SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

From school plays to betrothal, and bachelorette party to walking down the aisle, BFF smiles and hugs prevail. In the week approaching our daughter’s first wedding anniversary, I’m highlighting our daughter Rina with her maid of honor, Taylor.

WOW! Weeks ago, in the height of the coronavirus pandemic, I decided on the title of this blog post, wrote the introductory paragraph, and added some photographs. I went on to other writing, figuring that I would wait for a spark to finish this piece when along came George Floyd’s killing leading to violent protests amid racial unrest.

While many in my current situation are in introspection about their white privilege, I’m not. Read on.

I realize now that the things my father reported that he lived through were not exaggerated. I was there for some of his most-telling life experiences. In one such incident, my aunt’s car had been stolen from the street in front of the house where she rented an apartment.

The four-family building my aunt resided at then was on Lyons Avenue, across from Newark Beth Israel Hospital. In search of his sister's car, my father and I drove around what seemed to be the entire city, including through derelict Newark neighborhoods, which I hadn’t seen in years.

While sitting in the passenger seat of his weather-worn jalopy, I focused on finding my aunt’s used two-toned Chevy, as my father slowly navigated, traveling almost at a snail’s pace. As we moved along Belmont and Avon, as those streets are still known today, my father took a trip down memory lane.

We often visited my aunt, a lifelong apartment dweller, on Belmont when I was a young child, and for me, memories surfaced of her black cast iron stove. That brick building with the matching stoop, near the well-known intersection of Avon, was where my grandmother lived, too, in her final years before my birth. 

As we surveyed the area, while not finding the stolen car, my father predicted riots were coming to Newark, and it was only days before his premonition proved true. It was very hot and humid, as he explained the looming situation while driving in our air-"conditionless" car with the windows rolled down.

I remember his farmer’s tan arms on his Mediterranean dark-toned skin, with the more deeply tanned elbow on his left arm familiarly perched outside the driver’s window, as much as I remember his comments. The epitome of a jolly mailman, this time he painfully cautioned about the inordinate number of downtrodden looking residents we drove past, sitting idly outside on their deteriorating front stoops.

“Roll up the windows,” he warned, as he picked up the pace and put the pedal to the metal. That was in stark contrast to the days, merely a generation before my time, when he traversed the cobblestoned streets of the city he knew so well, riding horseback, and the Sunday family outings with horse and wagon around Newark’s Weequahic and Branch Brook parks.

Soon after he was born in Chudnov, Ukraine, in 1911, my father, along with his mother and older brother, survived a two-week steerage boat ride to America, Land of the Free. My grandparents could never have predicted that their boys would fight their way up in the Ironbound Section of Newark, known as Down Neck, an ethnic mecca. Nor could they have known that my father would meet his bride in a racially mixed neighborhood in the adjoining county’s town of Roselle.

My mother’s kosher fried chicken, born from a recipe of a black friend in the neighborhood, was the most delectable I’ve ever tasted. I’m sorry I didn’t record the technique. The memory of its crispy taste makes my mouth water, only rivaled by her baked spaghetti, made with a white cheese sauce, which has been a family favorite for three-quarters of a century. I’m not sure if it originated from the same friend or another in the community.

My parents married in 1940. As newlyweds, they rented in Linden before settling in Roselle. After a few years of marriage, with their first two children, they moved into an apartment in a four-family building in a blue-collar, mostly black neighborhood, already occupied by my maternal grandfather and aunt. Around the time they had their third son in 1950, my aunt married and my grandfather moved out along with her. I joined the family in 1953.

We lived in that second-floor two-bedroom apartment until 1965 when we moved to the most affordable one-family house my parents could find. It happened to be a house on my father’s postal route in a white working-class neighborhood, in Elizabeth. In Roselle, I was called “white cracker,” while in Elizabeth, I had to deal with Antisemitism.

We now see history repeating itself, as it tends to do. When our youngest passed the quarter-century mark earlier this month, my husband remarked about all the turmoil our son witnessed in his first twenty-five years. We never thought we would return to experiencing a time like the 1967 riots or lining up at the firehouse for sugar cubes laced with the polio vaccine.

We often regaled our children about such harrowing times of our childhood. Sadly, now as young adults, they are witnessing worldwide protests while on lockdown for coronavirus, impatiently waiting for a vaccine against COVID-19.

I entered college in 1971 at the most diverse college in the country, Rutgers-Newark College of Arts and Sciences. After taking a bus from Elizabeth to get to class, I obliviously walked the streets of downtown Newark, which were still battered and reeling from the 1967 riots. I was a target of prolonged stalking during that time.

Calling my house time after time, the pervert would simply say he saw me in my gray boots one day, black another. He probably walked by me on the cement campus or, for all I know, maybe he even sat next to me in class. Despite these obstacles, while anxious, I was eager to learn and move up socially and economically. 

In the days before caller ID, each time, I slammed down the receiver of the Princess-style push-button landline phone in my small, crowded bedroom. Eventually, to root out the monster, I tossed my favorite fashionable boots, while all along, with resilience, continued to attend classes regularly.

While studying for my master’s degree, I drove from Elizabeth through Newark and also Jersey City, where my friend grew up, to get to NYU, in the heart of Greenwich Village, a true melting pot. Soon after getting my degree, my husband and I bought a house in an integrated neighborhood.

The large, relatively inexpensive, stately Colonials and Victorians, within my required 1/2 hour drive to our offices, had lots of property that we were seeking to avoid the cramped quarters of our youths. When we moved into our home in 1981, three houses in our immediate neighborhood were boarded up. Today, our house is listed in a historic district touting million-dollar homes for sale.

My friend, on the other hand, whom I worked with in Newark, and her husband, an engineer, executive, and ordained minister, relocated to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. They bought a large, newly built house with open-air grounds in a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood. 

In close to 40 years, my husband and I have entertained our neighbors, participated in block parties, and celebrated various occasions together with others in our diverse, local community. One of our friends in the neighborhood graduated from UC Berkeley, with a law degree from Harvard. He was eventually called to work in the Obama Administration.

Before he left our area, while at our home for some occasion, we sat talking when our friend asked about a repairman who had done work at our house. I honestly couldn’t tell my black friend whether the worker was black or white. I’ll never forget him sitting, taking it in, reflecting on my statement, then turning to his wife and others in the room, announcing almost incredulously, “she’s colorblind, look at that, she’s actually colorblind.”

My husband and I purposely set out to raise our children in a diverse community, easing their way to live and work in peace with all people. Our dream was to see a world in which our values were admired, and our nuclear family was well-grounded.

It may sound cliché, but one of my besties, the friend who was raised in Jersey City, now living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is black. We talk on the phone from our suburban houses over sixty miles apart, usually at least daily, often multiple times in a day. Commiserating on the lack of understanding in the world, we often pine for the good old days, as did our parents.

When my friend became a young widow, fearing for her son’s well-being, she drove him through blighted Newark neighborhoods. She intended to show him how he should not carry himself so that being a person of color, he could not only survive but thrive. He and his older sister surely have done that.

Each holding advanced degrees; both of her children are gainfully employed in high-end positions. Their Spanish-accented, dark-skinned father, of Latin descent, who was born and spent his childhood years in Colombia, South America, would be proud.

My friend in Bethlehem and I have so many similarities it’s uncanny. She is committed to her Baptist faith as I am to my Judaism. Our fathers each worked for the U.S. Postal Service and our mothers had so many of the same expressions and life experiences, we laugh. Her East Indian paternal grandfather’s recipe for sautéed curried chicken is savored in our house.

My mother’s favorite expression bears repeating today, “Why can’t people live and let live?” To this, I say, "Amen." We can only hope that the upbringing of our children was the foundation for a life well-lived.

Not that we expect our three to solve all the world’s problems but we do want them to know their family history and contribute their share by continuing to be good people. In Yiddish, the all-encompassing term would be to exhibit menschlichtkeit.

In the photo above, the groom, Eric, stands watching as he and the others in the room surely gained a lot from two BFFs.

P.S. In her speech at our daughter’s wedding, Taylor spoke of eating chicken dinner, baked lemon/mustard this time, no doubt, at my daughter’s apartment on the holiday of Rosh Hashanah. It seems in our family tradition some things never change and whether fried, sautéed, or baked, chicken is a conduit.

Rina at her bachelorette party February 2019 with her maid of honor Taylor

Taylor, Sara, Rina, and Kate. December 2018 at Rina’s engagement party. Her maid of honor and two of her bridesmaids from her old South Orange/Maplewood School Days.

Taylor at Rina’s engagement at The Hollywood Improv in Los Angeles, March 2018

Taylor and Rina after playing orphans in Annie Columbia High School Maplewood, New Jersey March 2005