The story of the couple who stayed together...

My parents are the older couple who had been together since teenagers. They met in Camp Moodna in Mountainville, N.Y. in the 1930’s, children of immigrants, eager to leave the hot city each summer and grateful for this camp set up by the Grand Street Settlement. She was a camper, her family scraping together the dollars to send her there, he, a dishwasher, needing those dollars to help his mother and two younger sisters. Both of them were used to working. Sometimes she accompanied her Aunt Ethel to the home of the famous Jewish actress Jenny Goldstein whose lower east village “castle” always seemed to need cleaning. Mom arranged a little this and that and sometimes put on a piece of Jenny’s designer clothes, pretending, pretending all the things a poor teenage girl dares to dream. And she got a few cents to save.  He worked in a candy store, answering calls and running the long distances to tell the people they were needed on the store’s phone. He was smart; he was planning to enter Brooklyn College and study accounting. That didn’t happen.

          But that summer, they fell in love in camp. She was dark skinned and gorgeous, a little overweight. That would last forever. She’d never in her mind be thin enough. Neither were we, her daughters. He was thin then, I think, red-haired with the bluest eyes. He had lots of energy and friends, she told us. I wish I knew him then, my father, so different in my life-time.

          The two of them keep seeing each other after the summer. His family had many mental problems in addition to being poor. It was well known in this almost incestuous neighborhood. They lived on Stanton Street, in a walk-up, with a bedroom for the women and one for my father. My grandfather had left the family but that was supposed to be a secret. The apartment had a shared bathroom in the hall with one of those pull chains. The sink in the kitchen could be converted to a tub. The windows faced other windows and roof tops. There were people on those roofs who raised pigeons and drank alcohol. My grandmother sat watching them, her arms on pillows on the windowsills.  She rarely went out. The sisters worked after graduating high school.

          My mother was a student in Seward Park H.S. and would look for a job when she graduated. She was confident she’d get one. She was always confident and lovely. And now she had a man she was sure she’d marry. Her mother was widowed for many years, TB claiming her husband. They had opened a candy store in Harlem; my mother was 7. But they abandoned it when the rent was due and only the two of them were left. They went from apartment to apartment until they settled down. My grandmother knew about everything and everyone like it was her hobby. The last thing she wanted was to have her daughter get involved with my father’s family. She rallied her own relatives, made the rules, but it just didn’t happen. My mother was in love. Love that was lasting.

          And in the 1940’s they were to be married. Pearl Mansion was the name of the wedding hall. My mother’s family rented it, got her a dress, her flowers, the photographer, paid expenses. My father’s family did what they could. Maybe they rented his tuxedo? Who knows? When I look at their wedding photos, and there is only one, it is my parents surrounded my mother’s family. There is not to be found any photos of my father’s side. Where were they? Too poor to contribute and so kept out? And that is the story of my life. Another story for another time.

          But these two, Flos and Moishe were in love and their love was to last for over a half century. They honeymooned in Washington, D.C. at a time when that place was exotic. They moved to an apartment on the lower east side of NYC, and they settled down.

          But there was a war, a big unsettling experience for the world. Gone were some of their dreams. My father was drafted and lucky to be kept stateside, learning to sew and type for the Army. My mother worked for a pinball machine company until I was born.

          And still, all this time, though, a more domestic war between my parents’ families was being “fought.” My mother’s mother kept at disliking my dad’s family; my dad, disliking her for it, didn’t see that part of the family. Yet, the, mom and dad stayed together. As I grew I called these disputes “the bubbe-bahby" wars, each being the term in Yiddish I used for the grandmothers. It didn’t matter, they stayed together.

          THE WWII ended, the servicemen were returning home and healing was in order. My parents moved to the Queensbridge Housing Projects and settled down. My sister was born two years later. We seemed to be a happy bunch that remained together. My parents formed strong lasting friendships; my mother remained attached to her family. My father remained attached to his family. We children stuck to everyone. We stayed in those city houses until 1954 when with another sister, we moved to the Bronx. We made new friends, my mother began to work again, my father held two jobs to keep us comfortable. And we saw the families downtown in the same way we had for years, one group with our mom, the other with our dad. We were never sure that would change and it didn’t. 

          Grandparents died and we all went to the funerals. There was lots of sadness and crying about how sorry dad was that he let my mother’s mother cause all that trouble. My mother too wished she’d been stronger. Of course, it was too late. But good to hear. Nevertheless, my mother and father remained together until my mom died of cancer in 2005. Dad visited the cemetery each year, sometimes more than once, standing over the grave, telling mom about what was going on. In their way, they remained together. And when in 2014 dad died, we buried him alongside mom, stone against stone, together here as they had been since they met in camp Moodna so many decades ago.