Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 27, 1994 TAG: 9403010188
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Madelyn Rosenberg
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In every family, there are ties that bind: some strong enough to withstand a game of tug of war; others, small threads that could snap, with no hope of ever being retied.
They're frayed or reinforced depending on who marries whom, who divorces whom, and who lives where.
Until a few months ago in my family, there was a side that hung like a broken spider web, slender strings dangling into nowhere.
Every family has its unique traditions. For my grandparents, and other Jewish families centered in New York City, there was a tradition of loud conversations, loud arguments and interminable silences.
No Hatfields and McCoys in my family: it was the Striers vs. the Gotbetters, the Briers vs. Zuckers, the Rosenbergs vs. the Rosenbergs. Some of those feuds lasted months.
One lasted 58 years.
My grandfather, a junkman in New York, had seven brothers and sisters, and according to my family lore they lost touch after the Great Depression. Grandpa had dropped out of school to support them all. When he wanted to save his dollars, marry my grandmother and start a family of his own, his siblings were unforgiving. They never spoke again to my grandfather, who died a few years ago.
His brothers and sisters and their descendents were dead to us, too, until about two weeks ago, when I met my long, lost cousin Bernie. Family history may never be the same.
Bernie, 60-something and the spitting image of my grandfather, came upon my side of the family early this year.
Bernie, the son of Grandpa's brother Harold, and Bernie's wife, Ruth, learned about us from his Aunt Frieda. According to family lore, Aunt Frieda is something of a machashafer, Yiddish for evil/gossip/troublemaker. (In Yiddish, there's a word for everything.)
Hearing Bernie lament that his son was the last of the Rosenbergs, Frieda, who knew differently, let it slip, mysterious as Obi-Wan Kenobe: "There is another."
On a vacation through the South, Bernie and Ruth stopped in for a visit.
"These are my cousins," I said, introducing these strangers - my family - to my boss.
"Never met," piped up Ruth, her New Jersey accent loud and clear. They're talkers, my cousins, and over the years, they've learned to take turns commandeering the conversation.
At the restaurant, Bernie cleared his throat and raised his glass. "To cousins," he said.
"To cousins."
I etched our family tree on the back of a placemat. Bernie, I think, approved.
"Dante said: 'Smart people take notes,'" he told me. I filled in the empty branches: Lila, the sweetheart; Harold, the furrier; Phillip, who died early; Dinah, who lost family favor when she married a foreigner, though they were first generation Americans themselves. All related, all "never met."
"Why?" I asked Bernie, as talk turned to the feud. "Why did they stop talking?"
His family lore is different than mine. He had heard, through Frieda-the-Machashafer, that my grandmother once made a play for Frieda's husband, Irving. End of story.
The truth probably lies somewhere between our family histories and no doubt involves my grandmother.
When she met Ruth and Bernie at my aunt's house a few months ago, Grandma, now 79, clutched their hands and said: "We're hungry for family." She's a reporter's dream, my grandmother. She speaks in quotes. She's a politician's dream, too: she forgets things.
"Who?" she said when I told her about my dinner. "Do I know them?"
"Bernie and Ruth," I said, patiently. "Grandpa's brother Harold's children."
"Do you know them?" she asked me. I sighed.
So much for truth. So much for family history. But perhaps this particular piece of history is best left lost. Perhaps this is the time to concentrate on the living, pick the best of my past, and leave old feuds forgotten.
Madelyn Rosenberg is the Roanoke Times & World-News' assistant New River editor.
by CNB