The Eyes Have It

My father was just six when his mother died in 1939. She was only twenty-eight and pregnant. Born Estera in Warsaw, my maternal grandmother, like many Jewish immigrants in that chaotic, war-torn moment, had her name Americanized to Esther when she passed through Ellis Island in 1918. Inexplicably, her husband, my Grandpa Max, viewed death as the closing of a book, never again to be visited. So, from the moment she died, Max shared no tender stories of their mother with the little boy, Arthur, who would become my father, nor his four year old brother, my Uncle Marvin. Max hung no photos on the wall. Celebrated no birth or death anniversaries. Then married within a year to Hilda, a comically cruel woman straight out of Disney casting who doted on her little girl, Rita, and treated her two new stepsons like garbage. My father’s biological mother was replaced with a woman who, when my dad was seven and beat her in checkers for the first time, denied it to my grandfather when his little boy excitedly greeted him at the door with the news.

So totally did my grandfather erase all trace of his dead wife’s existence that my father lived his entire 88 years with virtually no memory of his mother. He could not see her face, hear her voice nor recall any interactions with the woman who gave him life. His subsequent relationships with women, my mother included, suffered significantly from his trauma.

In my fifties, knowing nothing but the above about Estera, I asked my dad to write what little he did know and feel about his mom. He did not disappoint. “No one alive, including me, actually knew her. Memories should not be so easily lost. Indeed, Estera had become a non-person. I had only a few photos of her, less than one minute of her on film. I have no knowledge about the funeral … but looking back at her ‘closed book,’ I can conclude what I missed. Actually, I can conclude what I was denied,” wrote my father.

Sweet boys

I cannot conclude what he was denied, because my experience of motherhood could not have been more opposite. My beautiful mother, Arlene, is and has always been my anchor in life, my go-to person who felt what I felt. Exalted the wins. Made the losses, including her divorce from my dad when I was four, bearable. She was ever-present. The one person who could alleviate my childhood migraines; sitting on the edge of my single bed beneath a wall-sized mural of football players, she’d place a wet washcloth across my eyes and gently stroke my curls until I fell asleep. We still speak every day as the sun rises, me in Costa Rica gazing at the Pacific, she in Miami, communing with the Atlantic, having our coffee “together.” The depth of our connection is the stuff of poems.

My parents in the happy times

Likewise, when I look at Jodi with our sons, I see not only an eternity of love in both directions but the natural order of things. And again, I cannot grasp the idea of a child with no recollection of his mother. What my handsome, hardworking, loving and loyal father was denied was something most of us take for granted, trust and safety, the basic oxygen of maternal love and the cornerstones of self respect and confidence. Perhaps he received a thimblefull before he was six, but then it disappeared completely. Erased. Eliminated. Deleted.

My dad, circa 1980

In 1980, forty-one years after Estera’s death, my dad’s second wife, Carol, asked, out of the blue, if he knew where his mother was buried. When he said he did not, the sad and surprised look in her eyes pierced him. She believed that not only should he have known where Estera was buried, but he was also expected to offer a reasonable answer as to why he had never visited her grave site. “What kind of person are you, Arthur?” she asked. He did not disagree with her assessment; such was his shame. Talk about insult to injury. My poor 47 year old dad, the little boy inside the man, standing there as if he somehow did something wrong. An innocent man accused. An innocent boy abused. What kind of a person was he? A good person dealt a terrible hand. Scarred yet kind. Betrayed yet just. Misled yet gregarious. Still, Estera's firstborn remained a compassionate lover of life.

I was in my fifties the first time I saw a photo of Estera. And the grainy image stopped me in my tracks. This mysterious woman, whose potent blood courses through my veins as I type these words, stands with my grandfather and their two boys in front of the family car. Her hands pressed gently to the shoulder of her eldest, my dad, who gazes downward shyly, as if telegraphing his impending sadness. My wily uncle glances up demurely beneath blond curls. Estera stares straight ahead. Her moon-shaped face composes a look both serious and calm. Her hair nicely combed. Her dress stylish. She isn’t pretty, but her plainness wears the hint of a smile.

But, THE EYES!

Those eyes I knew like the back of my hand. Slightly slanted with a downward tilt. Almost Asian. Playful. Clever eyes … revealing just a touch of mischief. A grin. A wink. Good trouble. I recognized these eyes because this simple woman denied a future much beyond this photo, ERASED and INVISIBLE, is the face of my entire family. Hers is the visage the entire world beholds when they see us. She is the mask we wear. Her distinctive eyes are the defining feature of my dad, even more so my Uncle Marvin. And both of Marvin’s children, my first cousins. And their children. And THEIR children. And my son.

My son Bodhi

My Dad & my brother, Eric

Eric's son, Max, holding the picture above of his dad and grandfather.

Uncle Marvin

My cousin Stephen, Marvin's son and his wife, Roni

My cousin Barbara, Marvin's daughter

Barbara's daughter, Jessica and her daughter, Maren

The irony. The EYE-rony.

Invisible? Hah!! My fierce grandmother would not let death steal her legacy. Quite the contrary. Her DNA, with its sparkling, disarming, lovable aspect, is the water that fills the gene pool in which we Sheldons swim all day, every day. She-of-no-memory imprinted her glint on the windows of our family's souls. She is who we see in the mirror each morning. I now recognize how Estera's childlike eyes twinkle and scream across the generations, “let’s have fun." Let’s make jokes. Let’s eat too much. Curse like sailors. Let’s work hard and play harder. Cry hard and laugh harder.

1918 Estera's Ellis Island Immigration Papers

Estera's are also the eyes of a quiet survivor who witnessed firsthand the tyranny and suffering of the Eastern European Jew under the the boot of the czar. They saw both the old and new worlds. Yet looked not backward at despair but forward to the future. To my future. My joy. My pain. My soul satisfaction. To babies and travels and wild successes. To a brood, her brood, of doctors and artists and eagle scouts and veterinarians and landscape architects and bass players and builders and skateboarders and dandies and caregivers and lawyers and rock climbers and real estate magnates … and multitudes. All came, saw and conquered the world with her face. This boss lady would not be denied her role of matriarch.

Bodhi

Bodhi clearly wears Estera's prized eyes, charming badges of honor that practically shut when he laughs. My second son is deep and thoughtful and profoundly connected to nature. With eagle eyes that notice the smallest creatures and details. I love his eyes. And the timeless wonder of genetics!

The wedding of Estera & Max

My dashing father eyeing the world in Germany while in the army circa 1956 ...

Ours is the classic American immigrant story. “She walked through the turnstiles at Ellis Island, up the steps up to the tenement where she and her new husband lived and brought two children into the world,” my father wrote. He too, bore the power of those eyes. Lit up any room he walked into with a firm handshake and a thirst for friendship. He exuded an enthusiastic zest to see the world and meet and know everyone, something I inherited.

With the help of his wife, Carol, my dad did eventually learn which cemetery his mother was buried in, though he did not know where her actual gravesite lay in the vast acreage of Miami’s historic Woodlawn Gardens. Then, at age 51, he and Carol attended the funeral of a dear friend’s mother at Woodlawn. When that funeral service ended, with Carol's encouragement, my father looked out over the sprawling headstones determined to find his mother’s grave. He wrote, “I suggested that we walk to the far southwest corner of the cemetery and work our way back to our parked car. For lack of a better idea we launched into my plan. In the southwest corner there was a landmark, a large oak tree. That would be our starting point.” The two tread solemnly for fifteen minutes to get to that tree, with a plan to systematically march down every aisle until they found her gravesite. When, at last, they reached their starting point, beneath this wise old oak, my father gazed downward … and the VERY FIRST HEADSTONE HE SAW … was his mother.

“I looked down at it, and my knees buckled … crushed with guilt and shame. At age 51, I was at my mother’s gravesite for the first time. At age 51, I had never said the kaddish prayer for her passing. At 51, I had barely known of her as a person. My mother had become a non-person, and it just was not fair. Max had closed her book in 1939 and put it on the top shelf where it barely could be seen. My shoulders slumped, my head dropped to my chest, and a torrent of tears poured from my eyes. I cried uncontrollably for around ten minutes.”

He found her. She made it easy for him. The first one in the first corner. A long overdue mother and child reunion. And some modicum of healing for a good boy who became a good man.

Estera's brood at her gravesite 2015. My dad wears a tie, while I touch her headstone.

In the years that followed, my father made "several unremarkable visits" (his words) to his mother’s grave, but a singular thought occupied his mind. “Dammit, as her older son I had a responsibility to post-mortem make her a part of our family. They should all know that I too had a mother, and her name was Estera.” On Thanksgiving weekend, November 27th 2015, 76 years after her death, my 82-year-old dad arranged for twenty of us to gather at her grave site. “The book covered in dust, was taken from the shelf. I made appropriate remarks, shed a few tears and left feeling like a dutiful son,” he wrote.

Estera's dutiful, loving son at age 88, just weeks before he reunited with her in eternity

I was blessed to know three of my grandparents. I loved them all. Each was kind to me. Each gave me something meaningful. One showed me snow for the first time. And how to catch blue crabs with a chicken neck. Another made me trays of banana pudding every time we visited her mobile home. Another built me a benchpress in the garage. They loved me. And I them. Yet Estera and I did not have the pleasure. Now I realize she too gave me something precious - the face of my tribe. The eyes of my wolf pack. Though not shaped as much like Estera’s, I’d like to think my eyes bear a touch of her timeless shine. She could not be any less invisible, because she is what we look like. I see her every day in the face of my son. And at family gatherings, as if there are dozens of Estera’s running about, ranging in age from newborn to ancient, laughing and gesturing and talking shit with the best of them. I marvel and give deep thanks each time I watch my own mother reveling in the moments with our boys, her grandsons ... as they enjoy her calm, nourishing adoration. In both directions their relationships are singular,. because a maternal grandmother is a big deal.

I see you at last, Estera. How amazing that you have been right in front of me all these years. Smiling with your magic eyes straight into my heart.

I love you, Grandma.