All posts tagged women

Imagining My Parents’ First Date

A writing exercise that takes me way back in time, and helps me to know more about the characters I have fictionalized in my novel: The Sweetness. Thank you to Matt Klam. 

As I walk down an abandoned narrow street, cobblestones clicking under my feet, I begin my foggy daydream. It is the assignment I’d balked at writing, thinking it would be impossible to do: imagining my parents when they were young, before I entered their world, together on their first date! But before I know, I’m transported to a different world- their world. The year, 1941.

The marquis flashes its triple row of lights. A billboard announces: playing now: The Princess of Avenue T…Could it be I wonder? But how?

Since it is pouring and I have nowhere to go, I take a seat in the back of the ancient theatre. Alone and tired, I lean back against the red velvet seat and wait, and before long, after the long trailer of my imagination, there they are, my parents, life-sized cut-outs sprawled across a big screen─ immediately reminding me of my fragility in their presence. I feel small, huddled like a toddler in my seat.

First I see her, my mother, and as always, I am struck by her grace and beauty. This younger version of her warms me, softens the tighter icy shroud of memories I’ve carried too long. At nineteen she is tall, too tall to be wearing her stilettos, shoes her father has told her are ridiculous. But she doesn’t care, she has pan-caked her face and penciled in the beauty mark on her right cheek, like her idol, Jane Russell.

She slips out of the house before he catches her, before he will make her late by one of his long and windy sermons on why she should try to look like a normal girl, and not upset her Momma with her fancy, schmancy outfits she concocts that are costing him a small fortune. She looks like she is still mad at him. Furious, since he told her she could no longer study at Rockefeller Design, the school in New York City.….But tonight, she is running down the street to the corner of Ocean Parkway to meet Nathan that really sweet guy, who takes night classes at City College and works as something called a soda jerk part time. So what that she lied when she told Poppa that Nathan was in the food business? Syrups, she had said and remembered that first hot fudge sundae he’d carried to her table when she met him last week for the very first time.

Her best friend, Faye, had taken her out after seeing “Gone With The Wind” to try and cheer her up after her father’s announcement…and then, as her violet eyes scanned the walls of authographed photos: Clark Gable, Mickey Rooney, Jean Harlow, she heard this soothing voice, asking just above a whisper, as if he could sense her awful sadness: What will you have?

On the street now, she wobbles a bit but is careful not to step on a crack and break a heel. She looks back at her house and senses she is being watched. It would not be the first time. A pale hand lifts the shade, and now she knows for certain, and maybe later she will have to pay for her escape, but he is waiting for her on the corner and she cannot be late.

Nathan. Tall with curly hair, brown waves that glisten and compliment his eyes. Eyes as warm as the caramel on the double scoop of Vanilla he had topped with a single maraschino. Red─ the color of passion, of love and all she keeps hidden inside.

He waits for her, smoking a Camel, leaning against the door of his rusty De Soto. He laughs aloud thinking how the silly girl had lost her wallet, and how she promised to pay him back for driving her home. How fine she looked, and made him feel by the simple act of coming to her aid. In the distance, he hears the staccato click of her heels. Music swells. He is surprised that he is nervous, and struggles to keep calm, stay serious and strong for her.

This pretty girl, who will one day become my mother, and who for a reason he does not yet know, truly needs him.

 Happy New Year…Auld Lang Syne!

Gown by Manette 1941

Gown by Manette 1941

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by sandeboritzberger on January 1, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by sandeboritzberger on January 1, 2013

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The Next Best Thing

My only real surprise gift, this holiday season, was an invitation from one of my favorite writers, Mary Glickman@ www.MaryGlickman.com to take part in an exciting, cooperative writers blog:

The Next Big Thing, which may turn out to be the next best thing in social media for writers. This, I believe, is a great opportunity to spread the word about what we writers are presently working on or have completed, or, in my case, have recently re-edited, hoping to send out to the world…in one form or another. Below are some short, solid questions that helped me to refocus on my original goals while writing my novel.

What is the title of your book?
 The Sweetness

Where did the idea come from for the book?
The story was inspired by my own complicated family history, events and family secrets I learned about only as I got older. When I look at some earlier short stories, I realize that many of the same characters appear, as if looking for a place to breathe. They are the ghosts of my past, some the angels. In The Sweetness, I gave them lots of breathing room.

What Genre Does the book fall under?

I don’t believe the book falls under a specific genre, but family saga and historical fiction is a fair description. Also, Jewish Fiction.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Having worked in film and video for over twenty years, I sometimes imagine specific people as my characters. Mira Kane, the 18 yr. old protagonist and fashion design student could be played by Emma Stone; her parents by a number of wonderful actors. Alan Arkin’s edginess would be perfect for Charles Kane, the family patriarch. His soft- spoken, nervous wife, Mira’s mother, I imagine played by Diane Wiese.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Set between two continents during WWII, The Sweetness is one family’s story of loss, survival, and forgiveness for the circumstances that ultimately changes all their lives.

Is your book self-published or represented by an agency?
The book, which was a semi-finalist in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Awards, receiving a review by Publisher’s Weekly, is not yet represented. Though a traditionalist at heart, I am presently considering self-publishing. Here is a quote from Publisher’s Weekly, which reviewed the selected semi-finalists novels.

“The characters are rich and engaging, entirely original and never clichéd. The author has penned a story that is quite stunning in its simplicity; it’s neither a war novel nor a romance, despite the fact that there are aspects of both genres in the novel. Rather, the novel is a beautifully crafted portrait of life in its rawest form during a time of great unrest, and stays with the reader long after the final page.”

Publisher’s Weekly

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
The Sweetness was started years ago as a short story. It wasn’t until I began my MFA in Writing and Literature at Stony Brook Southampton College that I started to write the novel, adding a whole new cast of characters that had not appeared in the original story. One is based on a young girl cousin, who I learned about not too long ago. Her name was Rosha.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Those who have read the book (I had a few readers because it was my thesis) compared it to the screenplay: Avalon, which takes place in a suburb of Baltimore after WWII. Because The Sweetness takes place during the time frame of the holocaust and post war, it has been compared to a few books of that time in history. Its focus, however, is the fall-out caused by war, the guilt felt by those who survived, and had to continue living their lives though much had changed. It asks the question: How do we go on, continue, in the face of such evil?

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
When I first saw a picture of the young Rosha, which was my cousin’s real name, I was already a grown woman with my own children. I could not believe I had known so little about her, and that so much of her real story had been buried by my family. While my curiosity forced me to ask many questions, they said nothing. The pain was obvious. I had to invent the truths I wanted to know, answer my own questions… and finally create the ending all would have preferred.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Even though the novel takes place in the 1940’s, and 1950’s, I have created strong women characters struggling against the difficulties and stereotypes of that era. While writing, I learned that many things have surprisingly stayed the same.

Here are five authors I’ve tagged to tell you about their Next Big Thing:

Nahid Rachlin is the author of the memoir, Persian Girls, and the novel, Jumping Over Fire. www.nahidrachlin.com/

Beth Schorr Jaffe is the author of the novel, Stars of David. https://www.facebook.com/starsofdavid

J Patrick Redmond has recently completed his first novel, Feeding the Christians http://jpatrickredmond.tumblr.com/

Judy L. Mandel is the author of the memoir Replacement Child. http://www.judymandel.com/Blog/

Elizabeth McCourt is the author of the novel Red Beans and Murder www.triathlonobsession.wordpress.com

Stephanie Hart is the author of the beautiful and lyrical memoir: Mirror, Mirror. https://www.facebook.com/stephanie.hart.3720?ref=ts&fref=ts

 

Thank you to Mary Glickman, author of One More River, and Home in The Morning for tagging me! www.MaryGlickman.com

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by sandeboritzberger on December 28, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by sandeboritzberger on December 28, 2012

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The Lure of Hardware

Next to a pharmacy in any foreign country, it is the neighborhood hardware store that gives me the biggest thrill. Upon entering the heavy double doors, I inhale the dusty, metallic smell; the blending of chemicals and alloys promising to solve my latest household problem, some big like a torn screen, or a leaky faucet (yes, big to me) but mostly minor like needing a missing bolt, a molly, or the right wrench, as in lug, or a Phillips screwdriver. But it is the lingering of the male scent that I find most compelling, catapulting back to another time perhaps very long ago.

As a child, on Saturdays, my father would often take me along when he was about to fix whatever might have broken during the time he’d been away traveling, which he did much too often, leaving my brothers and me a little too feisty and capable of breaking a chair, smashing a window, or a vase or two. Glue, really strong glue, became a staple in our house, and with glue gun in hand, our father was suddenly transformed from fabric salesman to magician. Projects that involved sawing, chiseling and sanding were not that interesting to me, or perhaps, I was wary of the perilous sounds and possibility of blood from an unexpected injury.

What I loved then, and still do, were the floor to ceiling shelves stacked with such necessary products:  walls of chains, locks and keys, potions and liquids in brightly colored cans and bottles…remedies, and things to keep our father busy, but more importantly, to keep him home.

 

 

Fact: Approx. 40% of all hardware store purchases today are made by women. Thanks, Dad!

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by sandeboritzberger on August 19, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by sandeboritzberger on August 19, 2012

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Sleepwalking

Excerpt from the novel: A Split-Level Life    
So, have you ever been so lost that you’d take the advise of anyone, hang with the wrong people, and yet, at the time you really didn’t know it?  Somehow the friendship was a blanket for you, even though more than a bit flimsy. 
It’s noon before I realize the phone receiver spent the night trapped in the kitchen drawer. As always, Rona manages to be the first to get through to me.
“Well, aren’t you the little chatterbox today,” she says, with an acidic hint of possessiveness that signals: it is time for me to make new friends.
“No, I completely forgot I took the phone off the hook. I’ve been in the bathroom all morning. It must’ve been the chopped meat. The girls and Donny ate pasta and they’re fine.”
“Are you saying it was the chopped chuck from Fernando’s?”
“Ah-huh, probably that order we split of frozen patties.”
“Oh crap, Alex, I just read in Family Circle that you can die from bacteria in spoiled meat.”
I hear doors opening and closing, a frantic shuffle coming through the phone wires as Rona begins emptying her freezer. Like a seasoned cashier, she tabulates aloud: “that’s six filet mignons for $48 bucks, eight shoulder chops equals $ 25, two prime ribs $ 35 and a five pound package of hamburger patties for $15… in zee gar-bage.”
“But it might only be a little virus,” I say. I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or come clean, telling her I’d eaten some scrambled eggs, coffee, had a toke and pretty good sex against the bathroom wall.
“I’m not taking any chances,” Rona says. “Hey, do you feel well enough to come over? I’ll fix you something light to eat…tea, toast, and some scrambled eggs. I’d pick you up, but Hy brought the car in this morning for the 5000 mile check-up. So, I really need you to drive me there later so I can get the car. That’s if you’re up to it.”
It serves me right. I’m full up on eggs, but agree to lunch in half an hour. Without going into details, over the telephone, I mention the lovely babysitter, Colleen Byrnes, saying she is no longer under my employment. Rona gasps with the identical intensity she demonstrated over the possibility of food poisoning.

The Karl’s home is an immaculate split-level, on the north side of town, “done” in muted tones of beige and mocha— reminiscent of a Danish modern furniture showroom or what is best described as dentist sterile. I often picture Rona and Hy sitting down to a Pillsbury-perfect dinner with their young son Ethan, a sweet nervous boy forbidden to tumble and soil his clothes. As their forks and spoons lift in unison, they appear futuristic and comically robotic. As part of her vows, I bet, Rona has included a policy promising no crumbs, spilled milk, or indelible stains.

 Yet secretly I envy her strict dedication to order. She would have been the model daughter for my mother… the one she would have chosen had she been able to foretell the future. “Oh, Alex, how’s that darling friend of yours?” My mother never fails to ask when she calls weekly from Florida, her question reminding me that I, too, was raised in a home where the pursuit for perfection was revered.
“I thought you and Donny loved your babysitter,” Rona says, wiping the tuna salad from the corners of her mouth. I’d love a bite of her tuna, but I’m stuck with the dry rye toast and eggs. She stares me down with her thick, mascara-ed brown lashes. Here in Rona’s spotless Formica kitchen, there is no place to hide. I pretend to look for an old dry cleaning receipt in my bag, stalling to collect my thoughts.
“Yes, we both liked her a lot (my voice breaks on both) and she was great with the girls, but there’s this new boyfriend… someone she met this summer. She’s just not as dependable as she was, so…”
“Hmm, I’m not surprised she has boyfriends. That kid is drop-dead gorgeous.”
“You really think so? Personally, I think she’s too damn skinny.” Heat wraps around my collarbone. My teeth rip through a piece of dry toast.
“Well, maybe she is a bit too thin, but I’d kill for her hair.”
“But it’s red, Rona! How would you, of all people, manage all that wild, red hair?”
“Relax, take a breath. I can see you’re upset. You’ll find another sitter soon. There are zillions of homely teenage girls hanging out at the new mall with nothing to do on Saturday night.”
“That’s depressing.” I drain the tea-cup. “I hate having to look for someone all over again.” Tears spring to my eyes. I’m on the brink of spilling the beans.
“Hey, we are talking about a few hours on a Saturday night, and an afternoon here and there. Not a big deal.”
“You know, you’re probably right. I’ll find someone new, maybe more competent and reliable.” I sit up straight and finish my slice of rye. The soggy scrambled eggs are buried underneath my napkin.
“So you’re feeling better already, right?” Rona asks, picking at her molars with a wooden toothpick.
“Yes, I think so. Thanks. Thanks for lunch.”
Rona glances at the chrome clock above her stove. “Come on, we’ve still got some time. Let’s get some shopping done while our little monsters are still in camp, and then you can drop me at the car dealer.”
She stands, and in seconds, loads the dishwasher, freshens her lipstick, grabs her handbag, and is ready to go. I stare at her amazed, at how easily she analyzes any crisis, minor or major, produces a solution, and then ties it up like a bundle of old, worn-out clothes to dump in the Goodwill bin.
There is not a trace of sentimentality in deciding to let go.
 Finished. Done. Next. Rona and I live, not only, on the opposite sides of town; we live on opposite poles of the earth. Still, since moving to Wheatley Heights, I am drawn to her like a piglet to teats, searching for any semblance of nourishment.
Truth is; it’s less lonely to sleepwalk alongside her.
Later that afternoon at her suggestion, I place an ad in the North Shore Tattler. By the following week, I have ten teenage girls scheduled for interviews. One of them is a fourteen-year-old named Agnes who lives half a mile away. She is ebullient in spite of severe acne and the silver fences imprisoning her teeth. I hire her on the spot.
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by sandeboritzberger on June 29, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by sandeboritzberger on June 29, 2012

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Ambition

If you were at all ambitious in the 1940’s and beyond, or a woman starting a family, chances are you had to store away those dreams, or make yourself believe that they weren’t important enough to pursue. Women were reluctant to talk about a future that didn’t involve marriage, children, a house with a nice backyard. Of course, there were exceptions.

As a teenager, my mother was lucky enough to attend a prestigious fashion design school in NYC during the late 30’s, where she had won all kinds of recognition for her unusual talent.

Gown by Manette 1941

My grandfather was a manufacturer of ladies fine knitwear, and so she was influenced by the fashionable industry around which she had grown up. Her perceptions and talents though were emphatically unique. A huge fan of the glamorous movie star set of her era, my mother conjured up all the greats whenever she created gowns or outfits for her many school assignments─ an ensemble you might see on Davis, Harlow, Hepburn or Crawford. Though she was barely seventeen, her creations looked like small masterpieces from the fashion houses of famed designers.

But there was a war brewing through-out Europe, and by 1941 some of our closest relatives would soon suffer a terrible fate under Hitler’s command. My grandfather, despondent and guilty for not being able to protect and save his brother’s entire family, went into a deep depression, and without explanation, other than financial restraints, he pulled my mother out of her fashion school, and never allowed her to return.

She was crushed. It had been the one thing she loved the most, and she was embittered by his act most of her adult life. She soon chose marriage and within eight years, had become a family of five. Her project then: decorating a 1500 sq. ft. house in a small suburb of Long Island, where she would live until her husband, my father, retired and moved away to Florida in the 60’s.

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by sandeboritzberger on June 27, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by sandeboritzberger on June 27, 2012

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Baby Girl

                                     Sandra Fern

I was a war baby, the first child and only girl. In the years when I could finally understand, my mother never missed a chance to tell me that she had suffered two awful miscarriages before me, so I understood that I was her third, and lucky try, yet if not for the difficulties during those previous pregnancies, I would have never arrived. The thought of that was unimaginable to me and more than a bit shocking.

How could my entire existence be so precarious? Instead of a girl, with big hazel eyes, and chubby thighs, I might have been just another egg, sloughed off with all the dozens of others that came before me.  Oh, and then the other story she liked to tell was that I was born with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around my neck and nearly died.

Though these tales fascinated me, I was always aware of my mother’s matter-of-fact approach in their telling. I think what I wanted was to hear how happy she had finally become, or that something miraculous had now changed her life for the better, and that the something was having me, finally, a healthy child- a daughter. I wanted to know that my birth and entry into the world was not paired with memories of remorse or regret.

Fifteen months later, with the war over and my father safely returned from his stint in the Navy, my mother gave birth with little complication to another child, this time a boy. Since we lived across the street from my grandmother’s house in Brooklyn, there were always surrogates to help out with babies. Besides my grandmother, there were my two unmarried aunts. Both were happy to look after their niece and nephew, intent on earning their keep so far from their homeland in Vilna, and living, since they were teenagers, in their brother’s house.

In most of the baby pictures of me, which are just a few, I appear owl-eyed and cautious, even a bit worried.  Told again and again that I was a terrible sleeper, I was tossed around a lot, passed from body to body, from scent to scent. Was I searching for her, my mother? A lifetime later, I am still restless.

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by sandeboritzberger on June 25, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by sandeboritzberger on June 25, 2012

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The Graduate

Like some stories, this one begins with an ending─ my graduation from college. It was a milestone that arrived too soon, but I didn’t know back then, didn’t know much of anything. All I knew was that for the last four years, I’d felt free and amazingly happy, and I believed things would remain like that no matter what path I chose. And then, on the afternoon of graduation day, as my soon to be fiancé turned the corner and Old Main was out of sight, I began to tremble. I looked back in the rear view mirror and envisioned a much younger girl in knee socks and a plaid skirt bouncing up the steep hill to her first class. She did not have a care in the world, except maybe to pass her biology test, or to rush a sorority in the spring. She did have dreams though, but to talk about them might somehow jeopardize them coming true. She was, of course, superstitious as well.

Now, there would be no guide for the next curriculum of my life. Nothing but the models made by my grandmother and mother, aunts, and a fewer older cousins who I hardly ever saw.

Twenty years later, already in my 40’s, the mother of two adolescent girls and past the first decade of a second marriage, I returned to that school for the big reunion. Beside my sorority sisters, the first people I wanted to see were my English professors, two in particular, but they were nowhere to be found. Happy to learn they were alive and well, and still teaching, I found their offices and decided to write them each a note. It was a note of thank you, very long overdue, and I cried while writing because every word was true and heartfelt, and yet I’d never said any of it before. While I had dedicated myself to becoming a teacher, mostly because I loved kids and Dad had told me to choose between going away to college and getting a new car and working, I chose the profession that at the time seemed practical. I could always write, right?

And the universities I’d dreamed about were so much more costly than a teacher’s college, which in NY State in the late 60’s was tuition free. My very frugal Dad was thrilled that there would be money left-over to send both my younger brothers to college sometime down the road.

And I was lucky, it turned out, to have had the kind of professors I did, in a small school where I never felt lost and was given the attention and encouragement I might not have received on a campus with thousands of students. I was, by all standards and still am, a small town girl. And so I wrote my notes of thank you, even though they were a little late. And then, while walking down a staircase, I ran into one of the professors who I’d always liked but never actually studied with. We chatted for a while, and then he told me…that he quotes me at the beginning of every school year in his freshman comp class.  Me? I couldn’t imagine what pearls of wisdom might have come spilling from my 20-year old mouth. And then he told me. Simple really, but very true.  After he had wished me luck in graduating, I had responded, without a beat:

“But I’m not ready to go,” I’d said, “I’m only just beginning to learn.”

 

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by sandeboritzberger on June 22, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by sandeboritzberger on June 22, 2012

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