THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 6, 1994 TAG: 9409060049
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 171 lines
A thousand years in Thy sight are as yesterday when it is past, but as for man, his years are numbered; every hour is precious for Thou has set a limit to his days. On Rosh Hashana we become aware of the flight of time, the vanity of our possessions and the uncertainty of life.
- From ``Prayer for the New Year.''
Alice Herskowitz, a dark scarf loosely covering her white hair, leans against the table and flicks the blue disposable lighter. With a shaking hand, she lights the middle candle, using it to light the remaining four in the candelabra. Then she covers her eyes with her hands and soundlessly recites the ancient Hebrew blessing over the candles.
From his chair, her husband, Sid, watches, his eyes gleaming in the candlelight, his walker next to him. He motions for some red wine, then lifts the filled glass high and intones another prayer.
From the kitchen, Felicia Nixon watches, waiting for the signal to serve the first course, to begin the Rosh Hashana dinner.
This is Alice's 70th Rosh Hashana, Sid's 81st and Nixon's sixth.
Without Nixon, their 37-year-old home health aide, Sid and Alice might be celebrating this most sacred of Jewish holidays in a nursing home somewhere, instead of in their own Virginia Beach apartment with the silver-plated candle holder Alice bought 37 years ago for $50, with their cat, Ketsela, lying by their feet, and with the fragrant scent of chicken soup wafting in from the kitchen.
A stroke Sid suffered a year ago, coupled with Alice's bad back and swollen legs, left the couple physically unable to manage the everyday activities of life, even though their minds remained sharp.
They moved here in March from Los Angeles after the earthquake there left them trapped in their second-floor apartment with no electricity or running water. Their son, who lives in Virginia Beach, flew them out, found them an apartment and called Jewish Family Services about providing them with help.
And so now they have Nixon, a tall, thin woman with muscular forearms and a wrist full of jangling bracelets.
Nixon comes six or seven days a week, five hours a day, to care for them. She cooks, straightens the apartment, makes sure they take their medications, watches what they eat, commands Sid to do his exercises and provides the support Alice so desperately needs to care for her husband.
To the Herskowitzes, she is much more than an aide or even a nurse.
``She is like our daughter,'' says Alice, patting Nixon's hand. ``She is our family.''
Felicia Nixon was working in a nursing home as a certified nursing assistant six years ago when a friend suggested she apply for a job with Jewish Family Services in Norfolk.
``Jewish Family Services?'' Nixon asked. ``Are you kidding?''
Nixon, who is African American, knew few Jews. Her image of them reflected society's stereotypes: ``I thought they were some of the strangest, most self-righteous, miserly, pigheaded people I'd ever met,'' she said. And she never understood their claims of discrimination. They could always just change their name, couldn't they? A black person, however, couldn't change the color of her skin.
But she soon learned differently.
There was the client who made her remove the name tag she wore, which read ``Jewish Family Services,'' when they went out. ``I don't want people to know I'm Jewish,'' the old woman said.
Others talked about relatives and friends they had lost in the Holocaust during World War II. ``You probably understand,'' they said, seeking a kinship with her own ethnicity. She would shake her head. No, she'd say, there were similarities, but their stories were very different.
Why, she once asked Alice, do white people think of you as Jewish, instead of as just white? How do they know you're Jewish, and why does it make a difference?
Alice couldn't answer.
Then there were the very real cultural and religious differences. Her first client was a woman who kept kosher. That meant separate dishes for dairy and meat, a long list of complicated rules about what she could and could not eat, and customs that flabbergasted Nixon.
Once, she inadvertently used a dairy fork for a meat dish. ``Go bury the fork in the ground outside,'' the woman said, explaining the custom of purification. Nixon was appalled. ``Give me the fork,'' she thought. ``I'll use it. Who would want to use a fork after it's been in the ground?''
But she has learned. These days, her strong hands shape matzo balls, the Jewish version of dumplings, with ease. She cooks brisket - a type of beef - for her own two daughters. And she understands the significance of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, a holiday that ranks right up there with her own Christmas and Easter.
``They're just as equal to me as I am to them,'' she says about the people she cares for today.
The dining room table is set, even though it's not yet noon on Rosh Hashana eve. A starched, sheer lawn tablecloth, crystal wine glasses and gold flatware are carefully laid out. In the center, in the place of honor, is the silver candelabra, five candles already inserted. Three places are set - for Sid, Alice and their neighbor.
In the kitchen, where the sharp scent of cut onions permeates the air, Alice, with Nixon's help, is making her famous potato pudding. Alice needs no recipe for this dish - she's been making it since she was 8 years old, when her older sister had to light the stove for her. She recites the ingredients from memory, measures them out by feel. Potatoes. Onions. Flour. Salt. Oil. Eggs.
The potatoes go into the blender and, with one hand on her walker, bent nearly double, Alice pushes the machine's button.
A whirring noise fills the kitchen as the raw potatoes turn into a thick mush. Nixon stands next to Alice, watching, ever ready to help, but restraining herself. It would be much easier if she just did this herself: lifted the heavy blender and dumped the potatoes into the colander to strain out the water, poured in the onions, mixed the concoction together.
But it is important that Alice do it, that this be her holiday meal, the 45th she's cooked for Sid.
And there are still things Alice has to teach. ``Can you separate an egg?'' she asks Nixon, her thumbs pushing into the eggshell, her hands gently rocking the liquid to and fro until the white slips from the yellow yolk.
``See, white and yellow, separate. That's discrimination.'' She and Nixon laugh.
One of the four casseroles of pudding is for Nixon, who can only stay long enough to help serve and clean up the meal. She refuses Alice's invitations to join them for dinner, insisting she has to get home to her girls.
``Oooohhh, you should see her girls,'' Alice brags, as proud as any grandmother. ``One of them got a certificate for perfect attendance; the other is a dancer. They are just beautiful.''
It took only three weeks of working for the Herskowitzes before Nixon moved beyond being just an employee and emerged as the couple's surrogate daughter.
It happened one afternoon, after a fight with her daughter-in-law left Alice in tears. Nixon went to comfort her, softly rubbing the woman's bent back. ``Don't let that get next to you,'' Nixon murmured consolingly. ``It's just not worth it.''
Sensitivity.
It's why she's so good at her job, Nixon says. ``I can put myself in their position; I can feel the way they feel. You've got to have compassion for these people; if you don't, you might wind up mistreating them.''
She's seen that - in the nursing home where she worked she once had to grab an aide's fist to keep her from punching an elderly man.
``Sometimes you just have to go outside and wash your face and calm down,'' she says.
Like the time a senile Jewish woman called her a nigger. ``Two words I won't be called,'' Nixon says. ``Nigger and bitch.''
She knew the old woman was demented, but still . . . ``it had to be somewhere in her mind from before,'' so she asked to be reassigned.
The job gets to her in other ways. Last Rosh Hashana she wasn't working - she was taking a six-month hiatus after a client she'd taken care of for a year died. ``It just overwhelmed me,'' she said.
But with the Herskowitzes there has been rewarding progress. Sid can now walk a bit, use the bathroom and wash himself, even shave himself.
Nixon attributes it to the fact that he is in his own home, that he has his dignity and independence, things she found missing among the elderly she cared for in nursing homes.
``In a nursing home, it's the end of the line. People feel there's nothing to learn.''
Nixon is not the Herskowitzes' only caregiver. Through Jewish Family Services, they have visits from a social worker and a recreational therapist, who helped Alice plant tomatoes and persuaded the couple to buy a cat. A volunteer comes once a week to take Alice shopping, and another to take Sid for walks around the apartment complex.
But most of his independence, Sid says, is because of Nixon. ``She insists I be independent, and I fall in line.''
``Aacchhh God,'' says Alice, nodding in agreement. ``She is such a member of the family. Every time she walks in, even the cat greets her.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photos by RICHARD L. DUNSTON
Alice Herskowitz prepares the candelabra before she and her husband
recite prayers and begin Rosh Hashana dinner on Monday.
Home-health aide Felicia Nixon helps Alice Herksowitz fix dinner for
the Jewish New Year Celebration.
B/W
Felicia Nixon, left, oversees one of Alice Herskowitz's Rosh Hashana
rituals: Preparing potato pudding for dinner.
by CNB