I wonder about names. They seem so important to us.

Pretty much we choose names for our children before they are born. Some are named for saints. What a lovely thing. Or named after their parents. It is so interesting.

My mother had a few favorite names. Caroline and Dorothy were two, but she finally named me Gloria. She liked the name, and she liked naming me after (more…)

My sister Sylvia was married when she was seventeen. She and her husband, Jack Davis, familiarly known as Husky, and their daughter, my niece, also named Gloria (Baby Gloria) lived upstairs from Jack’s mother and father on Allendale Street in the North End of Springfield. I was a sister-in-law when I was a baby and an aunt when I was three years old.

There were three grown daughters at the Davis home on the first floor of the house where my sister and her husband and my little niece lived.

Ruthie had been a child prodigy on the piano who would not, or could not, leave the house. (more…)

In response to the blog entry, Tante Fanny, Pam responded:

[Reading your family stories] is like reading true-life Grimm’s Fairy Tales … the really scary ones!

I do see what Pam means! Particularly my mother’s stories, like the one about Tante Fanny — and the story of my father’s race against time to stop the doctor from aborting me. What kind of bedtime stories were these!

When I think about it, Pam is right. Many of my family stories are just like (more…)

Tante Fanny’s Jewish name was Gitte Fagel. That is my Jewish name too. It means Golden Bird or Good Bird.

You remember my mother was born in Russia, the youngest of seven girls, and her father died soon after she was born, and life was hard.

Tante Fanny was two years older than my mother. When Tante Fanny was nine years old, she was so miserable, she tried to drown herself in the river. (more…)

I have come a long way in the letting-go department. I can just about let go of anything. It’s almost effortless. Definitely, the more I experience letting go of possessions, the easier it gets. I would like to say that practice makes perfect, but yet there always seems to be another deeper level of possession that pops up. (more…)

I mean, is it cheating if, instead of my responding to the two comments to the previous blog entry in the same place, I make my response a new blog entry? Kind of a two for one?

Both the comments from Pam and Charles about My Brother Bennie kinda hit me between the eyes.

Here is the comment from Pam that sparked (more…)

My brother Bennie is in great contrast to my brother Sid. The friendship between my brother Bennie and me never went downhill. It stayed sweet until the day he died. He was forty-nine.

Bennie was twenty-three years old when I was born.

My first memory of Bennie was when he brought me a puppy. This was Mickey. I was three or so. I was in the backyard, and Bennie pulled up in his truck and handed me a puppy. He may have given Mickey to my brother and sister too, yet, as I saw it, Mickey was mine. (more…)

My father was a life-saver for me, and he was fun and sweet, and I was so proud of him and so happy he was my daddy.

You know how hard and long my parents worked just to make ends meet. Fortunately, I think they really did enjoy working. They enjoyed picking out the best fruits and vegetables, buying, selling, dealing with customers, making a living and all that.

The main recreation my parents had was to (more…)

How fussy I am. Ask anyone. I like something done the way I like it, this way and not any other way. It is very hard for me to keep my hands off.

It makes me sad to think of my mother who let others raise me and who could not have had much say, if any. She simply wasn’t there. What could she have insisted on, and how would she have known how well her instructions were carried out, or if they were at all?

My mother had to keep her hands off. As an example, my mother never (more…)

First there was Mamie who took care of me. She had white hair, and my mother liked her. Mamie was a good memory for my mother.

Then there was Martha whom my mother must have fired because Martha had boyfriends over.

I did not remember either Mamie nor Martha, but later, my mother must have pointed Martha out to me. Later, copying my mother, if I saw Martha in the street, I looked away as if she did not exist.

And then there was Margaret (more…)