- Share This Post
- submit
- 9
-
Sparkle (0)
"Only one bathroom?" The woman behind me looked ahead, at the half-dozen other passengers waiting for the tiny toilet to be available. I smiled and nodded, raising my eyebrows in a what can you do? kind of way.
"I should not have had that second coffee,” she said, and we both laughed politely. She looked like any of my great aunts, like my grandmother - soft skin, kind face, a friendly, round body that countless grandbabies had no doubt climbed onto, seeking refuge from scolding parents and advancing siblings. She was shorter than me, and maybe age had done that, but if it had, she was retailiating by maintaining a gravity-defying hairstyle. It looked familiar, kind of like my own mother’s. A Jewish woman’s hair may gray; it may thin, it may even start to fall out. But as long as there are combs and hairspray available, it will be big.
“At least we brought a little snack,’ my line-mate continued, leaning in a bit. “Bagels. We don’t like to eat too many bagels – too fattening.” She pronounced it "fettning," and I guessed she was Polish. It was a familiar accent; the accent of my people, although there were less and less of my people and their accents around with every passing year.
“We were going to wait until we got to Miami to eat, but oy, abruch! With the security, this plane is so late, and who knows when we’ll get to the restaurant?”
“Yes,” I agreed, “The security check was a bit ridiculous.”
We had been searched. And then metal-detected. And then re-searched. And then they shuffled through every single business card in my wallet, looking for implements of terror, or maybe a good aestitician. They spoke about ten words to me, but they searched.
The woman continued, “In Israel even, the security is not like this. They are smart. They know what to ask, and they know where to look – in your eyes. They don’t care about what is in your pocket-book; they care about what is in here.” She drew circles in the air around my eyes with her finger.
I told her that I knew about Israeli flight security; I had spent almost a year in Israel on a kibbutz.
Somehow, in the five minutes that we were in line to use the bathroom on a crowded flight, I learned that this woman currently lived near where I had during high-school; that she was on her way to Miami for the winter because her husband couldn’t take the snow; and that she would miss her grandchildren, but maybe they would come for a little visit?
I also learned that she was a Holocaust survivor. That she was Lithuanian. That she had been six years old when she was sent to the camps. That her father and brothers never came out. I was astonished, not because of her footnote-version of her horrifying past – unfortunately, I have heard so many of those stories, told to me by my own relatives – but because I was on my way to Miami with my best friend to share my birthday with her grandmother, who was turning 94 on the same day. And who was a Lithuanian Holocaust survivor. And if you know how small Lithuania is, and how big the Holocaust was, than you’ll know why I was astonished to meet this woman on a plane to Miami two days before my birthday.
***
We met in Vilna, the ghetto, of course - where else was there to meet someone? We were not allowed to leave, so in ways of romance, you took what you could get. Good thing what I got was so nice!
We wanted to be married, because we heard that they would not separate you if you were married. It was not true of course, like most things we heard. But, we wanted to be married and we were not allowed. If they found out you had been married, they would take you away and kill you. Don't look so surprised! If they found out that you were pregnant, that was even worse, because they would not kill you. They would make you get rid of it. And if it was too late to get rid of it, they made you have the baby, and then they took it ... it was better to get rid of it.
But we went to the rabbi, and he said come back at 5 in the morning. So we
