Endurance

When I first read Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl, I was just a little older than my oldest daughter is now. For me, like it is for most people, the book was devastating and inspiring, all at the same time. I came back to it again and again throughout my pre-high school years, looking for hope and courage in Anne’s words. I moved on to Elie Wiesel’s Night, and other Holocaust books – some biographical, others fiction – and I still read every single one I can get my hands on.

Then, it was a search for understanding, a desire to find courage and resilience in the terrible, unjust lives of people who were simply trying literally to endure. Now, I think I read more out of a sense of responsibility, a need to bear witness to these events which seem so long ago. I have had the honor of hearing many Holocaust survivors speak, and each time I am reminded that these were real people. They were just like you and me, but were targeted and victimized and murdered, for the simple reason that they were somehow different. Except they weren’t. Different, that is. They were people.

And so, when I learned that a Holocaust survivor, Thomas “Toivi” Blatt would be speaking in Prescott in honor of Yom HaShoah, or Days of Remembrance, I wanted my eleven-year-old daughter to join me.

When we arrived at the theater, I was surprised – and pleased – to see such a large crowd assembled, and then I worried that there wouldn’t be any seats for us at this ticketless event. We somehow made it up through the line, and were escorted to a pair of seats, and the ceremony began a few moments later.

Prayers were said, a short film was shown, and then candles were lit by local educators and librarians to honor victims of the Holocaust. Survivors in the audience were recognized: there were more than a half dozen. And then Mr. Blatt entered the auditorium. Even at 84-years-old and walking with a cane, Mr. Blatt looked like he could take on most members of the audience and walk away unscathed. The details of his ordeal during the war are in his book, From the Ashes of Sobibor, which I haven’t yet read, but his story was a completely different kind of Holocaust story from any that I have known.

I’ve heard Holocaust survivors speak at schools, both when I was a student and since I’ve been a teacher. Last year I heard the story of a man who hid in the woods in Belarus for several years during his early childhood, among the armed partisans depicted in the film Defiance. There was the harrowing account I heard in Tucson of a woman who detailed what she lost. The most difficult loss, she said, even more difficult than losing her entire family, was losing her dignity. How, she still wondered, do you reclaim that? Her story was emotional and raw, tearful and angry.

But Mr. Blatt’s story is none of those things. His story is one of cunning and courage, of risk and audacity. The creative ways his family survived – up to a point – and the lengths they went to in their attempts to save their son were surprising, including purchasing documents to permit him to travel to Hungary in his early teens, where, they hoped, he would be safe. All was going well on the train until he was deemed suspicious, and while his papers checked out fine, the Gestapo guard somehow knew that young Mr. Blatt was a Jew. I wish I could relay the humorous exchange between Mr. Blatt and this Nazi who insisted on personally checking if Mr. Blatt was circumcised, but I doubt I could it justice without a Yiddish accent. Mr. Blatt is utterly human, but somehow larger than life, too.

Mr. Blatt and his family ended up at Sobibor, not far from their hometown village, or shtetl. Sobibor, in eastern Poland, was not a concentration camp like Auschwitz or Dachau. Sobibor was a death camp. Most of the Jews that were taken to Sobibor, including Mr. Blatt’s family, were immediately gassed after disembarking. Mr. Blatt survived because he was chosen to be a shoeshine boy for the Nazi guards.

In October of 1943, the Jews at Sobibor carried out an aggressive plan inspired by news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. They killed the Nazi officers of the camp in order to escape into the woods. Mr. Blatt, age fifteen at the time, delivered false messages to lure some of the officers into situations where they were ambushed and killed. Half of the Jews - more than three hundred - were killed in the attempt, and while the remainder escaped, less than fifty ultimately survived the winter and the last eighteen months of the war. Mr. Blatt is one of six Sobibor escapees still alive today. The successful escape was so embarrassing to the Nazis that within days, Sobibor was closed, razed, and a forest of trees was planted in its place.

I was honored to witness Mr. Blatt’s story, and while I think my daughter struggled to understand this old man and his strong Yiddish accent, she was pleased that she went. This spring, she had studied the life of Eleanor Roosevelt for a living history project. And by listening to Mr. Blatt, my daughter was witnessing the story of someone whose life experiences had led to what Mrs. Roosevelt called her “most important accomplishment:” the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. My daughter was able to hear Mr. Blatt’s story straight from his mouth and to have history come alive for her through his experiences.

And so here’s to the power of our own personal histories. And here’s to the continuity of history and the power of connecting the dots between historical events and across generations. And, most especially, here’s to the strength, resilience and endurance of the human spirit.

The New Old School of Egg Decorating

I couldn’t remember the last time we’d decorated Easter eggs. My daughters have only done it a few times in their lives. And so, after seeing Soule Mama’s blog on eggs, I thought it was high time we tried it again. But having been inspired by Soule Mama’s crafty inclinations I thought we’d try using some natural dyes. I’ve never met this women, who lives on a farm somewhere in New England, where she sews and knits, photographs, writes books, and does so many beautiful things that make me wonder why I’m sitting in front of the computer screen (again!) instead of learning how to do something.

As kids, my siblings and I decorated eggs every year, if I recall my childhood correctly. We were dyers of the Paas School of Egg Decorating. How I loved to drop that colored tablet into the vinegar! Easter, to me, always smelled like boiled eggs and vinegar, rather than chocolate and lilies. We were pretty traditional in most of our designs, using crayons and rubber bands to illustrate our egg canvases. And usually, even our dad would join us, often late in the game, making cool multi-color eggs that made us all wish we had a few more eggs to color. And our mom would usually indulge us by letting us dye any eggs – even raw ones – that remained in the house.

It is definitely more work to make our own dye, and the process of dyeing took a lot more time than it would with the kit. It wasn’t a short activity by any means; in fact, eggs were in the dye baths for several hours, so it wasn’t the greatest activity to do with young kids. Arden got bored, but came back to check on her eggs several times.

To make a pink dye, we used beets. Coffee, of course, will give you a yellowish-brown effect – I tried not to think about what my daily habit is doing to my teeth! Red cabbage makes a beautiful blue dye. And red onion skins resulted in a very cool mottled greenish effect that was more dramatic than anything we could have achieved with a kit.

I was reminded of a framed poster my grandparents had hanging in their house, which had illustrations of various native-to-Arizona plants and small swatches of yarn that was dyed from parts of those plants. For a time, my grandfather was into weaving and even dyed his wool.

This process of making dyes was an experiment that made me think of how we – as a society – have lost a lot of skills and knowledge about how to make things and how to do things. A few generations ago nearly everyone had a garden, was an artisan of sorts, understood how things worked (and therefore could fix them), or created something that was a necessity for others. It was far more than a hobby or craft. We’ve ventured away from that for the most part, towards offices and desk jobs and computer screens. But the good news is that there are lots of people out there who do know how to make and create all kinds of things – and many of them write books and blogs about it.

What new “old skill” might you learn?

Pressed

Another pot of coffee pressed while
the snow piles softly against the panes

and our pajama’ed daughters drive small
vehicles of even smaller creatures

about the house, racing to appointments
here and there, they play at being us.

The snow grants reprieve, an excuse
to stop and wait, not pressed, unlike most

weekends when we rush toward whatever
it is we do: mostly, it seems tasks

not accomplished during the week.
Yet in today’s quiet Saturday

morning moments we linger: these we
yearn for during the chaotic pace

of work’s week, these that are pressed in a
book of memories banal but desired

still because they usually flee,
chased off by a cycle of trite to-dos

that drive us from our cozy bed, but
where this morning, your head on the pillow,

I watched you sleeping, and traced the
imprint of your heart, pressed into mine.

The Promise

There are mountains of clichés,
piles of poetry, all proclaiming:
The Promise of Spring.

And no small wonder, really.

Winter casts a bitter, dark spell,
never-ending below-freezing nights,
frost coats all,
the drab trees, naked,
shivering minus their green garlands
the dull skies, the clouds uninspired, and
even the tall grasses are dead,
lying forlorn and horizontal.

The tomb of the world seems cast open,
with little chance of redemption
or rebirth
Winter’s death creeping, shadowing
over all

Somehow the crisp air
the yellows oranges reds
the blue skies of October
all faded to the same lame, deathly grey
without even a rattle to mark their passing.

And we retreat indoors,
we scurry, preparing for holidays and
family, gathering together in the warmth
of the hearth and the stove
brightening the nights
with artificial lights whose symbolism
we may not recall.

We plod
through the later months,
dulling the ache with chocolate
(is it possible to be homesick for the sun?)
this pitiless wind rattles our windows
and whistles down the chimney

Until

One day

I notice incremental changes:
a haze of green at the tips of distant
branches, which yesterday, yes! just
yesterday were still only grey

then the pink buds appear on the plum trees,
sunny daffodils materialize from earth,

But

not until
this morning -
when I go out looking
(again)
and I see,
finally,
that from the lifeless vines
on the arbor,
red green shoots have emerged,
strung tight as a gyroscope,
ready to twirl open -
can I exhale for
the promise kept,
once again.

Her Bittersweet Burden

My daughter Arden has worn an eye patch for the past four years – more than half her life. For between two and four hours a day – and sometimes as many as eight – she’s covered her strong eye to give the weak eye a workout. We were cautioned early on not to call it her “bad” eye. It’s not bad. It’s just weak, and the hope is, that through patching, the weak eye will gain enough muscle strength to track the way it’s supposed to.

It seems easy enough. But that’s a lot to ask a preschooler. And now she’s a second grader. And still patching. And it is easy now. She knows the routine. She reminds me when I forget. She knows – and I mean knows – how much she’s gained by wearing her patch.

Four and a half years ago, Arden’s preschool teacher – who was also trained as a nurse – pulled me aside and told me that my daughter had serious issues with her vision. I think her exact words were, “She has no vision in her left eye.” She urged me to get her to a pediatric eye doctor right away.

I’ve always pictured myself as a (mostly) rational parent. I think I know my kids pretty well. I think that I am a pretty good judge of what they are capable of and what their limitations are. And, being a teacher, I figured I had a pretty good edge on believing what other teachers might have to say about my own kids.

And yet, even as this woman was talking to me, a little voice inside my head was saying, “Yeah, right! Not my kid!” I just couldn’t believe that my offspring might have an imperfection.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later, when another, more lucid voice in my head, one which had been nagging, finally broke through the incoherence: “Maybe Miss Renée is right. Maybe Arden can’t see.” And so I plopped my daughter onto my lap with a stack of CD cases nearby. I told her we were going to play a little game and I wanted to know what she could see on the CD cases when I covered up each of her eyes. I covered her left eye, and she played along. I covered her right eye, and held – I can still remember this vividly – my French Café CD. She pushed my hand away with her own chubby, dimpled-knuckled hand.

“Mom, I can’t see when you do that!”

Of course, the shock, dismay, and panic that ensued are all tragically commonplace. We took her to a local eye doctor who confirmed the nurse’s findings, explaining that her brain couldn’t reconcile the conflicting images it was getting from one eye so strong and the other so weak, so it essentially shut off the weak eye. He took very cool photographs of Arden’s optic nerve in her weak eye, which is covered in what he called “grey matter.” He couldn’t say if that was a cause of her loss of vision, but her eye was slightly “lazy” too, and he referred us to a pediatric specialist who prescribed the patch.

Oh, those first days and weeks with the patch. They were difficult. Because with the patch on, she could not see. At all. And it was so very scary for her. And how do you explain to a four-year-old that something so scary is actually going to be good for her?

But we all marched forward; sometimes all of us wearing a patch while she wore hers, a show of solidarity although I wasn’t sure if she could even see what we were doing for her, with her. We bought her cool patches, decorated with ladybugs or pink camouflage. We found patch posters of fish and princesses that were designed to display her used patches – a gold star chart for the visually impaired.

Once, on the way to school, she heard the word “burden” in a song. She asked Dan what the word meant, and upon his explanation, she said, “Oh. My patch is a burden.”

At first, she couldn’t see the Christmas lights I eagerly tried to point out to her on the way home from gymnastics. And then there were little glimmers of improvement and success, like the day in the car when she told Madeleine and me that the traffic light, fifty or so yards ahead, was red. Hearing stories from adults (so many!) who saw her patch and had to tell her that they had worn a patch as a child and could now legally drive without glasses. And every three months, a visit to the doctor, who confirmed that yes, she was improving. And who urged us to keep patching, double the hours, it’s working!

There were stories, too, of children who weren’t as lucky. Who were facing surgery as their best option. Who refused to wear the patch, or peeled it off when their parents weren’t looking. And also, stares from curious kids, the looks of concern and pity from adults, and questions like, “What’s wrong with your eye?”

To which my brave girl would reply, “I’m a pirate.”

(Disclaimer: I relish in the bewilderment that would pass across the faces of these well-meaning, but sometimes nosy adults.)

All the while she was improving, sometimes incrementally, sometimes in leaps and bounds. But the weak eye still lags far behind the good, even with her glasses on. And even though I know I’m not supposed to, I really, really want to help her with her eye chart while she sits in that too-big chair at the doctor’s office.

Her last few appointments, however, she’s shown no improvement. And we knew this was coming. The doctor had told us that the effectiveness of the patch would begin to wane somewhere around age seven. And so at her appointment earlier this month, we were told that we could begin a “slow wean” from the patch, backing off to three hours daily. At her next appointment, we’ll see if she’s maintained her gains in vision, and I imagine, back off a little more.

I welcome the end of patching, I really do. But I do so with a sense of wistfulness that surprises me. I want her to be free of that burden. She has gained vision through her own diligence and sacrifice. And that’s a huge gift to herself. But at the same time, the end of the patch means the end of improvement. Her vision won’t get any better once she is permitted to stop. And that will be a bittersweet celebration.