Don't Tell Me I Can't Do It! (4 page)

It seemed unimaginable—surviving the brunt of Nazi cruelty only to be incarcerated by one’s own liberators.

Though we were free to go, Mama wasn’t about to leave without Papa. The conditions in that jail were beyond deplorable, and he would probably have died in there had it not been for Mama’s tenacity and determination. I’ve always admired that about her. My mother may have been academically impoverished
growing up, but she was street smart and highly resourceful. She was indeed. Armed with nothing but a pair of used shoes, still a precious commodity under those circumstances, my mother artfully negotiated an exchange with one of the Russian guards. The secondhand footwear was enough to buy Papa’s release. It made me think of Moses in Egypt, appearing all but empty-handed before Pharaoh to demand that he “let my people go.”

We were there to embrace Papa as he crawled out from the dungeon of the jail, unrecognizable, unable to walk or to talk. I knew I was looking at my father, but what I saw was a broken shadow of a human being. His spirit had been utterly shattered.

My mother propped up and supported his frail body as we began walking away from the camp, but only a short distance later Papa collapsed. He lay on the ground, sobbing in a manner I have never seen an adult sob before or since. It was beyond difficult for me to believe that the pathetic figure on the ground before me was my tall, handsome, shrewdly resilient father of yesteryear.

“You go without me,” he pleaded. “I can’t make it. Leave me here. Go, go. I can’t.”

My poor mother, herself thin and fragile, a woman who rarely even opened her mouth, who normally shrank into the background, would have none of it. “Come on, Mendel,” she demanded, “we have to go. Let’s go!” Gripping me with one hand and my sister with the other, she made Papa lean on her from behind, and somehow we all dragged ourselves along the interminable road home. Her strength in that moment was
incredible, even miraculous, given her weakened condition. But she did what had to be done to keep her family together at a time when it looked as if we might fall apart.

I’ll never forget that image of my mother. Outwardly, she looked wretched and puny, but in my eyes, she was noble and heroic. I learned then that life sometimes requires you to
flex your muscles of experience
, even when it takes every last bit of energy you have.

Having never forgotten that sense of helpless frustration that overcame me when my parents prevented me from joining the kibbutz as a young woman, I decided that sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t make things happen for yourself if you have to depend on others. I naively resolved never to depend on anyone else ever again, something I now realize was a bit of an overcorrection, but I was young and bold.
Just try to stop me!

I became obsessed with control. I wanted to be sure that I was the one in absolute command of my
circumstances, leaving nothing to chance insofar as I could help it. My policy became (and remains), “Trust, but always verify.”

This resolve manifested itself in surprising ways, even for me. I’m not ashamed to say that as a young woman I enjoyed a very passionate fantasy life, something private and just for me. I feared that if I ever allowed myself to openly explore such fantasies, however, I might very easily become a “lady of the night,” drifting from man to man in a slavish exercise of amorous indiscretion. So I pledged to remain a virgin. I “got on base,” as the kids say. I got to second, perhaps even third base, but that was it. There was no outward pressure for me to hold the line there, but I was determined. I guarded my chastity for my own reasons— not so much to preserve some lofty ideal of sexual purity as to zealously retain full control over my life. I would be a virgin until I got married, I decided, and marriage just happened to be the furthest thing from my mind.

Even today, I try very hard to avoid situations in which I have to depend on someone else. Being a wife and mother has taught me that there’s a fair amount
of uncertainty that comes with the territory of raising a family, of course, but the basic policy is the same. I’ve known plenty of trustworthy, loyal people, and I’m deeply grateful for them. It still doesn’t change my determination to depend as much as possible on the one person whose desires I understand best: me.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve come to believe that one of the most precious gifts parents can bestow upon their kids is to steer them toward self-reliance. It doesn’t ultimately benefit our children when we do for them what they are fully capable of doing on their own—age appropriately, of course. Feeling good about accomplishments and achievements has a powerful effect on a child’s development and self-esteem. I believe there’s no task too small or too insignificant for a child to take ownership over in order to begin experiencing the joy of mastery, though it is equally vital that we train our children to recognize that with privileges come responsibilities.

My own children grew up to be competent and self-reliant largely because of my decision to make sure they had responsibilities early on. Admittedly, Diana and Johnny had to contend with some peculiar
difficulties that many other children did not encounter. Most notably, while I was chasing my educational ambitions in graduate school, I was self-consciously an absentee (though always dutiful) wife and mother. I knew that pursuing my doctorate as an adult student would mean that I couldn’t be the kind of doting, stay-at-home housewife that many of my peers expected me to be. I’m not entirely sure where I got the wisdom to begin demanding help from my family during that stressful season, but I’m glad that I did. Sure, I received all kinds of disapproving comments, from friends and family alike. To be a wife and mother of two young children while attending graduate school was unheard of then, but it wasn’t the first time for me to break the mold.

Years earlier, when I made the decision to be a working mother at a time when two-career families were anything but normal, I was less available to Diana in her formative years than I would have liked to have been. She received much of her hugging and holding from my mother instead of from me, and Mama even expressed serious concern that Diana would love her more than me. I knew better than to feel guilty. I
was driven to pursue my career both for myself and for the good of my family. “Diana will always know who her mother is,” I told Mama. And I believed it. But there were still casualties. I never developed that sense of playfulness with Diana that would enable me to be patient with her as a child. “Grow up already,” I used to say. “Be more mature!” I had difficulty tolerating her natural exuberance. To me, she didn’t measure up; but then, neither did I. We were at odds, and our lack of synchronicity made me feel out of control—that most unnerving feeling. For me, being out of control meant a heightened sense of vulnerability second only to death. It meant having no power, and that was a difficult pill for me to swallow. I didn’t like being reminded of the helplessness I had felt as a little girl myself, when I was forced to “grow up” on my own under circumstances far stricter than those Diana was facing.

So there was a learning curve. I was navigating uncharted waters, and there were bound to be some unpleasant surprises. I’ve learned to take these in stride and to engage them with honesty and grace. Today, largely as a result of self-critical reflection
on both our parts, Diana and I enjoy a very special mother-daughter bond. I still regret that aspect of our past, but I don’t dwell on it and I don’t let feelings of guilt slow my pace. That’s one of the prices of ambition, I’ve learned: Sometimes when you flex your muscles, you break things and have to mend them. I’m glad that I had both the audacity to flex and the humility to mend. Both have served me well.

I’ve never been bashful about asking for help when I need it. There’s no shame in recognizing our need for help and asking for it, even when others aren’t perfectly on board with our ambitions. I’m convinced that my family emerged stronger because I was an assertive spouse and parent. My relationship with Jerry was robust, and my kids have grown to be resilient, self-sufficient adults at least partly as a result of taking on more than their share of household duties all those years.

Still, it’s a good thing that Jerry never attempted to put his foot down and stand in the way of my ambitions, particularly in that phase of our life together. I was so determined to earn my degree that, had he done so, our family would probably have come apart at the seams. Long before Jerry came into my life, I used to say, “I don’t need a man. I will only marry if we can be partners and equals. I don’t need to be supported.” Remember that this was at a time before feminist ideals had achieved any significant degree of currency. None of my girlfriends thought along these lines at all, but I suppose I’ve always had a latent distaste for
the passivity my mother modeled as a woman and as a homemaker. “We women,” she would say, “are smart, very smart—sometimes even smarter than men. But we need them. Without them, we’re nothing.” I thought she was wrong. Later in life, I would prove it.

There was so little room in Mama’s home when she came along that her parents consigned her cradle to a place under the kitchen table. In many ways, Mama never completely got out from under that table. She lived much of her existence from within the confines of that narrow and limited space. She was an extension of everyone else. She feasted from the crumbs of education as best she could but nevertheless remained hungry for knowledge and embarrassed by her difficulty reading and writing. She never evolved. She was a prisoner of her time, unable to push the envelope and become something more.

Not me, I decided. I would break through and go beyond the narrow-mindedness of traditional gender limitations. I would be my own person, and if my family couldn’t get behind that, then I’d just have to face the consequences.

My outspoken demeanor is one of the more difficult traits of my personality for people to get used to. My candor shocked many of the people I encountered when I first came to the United States. Israelis are considerably more forward about their thoughts and feelings than Americans are, and that suits me well. There’s nothing phony about me. What you see is what you get, and I like it that way. If being a straight shooter and saying what’s on my mind gets me in trouble once in a while, then so be it.