I couldn’t ask her if she registered. I didn’t want to embarrass her. But what would they do to her—to us—if she hadn’t? To prepare myself, I pictured the situation. We’d be going up the escalator in Lytton’s department store in downtown Evanston—a usual haunt. We always used the ladies room at Lytton’s on our once or twice weekly visits to the allergist. After making our contribution in the long row of stalls, we’d look at the rounders of ladies wear. The ladies room was gray and white. The store was gray and white. We were gray and white. The PSA was gray and white. Maybe I just remember everything from the early 1960’s as a grayscale image. We were light years from the rainbow streaked 1960s that would arrive when we moved to California at the end of the decade.

The PSA voice would come over the store’s loudspeakers. We were trapped on the escalator—we’d have to go to the top to get off and come back towards the exit. That would be too obvious. We’d better run up the mechanized stairs and hide in the rounders. I pictured the uniformed men—much like the NAZI’s my Mother had fled less than 25 years before—pushing aside the clothes and finding me hidden in the center, knocked down by their guns. What had they done with my Mother? Where had they taken her? And where would I go?

I could probably get back home by myself on the bus. Or would they find Daddy? Daddy traveled for work; he was never in town when anything happened. I would just have to learn to get on the downward escalator faster and lessen the time for escape.

I’ve never told this to anyone else who remembered the PSA’s, including my Mother, years later.

When I decided to thumb through Ireland, I got busy putting all the fear-laced warnings about hitch-hiking out of my head. I hadn’t contemplated the also-fearful-and-more-likely reality that I’d be expected to converse with perfect strangers for hours. Before I could get too nervous, the view, the comfort and the repetition of the road helped open up my travel-mind and loosen my ear and shy-tongue.

In Swansea I filled my few days easily. I traipsed the castle, shopped for old watches, and sat still for a lengthy rant on the crown and the dole from an articulate resident squatter. The next day I played in the surf, getting horribly muddy in my new travel sandals. It didn’t occur to me to give them more than a cursory wipe and leave them outside. My elderly hostess scrubbed them to a clean and broken–in state, to my embarrassment. Over my cold beans, cold toast, cold egg and fabulous marmalade the next morning, she informed me that she and her husband strongly disapproved of my travel plans—the ferry to Ireland. “Why just last week several of our Welsh boys were killed”—soldiers serving in Northern Ireland. I knew tensions were high, but I was shocked at the hostility for the land and people across the small channel of water. I listened politely, promised not to go to Northern Ireland and set out for the ferry terminal.

We sailed overnight. I woke early stretched out in the ferry’s public lounge with the TV blaring the state funeral for Éamon de Valera, the former prime minister and partial architect of modern Ireland, whom I had never heard of. My heart sank a bit as I glimpsed something of my ignorance. Why was I traveling to Ireland? I certainly didn’t know anything much about the place. I wasn’t seeking my heritage, as so many Americans do. I read John Osborne and Brendan Behan. I loved the language. I liked the Guinness and the whiskey. So now I walked into a country somewhat in mourning, with it’s inconsistencies and controversies freshly stirred, as if that weren’t always the case in the mid-70s.

Customs gave me pause, unexpectedly. They searched me ever so thoroughly, not for the guns and bombs the London police had been checking for in my purse in theatre lobbies, but rather, for condoms. Clean on all fronts, I entered the City of Cork, thumb aloft.

My first ride, gave me the bit of political history I needed. I understood parts of each of his sentences about the devotion and infamy of de Valera. Mostly, I secured a little grounding in the dialect and the ways of the road. Those hours of ear-training were essential and the luncheon pint a nice surprise.

This middle aged man who stopped for me in his tiny well-worn car with no radio would be typical of my rides over the week. Our gab was entertainment for a long drive. In this green and friendly place a long drive was any distance between towns.

One driver left me in a pub while he made a business call in a small town. He came back for me and toured me all over the county. We wandered around small stone huts, stone circles and stone fences. A truck driver on holiday and his passenger, a young runaway, took me to the cliffs of Moher, where we crawled along our bellies to the edge. (I understand the people are fenced away, these days. Too bad; it was thrilling and a great lesson in how a gulls leg is fastened into it’s body.) I was just an oddity in the day’s drive for these folks. They became a part of my trip, my travel ethic and my thirty plus years of memory.

No driver ever asked my name and I was too green in the art of conversation to properly introduce myself. But before I quite sat down in any car the driver asked my religion—Catholic or Protestant. I was taken aback at first. The ride didn’t seem to be conditioned on a particular answer. After the second time, I came to relax. I wouldn’t be scorned when I answered “Jew.” Quite the contrary, my exotic pedigree gave the driver license to deliver his views most candidly.

I didn’t realize how odd it was to spend the day with someone still nameless until, awaiting the next lift, I had rejoined the ubiquitous sheep at the side of the road . Although we hadn’t gotten to names, each driver spoke fearlessly about all the important things, especially politics, religion and sex. I followed suit, of course. It was a replete with wonderful twists of gab that roamed through history, family, the crystalline logic against reuniting with the Northern counties and the inexorable heart that craved it, all delivered with a kind-hearted glum sense of fate, wear and tear, as befitted the year and the dismal economy.

I barely touched Ireland but I learned maybe her greatest lesson, talking to people. My meanderings along her fuschia-lined roads trained my ears and my traveler’s quest for serendipity. I still love Osbourne, Behan, the whiskey and stout.

That secret life that came before, that vital, dangerous, struggling life you set out upon when you left your home in Germany, I’ve run across that too, in your snap judgments, reminders not to care too deeply or expect too much, and pushes out the door–past my “comfort zone” as we would call it today. You were so quick to move on to plan B, never mind even beginning to understand whatever happened to plan A, and never, never daring to cry over it. All those events in New York, in Hartford, with your family, with your work and the people you found made you the woman who stroked and pushed and shushed and worried me.

Early on I judged you, when your rules didn’t make sense to me. I was angry, resentful, and rebellious and I knew you were unreasonable. Most likely I was also unreasonable, but I liked the feel of bitchy and callous, selfish and superior. That behavior is only “supposed” to last from age 12 to 21. But I performed that tedious repertoire from about 10 to 45. I didn’t know about Mother-as-friend. You steadfastly opposed that recent American notion. Anyway, I was devoted to my habit of annoyance.

Now that you’re failing, flailing, I want to protect you from the horrible traps of gravity, memory and speed, the uncomfortable visitations made by curbs, glass and silence. I want to offer you places for an eye, an ear, a nod or a notion to land safely, comfortably. And I want to know, Mom.

I want to understand that young woman who became my mother, Mom. I want to know the situations that formed you. I need to know, how did it go for you? How did you do it? How did you negotiate all the unknowns? How did you discover and tame your feelings? How did you learn to live with sadness and fear? How did you take care of yourself? I want to know with all the intimacy we’ve never had, that I never knew was possible, that you never allowed maybe anyone. Make it fresh in this moment and take me inside back to the time each armor plate was forged, pounded, cooled, and hung along the perimeter. What soft moment did it defend? What strong barb of laughter did it unleash?

You are slipping away from life and I’m just finally appreciating what you have—your legacy of story and experience. Our legacy. Tell me. Tell me about your fears, your worries. I will carry this story to my daughter. They are our stories and we must have them.

So what does it feel like, last one? Are you a weathered post supporting more weight than any trespasser has a right to expect? What is the last feeling of the bygone era, the last first-person blessing or curse to be landed against a too well-known opponent? Mom, does the emptiness of loss cast a sidelong knowing-sort-of glance, a nod of recognition even, before he pulls away yet another rug? Is it like an agreement to disagree? Another speech from the loyal opposition?

The catalogue of loss: You lost your country first—a loss I will not know and cannot imagine. You lost any sense of controlling events, long before you got that grown-up notion that you could be in control. I suppose it wasn’t such a shock then to find out in middle-age that control was an illusion and not really that important anyway. You almost always knew that, didn’t you?

You knew that things don’t happen for a reason, life isn’t fair, it might not be OK and the best man doesn’t win–tough lessons to master before the age of twenty. You learned that the human animal can dream up horrors beyond comprehension and there’s nothing you can do about it. You learned to act now—tomorrow may be too late.

And then you learned that your Mother and little sister were strong, smart and lucky beyond measure—each element was required for their survival. And you knew you’d always have to wonder if you could have made it through—and that you were so lucky not to have learned that.

So my memories turned to cold water, rushing in through the gash the iceberg left. An iceberg—there’s a devil. How wicked to hide a towering city of thoughtless cold beneath the water’s surface–invisible and unknowable. The water rushed to evict air with drowning clarity. “It was this; you can’t control. You don’t even know. You may never know.” Irrefutable choking ignorance.

Warm or cold, these memories suffocated me. I became used to pushing them away from my throat, from my chest, from my eyes.

But now memory is hard to find and trickier still to hang onto. I do hang on as it tears across a field with me clutching at it’s mane, afraid to fall. It stills the world around it like that wild horse would do—with terror, hot steam and cold reality. Who cares if you ate lunch, darned socks, read the paper or answered the phone? Only this matters now: hanging on tight and noticing which way the fence goes. I could fall and even if I could hang on, this crazy ride might crush my legs against that fence. She has a will of her own and pays me no mind.

My own mind, my thin, sometimes not-there mind, knows only on the mane and the fence. I am in the memory. I live it again in the tell, I live it again in the show, I live it again in the steam of my breath, I live it again in the blood and the bone and the taste of stale kisses. And when it’s finally still, I let go, slide off, and wonder where I’ve landed.

What identifies a person with a country? Is it the culture, the language, the neighbors or the neighborhood? Fighting in the war for my country, as a young man, that made me realize that this country was very important. I could die for my country: so many young men did—even friends of mine. It was terrible war. We lived in trenches, cold, dreary, filthy, endless. Fortunately the war ended before I was sent to the Eastern Front—that would only have been worse still. But I really knew I was a German—people wanted to kill me for it. I saw the very best in my countrymen and the very worst.

You know, we are not even citizens anymore. It’s bad enough to have to carry papers with the Swastika all over them and to see all those arm bands everywhere. But I am not even considered German. Such an insult. It’s unimaginable.

I’ve walked the streets of small towns, big cities, beaches, exotic continents, parks and neighborhoods, all alone. I’ve made most decisions big and small alone. I’ve trod the hardest trails alone: father’s death; mother’s deterioration; divorce; child’s illness; career dissatisfaction. I didn’t know what to say when asked by the partners and friends I’d kept at the periphery. Even I didn’t see the invisible barrier.

I wouldn’t call myself a loner. I have pockets of people: new friends to make; old friends to catch up on; and calendared gatherings. But I’m just fine alone—even in a movie theater—that most forbidding of lone adventures.

Some came closer, spun out, and hated the not-knowing and shifting priorities. Some would have been there for me had I let them. And some got through and took a bit of the strain from my tired bones.

You might not have noticed just how alone I am. After all, I lived well-loved with my parents for eighteen years. I spent thirty years as part of one couple or another. But coupling can be so isolating. At its worst, it steals the generous mantle of solitude and replaces it with missed-opportunity.

In unconnected hours face-to-face, drenched in the ice-water of failed intimacy, alone finally becomes loneliness. My strong right-side withered under worm-eaten embraces, preoccupied hearts, and habitual sex. The unearthly weight of sadness, the black weight of doubt, the sharp stones of anxiety, sent me sprained and sprawling atop the original ruin.

You might not know it’s ok to be alone. But alone stands on two strong legs. Feet may tire, shoulders ache, and breath rasp, but the slow stride uphill can continue almost indefinitely, alone.

When I was a child in Sunday school I thought this must mean bowing and scraping. I couldn’t relate to that. I was precocious in my sense of not being understood, putting up, shutting up, complaining and resenting. It didn’t have to wait until I was a teen ager. I wasn’t so big on the respecting part. I knew this commandment must mean something, but I assumed it would come clear at some future time. After all, I knew even then that these bold strokes of literature were meant for all ages: a large tale told against the tiny facts of my life.

Today I have memories and hand-me-downs from Mom and Dad. I find the bit of learning—the fond memory and the noble act—and I embrace it in the tale told. It can be a quiet, private thing. Sometimes I’ve made it a public thing, splashing it across my website and my stages. Is this what the commandment means? Rediscover, tell-the-world and perpetuate?

When my parents were still here for me, I asked and avoided, I listened and ignored. When I became a parent, all that programming poured from my firmware and wanted control. Would I live the legacy or change it? Blindly, consciously, fearfully and carelessly I retraced those steps right down to the words and deeds that had made me shudder a few short decades before. “Take them back, that’s not me speaking.” Oh, but it was. Those words oozed from lymph and bile.

Now my baby is grown and my mother and father are shadows. I have a little reflective distance on parenting from both ends. To honor my father and my mother I am commanded from becoming them, either blindly or slavishly, even if that’s what it might seem that they wanted. They didn’t; I know that. Instead I must live into the opportunities my parents provided for me. And when parents are rattling through my brain and my blood particularly loudly, which they still do on occasion, I have to give them a time out.

We are each marked by the hard knocks that have come our way. Some of those gashes are passed down to us and from us genetically, emotionally and experientially. We yearn to leave the damage and the fear behind; nobody wants to further those legacies. But our desire to protect our children recycles fear into anxiety.

To honor, I would like to purge the scold machine, take the love and put aside the nagging. I won’t become you, Mother or Father, but I’ll be my best self. I will look at the difficulties of parenting and offer a bit of compassion. I will look into my heart to touch the memories you placed there. I will live now, both a part and apart.

Both of my parents were quite devoted to butterfat. My father, from the dairy Midwest, was born of Hungarian stock; butterfat was next to godliness. My Mother had already lived through the worst her gluttony could offer, so no low-fat incantation was tolerated.

Little Laura’s fondness for ice cream made her the special target of a prosperous Jewish family in her small German town in the mid-thirties. In preparation for their eventual flight to Holland, these people would pick her up and take her across the Dutch border for ice cream, hiding their valuables on her small person. In hindsight, she resented them for using her to smuggle their gold out of NAZI Germany, putting her at risk of being bayoneted on the spot. But she never regretted a smack of the ice cream.

My ice cream adventures were much safer. Childhood summer nights were often graced by a square dip from a local Evanston shop—I’ve forgotten the name. Today I cannot imagine how I could begin to manage a square of ice cream. Those corners would impair the experience for me. As a kid the square scoops were nicely weird.
Non-ice cream frozen treats (“quiescently frozen” as opposed to churned) were frowned upon in my household and thereby exoticized. In my Mother’s courtroom these treats could be exonerated by chocolate; my weakness for fudge-sicles was tolerated. I didn’t get to try a rocket pop until I was grown.

At nineteen, a double-dip cone of maple nut ice cream from Bridgeman’s took me to my summer graveyard factory job each night in Minneapolis. Occasionally I flirted with other flavors, but I always came back to maple nut. This was one of my few devotions to a non-chocolate dessert. Bridgeman’s chocolate just wasn’t chocolate-y enough.

In my child-raising days, ice cream was the third level of emergency treatment for childhood injuries. Step one was “kiss the owie.” Step 2—put a band-aid on it. When my daughter grabbed the searing beam of a metal jungle gym I initiated step three; “let’s go get ice cream.” Step 4 would have been a trip to the emergency room. Fortunately I never got to step four.

From an early age, I gave my daughter expert coaching in ice-cream cone management. I knew iced cream would be an important part of her future, so I approached this as a valuable skill to be handed down and practiced. You circle the cone, working the meeting of cone and ice cream, picking up the meltiest outside layer to get the “ready” ice cream and prevent drips. Watch the tongue pressure—you can easily undermine the stability of the scoop on the cone. Yes I had a tragedy once as a child. No need to reproduce that trauma. Practice makes perfect and how sweet it is.

Ice cream still works quite well on those injuries that transcend age and maturity, such as wounded pride, disappointment, fatigue … just about anything short of a broken bone. It’s so easy, so elegant, so well-disseminated. Even the worst retail muck or the hyper-precious versions transport the eater directly to the magic of a very cold thing on a hot day, summer’s best punctuation mark.