At the age of five, my father witnessed a horrifying scene; his uncle was hung alongside the cow he tried to smuggle into the ghetto. I cannot fathom that scene; it's too much even for my overactive imagination. My father hardly ever spoke about it except for that single mention.
Once as we were sitting by the computer searching through Yad Vashem's website,
we came across a written testimony his father gave
in the 1950's about relatives who were murdered by the Nazis. The printer spat out my grandfather hand-written testimony. The incident with the cow was mentioned there.
My father was emotional and embarrassed. "I didn't know he went to Yad Vashem." Yet there it was, in my grandfather's handwriting. There we were, father and son; survivor of the Holocaust and a second-generation survivor, staring at the computer.
I felt my father was holding back an ancient unbearable pain. I wanted to hug him, but I couldn't.
I remember my grandfather. He was a butcher who sold poultry, but his hobby was raising song birds. Dozens of colorful birds filled his balcony. He loved his birds. I know nothing of his love or his wife and children.
Perhaps they loved differently in those days. Loved in secret, loved only in the dark? How did they do it?
I never saw my parents hug or kiss. That's sad. The fact they "spared" us those tender moments left me with nothing to counter the memories of endless friction.
My grandparents on both sides were butchers. As a child I saw blood in the huge refrigerators in their stores but I also remember that in their houses there was not a drop of it. There were family dinners for which you had to dress up nicely. We were not allowed to get excited; everything had to be done politely. No hugs or kisses but yet something warn and cozy lingers from those days.
No one spoke of love, no romantic movies, and no sexy commercials so how was I supposed to learn about it?
I wish they'll invent a pill for every emotion. Feel like romance? Take the red one. Doesn't matter who you are, where your family's from, what you experienced as a child. Just take t he red pill.
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