At a recent reading the Berkshire author Susie Kaufman shared these lines from “Invoking the Ancestors,” one of the stories in Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement :

My guests and I invited our grandparents to the Seder, and they came, in steerage, carrying bundles. My great-grandmother hides her silver candlesticks in her skirts during the long journey from Romania.

I have my grandmother’s silver candlesticks, but there is no family story about how they came here. They are stamped 1856, so I have always assumed she brought them with her, or that they were from my grandfather’s family. There is no one left to ask.

One thing I did know about my grandmother was that she was beautiful. Of course I only found that out after she died; I only thought of her as old while she was alive.

I also knew, although I’m not sure how, that my grandmother had been married to someone else before my grandfather, supposedly in order to immigrate to the U.S. The story I told myself is that she, like Kaufman’s grandmother, came over in steerage. I thought of her as strong and brave, traveling alone to marry a man she didn’t know and then meeting my grandfather. I never bothered filling in the details.

Then, a few months ago, my cousin sent me this picture.

I called my cousin to say I had no memories of my grandparents being as affectionate with each other as they were in the picture. “Because,” she said, “That man is not our grandfather.”

So now there is another story I don’t know. Was there a great romance in my grandmother’s life? Was the marriage of convenience more than that?

When I got divorced, my grandmother asked me why. “Because I didn’t love him,” I said. “What has love got to do with it?” she asked. I remember wondering if she was talking about her own marriage, and if that were just a reflection of the times, or of unhappiness. Either way, I never asked her. And now it’s too late.

Perhaps some day I will write her story as I would like it to be.

Family Stories

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