AGE IS JUST A NUMBER - PART II — Sharon Mark Cohen

AGE IS JUST A NUMBER - PART II of IV

Between the time I read Kitchen Talk to, or should I say “with,” Lois, and the start of the coronavirus pandemic, we were fortunate to get together on several occasions when my son was back in Cleveland for law school and marriage, making it a family destination. (See my May 17, 2018, published article, A Familial Love Affair at https://jewishlink.news/monthly-sections/family-link/25077-a-familial-love-affair). On one occasion, Lois urged her daughter, with her eldest granddaughter, to join us from Michigan.

It would be impossible to encapsulate Lois’s life, but I’ll work at summarizing unbleeped snippets. Lois informed me that, post three marriages, she willfully stopped dating at age 70. She was "finished" with that part of her life. Yet, she had so much living to do. Her worldliness was unparalleled.

Lois took a deep interest in so many facets of living. She had strong opinions and interests in fashion, politics, entertainment, grammar, cooking, and a fierce desire to perpetuate her Judaism, even though she was not, by any means, religious.

When she was "about" eight years old, she went to Catholic School in what she called “a nasty little coal town in Pennsylvania.” After six months, Lois said while laughing at the thought, she was "thrown out" for dancing to the music in morning prayer. That was so “Lois.” It’s okay to laugh. Lois would have loved that reaction.

While growing up, Lois, who went to two elementary schools in Cleveland, two Junior high schools there, and two high schools, plus schooling in California, New York, and Pittsburgh, said, “it seemed it was a normal life. In retrospect, it was crazy.” Thinking back, she said, “how did I get through it?” Freely spilling out things she never spoke about before, she humorously reacted, “was like getting an enema.”

Unapologetically, Lois, who, as she put it, “was witness to almost the first plane rides,” and I enthusiastically conversed about anything and everything. My senior Cousin Lois was a beauty and a class act. There was nothing that didn’t interest Lois and not a thing that embarrassed her to discuss. Masturbation, abortion, infidelity, crotch-watching, drinking, smoking, perpetual dieting, medical marijuana, she did it all. And she didn’t mind telling me.

After the convoluted life that my cousin lived through, she deserved to be able to share her stories without judgment. Lois spoke of a broken home life with her parents divorcing after separating more than once and last seeing her once adored father when she was twelve. She had a much older half-sister from her father’s first marriage and only met her a few times in California.

Lois’s younger brother, my cousin Dale, the apple of his mother’s eye, died after being struck by a car upon exiting a bus. Dale (August 18, 1933 - January 10, 1949) was merely 15. That was a year after their father married a third time and, living in California, died. Was it in their state of shock that Lois heard her mother say, “it should have been you?”

At 17, Lois went with her grieving mother to live with our only aunt and uncle in Cleveland. That was one of the 17 places Lois called home before marriage. Her sleeping arrangements were not ideal for a 17-year-old who shared the bed with our aunt’s 17-year-old daughter from her previous marriage, whom our uncle adopted. (see my blog post, Why Do You Do It? dated August 25, 2020).

Lois’s parents, each born in Eastern Europe, were assimilated Jews and shunned speaking their native Yiddish. The darkest of tales that Lois told included reliving a time in childhood when she was abducted.

Initially, she felt her father’s infidelity was to blame for her parent’s marital problems. Later, she proclaimed that her mother let her father down, realizing the divorce was her mother's fault as she was a gambler who played cards daily.

Hearing a different side of the story from me helped my cousin come to peace with her feelings for her mother, one of 11 children, who lost her mother, when she died in childbirth when my aunt was 15. My aunt also lost her first husband of ten years, with whom she remained childless.

After our conversation, Lois said I make her feel like she’s going to a mother confessor. She concluded, “now I feel she did things out of love for me. I need better to understand and forgive.”

Some positive things Lois told me about her mother were that she made exotic dishes, such as Spanish Tongue with raisins and sweet sauce, and “she had a wonderful eye and loved gorgeous things…She had great taste and a pretty home decorated with second-hand furniture…While she couldn’t afford her lifestyle, she had an insatiable love of expensive clothes."

Due to the health issues of her first husband, my Aunt Estelle moved to Arizona with him. There were no buses, and she didn’t drive. Her only mode of transportation was by horse. The story, handed down to Lois, was why she especially appreciated the picture I shared. The tale came to life in a photo fit for framing of her mother with her horse.