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My Father came from a relatively small family: he had but one surviving sister, who in turn had but one daughter. My Father married at such a relatively advanced age (46) that my one May cousin was already 22 and about to become a mother herself when I was born. So essentially I had no May cousins.
By contrast, my Mother came from a relatively large family called Nadler: she was the second of eight. Four of those had a total of 11 children, and at around the same time. So I had an embarras de riches of Nadler cousins. Sadly, most of these lived hundreds of miles away, so that I only saw them at most once a year. (Removed as they were, my Brother and I developed romantic yearnings for a few of the females, a fact concerning which our Mother would admonish us: 'It is illegal to marry your cousins!' We didn't tell her that marriage was the last thing on our minds!)
But there were reunions, as there always are in such a large extended exuberant family. At first these were at my grandparents' farm in Homer, N.Y. on August 25th (my grandmother's birthday.) Later, they would be at the houses of my cousins in upstate New York. These events, and Christmas, were the only times I communicated with my cousins.
Until, that is, the advent of the internet: that made it possible to address all of my extended family in one easy operation - a weakness to which I yielded all too often!
Some of these communications, however, had a higher goal in mind: to chronicle certain events of my Mother's generation before they became 'lost in the mists of history.' Below are two such efforts.
(By the way, I used CAPITALS in these email communiques on words I would normally italicize, for the simple reason that I did not know how to effect the latter in email.)
4 August 2005
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HELEN BERNICE NADLER: AN ODYSSEY
17 January 2003
Dear Uncle and Aunts, Brother, and Assorted Cousins and Spouses,
I am not exactly big on acknowledging death-days. On the other hand, my tenacious memory for dates usually won't allow me to forget almost any date and its significance. (For example, I happen to know that August 16 is not only my parents' anniversary, but Marilyn's birthday as well.)
I have also acquired, during this Christmas season (my dear wife's present to me), my own iBook, complete with airport card allowing me wireless access to the internet; this I can use right at my own desk. The result is my very own email account. The ramifications, I fear, will be chronic logorrhea (running at the mouth.)(I anticipate the response of many of you: "So what ELSE is new?!")
Well, you will have to bear with me, I'm afraid - at least until your patience wears out! (At what precise point will you begin to classify my missives as 'spam'?)
Anyway, this Friday January 17 will be the 5th anniversary of my Mother's death. (Don't worry - I don't plan to get maudlin!), and I thought I'd mark that with some remarks about her so-called (by me) Odyssey.
(Warning: The following edifice is constructed on a very flimsy foundation of fact! But, as no one else is writing this particular history, it seems that I shall be the Historian of Record, with all my inventions, suppositions, and surmises to be subsequently taken as The History. Do I feel Freighted Down with the Heavy Responsibility of It All? Yeah, right!)(On the other hand, I feel that SOME history, no matter how questionable or fraudulent, is better than none)(or IS it?) So here goes:
Dorothy had a grandmother who, in 1920, established a school in Thailand. She (the grandmother) called herself, rightly, a 'PIONEER'. I would not apply this term to my Mother; but I think I am justified in the use of the word 'ODYSSEY'. You decide.
She graduated from Homer High in 1924. Like her sister Mildred two years earlier, she attended Cortland Normal School - the local teachers college. (I would claim that this already constituted an Odyssey of sorts for both sisters: for neither of their parents had attended college [Uncle Mike: how much education DID they have?] My Mother used to say that it was her own Mother who pushed her and the rest to get an education, to advance themselves.) She graduated from there in 1928.
Now this (1928) was an auspicious year. It happened to be the same year that Virginia Woolf published a potent little essay called A Room of One's Own. Of course she was talking about how a woman could set herself up independently as a writer; but the IDEA - a single woman living on her own in a productive way - applied to my Mother and no doubt thousands of other young women at the time. This was a fairly revolutionary notion then: it was, so to speak, IN THE AIR, and my Mother reached out and grasped it greedily.
She had trained to be a teacher. What were the 'reasonable' options for a young woman in that place (Homer, New York) at that time? She had spent the first 22 years of her life living on various farms, as a member of a farming family. It would seem to me that the temptation would be to yield to not-so-subtle social pressures and remain at home, seeking a teaching position in the immediate environs. But she did not do this. Perhaps Mildred, who married in that year and proceeded to move to a far place, showed the way. Whatever the reason, my Mother went to Buffalo, a fair distance at the time, for her Masters degree. And then she proceeded to move to Long Island (a much longer distance, in ALL respects), rent a room (of her own), and land a teaching position.
I cannot emphasize enough this change in my Mother's state of affairs. From the sleepy farming community of Homer, she went to the outskirts of New York City, one of the greatest cultural centers of the Age. At the moment she arrived, the Chrysler Building was being built; the Empire State Building (tallest in the world at the time) would follow the next year. And in 1939, right there in her back yard, was the World's Fair - something she no doubt attended many times. Meanwhile, she was living by herself, free and independent, and earning her own living as a teacher in Merrick.
And then she bought her own car (a Plymouth.)
It is hard to measure the impact of such an acquisition from today's standpoint. My Mother's was the first generation to utilize the automobile in their youth. (There were no really reliable cars or decent highways until the 1920's.) As such, it afforded young people unprecedented freedom - something that must have worried their parents sick! Young single women, especially, must have found the automobile the perfect vehicle in which to travel freely and safely. (Our Mother regaled us with many tales of her happy trips with girlfriends during those years.) No longer did a woman have to depend on grooms and drivers - or the railroad - to go somewhere; now, at the turn of a key, she could drive herself nearly anywhere. And drive herself my Mother did, often.
I would also like to point out that, by acquiring her car, my Mother was differentiating herself in yet another way from her own parents. For my Grandparents did not drive; neither were they to own an automobile at any time in their lives. (In fact, Grandpa never even owned a tractor: I recall him plowing by horse.)
Well, that's the tale of my Mother's Odyssey. It was not to last, of course. Society continued to change, and what had been daring for a young woman became commonplace. Then, too, my Mother no doubt felt the biological time clock ticking. In 1942 she married my Father; she then proceeded to spawn the two most stupendous creations of her life. She became a loving parent and homemaker, and continued to teach part time. The Odyssey changed into Suburban Life.
There is at least one irony in this story. I chose teaching as my profession, and it soon became clear that this was the right kind of work for me (who enjoys showing off in front of young people.) But my Mother never accepted this decision of mine. What was daring and cutting edge for her was not, in her view, good enough for me. She envisioned Something Better - an insurance company executive, perhaps. (Can you imagine someone buying insurance from MOI?!) One thing is certain: I never had the courage to match her Odyssey in the sense of physical displacement and travel. MY Odysseys were internal: artistic and political. My poor dear Mother didn't understand THAT either. Ah well!
Love to you all, Ted
PS: In her later years, my Mother became an increasingly erratic driver. The last time she drove, she veered off a quiet side street, careened down a grassy slope, and sheared the drain pipe off a bank. Not knowing what to do with her, the police committed her to a hospital, though she was only confused. There she was assigned a social worker. The name of this person was HELEN BERNICE.
MARION RONALD NADLER: A BIRTH DAY
19 June 2005
Dear Fellow Nadlerites,
Today, if memory serves me correctly, is Uncle Mike's 82nd birthday. SO HAPPY BIRTHDAY, UNCLE MIKE - AND MAY YOU HAVE MANY MORE!
A few reunions ago I told Mike and Ruth the following story, which they had never heard, about events on the day of his birth. I tell it now for the rest of you, in the interest of maintaining the family lore.
The eight (or nine) children of Charles and Minnie Nadler were spaced 19 years apart. That means that, when Mike was born, Minnie was 46 years old - and I don't have to tell you that this is OLD for a woman to give birth. What no one knew before the birth was that she was carrying twins (sorry - no ultrasound in 1923!)
On the day of the birth, my mother Helen, 17, was taking the New York State Regents' Exam in Geometry. In the middle of the test, she was called to the phone in the office (sorry, kids - no cell phones back then!) It was Helen's father on the phone and he seemed to be agitated. He said bluntly, COME HOME RIGHT AFTER THE TEST - YOUR MOTHER IS DYING.
My goodness, how - INDISCREET - of Grandpa! But that's probably just what Helen needed - a good shot of adrenaline! She told us that she did not remember finishing the test. (And: she received a grade of 90.)
Yes, the birth was hard. One of the twins (he was named RALPH) died; the other survived and was named MARION (I hope I am spelling this correctly.) When he was a boy, Helen began playfully calling him MIKE, and the name stuck.
As for the mother MINNIE my grandmother? Well, she survived - and managed to live another 40 years. So my grandfather's report of her impending death was decidedly - PREMATURE.
So once again, HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNCLE MIKE! Our only regret is that your twin did not survive and make two of you!
Love, Teddy
PS: It is interesting to speculate on how things might have changed had my Grandfather's fears been realized.
Well, that would have left seven children without a mother. Besides Mildred (19) there were: Helen (17), Beulah (15), Margaret (13), Clifford (10), Harold (7), Verg (6), and Mike (0). Add to this that they lived on a farm - a small, barely-subsistent one at that - and I imagine that there would have been pressure for Mildred and (later) Helen to stay put and care for the brood. No more would there have been their mother's pushing them to better themselves through higher education.
Gone, no doubt, would have been at least part of my Mother's Odyssey. Would she have eventually emigrated to a place so distant as Long Island? We cannot know, of course. Nor can we be sure that Mildred would have married and moved with her husband to live as far away in a cute little cape in Verona, New Jersey, where her sister Helen would visit her over Halloween one year and meet the man next door (literally) named FREDRICK THEODORE MAY, who...
Are you seeing where this is headed? There is a good chance that, had this (death of the MATERFAMILIAS) occurred, I would probably not exist. Such a realization tends to bring into sudden stark relevance events as seemingly remote as those of 19 June 1923.
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