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Tell Me About Your Grandfather
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Tell Me About Your Grandfather

my friend Fran said

Esther Cohen
Jan 5
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My friend Fran one of those people you could

talk to on the phone for hours I still

prefer the phone to zoom

and the unfortunate umbrella

Social Media I like hearing telephone voices

my friend Fran said

tell me about your grandfather

and I told her what little I know my family

did not write life down did not especially want

to tell difficult stories wanted to be sui generis Americans

to go to college maybe become doctors and lawyers

so the very little I actually know

was my grandfather Oscar

I believe he was rabbinic

one of three brothers

I never met the brothers

Eastern Europe to South Africa

to the small factory town where I was born

his brothers went south I’m not sure where

my grandfather died of a heart attack

the year I was born

I would ask his children

my father especially what he was like

my grandfather’s wife a Yiddish speaker

didn’t talk much to children

when my friend Fran asked about my grandfather

I deflected the conversation

because I know nothing.

Let me tell you about a cousin instead I said.

(Fran was OK with that.)

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Judy Rabinor
Jan 9

you made me think about a story i want to write about my grandfather. thank you. i felt appreciative of who he was in my life. my mother and i lived with her parents during world war 2 when i was a small child and my father was in the army. my mother was an only child and i the first grandchild- special times.....

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Carolyn Toll Oppenheim
Jan 5

So sad.

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