that a relative of hers achieved the success that never came in Poland. However, the woman lived in El Paso de la Vaca, near the Central Market, and her pride was nothing more than a projection, as our fellow coun-tryman Freud would say.
Were we rich? Only in appearance.
Although the house was worth a fortune, life was simple. Paquita, the maid, served us in cut Coca Cola bottles or ordinary plates from the Central Market.
They never taught me to use deodorant or shampoo.
They didn’t take a single photo of me from the age of 1
to 13. There was no pleasure trip beyond La Sabana3.
We had a castle of a house and lived like paupers.
But that wasn’t the only contradiction.
Another thorny one was living in a neighborhood far from the rest of the Jewish community, which made us doubly strange. On one hand, by residing to the East of the city, our options for kindergartens and schools were limited to those where there were no other Jews. Contact with the other fellow countrymen then occurred in two ways: visits from my mother’s companions, the occasional party, and attending Hebrew school.
The three o’clock teas were memorable. About thirty or forty fellow Jewish women would come monthly to the WIZO meetings, a Zionist women’s 3 La Sabana Metropolitan Park (Spanish: Parque Metropolitano La Sabana) is located in downtown San José, Costa Rica. It is the country’s largest and most significant urban park.La Sabana is considered
“the lungs of San José” by Costa Ricans.