The Daughter Marries; Long Live the Queen

Transitions… I feel as if I'm moving through a new one I hadn't considered before.

Last week, my "baby" --the youngest of my three daughters -- got married, following in her sisters' footsteps. It was a moment we had long anticipated, encouraged, hoped for, and-- finally-- celebrated.

Yay!  And yet….

While I might have been kidding myself to think that I was her confidante and adviser-in-all-things-about-life, I now suddenly realize that she has moved on to someone who can do it better and longer. If, God willing, the course of life proceeds as it should, he will be there for her when I am not.

It is a joyful, yet sobering passage. It's one thing to "retire" from a longtime career and plunge into the "next great thing," with expectations of many years of fulfillment ahead. It's another to warily eye the future and know that those years are becoming fewer. 

As my mother used to say, “You laugh with one eye and cry with the other.”

There’s a tradition, I’m told, of crowning the mother when her last child is married. Does it celebrate the ascendance, finally, to a place of governance and wisdom? Or does it mark some brilliance in the accomplishment of marrying off all the daughters?  Or is it more like that old TV show, “Queen for a Day,” where typically the woman who was crowned and showered with prizes was living a hard-luck life. (Now, realize, that I love my daughters, but raising them has not come totally free of angst and worry.) Here’s another old saying: “You’re only as happy as your saddest child.” I’ve had a few(fortunately, very few) sad days.

At the moment, though, with the newlyweds on their honeymoon, and the other daughters deep into their marriages, careers and  children of their own, I am free to walk my kingdom – or queendom – in whatever direction I wish to go, for as long as I am able.  The umbilical cord is cut.

Well, knowing me, I should qualify that.

It's About Creating Memories

Would it be worth driving 4 1/2 hours for "Grandparents Day" at our granddaughter's school?  Last year, our daughter told us not to make the journey, thinking that the event would be no big deal. But Talia, then a first grader, was disappointed when we didn't show up. So last Friday, we made the trek, getting up at dawn to arrive in time.
The day underscored the impact that a "special elder" or grandparent can have on a child. Something I hadn't thought much about. (Perhaps selfishly, I'd thought about it the other way around-- the joy I got out of a grandchild.)
The kids had all written essays and drawn pictures, reflecting on why their grandparents were important to them. The school's principal summarized for us the themes that had emerged:
Memories are etched in the the children's minds of plaees and activities spent with 'special elders' -- "being in the kitchen with grandma when we bake cookies;" "the stream where I go fishing with grandpa;" "playing cards with Poppop in the dining room." And then there are the trips -- whether to exotic locations or just to the city.
Things like that.
But most important, the principal said, were  the stories that grandparents tell -- the family narrative. Coming to America. Surviving hard times. Giving children the sense of where they came from and the challenges that their ancestors faced and surmounted.
"Research shows," he said, that children who have a family narrative do better than children who don't."
A former student at this school was so touched by Grandparents Day, that when she grew up, she gave the school a sizable gift to support the day, with lunch, refreshments, but most importantly, an artist in residence, who works with the children on poetry and dance for a performance.
The theme last Friday was "migration." Butterflies may have been what the children depicted in clever choreography and costumes. But the "special elders" knew that a migration of generations was in progress.
While each of us grandparents had received the gift of an enduring memory of this day, we are creating for our grandchildren memories that will endure long after us.

Toba's Tale -- Stories Aching to be Told

"Toba" in Budapest, 1946

Legacy. What stories do we leave our children and grandchildren and the generations we will never know? For as much as our genetics may play a role in their future, what about the courage and the spirit they have also inherited? What of battles fought and won by their ancestors? Loves lost or lasting? How do we make sure they know their family’s narrative?  

A book landed in the mail the other day that prodded me, that reminded me, that recording my family’s history, passing on the stories I heard as a child, is on my to-do list. It’s hard. I keep putting it off. Maybe because I don’t want to accept that some day I’ll be too feeble or senile to take on the task. But if not now, when?

The book sent to me last week by a federal judge –the story of her mother – is an emotional reminder of why, some day soon, I must start writing for my children.

Every single person I’ve ever met who survived the Holocaust –including my own parents -- has a miracle story to tell. That’s the only way anyone escaped. It wasn’t like you could just walk out of Europe. You needed luck. And you needed a determination to take action. As my father always said, “Opportunity is everywhere. You just have to grab it.”

The story of Terry Goldstein Herskovits is that kind of story. When opportunity arose, even in the midst of bad luck, she grabbed it.

 Once a flower, Always a Flower will never make the best seller list. It’s a read-in-a-night memoir. A legacy for her family. Importantly, though, it is yet another entry into the indisputable record of this unbelievable period of history. 

In brief: Terry, a 14-year-old Hungarian girl, from an impoverished rural family, makes her way to Budapest in 1939, with no job, no resources. On day two, she overhears a woman – Gizi --  in a market complaining of her need for a seamstress. Terry (then "Toba"), with virtually no sewing experience, convinces Gizi to take her on. By 1944, when the Nazis begin deporting Hungarian Jews, including Terry’s parents and siblings, the two have formed a mother-daughter relationship. They rip off their yellow stars and hide in a tiny farmhouse attic for six months. No bathroom. No activity. Excruciating heat. Food secretly passed up by the Christian farmer.

But then they are discovered and sent to the ghetto that has been built in Budapest, awaiting transport to death camps. And here comes luck: as Terry is herded onto a human cattle car, a Hungarian guard, struck by her beauty, “threw me down from the train, muttering something like ‘it’s a shame.’” Finding her way back to Budapest, she goes to the Swedish Embassy where Raoul Wallenberg is giving Jews the lifeline of papers. The line is long. “I had chutzpah!” Terry writes. “I maneuvered to the front of the line.” She gets papers for herself and Gizi to remain in a safe house.

After the Russians “liberate” Hungary, she miraculously escapes a group of drunken Russian soldiers intent on raping her; marries, has two children and tries, in 1950, to sneak out of Hungary but their transport guide betrays them to the Russians and her husband is shot to death; she is jailed in a cell shared by 28 others while her children are raised by Gizi; after three years, she is finally freed, remarries, and in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 successfully gets across the border with her husband and children. They make a life for themselves in New Jersey.

It’s a movie script. Except it really happened. Telling the story with her mother is Judy Wizmur, the daughter who was only a year old when her mother was jailed and just seven when the family finally escaped Communist rule.

Now a federal bankruptcy judge, Judge Wizmur writes:

“By sharing her stories with me from the time I was young, my mother gave me another very special gift. She gave me a unique perspective on life – the gift of understanding that the ups and downs of daily life are relatively inconsequential….I have tried to measure the difficulties I occasionally encounter against the courage, endurance, grit and determination shown by my mother as she experienced the extraordinary events of her life.”

Recently, at a meeting of our Project Renewment group, where women discuss their issues of transition out of careers, Judge Judy talked about her goals when she retires in May. Among them is spending more time with her mother, who turns 90 in December.

I now understand why.

On Her Tractor: Wisty Sows New Jobs

Wisty Rorabacher: Working to create work

At a children's Halloween party in Northampton, Mass, the only two women of a certain age gravitate towards each other.

I like how Wisty Rorabacher is dressed – plaid shirt, corduroy overalls and a brown tweed  British newsboy cap. Our conversation is as relaxed – and as surprising – as she looks. Because Wisty has accomplished something in her so-called retirement that, in two years of interviewing people,  I had not found:

Wisty has created jobs. She puts a lie to the idea that older people are draining the nation financially and taking jobs from the young. In fact, she’s done the opposite. How?

Six years ago, Wisty found herself, like a lot of retired people, moving to be closer to a son and daughter-in-law. She and her longtime partner arrived in Greenfield, Mass. from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, with no jobs, no friends, no history, no connections.

 “Part of it was, I just retired. I don’t have 20 years to slowly make friends.  I had to hit the pavement. And I decide I’m going to do something, right here, right now. I really wanted to work on being physically healthy. So I joined the Y and worked out three hours, three days a week there. You gain friends in the locker room. Women didn’t used to do that, But you get your locker room friends. So there were those people.

“I really wanted to get involved in the community.” Greenfield “is like 18,000 people and if you want to get involved, you get involved. One of the things I read about Greenfield before I moved was that there was a national sustainable energy organization. I called them up and said, ‘I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll help out.’

Plowing Greenfield's community garden

“They had some gardens in their solar park. They needed someone to work those gardens. I had just come off the land in Arkansas. I know how to garden and I missed it. So they gave me the best gift and they were thrilled to find somebody who felt good about doing that.”

“Meanwhile,” she continued, “I was meeting all these people in the sustainable energy community. So I got onto some committees on energy.  One thing led to another and it was real easy to start an identity from being active in that community.”

Soon, she was helping to pull in federal and state grant money and large donations for the community farm to sustain open space and grow crops for local residents.  Low-income families pay just $5 a week. And she was garnering press for Greenfield Community Garden, driving a tractor, plowing 20 acres of the 60-acre tract that she’d helped preserve in perpetuity. Suddenly, there were jobs to be filled: a full time farmer, a full time person who does education, an executive director and assistant director to oversee media and volunteer work. Others are hired seasonally, including an apprentice who helps weed and harvest and work in the farmers market.

If that weren’t enough, Wisty, who spent her career in education – teaching special ed and early childhood education in Minnesota and then gifted students in Arkansas--also is creating jobs in the Greenfield public schools.

In a permaculture gardening class, she met a woman who wanted to get YMCA members to volunteer in the public schools. “Nancy said, ‘How bout if we work together on it?’ Wisty recalled.  “So we made a proposal; the superintendent liked it and asked us to run with it, so we did. It quickly became apparent that we needed to hire somebody” to coordinate the volunteers.

“It was one of those things in a smallish community, if you see a need and you can show that you’re reliable,  responsible, you’re gonna follow through, then people will give you leeway. And it happened.”

Next for Wisty:  Her work to tie the community farm program into the schools, with students coming out to the farm and educational programs, got her doing some research. She found that none of the agricultural courses in the state’s tech or vocational schools focused on small organic farming, despite growing demand. She’s now intent on creating such a program with the high school.

“If that happens, “ she says, “it will open up more jobs.”

Wisty told me all this because I asked. She doesn’t usually wear her accomplishments on her overalls that way, even though those who’ve left careers often yearn to be acknowledged.

“One of the things that I learned to treasure,” she says, “ is to just walk around with that knowledge myself. Maybe nobody else has a clue about [what I’m doing] but it’s like part of the whole of me. You know what I mean?”

Money for Your Kids You Never Knew About

As a life lesson to me, my grandmother used to recite an old Austrian saying:
If someone gives you something, take it.
If someone takes something from you, scream.
This came to mind last week when my longtime hair cutter confessed to me that he had somewhat guiltily accepted an offer he had never expected.
Married late, he has a daughter in high school. When he  recently applied for Social Security, the agent explained that his daughter was entitled to  Social Security as well: $1,000 a month, about half the amount of his benefit. The payments last through 12th grade.
"I'm still working, but if they're going to give it to me, I'm taking it," he told me as he blow-dried my hair. "I would never have known about this if the agent hadn't told me."
If he had to vote on whether the child of a 66-year-old who still works and can afford to educate his child should get benefits, he would vote "No." But as long as it was handed to him ...
This got me wondering: How old would you have to be when your baby was born to still have that child in high school at age 66, when your full Social Security benefits kick in?
Answer:  48 or older at your child's birth.  (It's 44 if you're taking the reduced benefits at 62.)
That leaves few moms eligible with payouts for their student-children. But perhaps a lot of dads --and more in the future -- because a lot of men seem to increasingly move like snails when it comes to marriage and parenthood. (Ask my daughters!)
I also pondered: How many people, like my hair cutter, don't really need this benefit? Should it be means tested -- taking Social Security down that slippery slope?
Surprisingly, I found myself in agreement with a post last year on the conservative Heritage Foundation website headlined, "Social Security Pays Benefits to Millionaires' Children." It names an 80-year-old California congressman, Pete Stark, supposedly worth $27 million, whose children get Social Security. A writer in Investment News last summer called this the "Viagra College Benefit." She guessed it would be axed if Congress ever got around to reforming Social Security.
But according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Social Security experts say payments to well-off families are rare, with most children who get support doing so because a parent has died or become disabled. The benefits are intended to "help to provide the necessities of life for family members and help to make it possible for those children to complete high school," a Social Security spokesperson said.  
 The "student benefit," started in 1939, is aimed at assuring that the children of retirees finish high school, rather than being forced to take a job to help support the family.  In 1965, amendments to the Social Security Act extended the benefit to age 22 -- through college. 
Bad idea. 
"In the peak year of 1977, almost 900,000 students were receiving this type of benefit, according to a history written by the agency. "In the peak pay-out year of 1981, almost $2.4 billion was paid in the form of student benefits."
That's when Congress finally acted to phase out the college add-on.
A 2011 study by the Social Security Administration, based on 2004 data, found that about 9 percent of all children receiving OASDI (Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance)  get it for "old age," simply because a parent has retired. (The other 91 percent are to children of a disabled or deceased parent.) The average payment in 2004 was $426 a month to each of the 278,000 "old age" student recipients.
The study concluded that "although some children in this category are well off, a substantial segment exhibits financial vulnerability."
Today, according to Social Security's latest statistical snapshot, 634,000 students get SS benefits because a parent is retired, with the average payment of $621 a month. (See, the numbers are climbing!)
So, what do you think about this? If offered to you, will you take it? Or if taken away, will you scream?

On Being a Daughter's Temporary Glue

Tiring, trying, a bit terrifying (read on) – also terrific.

That has been my week as the Grandma-on-Duty-with-two-year-old as daughter has her second child.

Speaking of UnRetiring, this may be the most challenging time I’ve had since leaving my job. (Maybe more so. At work, at least I could sit.) Call it Grandmalympics.

Among the tests of brain and brawn: figuring out how to wheel a large-ish stroller three blocks to Washington, D.C.’s red line (after remembering to bring Big Bird, the old Iphone with games on it, the hat and mango chips),  then two elevators, the metro, another elevator, another metro, two more elevators. Whew, 30 minutes later I’m wheeling him through the maze-like Ronald Reagan building, searching for the daycare center near daughter's office where she won't be for awhile. (I'd found it the day before -- where did it go today?) Finally find daycare and fish through my purse for the code to open the door and sign in the lad, (oops, I never signed him out the day before), and place him in the loving hands of his daycare moms.
Then return home via supermarket to buy newborn diapers, lunch, and the makings of dinners to stock their freezer. Oops, went to Giant instead of Whole Foods for those diapers – they need to be organic or recyclable or something. Good thing I kept the receipt. Back to the Giant to return it and to Whole Foods to buy the right thing!

Cooking, cooking, cooking.

Laundry, laundry, laundry.

Pick up at day care (half hour each way on metro); lad is not happy to see me. He approaches me, head down, like a prisoner returning to his cell. Good thing I brought a cookie.

New baby only home one day when medical problem emerges and we’re all racing to the ER. She lands in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. All of the above continues –now with visits to the hospital -- and then it’s Saturday. No daycare. It’s me, alone. Off to a toddler Shabbat service (he lasts through about half before remembering that it’s me -- not his daddy – who is with him). Then the communal lunch. I give him a bagel slathered with cream cheese and help myself to hummus, stuffed grape leaves, and other great looking stuff.

Oh no! Screaming, screaming.

Whazza matter?

Oh, he wants my plate. He sits there licking the cream cheese off the bagel, guarding the plate he’s commandeered. I sit there, hungry. Fortunately, some other grandparents take pity and get me food.

Back home, it's nap time. We both climb onto his bed where he reads me Goodnight Gorilla while I close my eyes. After 40 minutes he nods off…. And here I am. Waiting for mom and dad, with baby, to walk in the door and so grateful my daughter and son-in-law trust me to be their temporary glue.

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