On needlepoints, Jacob's Ladder and Steven Spielberg

I think of all the stories I missed out on because I wasn't paying attention, or like the "gonef" Steven Spielberg, didn't want to pay for it.

This is my grandmother’s needlepoint of Jacob falling asleep before dreaming of the ladder. It was always prominently placed in her apartment above the sofa. My grandmother told me she crafted it as a teenager and smuggled it out of Hungary with a few other belongings when she escaped in 1956 with my mother, uncle and grandfather. It must have been important to her. I don’t know who kept it during the war. A few years ago, I had it reframed for my wall.

Goldie, my 100-year-old great-aunt, tried to sell me one of her needlepoint pictures last Saturday.

“I vorked on them for two years,” she says with pride. “The frame vas expensive.”

“They are beautiful. Really beautiful.”

“Two hundred dollars,” she barks out, like it’s an auction.

I mutter something about it being worth much more, hoping to end the negotiation. I don’t have any cash on me and if I did, I’d leave it on the sofa, hoping she finds it later.

What I definitely don’t want to do is take any needlepoints off her wall. It’s one of the few things that still make this apartment a home. She should be surrounded by familiar items, not blank walls, to help with her dementia. Plus, it belongs here.

Goldie is my grandmother’s sister, and from what I can gather, all the girls learned how to needlepoint when they were young. I don’t know who taught them — their mother died quite young, when Goldie was two years old — but likely it was a skill passed on by aunts and cousins and older sisters. Growing up, everyone I knew had these needlepoints on their wall. Most of them included idyllic scenes of women with luxurious hair bursting out of bonnets being pushed on swings in overflowing gardens by men wearing tights and tunics, sometimes carrying an ornamental sword.

Between you and me, I never liked these needlepoints. Their message seemed vacant. I didn’t recognize myself or my family in any of these pictures. It was if they were done to impress — or to sell. In retrospect, I can’t even imagine all the time, patience and skill that went into creating these works. There must be an analogy here about all the invisible work women do only to be left behind as a curiosity that most people glance at only for a moment. Well then, I guess that’s the analogy.

There was one exception to my dislike of needlepoints: a wide portrait my grandmother kept above her sofa for decades. I thought it was of a young woman laying down on a pillow outside, surrounded by angels. I liked to stare at it as I fell asleep on her sofa below, surrounded by my own angels.

I asked her once who the inspiration was for the woman.

“Not a voman,” she replied, slightly offended.

“No?”

“It’s Ya’akov. Dreaming.”

Ya’akov. Jacob. Just as he started to dream, before the ladder appeared that connected heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical. From then on, I was hooked (no pun intended). Only decades later does it dawn on me that I should have asked my grandmother, why that moment? Everyone knows about the ladder —it’s the only time a ladder is ever mentioned in the scriptures. Had I seen a ladder in the portrait, I would have identified the scene right away.

But my grandmother stitched it to take place just moments before, when the ladder only remained a possibility. I can’t help but feel that here I am, right now, connecting a ladder between this world and my grandmother’s. She’s somewhere, telling me to savour this space before I understand what I’m looking for, before the ladder touches the sky.

Staring at Goldie’s needlepoint on the wall, I wonder if there’s more to it than she lets on. Likely she doesn’t remember. With her dementia, she remains deeply rooted in the physical world. At 100, her finances are managed by her daughter and she resents it. Money equals independence, thus the impulse to sell whatever she can.

She continues to bargain:

“You tink $200 is too much?”

“No I don’t, not at all.” Goldie’s unsure of the time, or even of who I am, so I can’t explain that the frame would likely cost ten times what she paid for it. She keeps thinking my mother is a young girl, that my grandmother has no grandkids. I can see she is grappling with history. But being a survivor is in her DNA. She wants something and is willing to bargain for it

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Several years before I started interviewing my grandmother for The Bubbe Tapes, Steven Spielberg launched his Shoah Foundation initiative. Moviegoers loved Schindler’s List. People were suddenly interested in Holocaust stories. Goldie and my grandmother lived in the same building (well, we all lived together there). But the two sisters were inseparable, speaking multiple times a day, and regularly in and out of each other’s apartments. They also cooked and baked for each other, even though Goldie appeared more modern and worldly while my grandmother still dressed like a traditional Orthodox Jewish woman.

Goldie barged in once while I was mid-interview. My grandmother paused to tell her what we were doing.

“Honey, vhy are you vasting your time on your grandmother. My story is the interesting one. We can make millions of dollars if you tell it.” My grandmother appeared to agree with her, which I found annoying.

I told her I wasn’t interested. I found her declaration too self -serving. Back then, I didn’t have the language to understand emotionally stunted behaviour or trauma responses. I’ve regretted not asking her to tell me her story for years.

“You know I vas going to tell my story to Spielberg (the Shoah Foundation),” she told me at the time.

“That’s great,” I muttered, eager to get back to my grandmother.

“Yes, but vhen my turn came, I asked zhem how much they are going to pay me for my story. But zhey said zhey aren’t going to pay me nothing, zhey are just going to keep it. Gonef, I called them. My story is vorth lots of money. So I left.”

“Making money off your story isn’t their plan,” I told her.

“Sure, and vhen Spielberg makes his millions turning my story into a movie, zhen vhat? No, forget it. I left.”

I don’t know if Goldie ever told anyone what happened to her. Likely, her story will disappear, somewhere between heaven and earth on Jacob’s ladder.

“So do you vant the picture? I’ll sell it to you,” Goldie asks me again.

“I’ll come back with money,” I tell her but her granddaughter Sheryl quickly shushes me. “Don’t promise that or she’ll keep asking,” Sheryl whispers.

I apologize, not clear exactly how my great aunt’s mind works. I’d do anything to unclog it. I want to tell her that I’m going to Beregdaroc in a few weeks, that I found her father’s and brother’s grave, and ask her about them. I’d take any crumbs. I wish I could go back in time and pay her for her story. Maybe she would charge me less than her Spielberg rates.

“Who are you again? Agi’s daughter?”

“Yes I’m Agi’s daughter. Ica’s granddaughter.” Everyone called my grandmother Ica, a diminutive that meant Kitty. When she died, our rabbi grew angry with me when I referred to her as Ica, and not Ilona.

“EAT-Za!” I hear from the kitchen. Goldie’s caregiver perks up. “I was wondering who that was. Every morning when she wakes up, she tells me to call Ica.”

I want to leave now. That daily loss for Goldie hits too close to home. I can feel my grandmother now; her own apartment was only five floors above.

I remember back to all those times laying on her sofa, watching Jacob dream as the rotary phone made a quick ding before dawn. My grandmother would pick up before it had a chance to wake anyone else and listen to her sister talk. They spoke every single morning, even on Shabbat. I imagine they still do. This habit dies hard. I just can’t be here when it happens.

“So vhat you think?” Goldie is back on the pressure sale.

“I’ll be back soon,” I tell her. “Let me think about it.”

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