Generations Missing
Children of immigrants often speak of being one or two generations removed. Not knowing much about my family background, I’ve always thought of myself as two generations missing, and yearned to fill this gap, but didn’t know how, always envious of friends who could trace their lineage back several generations, able to rattle off memories […]
Discovering Hungarian in Budapest
1. At West End Mall Up Radnoti Miklos utca, street named after the Hungarian Jewish poet who died in labor camps months before liberation in a city that volunteered Jews to Nazi death ancestral home to parents who squeezed their way past two World Wars to meet in New York City’s immigrant hot-house. I am […]
The Golem
We’ve had this talk before when I didn’t know who else would listen to me standing at the last bench of Leona Canyon—you know the one—dedicated to the Jalquin people circled by dried thistles like petrified tongues? How you drifted from the house before ashtrays were emptied, butts crushed and sealed with a blossom of lipstick, the kind of Revlon your friends could afford, neighbors […]