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One thing I’ve missed in my family archive is the sound of my mother’s voice – I have the letters she received, but very few of the ones she sent. We’ve gotten to know the rest of the family, but have heard little directly from her. I was thrilled to find the few letters she wrote to her cousin Paul Zerzawy – 18-year old Eva in Istanbul (June 12th post) and upon arrival in San Francisco (October 23rd post).
Recently, I recalled that I have dozens of letters written by my mother, most of which she wrote to me during my junior year in college in 1978-1979 in southern France. I too kept every letter! One of the gifts of letters from long ago is that we get a sense of the times as they were happening, rather than some foggy feeling for the distant past. We see how the everyday world continues, even as sometimes the world seems to be spinning out of control.
November 27, 1978
Dear Helen,
If this letter is somewhat incoherent, you have to blame the state of shock due to the happenings in SF or related to SF for the past 10 days. I don’t know how much news you get in France about the US except that the events have been unbelievable. Before I start with personal news I better bring you up to date to the events I mentioned above. For the last week or so TV & radio had only reports on the tragedy in Guyana and most people in the mass suicide were Bay Area residents. It was a colony of a SF-based “religious group” which was located in the old synagogue on Fillmore & Geary & set up the colony in Guyana which was being investigated because the followers were not allowed to return to SF. The mass suicide involved over 900 people. You can imagine what the topic of conversation was wherever you went with all the newspapers & other media filled with it. Today as we finished up the clinic, the news came in that Mayor Moscone & Supervisor Milk (the spokesman for the gay community) had been killed by an ex-supervisor who resigned early this month, but changed his mind and wanted to be reinstated and must have gone berserk when his chances dwindled. Now you will understand my state of mind at this time.
When I received your card I started a letter to you and intended to finish it in my lunch hour, since my German dictionary was on my desk and I wanted to write a correctly spelled note regarding my birth certificate. Needless to say, I never got to the letter and to top it all I forgot your card and the letter I had written on the weekend in the office. Now I don’t have your new address and have to wait for tomorrow’s lunch hour and hope nothing will prevent me from sending it.
Now that I got all this out of my system, I can finish on a more personal note.
I am sure happy to hear that your move materialized and that you will have the experience you anticipated. I guess you will be able to use the recipes after all. How are you doing with the caterpillars? Did you ever get your winter clothes? Be sure to take the warmest clothes to Vienna. You might have to buy some snow boots (high waterproof boots). I don’t understand the telephone number. If I call do I have to ask for the “Poste”? I’ll wait to see my telephone bill before I do this however; and let me know the best time to reach you. Is this telephone actually in the people’s house?
Talking about Beethoven, Friday was the last opera this season and it was Fidelio by you know who. After the opera, we went to Elayne Jones’ house until 2am. She is leaving for Europe 12/12 and had thought of getting in touch with you, but instead is going to Spain. She is meeting her daughter in Rotterdam. Her daughter’s name is Hariette Kaufman; she graduated from Lowell with the class that had their exercise at the Cow Palace. She played cello in the school orchestra. Maybe you know her. She is 19 and teaches Englash in a town in Spain 2x a week. She makes 18,000 pesetas a month & spends 10,000 on room and board. The rest of the money she spends on traveling. I haven’t the vaguest idea how much this amounts to in American currency, but sounds to me that if you need to work only 2x a week, living must be cheap there.
I hope she will give me her address just in case you plan to go to Spain and might want to know somebody there. The town is not one I know, so it might be somewhere in the sticks.
Elayne was shocked to hear that you did not play a musical instrument, since she thought Lowell was geared to music. Do you still want some more of the guitar songs?
It will take me longer than I thought to write a German letter and my lunch hour won’t be long enough today; therefore, I will take my dictionary home and give you all the dope regarding the birth certificate. I am not sure how you will go about it without speaking German. That is the reason I will write a letter in German you can show to the authorities.
Things are quite hectic at work and our staff is getting smaller and smaller and at the same time we have more clinics, classes, etc. in the evening which cuts out all the day work. I don’t know if I told you, but I have to give parent classes and also Health Hazard Appraisals. Me and my big mouth. But the tendency is to give group presentations in preference to individual counseling. Maybe I can salvage my job by getting involved in all these activities. They are still talking about substantial cuts and non-professionals making home visits.
Now without a mayor, it will be difficult to have a budget for the city, because according to the charter, it has to be on the mayor’s desk the first week of Dec.
Well, I better get this off until the next installment.
Love,
Mom
Like Helene’s letters, my mother’s letter gives us a sense of all that was going on for both sender and recipient. She tells me about all that was happening in San Francisco, talks about necessary paperwork, refers to my recent move and to my planned trip to Vienna over Christmas break.
As my mother mentions, November 1978 was a terrifying time for San Francisco – within a few weeks, both Jonestown and the murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone occurred. I remember wondering whether I would have a place to go home to and imagined what my life would be like if, like my mother did at the same age, suddenly I found myself having to live the rest of my life in France, far away from family and friends. The news did indeed make it to France. At the time, I was renting a garage apartment from an elderly couple. When I got home from school on the day Moscone and Milk were killed, my landlady told me that “the mayor of California” had been shot. I thought they were referring to Jerry Brown, but soon discovered the truth.
My mother would have been touched by these events by the mere fact of living in San Francisco. But in addition, she was employed by the city and county of San Francisco as a public health nurse, and these were people she thought about every day – many of the Jonestown victims might have been her clients when they were in San Francisco, and the city administrators were her employers. I don’t think it occurred to me at the time how much these terrifying events must have struck my mother to the core – she had escaped Europe to the safety of the United States, and her adopted home was feeling far from safe.
My dream of studying abroad included living with a family so that I would have the opportunity to speak French every day. Thus, I wasn’t thrilled to find myself living alone in a garage apartment. Fortunately, I met Marine, who was in one of my classes. We liked each other immediately and she asked her parents if I might rent a room at their house. She was studying English and thought it would be a great way to practice. Happily, her parents said yes. We were both only children and it was fun to each have a sister, if just for a few months. Today’s letter is the first my mother wrote to my new address.
Although she talks of making a phone call, the cost would have felt prohibitive -- at the time, she was reluctant to talk much on the phone to her brother just a few miles away in Berkeley, because even those calls weren’t free. I only recall one call from my mother while I was living there. I remember loving hearing her voice after months apart, but was shocked to hear that she had a German accent! I never heard it when we were. together every day, but after months apart, it was evident. As I think is common for children of immigrants, as a child, it always surprised me when people commented on the accent I couldn’t hear.
The discussion of the quest for a birth certificate brings us back to the main story of the blog. When Eva came to the U.S. in 1939, she did not bring a copy of her birth certificate. Almost 40 years later, my mother was 57 years old and was looking forward to retirement. She was afraid that if she didn’t have a proper birth certificate, it would be difficult to apply for Social Security.
A friend and I had decided to go to Vienna over Christmas break. Never one to miss an opportunity, my mother hoped I would be able to get a copy of her birth certificate while we were there, despite it being the Christmas holidays and the fact that I didn’t know any German. Ever the optimist! I don’t recall whether I even tried – I’m sure it was beyond my ability and courage. Happily, my mother joined me at the end of my year in Montpellier, and we took a trip together to Vienna, 40 years after she left. One of her goals was to track down that birth certificate – a story worth a post of its own.
My mother inherited her love of opera from her mother. Unfortunately, that love wasn’t part of my genetic inheritance. Happily, I redeemed myself by marrying someone who loved classical music as much as she did.
I think my mother became friends with Elayne Jones through playing tennis. She was a timpanist for the San Francisco Symphony and Opera and led an amazing life.
In a number of letters, the idea of running into or meeting someone in Europe seems natural and inevitable. I never did see or meet the people mentioned in the letters and the likelihood seemed far-fetched. However, at midnight on New Year’s Day in 1979 as we waited for the subway after attending a performance of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, traditionally performed at that time of year, a voice from the shadows emerged and said “Hello, Helen Goldsmith” – it was someone who had been a housemate when we were studying in Berkeley. She was in Edinburgh for her year abroad. One of the eerier experiences of my life! And yes, I did indeed attend an opera – when in Rome…(or Vienna).
As an aside, my friend Marine and I recently reconnected after decades, through the magic of the internet. Our language skills our rusty – comprehension is good but speaking/writing is a challenge – so she communicates mostly in French and I in English.