I am from the tin foil coated with brightly colored wax that drips from the dollar box of Hanukah candles.  I am from those Seder dinners, too many to count-- I went from looking for the Matzo to hiding it.  I'm from choice, and freedom, and making mistakes. 

Hate and Authoritarian rule brought my family here.  The journey never would have happened, and I would not be here, if anti-Semitism of early 20th century had not grown and spread across Europe and Russia. The migration of the people who are in my blood cannot be recounted without speaking about this hatred that drove the Jews out of the old world.  And how it followed them, at least a little. I try to imagine the shtetls, as something other than a Chagall painting, as something other than a scene from Fiddler on the Roof, but it is so far away from my life.  Little is known about the many members of my family who could never escape.  Their stories, like their lives disappeared in that furnace of hatred.

 

I'm from trips to Jersey Shore and a big rented housed with everyone there, cheese and crackers & drinks at 5, dinner at 6:30.   I'm from "Be a mencsh" and "it's a mitzvah" and of course, "don't be a schmuck!" 

 

All I can feel is grateful and awed by the choice my ancestors had to make: to journey across the Atlantic, like so many others had done over the centuries, and establish a new home.  In my mind's eye I see Ellis Island, I imagine the crowds, names being entered in a logbook...Fliegelman, Silverman, Melnicoff...I imagine the chain of people, those who had come earlier helping those just arriving.   They all came through New York, but eventually the families of my mother and father both landed in Philadelphia, adding to the well of stories held within this revolutionary city.  

 

I am from Shel Silverstein poems, and my dad's big record collection that Matt and I used to finger through and play our favorites like Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder.  I'm from politics at the dinner table and the news at 6. 

 

The story of my mother's ancestors was interrupted in its telling by the death of my maternal grandfather 20 years before my birth, and then later my maternal grandmother died when I was 10. Their children have taken an interest in learning more about their stories, and have found photographs of relatives, learned what part of Ukraine and Yugoslavia they came from.  However, it remains a distant reality--the story of their crossing, the days and nights they lived.  The path that leads from me to them is there, is one I can feel but can't really envision.  

Both of my maternal grandparents were army medics in WWII.  They lived in Philadelphia after they were married and had seven daughters, also hosting great aunts and grandmothers who came over from Russia.  They lived in a large estate in a wealthy neighborhood called Chestnut Hill, not far from Germantown.  My grandfather was a doctor and his salary supported everyone.  The stories from the Melnicoff side are stuff of legend.  Mostly these legends are spun by the 7 daughters and those who knew them, growing up in the 1960's and 70's.  I see them, seven versions of the same face, long dark hair, center parts, posed in a pyramid, or staggered up the steps of a big staircase.  My cousins, my brother and I know that we come from mothers who share something unique.  We can't really ever know it ourselves, but we recognize it when we are all together.  It's a bond formed from decades of growing up, leaving old lives, finding new ones, relationships that have come and gone, children growing, parents lost, a sister lost.  In each other they see the only other people who can really ever know. They are scattered now, some still in Philadelphia, some south, some west, some north...

 

I'm from my parents' second marriages and the dissolving of one family and the forming new. I'm from that cross-country road trip and all those mix tapes. I'm from camping, hiking, and biking--no matter how much I protested. I'm from hand-drawn ornaments cut from plywood in the basement with my step-dad's jigsaw.   

 

In central Philadelphia, in a high rise condo building where balconies jut our rhythmically from the bright white concrete, on the 28th floor there is an apartment--polished with its many mirrors, coordinating black and white textiles and modern art.  It's a small space; well organized, large windows look out onto the city spreading in all directions. 30 years ago my grandparents left the suburbs to live out retirement in the heart of the city where they met, where their families had put down roots, amongst the growing Jewish community that overflowed from New York. 

 

My grandfather died nearly 5 years ago, and Grandmom has carried on in their home, she talks to him often, tells him about all the kids and grandkids.  She dwells on the past often, her need to transmit the past to us feels more acute.  She recounts stories we now know well.  The stories are woven into my understanding of myself.  My grandmother grew up a shop-keeper's daughter, with her siblings who all lived above the family's large Five and Dime in the Germantown neighborhood of Philly. My grandfather's family were poorer, had settled in North Philly.  School is where he learned the American tongue untwisted from the Yiddish. He learned tennis, Beethoven, and other touchstones to the Gentile world.  Both grew up in kosher homes, attended temple on holy days, Shabbat dinners on Friday.  Prayers and candles. Baruch atah Adonai elohaynu melech ha'olam asher kidshanu bemitzvotav vetzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Shabbat as the candles are lit.   Traditions that faded over the generations to come. 

My grandmother keeps the photos for all of us. She has numbered albums charting our family's evolution through growing children, trips to the shore, the mundane and the ritual, our marriages and anniversary's, graduations and visits.  The photos turn from sepia to color, from film to digital. She asks us all to keep sending her pictures of our kids, our vacations, so she can keep adding them.  Locking these moments behind plastic, distilling a version of our complicated and increasingly divergent lives.  

 

I'm from supporting myself and working hard. I'm from "be on time" and "sleep cheap, eat good!", "It's only money" and "you do the right thing and let others do the wrong thing."

 

When I consider all I contain, the many people I will never know of, I imagine the future generations who will continue on after me.  I too, one day, will be unknown to someone else.  My travels and migrations, my daily decisions, one of them may have a big impact on someone far away from this time and place.  It's humbling to think about.  Perhaps one day this small mediation will be a bread crumb for someone to find as they retrace the path.