Read an Excerpt
My Songs of Now and Then
A Memoir
By Rachel Josefowitz Siegel
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Rachel Josefowitz Siegel
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-3383-3
Chapter One
GLIMPSES OF CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
My Homes
1924, Berlin
Hot summer day
I was born
Preussen Allee 15
Age one to six
Wide garden steps
1930, Château du Signal
Lausanne
Learning French
Chemin du Levant
Up the big tree
Sam climbed higher
1935, Zürich, Volta Strasse
Chinese sitting room
Schwyzerdütsch
Lausanne again
Pensionat La Ramée
Girls everywhere
1938
Avenue don?t remember
Change and fear
1939 Hotel in New York
Seasick all the way
Saddle shoes
Montreal
Alice in Wonderland
Red plaid skirt
Cambridge, Mrs. Henri?s Dorm
Scared girl acting grown-up
Alone
1940, Simmons North Hall
High heel alligator shoes
Dating
Evans Hall, fifth floor
Necking until curfew
In love
1944, Cambridge, Riverside Drive
Sex before breakfast, after lunch
Newly wed
Linneaen Street
Third-floor walk-up
Heavy groceries
1945, Shady Hill Square
First child miracle
New mother
Eastern Parkway
Tante Hinde, Brooklyn Park
Strange world
285 Central Park West
My parents? home
Not mine
Summer in Mahopac
Hot and heavy
Pregnant again
1948, Old Cambridge House
Two sons now
Papa died
1949, Ithaca, Fall Creek Drive
Green hat, white gloves
Faculty wife
Hanshaw Road
Blue chintz curtains
Baby Ruth
1956 Avenue Charles Floquet
Americans in Paris
Morning baguette
203 Forest Drive
Teenagers, picnics
Shouts and whispers
Taughannock Boulevard rental
Peaches and sunshine
Joy
1960, Kikar Wingate, Jerusalem
Almond blossoms in January
Jewish among Jews
1975, Taughannock Boulevard
Built dream house
Midlife honeymoon
Spruce Lane, Ithaca
1992, Spruce Lane
My bed, my garden, my desk
Myself alone
2007, Savage Farm Drive
Life with people again
Community
2011, Kendal apartment
Joys, aches, blessings
Old, still kicking
Running Away
Once I ran away from home and into the woods. It was the day my sister was born, and my five-year-old self was full of unknown feelings, feelings so powerful, so scary, and so misunderstood. By me? By others? By all? No one had told me why Mutti was away in a hospital. My brothers teased me for not knowing that a new baby was on the way.
The woman who had come to do the laundry was the only one who took me in her arms, who made me feel a bit more comfortable. When she left at the end of the day, I couldn?t bear being without her. I followed her, near enough to see where she was going, far enough so she would not detect me and take me home. But I lost her among the many paths through the woods. The trees were dark and tall. I smelled the leaves, the strong earth smell.
I was tired and scared but still willful. I was more scared of being found and punished than of being lost. When they came and called my name, I hid and did not answer. It was David, no longer teasing me, who gently coaxed me out of hiding and took me back home.
My First Train Ride
I was six years old when my family traveled from Berlin to Vienna to visit my grandparents and to show them my new baby sister, Fenny. It was an overnight journey by train. Mutti and I slept in a sleeping compartment, the baby next to me on the same berth, in a well-padded sleeping basket. I do not remember how Papa, Rose, David, and Sam were distributed, but I vaguely recall that we had adjoining compartments. I was fascinated by the tiny sink and water closet, scared of the noisy flush of the toilet. Could I get sucked right out of the train and onto the tracks?
My only recollection of the actual Vienna visit was being taken to the ?Prater,? the giant amusement park with the equally giant and most frightening Ferris wheel. My brothers were eager and excited to go on that ride and teased me when I said I was too scared to join them. I was much relieved when my reluctance was accepted and they gave up trying to persuade me. Their teasing did not stop.
Lausanne
I think of Lausanne as my hometown. Though we moved frequently, from town to town and from country to country, my fondest memories are of Lausanne. The hills, the lake, the big house called Château du Signal, and later, the first-floor apartment and garden at 7 Chemin du Levant.
The day we moved into Château du Signal in 1930, I remember my mother standing at the kitchen table in this cavernous room, slicing big chunks of peasant bread. She held the fragrant round loaf against her chest, large knife in hand, and I was sure she would cut herself. Of course she didn't. She offered hefty slices of bread and butter with cheese and mustard to the burly moving men during their morning break. They spoke French; she did not and neither did I.
I was six years old and full of wonder and excitement. So many new impressions. Who ever heard of cheese and mustard on the same piece of bread? I sensed my mother's power, her competence, taking charge in this unfamiliar land and language, and directing the men to place our belongings where she wanted them to be.
A few years later we moved to Chemin du Levant. It was a large apartment, large enough to accommodate our parents, five children, a nanny, and a cook. There was a smaller apartment over the garage, occupied by the chauffeur.
On school days, I eagerly ran downhill to L'École Supérieure de Jeunes Filles.
On the way I passed a small park where I often stopped to play. The park was long and narrow and held a double row of chestnut trees. It was dark under the majestic trees, dark and mysterious, lighter toward the middle of this alley where the branches did not quite meet. In spring, the large clusters of white flowers tinged with pink seemed almost supernatural. Later, as seasons passed, chestnuts appeared in their prickly outer shells and dropped to the ground where I could pick them up. The challenge was not so much finding them as opening these outer shells. That was a messy, difficult operation and darkened my hands every time. Were we even allowed to pick them? I remember only a sense of furtiveness and an almost irresistible attraction.
Quite often I arrived at school just as the opening bell began to ring and was lucky enough to enter my classroom before the sound of the bell ended. Safe from a tardy mark.
I passed the park every day on my way to school. On the way back up the hill, I rode the tram. Home for lunch, the big meal of the day, and down the hill again.
When school was out in the afternoon, I nearly always stopped at the pâtisserie for a delicious treat. Sometimes I just stood in front of the store trying to decide if I was hungry enough to indulge. When my allowance ran short I had to make a choice between a sweet treat followed by a long walk up the hill or no treat and the ease of riding the tram.
These were weighty daily decisions. First, did I have enough money left for a pastry, and if so, which of the delectable items should I choose, with their tempting aromas of almond, chocolate, and vanilla wafting out to the street? And then, walk or tram. I would walk if I had a friend or classmate to walk with me and make the hike less dull and tiresome. I chose the tram depending on the weather and how tired I felt. If I dawdled too long in front of the pâtisserie, I might find the later tram ride crowded and have to stand, hanging on to one of the straps. For some reason, it is the memory of these decisions that stays with me: decisions, decisions, indulgence or deprivation, exercise or comfort. It's a dilemma I have not yet outgrown.
Pully Plage
I must have been eleven years old when I took the little winding path downhill toward Lac Léman. It was a hot day in August, and I had permission to go swimming alone at the supervised public beach in Pully. In those days we were not chauffeured all over town, and I was accustomed to finding my way around, walking up and down the hills of Lausanne. But I was not really familiar with the sentier that started just below my home. Would it really lead me to my destination? But hey, I was a Girl Scout, une éclaireuse, I would surely figure it out when I got there. And I did.
Oh, how grown-up I felt when I paid the entrance fee and found a spot among the older teenagers. Was that the day I tasted my first Coke? I can still feel the cold bottle in my hand and taste the sweet bubbly stuff—another sign of growing up. Alone among many, I had no word for the slight unease, the bravado, the pretense of wanting to look older than my years, the excitement of it all.
The swimming area was crowded; so many bodies confined to a limited roped-off space. I felt frustration and safety both. As my suntanned body moved smoothly through the coolness of this bit of lake, I relished the harmony of self and nature. Then, on dry land again, soaking up the afternoon sun, I contemplated the long trek back up the hill, feeling elated at my lone adventure.
Anti-Semitism in a New School
When we moved to Zürich from Lausanne, I encountered my first male teacher in sixth grade. I was coping with a new school, in a new language. Not only did I have to switch from French to German, but the informal speech in the schoolyard was Schwyzerdütsch, the local version of an old German dialect, which I tried to quickly absorb.
One day, during recess, some girls wanting perhaps to get to know this new kid, questioned me about really being able to speak French. They wanted to know if I could swear in French, and to prove it, would I do it right now? The words that came out of my mouth were "sale crétin" literally translated as "dirty retard" or a person of low IQ. The shocked response was palpable. The girls turned away from me and ran to tell the teacher. What they had misheard was "sale Chrétien," translated "dirty Christian." No wonder they were upset!
In class, the teacher marched up to me, confronted me, and refused to accept my explanation. I did not know the German word for crétin, but he did not want to believe me. He slapped my face and called me "sale Juive" translated as "dirty Jewess."
My life in that classroom was never the same after that. I made no friends. At home, my parents, less familiar with French and unfamiliar with the word crétin, could not understand why that had to be the one dangerous word I had chosen to use. Why not some other swear word? Well, truth to tell, I didn't know many other words to swear with in any language other than Yiddish, perhaps, or Russian, which I could have heard my parents use, but never knew the meaning of.
1937 Hirschengraben Secundar Schule
I flunked the oral exam that separates college-bound kids from the others at the end of sixth grade. I had nearly peed in my pants, waiting for my turn in the corridor before appearing before this panel of stuffy Schwyzerdütsch male examiners. Having changed schools and languages the year before, I was as insecure as I have ever been in my now eighty-seven years of life, and spent the next two years being miserable. Often bored to death, yet only second in my class, because Heidi, the teacher's daughter, always came in first.
The adolescent boys did not overtly mingle with the girls; some of them were repeating seventh grade. I remember one gangly youth who had outgrown his pants; he was good looking, but clearly not at ease in a school setting. I made friends with Evie Heim, a Jewish girl who lived near us, and Ilse Braun. Lilly was another Jewish girl whom we befriended after she suddenly lost her mother (to suicide, it was hinted). She was the daughter of a hairdresser, a single mom, and lived in a tiny apartment in the poorer section of town, a world I had never even glimpsed before. She was pretty, with short black hair and straight bangs. She appeared more mature, more sexy, and far more unhappy than any girl I had ever come to know before. I wonder what became of her.
It was an awkward age and an uneasy time, with Hitler in power next door in Germany. Our family were legal residents of Switzerland, a visiting status that could be revoked. War was in the air, we had blackout drills. And I, newly menstruating, feeling all the normal confusion and awkwardness of my changing body, was trying to adjust and find a place of belonging, a semblance of "normal" life.
I had to deal with being Jewish when Jewish was becoming more and more unsafe in my world. How could I blend in, in my Swiss Girl Scout troop? I remember the deep longing to be like them, to enjoy the candle lighting of the Christmas tree in the forest without feeling Jewish guilt and reservations. And I remember the moment of strangeness and deep shame when I realized that the song I had joined in singing in the girls' locker room was the German song of Nazi allegiance, the "Horst Wessel Lied."
Looking back, I know that my frequent migraines were evidence of a deeper malaise, a subtle depression and a stubborn will to succeed in juggling my conflicting feelings and insecurities. During our school outings and excursions into the Swiss mountains, I couldn't help pretending that the camaraderie of my schoolmates and the glorious beauty all around us was mine as much as theirs. Yet there would always be, beneath the surface, the knowledge that this was but an illusion, and my otherness would surface.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from My Songs of Now and Then by Rachel Josefowitz Siegel Copyright © 2012 by Rachel Josefowitz Siegel. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
