed to eat and survive. Toys were whatever discarded items were available. An empty carton or wooden crate. A broken and discarded baby carriage. With a little imagination, these could be transformed into an escape from the mean streets of the city, and the drab and bare existence they represented. It was these ghosts that taught valuable lessons in the frailty of human existence, lessons not soon forgotten.
I was sitting at her kitchen table on one of my most recent visits, watched her make my sandwich. She lay the small leaves of lettuce on the roll as though she was laying a newborn infant into a crib. And as I watched the care in which she handled the very food that we would be devouring in a matter of minutes, I realized the deep respect she had for this necessity of life. It reminded me of one time when she had come to my house for dinner, and was watching me clean up after the meal. “What are you doing with that?” she asked me.
“With what?” I asked, almost unaware that I was doing anything special.
“With that broccoli.”
What broccoli, I thought. There was only one stalk left in the bowl. “I don’t know.” I responded, somewhat confused. “Throwing it away.”
“Don’t throw it away.” She said, gently but firmly. “There are people in the world that would kill for that food.”
I looked down at the stalk of broccoli dumbly. “What am I going to do with it?”
”Put it in a little plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.”
“For what?” I asked, still not getting it.
“You can put it salad tomorrow for lunch. With a little oil and vinegar.” I looked into her face, and saw an expression that was trying to convince me of the reasonableness of the suggestion. And of its importance.
And as I watched her in her own kitchen spreading the tuna salad on the lettuce, I was further reminded of the importance that food had in her early life. And to the lengths she had to go to insure its continued presence to her family in her childhood. She placed two slices of tomato on each sandwich, and then wrapped the half tomato remaining in plastic wrap and placed it in the fridge. The images of childhood can be a great consolation in adulthood; and the ghosts of childhood can teach frightening and unforgettable lessons.
And while my aunt still values the importance of frugality as a virtue, she also values generosity as a virtue of equal importance. The juxtaposition of these two virtues have sometimes confused me, but always taught me how complex and yet wonderful her character is, and how gracefully she wears it. I called her one August day a few years ago, and, in conversation, mentioned that I had been at the beach and found a ten-dollar bill on the sand at the water’s edge, snagged in a piece of old fishing netting.
“Put it in the bank.” She stated unequivocally.
“Why?” I asked out of curiosity. Sometimes I wonder whether I ever learn.
“Found money makes money. Put it in the bank and it will make you more money.”
What did I have to loose? So the following day I went to the bank and deposited the faded ten-dollar bill in my savings account. The following afternoon when the mail arrived, I noticed a card from my aunt. Inside it read, “Thinking of you. Love, Aunt Edie.” And in the card was a check for one thousand dollars.
I called my aunt. “What’s this all about?” I asked her.
“Uncle Sey and I were talking and we decided that we’d like to give you some money so that you don’t have to wait for us to die to enjoy it. This way we’ll be alive to see you enjoy it.”
“That’s not necessary.” I said, a little embarrassed by the generosity of the gift.
“I know it’s not necessary.” Was her quick response. “It’s something we wanted to do. That’s all.”
“OK.” I said contritely. “Thank you.”
“Your welcome.” She responded simply. There was a brief moment of silence as I tried to think of something more original to say. But she beat me to the punch.
“See. I told you found money makes money.” I could almost see the twinkle in her eye over the phone lines. She had gotten me. “Put it in the bank.” She added. “It will be part of the down payment on a house one day.”
She was right. That money was the beginning of a drive to save and bank over the following two years. And in August, just two years after I had found that ten-dollar bill, I bought my first house.
“You ready to go?” my aunt asks me as she rinses the lunch dishes in the kitchen sink.
“Sure.” I respond, and we leave the apartment and walk down Bloomfield Avenue toward Verona Park. “I want to stop at the Luncheonette and get a lottery ticket.” She comments to me as we stride down Bloomfield Avenue, her two steps to every one of mine. Sometimes we stop at the Pharmacy to see what new sales they are having. And sometimes we walk to her bank if she needs to do some quick transaction. The first day we went to the bank on one of our walks, she was just recovering from one of the many illnesses that my aunt has had to cope with in her life. I was concerned about her ability to handle quite such a long walk so soon into her recovery. I didn’t really know how to slip into the conversation that maybe driving to the bank might be in her better interests.
“Where is this bank?” I asked as subtly as I can.
“Don’t worry.” She responded. “You’ll recognize it by the flag that flies out in front of it.”
“Flag?” I asked, not sure of what she was trying to tell me.
“Yeah. Flag.” She said, with a slight touch of annoyance. “The one with the
money sign on it.” OK. Now you don’t have to hit me with a bat. She’s up to the walk and my best strategy is to drop it. The flag with the money sign. Good one, Aunt Edie.
But today we are not going to deposit money. Today we have a mission. Today we are going to spend it. “I didn’t know you bought lottery tickets.” I commented to her, a little surprised that my aunt would participate in anything that akin to gambling. And that I was the representative from the country of Frugality.
“It’s 92 million dollars today.” She says.
“You know,” I comment, trying subtly to inject a note of fiscal reality into the conversation, and finding it hard to believe that I am the one doing it. “They say that you have a better chance of being struck by lightening than by winning the lottery.”
“Never know unless you try.” She says as we enter the store. “You buy one too. It’s only a dollar.” We purchase our tickets and are filling them out on top of a pile of newspapers.
“You have a system?” I ask.
“Sure.” She replies. “Ickel-michel.”
Now I know about the famous ickel-michel. I’ve seen my aunt find us parking spaces, good bargains, and good seats in the park all by ickel-mickel. But now she was going to use it to win a large sum of money.
I used to think when I heard her use the expression that it was Yiddish. My aunt was forever trying to teach me Yiddish. Her conversations were peppered with it. Sometimes to listen to her talk she sounded as if she were speaking “y’english”. So when I first heard this expression, I ran to my copy of Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish. No luck. So I called her on the phone. “Aunt Edie. I can’t find ickel-mickel in the Yiddish book.”
“That’s because it’s not Yiddish.”
“What is it?” I ask curiously.
“Nothing. Its like Snickelfritz und Frautzen. I made it up.”
“You made up Snickelfritz and Frautzen!” I exclaimed incredulously. Now I remember my Uncle Sey telling me once that his family belonged to a Native American tribe. The Shmedrick Indians. That was funny. My Uncle Sey had a dry wit that never failed to hit the mark. He explained to me once that when he died, that he would be buried in the family plot in the Jewish cemetery in Brooklyn. “You know.” He told me, “your aunt is not going to be with me.” Surprised, I asked where she was going to be buried. “Your aunt wants to be cremated, and her ashes spread over Long Pond Lake. I am still going to have her name engraved next to mine on the tombstone. But instead of her dates below her name, I am just going to put nickt du.” Not here. That was my uncle’s sense of humor. But that the steadfast Snickelfritz and the loyal but slightly insane Frautzen were made up was just too much to believe. My aunt used to come over to our home in Canarsie when I was a boy of four and babysat when my parents went out. I used to look forward to those times for days in advance. She would bring me a little cardboard box that looked not unlike a little valise full of Anne Morris fruit lollypops. We would sit on the couch with the yellow slipcovers adorned with large rose colored floral prints, and she would regale me with stories of the adventures of Snickelfritz and Frautzen. I had always thought they were real, and that if I could slip into their world, what larks we would have.
“So you are going to use ickel-mickel.” I responded looking over at her.
“Sure. Aren’t you?”
“Of course.” I responded with a smile, and we gave the man at the counter our tickets and our money and left the store.
“What are you going to do with the money if you win?” she asked, like it was a sure thing.
“I am going to send you back to visit Israel.”
“Oh no.” she replied. “I can’t do that now. Maybe another time.” And we strolled across the street and into Verona Park.
We spent that afternoon, as we had on every visit, talking of the latest news of friends and relatives, remembering stories from our shared past, and talking about the future, mostly mine. We spoke of the alien face that appeared my magic on the bottom of an old frying pan, or one of her “past lives” as a young Chinese girl in a country town in China. There was a certain feeling of safety and predictability about her life. And like a huge bubble, one in which she gathered everyone that was near her. And we felt safe, warm and loved just being near her. And her future seemed to be as preordained as the continuous stream of todays she lived every day. She liked her life, and those of us who are lucky enough to share a small part of it with her, like it too.
Later, we went to Linda’s Chicken for dinner. They had creamed spinach.
