Roots of Resilience: A Journey to the Women Who Came Before Me

In Their Stories, I Affirmed My Own Strength

I’m sitting in a Drury Hotel room in St. Louis, in front of a poster that says “Missouri - Welcome to Adventure.” It’s a print of a nature painting- a winding stream surrounded by trees.

A Different Kind of Adventure Awaits

But I’m on an adventure of a different kind. I’m leaning into my maternal bloodline, my own personal episode of Finding Your Roots.  Lucky for me, I have a second cousin (we just met!) who has done a lot of the work already. She has created a timeline, a family tree, located a bunch of documents and photos.

Now I want to hear the stories.

Here is where the bulk of my maternal grandmother’s siblings settled, and where many of their families still live. My grandmother, Anna (Chana) somehow wound up in NYC with my grandfather Harry instead, and raised their three kids on the Lower East Side and then in the Bronx.

I don’t know why that happened. Maybe these second cousins know the story.

Learning in 2018 - decades after my parents had passed - that my older brother Rick and I were actually conceived by sperm donation (!!!) - and that he, our younger brother Russ and I actually have three different biological fathers (Russ the only biological child of our dad Irving) was a blow to my identity. I’d always seen myself as a mix of my mother and father. Mom’s eyes. Dad’s jawline. Mom’s warmth. Dad’s stubbornness.

But no.

Who am I then? Not much information on my sperm donor Dad, other than what is written in his obituary. Before he died, I had tried to establish contact and was rebuffed at every turn - even the one with a self-addressed stamped envelope sent to his medical practice to ask about his medical history. Nope. Refusal. And I guess I could see why - all those med students who donated sperm back then were told that no one would EVER know.

So, okay.. I was a little hurt, but not that much. Other than the medical history, I found it doesn’t matter as much as I’d  thought it would. I did learn from his obituary that he lived and practiced internal medicine into his 90’s and ran marathons into his 80’s . So that’s good news for my medical history. And it’s enough. I was curious about more, but oh well.

Why? Because there aren’t really any stories. It’s not like I was given up for adoption. My biological dad’s story as it relates to mine is actually non-existent. Some med student just donated sperm to make a few bucks.The end.

I am in touch with a biological half-sister (same sperm donor Dad) and we like each other a lot - but. But. We don’t share history. There are no stories that bind us together. We have forged a new friendship as nice women who also happen to share some DNA.

But I want the stories. Here is St Louis, it’s a different kind of bond I feel with the new cousins I meet in person for the first time - especially the two who are at the core of this adventure.

The stories are here, along my maternal bloodline - which now extends beyond me to my daughter Ali and her daughters. The matriarchy. 

Our Great Grandparents. Their Courage is why nine children, and all their offspring, are here.

Sarah is the woman who gave birth to all those children (ten in all, I learn - including a daughter born two years before my grandmother Anna but who died in infancy). Sarah is the woman who eventually (and very reluctantly, I hear) came to America, on a boat with her three youngest children. The other remaining six all eventually dribbled into the US - one by way of Italy and Buenos Aires, as he had snuck away from the Bolsheviks out the back door, with only the clothes on his back and no paperwork to his name.

My own grandmother, Sarah’s third living child Anna, had already come to the US two months before Sarah  to join her husband Harry. She sailed across the sea from Vitznevets, Russia (could have at some time been Poland, or Ukraine, as borders always seemed to change) via Belgium to Ellis Island - with a 2-year-old, my late Uncle Morrie, in tow. And earned English. And rode the subway to babysit me and my brothers sometimes.

Now that’s courage, Or necessity. Or, I suppose, courage born of necessity. And hope. And love.

I find myself really leaning into the maternal bloodline from me (an only daughter) to my mom Edith (an only daughter) to her mother Anna, to Sarah --- and forward in time to my daughter Ali and her two daughters. And, of course, her son. But this is about the matriarch.

We come from strong, loving, courageous stock. Thank you, Sarah.  All of us, your grandchildren and great-grandchildren and beyond, are here because you and your family got out in time. The town you left was decimated in the pogroms and, later, the holocaust. Yet all of you eventually found your way to the new world. We are grateful -  and, this weekend, some of those offspring will meet for the very first time. And some of us will place that stone on your headstone. 

May your memory be a blessing.