Our February epistolary writing posts continue this week.! I am grateful to Marlene Samuels and Kurt VanderSluis (co-founder of Writing it Real) for their pieces, Marlene’s to her mother, and Kurt’s to his father. Each piece is poignant and addresses loss. Marlene’s loss is of her mother’s presence and wisdom as Marlene herself becomes a mother and expresses anger at the Holocaust and Hitler for creating circumstances that shortened her mother’s life. Kurt’s is about the lost opportunity of continuing to be bonded pals with his father. I hope reading these two and last week’s two will inspire letters from you. We have one more week in February to post these epistolary essays. Please consider sending your letters to me. 

Here again is the writing topic I chose for this month’s epistolary writing idea, spurred on after I read Victoria Chang’s Dear Memory, a collection of epistolary essays. One she writes to a poetry workshop teacher whose advice, support, and encouragement she hadn’t allowed herself to follow years ago, the encouragement she was finally able to use to read poets the teacher had listed for her so many years ago.

Chang’s words got me thinking about the variety of people who try to help us along our journey to use our gifts, but for various reasons, we don’t listen to them. This month I would love to post letters you write to one such a person telling them what you remember of what they offered and going on to admit why you didn’t follow their support and how you finally began to or could decide to right now.

Look up the Kindle version of Dear Memory to read a sample of Chang’s letters. So, do write one of your own and send it me. I will post your letters all during February. Keep them coming. I post late Thursday nights, so if I hear from you before next Thursday I can post your writing!

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Dear Memoir — Dear Memory — Dear Mom by Marlene B. Samuels

Dear Mom,

So, so many questions I had asked you, wish I could ask you especially now that I myself am a mother, especially now that my two sons are adults. I listen to the questions they ask me, but in my opinion, not nearly enough of them.  Sadly, I have to admit that when I was in my teen years and then a young woman, it never entered my naive, optimistic mind to ask you even the simplest of questions about yourself. If only I’d thought to ask about your likes and dislikes, your feelings, preferences for specific foods, dark or milk chocolate, roses or lilacs? The answers of which are so telling about the woman you were.

I do know about one favorite food of yours that you called mamaliga. It’s the Romanian version of polenta, a dish you made for my brother and me when dad wasn’t around. He refused to eat it claiming that only peasants ate such stuff. But I never did ask you about any of the other foods you loved, stuff your own mother made when you were growing up. And then there was Montreal. Was there something you especially liked to eat or cook in Montreal, where you’d immigrated?  I never thought to ask whether you liked milk or dark chocolate — my own personal favorite. Always, either you bought Hershey bars or ate the gift chocolates from those boxes your friends brought when they came to our house for dinner, mitbringens you called them. Did you buy Hershey bars because they reminded you of that young American G.I. who carried your sixty-pound body out of Dachau?

Now I realize the most relevant question of all questions: what if I’d have been a realist? Would I have considered the likelihood that you’d be gone from my life so shortly after we’d actually become real friends? What would you have done differently if you’d foreseen the true likelihood I’d outlive you?

One blink of an eye, eine augenblick. My fate was sealed and in too many ways destiny determined I’d repeat the difficult and lonely experience you faced when you had your first baby.

How did you carry on each day without a mother to guide you? Was there an older woman, that someone else you were able to turn to for guidance and advice? And if so, who was that woman? I wonder if she was the German woman in whose home you were all boarders for three years? Did she advise you once she got over fearing you — those Jews in her house? She fell in love with my brother, with you, with Dad, and cried bitterly when you moved to Canada. Did you miss her when you found yourself yet once more in another new land with no family?

So speaking about family, I know almost nothing about yours other than about your four full siblings — most amazingly, all of whom but one survived the camps. And about your parents, I heard bits and pieces from you while I was growing up but nothing at all about your grandparents or your father’s origins. I never heard a word about your mother’s family. Let’s be clear, Hitler made sure of that.

I’m near to certain that I’ll never find any information but for a miracle in genealogical research. What did they look like, your mother and father? You once told me that your father was a tall man twenty-two years older than your mother, with a full head of thick curly blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard. Handsome by any measure! Did the fact that he was so much older than your mother bother you? She was short, right? Petite and beautiful with very dark hair — a young mother who looked much younger than her years. Did anyone ever think she was his daughter?

He had six children from his first marriage and his oldest daughter was close to your mother’s age, right? Did you know what his first wife died of or how old she had been? Did you ever ask your father or was that a forbidden kind of discussion in your family? Also, did you know how long after his first wife died, leaving him with all those children, your father married your mother? Didn’t you ever feel confused because you had step-sisters and step-brothers close to your own mother’s age?

Only two photographs of you from before the war survived. There’s one in which you, your younger sister Esther and your nephew Yacov pose together in what looks to be a deep forest. Surely, you were in Romania, but where? Were you near your parents’ house? I can’t help but wonder, who took that photograph of you? The three of you are dressed in a way that makes me pretty sure it was warm outside, but what month was it? Could you possibly have remembered? And what about the time of day?

How old were you when this picture was taken? Yacov looks as though he might have been somewhere between ten and twelve. Were you and Esther taking care of him? Wasn’t he your oldest stepsister’s son? Esther was so much taller than you so even though she was five years younger, she looked older.

I know this is a difficult, maybe even insensitive question, but could you ever have imagined so much horror and loss, suffering, and pain, would befall all of you? May I ask, without upsetting you too much, how soon after this photo was taken, did humanity take a nosedive until, in short order, no such thing as humanity prevailed?

Did you have a strong sense of impending doom but like me, you simply never did trust your own perceptions or instincts? You had told me once about some of the subtle, yet significant and terrifying, changes that were beginning to take place all around you. Why did you listen to all those naysayers when they insisted that your imagination was getting the better of you? Why, even when your friends were beginning to disappear, one by one?

What books did you read? I know you loved reading more than anything else, that you even hid in tall grasses in fields that surrounded your parents’ house to be able to read undisturbed. Because you were fluent in so many languages, in which did you read? Did you have a favorite author? Did you ever write poems or stories? You told me your mother used to tell your sisters and you stories about her own childhood. What were they and why had I never thought to ask you if you remembered any of them?

You resisted your father’s intense pressures for you to marry young and to become a good Jewish wife. Was your resistance because you saw what your mother and older sisters dealt with or was it really because you had a sense of foreboding? When I was a college student, you told me that you always wanted a career, to be somebody. But that leads to my next question: what opportunities were available to you during a time and place where being both a female and a Jew imposed unimaginable limitations?

As I think about what I wish I knew, it also never dawned on me to ask you so many simple questions the answers to which are so telling about your character. Did you have a favorite color, for instance? I know to a certainty that you hated yellow but was that true before the Nazis forced you to sew yellow Stars of David on all your clothes?

I wish I knew: how did you manage to have my older brother so few months after you’d been discharged from your six-month stay in the Red Cross hospital? Did you think, constantly, about not having your mother with you during those difficult days with a new infant when you still were living in Germany? Did you cry? You once told me you didn’t cry because all your tears dried up in the camp and you no longer had any. Is that possible?

How were you so strong? I was without you, my mother, when I also had my first son. So many times it was near impossible for me to repress my anger and tears, knowing that the causes of your premature death were attributed to the abuses you’d endured in the camps.

In my early years of motherhood, I was able to find answers to many of my dilemmas by asking myself the simple question: “What would Seren Tuvel do?” But I knew full well that in another kind of life, I would have done what most other women of my generation did: pick up the phone, call Mom and say, “Mom, what should I do?”

I still miss you and all your love and wisdom!

 Your daughter,

 Marlene

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 Dear Dad by Kurt VanderSluis

Dear Dad,

Now that you are dead, I hope your memory has improved. It would make it so much easier to talk with you. You often had no memory of a moment or a conversation I would be relating. And you would fill in the missing moments from what you believe you would have said and done, not what actually happened. I always described you as a temperate man sitting on top of a volcano. And you could never remember your behavior when the volcano blew. Having a different set of facts made our complicated relationship even more difficult.

I mainly remember how much we talked in my early years as your son – so many hours of interesting and enjoyable conversation with you. You seemed to me then to be a man of the mind. You took such a great interest in me and I enjoyed your willingness to join in my mental adventures. My brain has always been my favorite toy and it was your favorite toy for a while too.

Here’s what I remember. You devoted yourself to seeing what I could do with my mind and helping me build it. You would say, “Before you start eating your ice cream, what is 35 x 27?” I loved that game and all the others you played with me. When we read a chapter of the Bible after dinner, you would ask me to recall the names and words and meanings. You encouraged me to memorize parts of the Bible and you patiently listened to me recite the Book of Jonah to you. You would drive down the streets in an unfamiliar place and ask me to recall the cross streets we went past and recite them. You would write them down and then we would drive back to see if I had correctly remembered them all. We did that and when I got better at it, you would increase the number of streets and the speed at which you drove.

You also taught me the stuff you had learned in the army. Like how to tell how much daylight is left, several ways to figure out the cardinal directions by day or night. How latitude and longitude worked, how to read maps of all kinds. How to use a compass. Advice about staying warm and hydrated and first aid.

We also talked for many happy hours about the nature of the universe and the meaning of life and the purpose of existence. We seemed so similar. When I was four, we were in the Indian Guides, and we said that we’d be pals forever at every meeting, and I totally believed and wanted that.

Of course, we didn’t know back then that I was autistic, despite all the clues. I didn’t even know myself until I was in my 50s. Because of that, I often interpreted what you said differently than how you meant it. So when you asked me to be doubly careful, I struggled to figure out exactly what that meant. Did it mean to lock the door twice instead of just once?

The moment I felt the first unraveling of our wonderful bond was when I was 8. I came home from Larry Slenk’s with a bloody mouth. You were horrified and asked me what happened, and I told you that Larry had hit me in the mouth. You asked what I did in response. I said that I did what Jesus said to do — I turned my cheek and he hit me again. You asked me if I fought back. I said no – that’s not what Jesus said to do.

Maybe you can’t appreciate the level of my confusion when you took me out in the backyard and started to show me how to fight or the extremity of my mixed feelings a week later when I had a rematch with Larry and beat him up in front of the neighborhood. They and you were so delighted in my performance, but all I could think about was making Jesus sad that I had disobeyed him. I tried for many years to figure a way out of this dilemma:

• The Bible is perfect. Every word is true.
• The most important part of the Bible to pay attention to is what Jesus actually said.
• Jesus said to not fight back, but to turn the other cheek.
• My dad and everybody else said I had to stand up for myself and if that meant fighting, to fight with skill and determination to win.
• There is no verse in the Bible about when to fight back except for when God commands it.

Over the next 10-15 years, I talked with almost every minister, Bible scholar and seminary student I came across about how to resolve this contradiction and no one had a clue. But even if they couldn’t resolve the contradiction, it didn’t bother them and didn’t bother you. You all were perfectly willing to believe totally contradictory things, but I couldn’t.

That was the first bit of unraveling I can remember but not the last. There were many more.

A huge one happened when I was 12. I came home from school so excited to tell you about having my first girlfriend and you made me break up with her over the phone because she was Catholic. I’m sure we talked over an hour about why this was necessary:

• Q: Will Charlene go to heaven? A: Probably not.
• Q: Wow! Really? Aren’t Catholics Christians? A: Yes, but not the right kind.
• Q: What is the difference between us and Catholics? A: They believe you are saved by your works, we believe you are saved by your faith.
• Q: But if you’re doing your works, aren’t you doing them because you have faith? A: But then there’s our belief in Election, which means whether or not you are going to heaven is known by God even before you are born.
• Q: So doesn’t that mean she *might* go to heaven anyway? A: You can’t go to heaven if you don’t believe in Election and Catholics don’t believe in Election.
• Q: But if it’s all about Election, doesn’t that mean that really nothing you do makes any difference? Not even believing in Election would seem to be either necessary or sufficient. A: No, you’re wrong, but that’s very hard to explain — you’ll understand better when you’re older.

I’d always known that I was adopted, but that night I reflected on how incredibly lucky I was to be adopted by a dad who had the right religion. I could have been adopted by a Muslim dad and I would probably have been under the mistaken impression that I was going to heaven and that my real dad was going to hell, but I’d be wrong. But wait, how would I be able to tell? I’d just believe what my dad said in that life as well.

HOW DO YOU REALLY KNOW which religion is the true one? It’s no small matter. It’s the difference between Salvation and Damnation. Well, that started a long journey of study and the study turned up things that diverged from what my family believed.

• Q: Dad, did you know the Pauline Epistles probably had at least 2 different authors? A: No, I’ve never heard that.
• Q: Yeah, they analyzed the writing styles and found that they couldn’t have been all written by the same guy. A: Well, just because you read it in some book doesn’t make it true, and besides, who really cares?

I thought of you as my study and discussion partner. I was very surprised that you weren’t interested in what I was finding out. That was when we started drifting apart. I stopped telling you stuff and asking for your opinions about things. I know that we both felt horrible about the loss of our “pals forever” status, but I think we both knew it was inevitable given the nature of the disagreement. For you, the thought of me being doomed to hell for my unbelief was too much of a weight and you couldn’t stop trying to persuade me to slip back under the tent. For me, the more studying I did, the more I found reasons to stay outside the tent.

Do you remember the final straw? Here it is:

• Q: What if conducted my spiritual life solely using Christian metaphors and precepts and, although we would never acknowledge it out loud, you knew that I didn’t think Christianity had an exclusive patent on Salvation and Redemption and such? Would that be enough for you?
• A: No, because then we would not be together in heaven, and I can’t stand the thought of you being apart from us in hell.

I had been trying to show you that I had made a good life in spite of my unbelief – that I was a moral, effective, productive, loving person in spite of this one decision. But you were never able to acknowledge any of that because of this one missing item in my list of qualities. Our lives became the poorer for it.

While I remember all this, I also remember how instrumental you were in my early life and all the things you taught me. I remember the contradictions–that sometimes you were a brute and sometimes a sensitive peacemaker, sometimes rigid in your judgments but usually keenly perceptive in your emotional understanding,  I remember you. I love you still.

I hope you can remember everything now.

Your son,

Kurt