The photo above is a place holder. I will find a photo to show you what she really looked like, I promise.
This is for Miriam, and Syd, and Julie and your children. You guys are all busy with your kids and I know, you'd write this if you had time. This is for all of us- to remember what she was like. Please add your memories here- she'd love it that we could all get together like this.
It's almost Passover. Passover makes me think of Camp Ella Fohs. And kichel. And Pearl.
Her name was Pearl Agatha Morris Smith. We met her at camp in the early summer of 1989. Camp Ella Fohs was a camp that was actually 2 camps- one for children and across the Lake-a camp for senior citizens. That summer we all came up before the children- Miriam and Julie shared a room and I was cohabiting like mad with the man that eventually married. Syd rated a private room as the high priestess of the waterfront- the privilege of royalty being a modicum of privacy in which to enjoy a summer long case of sun poisoning. I first encountered Pearl in the social hall. In a sea of elderly slow moving Eastern European seniors, Pearl was a honey-hued force of nature, universally referred to by the attendees of Ella Fohs as "the colored girl".
Pearl did a lot of things at camp- the only thing she didn't do well was blend. Though she was 72 that year she was not a camper... she attended sick call in the morning, dressing wounds dispensing aspirin and advice and a willing ear. To the refugees from the Grand Concourse there was no better tonic than a listener- she cured most ills with a gentle but firm attitude that they all should be glad they were there, and if they woke that morning- it was a good day. And she made them all smile. She tended the canteen when Nettie was taking a break, but whether it was a dance class, taught by Miriam, or sing along with Julie or aerobics in a chair, my own speciality- she attended. Some days I wondered if Pearl was twins. She was never ill and always eager for what the day brought.
But the work days were not the best ones. The best days were Saturday when we had the day off. The very best Saturdays were with Pearl. We would all squeeze into Paul's '72 Dodge Dart in search of Pearl's hobby. Armed with the local paper, The New Milford Times, we would search the local activities- auctions, car washes, tag sales, chili cook-offs and bake sales. We were looking for firemen. Pearl loved them. I do not recall eating any chili but I do remember having to drag Pearl away from a pile of firemen boots at one cook-off. She said with all those boots, if she climbed into them, a fireman would have to take her home. The big auction at the New Milford Firehouse was the highlight of her 4th of July. She bought more than one hideous horsehair stuffed chair or settee. The larger the piece the better- it took more firemen to deliver them. She owned that it was worth the dollar or three it would cost just to watch them carry it back to camp for her. More than once I saw her feign a passing "weak spell" to grasp a brawny bicep. The firemen saw a little old lady- we saw right through her and hurt ourselves laughing behind our hands as she glowed at their attentions. Her crowning achievement was the day Miriam bought a poisonous gray Victorian armchair for a dollar and convinced three firemen to carry it up to camp, with Pearl in it. She looked like the Queen of Sheba that day. We only found out later the chair had 3 springs sticking out of the seat- Pearl claimed it a most comfortable ride- she hadn't felt a thing.
After camp ended we still saw Pearl. Gathering in Manhattan we all took a trip to the San Gennaro festival where the guess your weight man lost a few days pay guessing Pearl's age a full 3 decades off. Driving in lower Manhattan Pearl made Paul swerve to the curb so she could get a better look at the ladies plying their wares in front of Bowery SRO's. She asked several times if we were CERTAIN these scantily clad damsels were actually prostitutes. Seeing things as she did she proposed they were dressed up, or down as it were, in case a fireman showed up. We didn't argue. It never worked. It was her stubborn and persistent view that the world and everyone in it was good- and that she was the same age as we were and able to run with us that earned her the moniker "the old bat". For all the years I knew her, every birthday card, Christmas card, Easter card and letter was signed "love, the old bat"
Two years later when her first grandchild Imanni was born we attended the baptism. We roared to see her holding the baby- a big girl at over 20 lbs who wore a pillowcase as a baptismal dress. Pearl at 5'7" never weighed more than 100 lbs and always looked as if a stiff breeze would blow her away. She stood straight and tall that day, her face filled with love for her new grandchild. It was that day we discovered there was a Mr. Smith. They did not live together as Pearl said, "one day I moved to a new apartment and he just didn't match the furniture." Divorce was not something recognized by Pearl's generation but neither was a life lived on anyone else's terms. Even though they lived apart, when Mr. Smith passed Pearl traveled over 200 miles down south by bus to inform his mother in a nursing home. We asked why she did not call instead. Pearl looked at us as if we were insane. That was not the way things were done. Not if you were Pearl.
Over the next years there were so many occasions- Pearl introduced me to volunteering at Harlem Hospital and taught me to hold babies born addicted to crack, swaddling them and cooing to them as they shook and cried. I was frustrated- there seemed so little that could be done, that I could not stop the crying. "It's alright if they cry", she'd say," with us here they don't cry alone." She danced at my wedding, and at Miriam's, replacing the grandparents we no longer had, and being so much more.
As the years went on we talked every few months by phone. She would visit me at my bake shop and I was always sure to keep a supply of her favorite onion rolls. She loved them smothered in cream cheese, sighing and moaning so loudly as she ate people would walk in from the street to see if she was ill. She would smile and point to her sandwich and then sell them baked goods- I never paid a better salesperson. She would try to pay- and when I refused she would drop money on the floor and point to it and try to convince my counterperson someone else had dropped it- once again playing the dottering old lady- but I had warned them to her tricks and she would always leave with a bag of rolls and most times I could convince her not to pay, or so I'd think- she slipped the cash to my salesperson with the admonition not to tell me until she had made good her escape. She won more than I did. My Old Bat.
The last time I saw Pearl it was January of 2002. She travelled with me to Long Island to witness the naming of Miriam's fourth child. Pearl had a hunger fit on the train- despite repeatedly being asked if she wanted something to eat while IN Penn Station, Pearl got hungry at Jamaica, blaming a poster on the train of a tasty looking pork chop, which she was threatening to lick by the time we got to Syosset. I called Miriam and we were met at the train with "a little something" to tide her over until supper.
It was a big day for all of us. Julie was there, and me, and Miriam- Syd was in Chicago but we filled her in by phone. As she sat holding the baby and welcoming her to the world and telling her how special she would be, all I could see was her light being passed onto yet one more generation. The baby's name? Rosaline Pearl.
We kept on with the telephone calls- every baby, job promotion and divorce- I filled her in. Often she would ask about Paul- and I would remind her we had been divorced over ten years- "But we still love him don't we?" and we did. When Julie married her partner Heather I called Pearl- "Heather.. is she nice?" yes, very nice "Is she Jewish?" yes Pearl, she's Jewish.
"Then that's good isn't it" she said, with great satisfaction. We were her children- she was happy when we were. And she loved us. Nothing else mattered.
Into her 90's Pearl worked 3 days a week as a receptionist at her church, read to the blind and visited the elderly in nursing homes. She lived in her apartment on 125th Street and Lenox until at 94 she broke a rib opening a window. She moved to her daughter's home in Poughkeepsie. When we talked on the phone she would gripe about the pettiness at the senior center with the big decision of the day being whether or not to have sprinkles on the doughnuts the following day. "Don't these people have BETTER things to do?" she'd mutter. And then ask about the goings on in the worlds of us- her children. My grumpy old bat.
I let more time go by than usual, sent cards but did not call- no one had a life event I could report and, maybe the past few phone calls, the repeated questions, the new quaver in her voice, told me what I did not want to face. In January I got a letter from Ben Eilbott, our camp director. Pearl had passed in the summer. The family did not contact her camp friends- for whatever reason, we had not been there to eulogize her.
At first I was angry- that we were denied witness to her passing. I called Miriam, asked her to call Julie, and then called Syd. Then I sat on my porch looking at the winter sunlight and feeling the warmth through the chill in the air. In the sunlight I realized- Pearl was not about funerals and passing death. I still talk to her- when Julie and Heather adopted Ashley, when Miriam's son was bar mitzvahed-whenever a good thing happens- I still tell her. She's my old bat and she's still here. We are her testament- her legacy, and the living proof. If I am to live up to that I have to remember-I woke up this morning, I'm alive,- and it's a good day.
:) X
1 comment:
That was beautiful.
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