2
THROUGH A CHILD'S EYES
Germany surrendered in May. "On August 6,1945 the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a Japanese city of 300,000. Seventy-eight thousand people were killed instantly, 70,000 were injured and 10,000 others were never 1 found.”1 "Five days later another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 40,000 people instantly and wounding another 40,000 in the city of 250,000. The following day Japan surrendered”2
"From the barren wooded platform, I surveyed the area of the atomic bomb explosion. As far as the eye could see, I could make out fields of burned ashes, twisted steel structures, and graves containing untold souls and spirits. There was no sign of life: no people, no animals, no birds singing. Silence prevailed. I wondered why the human mind and human society could give rise to such tragic things under this clear blue sky."3
"The Second World War had ended, heralding the Atomic Age. 1,086,343 Canadian men and women had served in the armed forces. 96,456 were killed, wounded or had died in service.”4
"After the war had ended the United Nations was born."5
My maternal grandfather, a tall man with grey hair and an air of awareness about him, sewed clothes for my favorite dolls, having been a tailor in Russia. At bedtime he would unfold a metal card table chair, place it beside my bed and tell me a story, starting with the Jewish words "a mul is gevain" which meant "once upon a time." I loved him and he was probably the only one that could get me to go to bed since I was quite a handful and mostly got my own way.
We spent summers in a small community on the south shore of Lake St. Louis, about an hour's drive from Montreal where the Great Lakes Waterway passed, and my grandparents stayed with us for part of the season. When I was four or five years old, my grandfather and I had gone swimming and on the way back to our cottage, I was holding his hand, having to reach up to him, and could see some- thing dangling between his legs under his bathing suit, one of those old-fashioned loose things. Fascinated, I stared at this appendage. Had I been a bit taller I could not have seen it and nobody else could. That may have been the first time I realized there was a difference between boys and girls. Although surely I was curious, I didn't feel free to ask about this strange occurrence. Sex must have been a for- minable subject to my parents and the strangeness I felt at such a young age was their ill-at-ease.
In the wintertime my friends and I made angels in the snow and seats in the high banks that lined the streets. While "ball and jacks" were great in the summer, smokiest or marbles were best in the snow. I kept mine in a small purple Seagram's sack with the name "Crown Royal" embroidered in gold which used to hold a bottle of rye, my father's favorite libation. Some I would never trade - glassy, smooth crystals, floating colored pieces encased in transparent greens and blues, bright reds and oranges, nebulous nuggets, obscure orbs of black and brown, I loved them all. We aimed for a thumb-print in the snow while hitting each others' out of the way. Hours passed while mittens frosted, cheeks turned red and noses ran.
Sledding and tobogganing on Mt. Royal, a mountain in the middle of Montreal, filled the weekends and skating was more fun with music and lights in the evenings. Some Sundays ended with Chicken-in-the-Basket at Miss Montreal, a family-type restaurant on the strip. We often took my friend Allan along if he was visiting his grandmother and aunts who lived on the top floor of the building across the courtyard. On the way home listening to Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen on the radio kept us in the car parked in front of our house until the program was over.
Most Sundays found us at my paternal grandparents' house in Lower Montreal. My grandfather, famous for his sour pickles made in large wooden barrels in the dark, musty, earthen-floored cellar, was a small, quiet, introverted man who retired to some inconspicuous corner whenever family was around. My grandmother, a heavy, happy matriarch who ran her household, loved having me sleep over when my parents would agree. Because of her heart condition she slept propped up on pillows and at any sign of trouble, it was her favorite son, my father, who would race to her house to give her oxygen. Her kitchen was always steamy with piles of potatoes baking in the wood stove, a huge pot of borscht with marrow bones on top and that's what everybody who visited ate along with my grandfather's sour dills. On the way home it was a treat to stop at Lafontaine Park to watch the fantastic fountains of dazzling, dancing waters that changed configuration and color and, if we were early enough, a visit to the Midgets' Palace to see the little people.
One evening we arrived home to find that a burglar had broken the pantry window, stepped into a freshly baked cake my mother had placed on the washing machine and left doughy footprints all over the floor. We must have disturbed him because the tracks didn't get very far and nothing was missing. Being so remote from my parents' room I pleaded to be allowed to sleep with them that night but my father insisted I get used to sleeping alone. I couldn't understand his reasoning nor his insensitivity when I was so deathly afraid.
At Christmas my mother and I boarded a train for Denver, Colorado, to visit her brother, my uncle, a major in the army who had just returned from the war, his wife and their five children. It took four long days and nights to get there. A huge decorated tree with a profusion of presents stood in the corner of their living room. With my uncle away, my aunt, not being Jewish, had been left to raise their children as Christians. For the few days we were there all I would eat was chicken. I must have been pretty adamant about it because she remarked that her five kids weren't as difficult as I was. Perhaps I felt insecure amongst five blood relatives. I wasn't really one of them and might have overheard something to that effect. Being an only child and thrown into a large family I was not center stage anymore. Or perhaps I just didn't like anything on the dinner table. You can't blame children for being spoiled. They aren't born that way. My mother spoiled me, overcompensating for her guilt and lack of love.
Seven thousand TV sets were sold in the United States as commercial television got off the ground and the country inched back to normalcy. Churchill coined the phrase "Iron Curtain," from the Baltic to the Adriatic, with Russia on one side and the rest of Europe on the other. The start of the Cold War between the East (led by the USSR) and the West (led by the USA), a period of hatred, mistrust and misunderstanding but no actual fighting, continued until 1991 - forty-five years. The first drive-in movie opened in Canada.
When I was six I got scarlet fever - an intimidating illness before penicillin. The doctor came to the house, ordered an ambulance to the shock of my parents, and shipped me off to the Alexandria Hospital for contagious diseases. When they came to visit, they had to stand outside the glass cubicle I was in. I was once again alone, securely sealed away, scared but complacent, not making any demands. Soon after, my tonsils and one adenoid were carelessly plucked while my mother, who was having something done, and I shared a room at the Royal Victoria Hospital. We created quite a sensation on the floor. Everybody dropped in to see the mother/daughter team. But my mother and I never really got along. She was critical of everything I did, always threatening to "wait until your father comes home" to straighten things out. His shaving strop behind the bathroom door was used a few times on my bottom and I secretly felt that this pleased her. What truly pleased her was playing the piano. Almost every evening my father and I listened to Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn and Bach. He didn't really seem interested but if I uttered a word he quickly signaled for me to be quiet. He was massaging her ego, kowtowing to her need to feel important, worthy, wanted, the center of attention, all of which made me uneasy. Why did he have to act this way - always catering to her? People normally overact out of guilt and it was only later that I realized he was covering something up.
Your father was a proud man, easy-going, pleasant and much more balanced than your mother, in a better space psychologically than her. He had a great deal of compassion for her. Were he