My Grandma Braff, at the age of 15, told her parents, she would not agree to a pre-arranged marriage, there are somethings, she would go on and tell her grandchildren, as she sipped her glass of Peach Schnapp’s, you know are right for you and somethings which others TELL you are right for you, which (then she would do the pooh/pooh/pooh pretend spit) which are WRONG! I remind you, she would add, looking around to see if my mother, her daughter, was in ear range, most information and advice your parents provide, make great sense and are said to protect you, but there are certain feelings only YOU understand, and NEVER ignore them.
This kind of conversation, was rare, as was the Peach Schnapp’s cocktail hour, but my Grandma Braff’ advice did float around when we played Gin Rummy (in which she always cheated), or when she decided that more Dill was necessary to make the chicken soup REAL chicken soup! Even the last weeks of her life, when she was growing tired, and she would nap more often than not, she would ask if her cheeks were rosy enough, and we would hand her a mirror. Often times, my Grandma Braff looked pale, and had a large tube of RED lipstick at her night table, “Lipstick”, she would insist, “Is the Gin Rummy of rouge, it is shinier, prettier, and you can never be worried about using too much.” She would use too much, and her daughters would gently use their fingers to spread out the hue, to make their mother look as beautiful as a lady should!
I write this short piece regarding my Grandma Braff, as a soothing sort of meditation, as I listen or read or watch the maniacal, menacing machinations of Trumps collaborators who would love to see this nation turn into a Theocratic Plutocracy with fringes of Fascism. I write about my Grandmothers inclination that when something is wrong ONE must fight…and I write as I watch Jews, the people who I thought shared my history as a Jewish person, begin to worship false idols, and bathe in gold and delight in wealth, no matter the cost of freedom, equality …and spit on the graves of their own ancestors. I write this, as I witness American families whose own parents or grandparents fought wars against dictator and government regimes whose disdain for personal freedoms grew outrageous and threatened the mere moments of life. I write this because I want our nation even in its most dire and seemingly doomed days of soon death, to realize we must change, we must persevere, and we must not let an empty, useless, selfish, narcissist psychopath and his army of flying monkeys, change the world in which WE live, but worse than that the world the next generation of our friends and family will inherit!
