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| My grandparents, Sarah and Irving Keller, with my mother, a long time ago. |
Today marks the 47th anniversary of my grandfather's death. I remember it well because I was with him at the time, the only person present as the rest of the family were all out at a wedding and I opted to keep him company since he was ill with lung cancer and not feeling well that day. Thinking of him, a true saint who walked among mere mortals, I was reminded of his wife, the devil incarnate. They say opposites attract, and I guess that was true for those two.
I grew up in a dysfunctional family, and that's being kind, believe me. The leader of the pack was my grandmother,
whose patchwork rules were directly responsible for my mother’s closet bacon
addiction. While Hitler was busy going after those six million Jews, my
grandmother somehow managed to escape. Arriving in New York City from Poland as a young girl, Sarah never learned to read or write English. Yiddish remained her
chosen language, and even if I didn’t know what she was saying half the time,
her inflections got the point across.
Sarah was
unpredictable, vacillating wildly between her old-world morality and her desire
to see me safely married. When I didn’t have a date on a Saturday night, common enough to be called a pattern, she’d sympathetically pat me on the head and advise me to “let the boys kiss you and touch you whenever they want.” But if I went
on two dates in a row, she’d scream to my mother, “What is she, a floozy?”
Nothing escaped her critical eye. No fashion plate in her frumpy
cotton housecoats, stockings held up at the knees with rubber bands, nevertheless
she always had something to say about what I was wearing. The first time she
saw me in something new, it was, “Another outfit? What, is your father made of
money?” The very next time she saw it: “Again you’re wearing that schmatta?” Concerning makeup: “Go, put
on some lipstick, you’ll never get married.” But if I did put on lipstick, and maybe,
God forbid a million times, eyeliner and mascara, she’d shriek, “Like that
you’re going out? All of a sudden you’re Elizabeth Taylor?”
My food addiction
is directly traceable to her sugar cookies, for a dozen of which which this very instant I would join ISIS. There were many nights when I’d sneak downstairs
to the kitchen to gorge on those cookies, which she baked literally by the
hundreds and brought to us unceremoniously packaged in a large brown-paper
grocery bag filled to the top. Who could tell if eight, ten, or maybe twelve were
missing? Granny, that's who. Somehow I was urged to eat, eat, eat, but yet not get fat, fat, fat.
One minute she might say, “Enough already, stop with the cookies,” and ten minutes later she’d implore me to
“eat something, look at you, you’re skin and bones.” (I have since performed
this service for myself on a daily basis.)
Her reputation
as a cook spanned two continents. There was a waiting list for her Passover seders, which were attended by no less
than 25 people on both nights. Julia Child couldn’t have drawn a
bigger crowd. (It was the matzo balls that kept them coming: Perfect spheres,
they were dense but at the same time, light. How did she do it?) When she
finally died, her funeral was attended by scores of people, each one
desperately seeking the recipe for one of her famous dishes. As the rabbi
fabricated stories about what a wonderful, loving person she had been, he could
barely be heard over the frantic cries of the mourners:
“Oy vey, Gut in himmel, I’ll never have
her apple cake again.”
“Apple
cake, shmapple cake -- did you ever taste her cheese blintzes?”
“Blintzes, forgetaboutit—I’d kill for her pot
roast!”
It went on like
that, young and old alike commiserating over the eternal loss of their favorite
foods. Sarah was most noticeably missed at the gathering following her
funeral, the first family affair that had to be catered.
But while cooking was Sarah’s
heart and soul, human relations were her Achilles heel. In a nutshell, she
disliked everybody and everybody disliked her. “Zust nor voxen a trolley car in boch!” which meant something like “A trolley car should grow in your stomach,” was her favorite
insult, hurled daily at anyone from the butcher to the mailman to her
brother-in-law.
She divided the world into three groups: those who should Live and
Be Well, those who should Only Drop Dead, and those who should Rest in Peace.
These phrases actually became part of a person’s name, and chances are they
stayed that way for a lifetime. You never heard her utter just a name. For
example, if she liked the person: “Uncle Benny, he should live and be well, is
coming for dinner.” Defying logic, the phrase would remain positive, even if
she was angry with him, as in, “Uncle Benny, he should live and be well, should
burn in hell forever!” More amazing was the fact that even when she hated someone
she could still acknowledge their inherent goodness, as in, “Peska, she should only drop dead, is a saint.” (Peska, by the way, was my grandmother’s sister, a fact
I didn’t fully comprehend until well into my teens, since the most negative of
insults always accompanied her name.)
In the case
of a corpse it was anything goes, as long as it remained undisturbed, as in,
“Charlie, he should rest in peace, was a cheap son-of-a-bitch bastard.”
Death was a big
topic with her. When speaking about the unspeakable, she would open with,
“God forbid a million times, it should
never happen, if I die.” I would always remind her that death was
not an “iffy” thing, but it seemed to have no effect. And since my
grandfather was one of thirteen children, the chances were pretty good that one
of our zillion relatives was at death’s door, or at least the front curb, at
all times. When Sarah called each morning for her daily family briefing, my mother
would usually answer the phone with, “So, who died?” Sarah always came through
with the suspected tumor, confirmed diagnosis, or actual demise of someone
remotely related to someone related to us.
For my grandmother to
actually like you, you had to be one of three things—Jewish, rich, or a doctor.
Obviously, all three in one person represented nirvana. When, in college, I
started dating a non-Jew, she was miserable, wailing, “Oy vey, I should only drop dead!” However, upon learning his
parents had money, her cry changed to, “Oy vey, what a doll, I could eat him up.” I eventually married the
guy, causing Sarah to plead, “You couldn’t wait a minute, maybe you’ll meet a
doctor?” Years later, overjoyed at my divorce, her only
comment was, “God willing, I should live so long, next time you’ll marry a
Jew.”
She didn't, but I took her advice. I figured it couldn't hurt.
