RUFF #2

Love, Grandpa

I have five drafts going, each in various stages of completion. Some are close to done but I can’t get there. I write the way I read - in fits and spurts - lately, my ability to concentrate makes squirrels look focused.

How is it possible that this insanity has only been going on for five weeks? I’ve aged at least five years. Hence, an inability to finish a Ruffle and instead, another Ruff, this one “inspired” (if you can call it that) by the state of the world. Or at least, the world as I see it, through the spaces between the fingers that cover my face as I kind-of look at the paper.

My nephew Doug needed help.

His fourth grade assignment was to write about his family history. So he asked his grandfather, my father, about all things Fried.

With that, my father wrote his grandson a letter. My mother said he wrote it twice - once, in pencil, with cross-outs and erasures, and then, a second time, in pen. Ah, the thought that goes into words when there’s no such thing as a delete button.

A few days later, Doug received a tightly-folded sheet of paper with writing on both sides - my father would sooner have drunk milk with meat than waste a sheet of paper. Growing up in the Depression will do that to a person.

The letter tells the story of my father’s family. An immigrant story that’s unique, yet universal. Or at least, was universal. Here’s a snippet:

Don’t try to decipher my father’s handwriting. I’ll spell out the important parts.

I re-read the part above recently and my eyes filled. Partly, because I love seeing my father’s handwriting. I pictured him taking pains to be accurate and informative - as a public school principal, I have no doubt he wanted his grandson to get an A. But he also wanted his grandson to appreciate where his family came from.

My great-great-great grandfather Lazar had a horse and wagon that he used as a taxi/moving service in Hungary. He died young, leaving a wife and three kids. Two of them, my grandmother’s siblings were sent to America to stay with cousins.

In 1921, my grandmother and her mother did the same. They came to escape persecution. I googled “Hungarian persecution of Jews 1921” and found that “persecution” meant the rounding up - and public hangings of those who were thought to be Communists (ie, Jews.)

They had to be sponsored by family members who could guarantee they’d support them if necessary. And to be sure that was the case, my grandmother, who spoke no English, cleaned houses for money. She and her mother shared a small apartment with the other two siblings and their cousins on the lower east side. How bewildered they’d be by the Ludlow Street of today.

I think of my grandmother, my Grandma Fried, who doted on me and made no secret of the fact that I was her pet - “I love them like the fingers on my hand, but oh, dot Debala” she said about her five grandkids.

I loved baking with her on Sunday mornings, when she’d hum a folksong called Di Grine Kuzine (“My Green Cousin”) about an immigrant who’s new to the US. Sometimes she’d stop to translate the Yiddish to English. I remember a line about the cousin having cheeks like apples.

But what I think of most is the way she talked about this country. How badly they - her people - my people - wanted to get here. Here. Where they’d be safe. Here. Where Jews weren’t persecuted. Here, where there was opportunity. Where freedom abounded and pogroms did not.

Sometimes, she talked about seeing the Statue of Liberty when the boat arrived. “We came up from steerage, after 9 days below” (a thought that sets my claustrophobic nerves into overdrive) “and there it was.” My grandmother would look at the kitchen wall, her peasant hands kneading floury yellow dough on a red formica table.

“The Statue.” She’d shake her head. “It was so beautiful.” (It vas so beautiful - her v’s were w’s and her w’s were - or vere - v’s.)

The letter continues - she met my grandfather, a Hungarian Jew who was born here - and married him. Both worked long hours in a nearby town, leaving my father and his twin brother to be cared for by their grandmother. Eventually, the family moved into a cramped cold-water flat above a small grocery store that my grandparents owned and ran.

My father and his twin brother, my Uncle Murray, enlisted in the army when war broke out - all the boys did - they wanted to defend our country from the evil that had forced their parents to flee their homes.

My grandmother once lifted her dress to show me the scars on her knee - “I used to look out the window and scratch when I worried (vorried) about them.” Two sons in the army at once. No texts. No calls. Only what you could piece together from the radio. No wonder she scratched her poor knee to shreds.

At the end of the letter, there’s this:

“She studied hard to pass the test.” My grandmother had a 6th-grade education. Her English wasn’t great, but she was smart and hard-working. I smile at “she was very proud to become a citizen.”

That never changed. She was always proud.

My grandmother was a great American.

“This is da greatest country in da verld” she’d say with pure conviction - not a hint of irony or bitterness. Because it was. It was the reason she was alive. And she knew she was lucky - “a regular Yankee doodle dandy,” she’d say with a laugh.

I’d look at the newspaper to try to make a pointed comparison between how Europeans viewed America then and how they view it now. But I can’t bear to. And I don’t need to.

It’s clear how Europe - and the world - sees us now.

Getting teary at the thought of one’s immigrant grandparents’ first sight of the Statue of Liberty might be a cliche. But it’s one I’ll gladly own.

I write this through tears.

For all we had.

And all we’ve lost

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