Nettie

Sunday Jan 20

by

Visited Rose Sherman,
she and her sister Tillie and
myself then visited my
cousins Lena & Jean who are
also known to them.

May it be known that
although not entered
regularly in this book or
not at all, every day includes
a visit to my sister Nettie
and my little darling niece
Rosie (Ruchale)

——————
Matt’s Notes:

The cast of characters expands. Looks like Papa’s cousins and sisters must have all lived close by on the Lower East Side, or at least within walking distance since the January cold didn’t keep them from strolling around and visiting each other. (Then again, I imagine the New York cold didn’t impress Papa too much since he grew up in an Eastern European ghetto where they probably ate bowls of hail for breakfast).

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Updates

2/4 – Via e-mail, my mother adds:

Did you know that niece “Rosie” called Ruthie by my cousin Jeanie is the one that died of spinal mennengitis at about 11 yrs of age? My middle name Ruchle or Ruth is after her. Aunt Nettie never recovered from her death. I can barely imagine Papa’s sorrow.

Friday Apr 4

by

Visited Clara at hospital
and Max Breindel,

Max is really besides
a relative a good friend
He is not like some
others of the family

—————–

Matt’s Notes

As noted in a previous post, Max Breindel is the man who met Papa and his sitter Nettie at Ellis Island when they first arrived from the old country. Max also invited them to stay in his apartment, where they shared a bed with his children, sleeping head-by-toe, until they could find a place of their own. Papa always recalled this as a great, adventurous time in his life, and I think his kind words about Max reveal his ongoing gratitude. (Check out the Lower East Side Tenement Museum’s tenement tour to get a better idea of what their living quarters must have been like.)

I don’t know whom Papa refers to when he says “some others of the family” are not as good as Max, but it’s about as harsh a statement as he ever makes. Perhaps he means his brother Isaac, the previous recipient of a disapproving nod for pressuring Papa from the old country for money. I also know his sisters Nettie and Clara didn’t get along, so I wonder if Nettie earned a demerit for some kind of misbehavior or lack of interest while Clara was in hospital with her newborn son.

I’m also trying to figure out if it was unusual back then for an immigrant woman to stay in the hospital for so long after giving birth (it’s been eight days now). Papa had expressed surprise at how early his nephew was born, so maybe there was some sort of medical complication. Then again, a week or more might have been a normal post-childbirth stay in 1924; as always, if anyone reading this knows a little more, please post a comment or send an e-mail.

Saturday May 10

by


Early this morning I took
Nettie to the Hospital.
Waited there all day
but no news.

—————

Matt’s Notes

Fear not: nothing was wrong with Papa’s sister Nettie. Though Papa hadn’t mentioned it before, she’d been pregnant all year and was now in labor. I’m not sure where her husband Phil was, but Papa was accustomed to helping his sisters out in various ways (you’ll recall how Papa paid for Phil’s English lessons, though that didn’t work out so well) so I’m not surprised it fell to him to take Nettie to the hospital.

Stand by…

Sunday May 11

by

Nettie gave birth to a baby boy
visited her at Hospital she
is weak.

Like through some misterious
power I feel downhearted.
Today,

Wired home to Europe
the news of the birth.

——-

Matt’s Notes

This is the second birth of a nephew, the second trip to the maternity ward, the second dash to the Western Union telegraph office for Papa in the last six weeks. Why, though, should such an event make him feel “downhearted,” a reaction so incongruous it feels like the work of a “misterious power?”

I’m sure Papa’s longing for a family of his own and for the family he left behind in Europe are partly responsible. We’ve seen, on several occasions, how holidays or milestone events served to bring those deep and difficult feelings to the fore, affecting Papa with sudden, seemingly inexplicable depression.

The birth of his other sister Clara’s son back in late March didn’t have the same effect, but the circumstances were different in several ways. Papa was in the opening throes of what he thought to be a burgeoning romance at the time, so perhaps the birth of his nephew contributed to an overall sense of optimism. The romance fizzled, though, plunging Papa into a long bout of gloom over his domestic prospects; maybe the birth of Nettie’s son reminded him of his disappointment and seemingly insoluble bachelorhood.

Nettie also already had a child named Ruchaly, but she was sickly and had, in fact, just experienced a serious illness a few months earlier. I gather that Nettie and her husband Phil were in difficult financial straits — Papa had recently been giving them financial support while Phil was out of work — so I’m sure the birth of their new child would have made Papa more than a little concerned.

Finally, we need to remember that Papa’s father had taken a bad fall at the end of February and still hadn’t recovered. Though he wouldn’t have written it down or acknowledged it to himself, he must have struggled mightily with the thought that his father might never see Nettie’s new son.

————-

I transcribed the fourth line of this entry as “Life brought some misterious new power,” but I’m not sure I’m reading the first two words right. Here’s the line in Papa’s handwriting:

Did I transcribe it correctly?

—————

Update: I’ve looked at this again and I the words are “Like through.” I’ve changed the tranncription above accordingly.

Monday May 19

by


Ran around this evening
to find and attending woman
for Nettie

—————-

Matt’s Notes

I’m not sure why it fell to Papa to find a nursemaid for his sister Nettie and her newborn son, but I suppose he was the best candidate since Nettie’s husband Phil didn’t speak much English and Clara, Papa’s other sister in New York, was busy with her own baby and didn’t have such a great relationship with Nettie, anyway.

While Papa’s willingness to help out Nettie wasn’t odd, this day’s circumstances certainly were — Papa still hadn’t told Nettie about their father’s recent death for fear of taxing her delicate, postpartum constitution. As he “ran around” that evening in search of her attendant, did he think about when he’d tell her, how he’d tell her, mouth the words as he rehearsed them in his head?

In any event, I expect it was pretty easy and relatively inexpensive for Papa to hire Nettie’s attendant (“I’m 100% sure that Papa paid for everything,” says my mother, adding “Poor guy, everyone depended on him.”) His neighborhood would have been full of women who were qualified midwives and nursemaids, since many Eastern European Jewish immigrants of the early 1920’s still adhered to the at-home birthing traditions of the old country (hospital births, while not a new innovation, wouldn’t be considered de rigueur in the immigrant Jewish community for many more years.) 1 Papa probably found someone just by knocking on a few doors or getting a recommendation from one of the landsmanshaftn.

——————

References

1 – “Modern Obstetrics and Working-Class Women: The New York Midwifery Dispensary, 1890-1920” by Nancy Schrom Dye. Journal of Social History, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Spring, 1987), pp. 549-564

Tuesday May 20

by


Took Nettie home from
hospital, She is suspicious
that our father is no more
but for the present I’m
trying talk her out of it.

I hired a woman for
a week to attend Nettie
at home.

Last night and tonight I
said Mishnayes at the
Synagogue across the street
I’m broken in spirit.

——————

Matt’s Notes

Papa’s efforts to keep his sister Nettie from learning about their father’s death continues to be a strange subplot in this story. Nettie had already, at their mother’s request, named her newborn son Josele after their father (Joseph) and traditional Jews don’t name children after the living — there’s absolutely no way their mother would have suggested it if their father were alive. So, I’m not sure how Papa explained their mother’s wishes to Nettie, unless he told her some other relative — a distant cousin in the old country with a similar name, perhaps — had died.

Still, if she was “suspicious” she must have asked Papa flat out if their father was dead, so it’s hard to imagine how he could “talk her out of it,” especially since he was feeling so disoriented. Maybe they had a mutual understanding (he knew that she knew that he knew, etc.) and decided not to acknowledge it. She did, after all, have a newborn child.

————-

Update 5/21

Carol, a reader, writes:

I , too, was puzzled about the fact that Nettie did not know that her father had died, but yet they named the baby after her father. One thought that I had was that at that time I think that it is possible that the mother was not present at the actual Bris and naming…that it was done by men with no women present at the ceremony. If that was the case, then they could have kept the news and the actual name from her. Just a thought.

Saturday May 31

by

Death (by John Donne)

Death be not proud though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:
For those whom thou thinkest thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go —
Rest of their bones and souls delivery!
Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, Kings and desperate men
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we woke eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die!

————————–

Matt’s Notes

Papa has tilted back and forth over the past few days as the urge to give in to despair over his father’s death has attempted to erode the integrity of his essentially optimistic, altruistic character. He has written, movingly, of his last moment with his father; he has suffered a bout of self-pity, but he has also countered with a surge of resolve; and today, he shows the clearest sign yet of his desire to master his grief, exploring and challenging death itself with the help of John Donne.

I don’t pretend to have any scholarly knowledge of Donne’s work (when I saw the T.V. adaptation of the memoir “Death Be Not Proud” in the 70’s, I thought the phrase was a statement of fact — “death is not proud,” whatever that would have meant, as opposed to a direct challenge to death’s pride — and even though I’ve since learned otherwise I’ve never been able to shake my “wrong” impression) though I certainly do think the famed poem above indicates a mixed relationship with the idea of death; does Donne truly mock it or does he kind of want to give it a try himself?

In any case, I think Papa reads Donne’s poem, at this moment in his life, as a rallying cry, paying more attention to its final line “Death thou shalt die!” than to its more ambivalent sentiments (the sure, bold hand with which he transcribes the poem conveys a sense of assertiveness, too, as opposed to tearful midnight weepiness.) While Papa is certainly not done mourning, this entry is a good sign, and shows us an interesting moment in his struggle to grieve without giving in to despair. He is deciding, bit by bit, that the best way to honor his father’s life is to live his own life well, and he’s letting us watch.