My father’s brother was called Irvin. Since my father was the older brother I was born when “Uncle Irv” was still young. I was fortunate in that way. All my aunts and uncles were young people and very much interested in me.
My uncle Irvin was a doctor; in those days, the 1950s, he was a general practitioner and of course he took care of our medical needs. My Uncle Irvin was a sweet, sweet young man, patient with all the fuss I made over every ache or pain. When I had chronic tonsillitis it was assumed that I would go to the hospital and have my tonsils removed. But I cried and screamed so much that it was decided to better leave me alone on this issue. My uncle just kept coming over and giving me a shot of penicillin. He always gave us shots in our buttocks–but he would say: Now, Leslie, I’m going to give you this shot on your right side. Then he was stick the needle into my left buttock. I loved him for that.
When my sister was born and my uncle and aunt began having a family there was a total of four little girls. My cousin Dan came along a little later. It seemed that one of the four of us always had a sore throat and swollen glands and a bad cold. One winter day I remember my uncle, a little tired of the demands made on him–and who could blame him?–feeling my salivary glands with his finger tips and sighing: Oh these Golding girls and their glands…
His wife, my aunt, was called Martha. As with my other aunts I loved her very much and she loved me. One of my favorite things to do was to go over to their house on Pocusset Street and hang around. My aunt seemed to have endless time to listen to me talk about school, friends, and boys. One day when I was there she told that she had something special to tell me. A boy a year older than I was, who lived opposite, had spotted me; he ran over to my aunt’s house after I left and said: Who was that girl? She’s beautiful. Give me her phone number, I’ve go to call her and asked her out.
So I got extremely excited and waited for him to call, but he didn’t.
My aunt and I remained close as I moved to adulthood. She had a sharp intelligence and read what I considered profoundly serious books. I like Vladimir Nobokov’s book about Lolita but I could never understand his others. Those were the kind of books she read. And, like my other aunts, she had superb fashion sense.
I have a final anecdote that reveals the kind of woman my Aunt Martha was.
I’ve written a lot about my grandparents following the kosher rules. So whenever there was a birthday party for one of us they would not attend because we never kept kosher. It was not mentioned that my grandfather ate his lunch at the Colonade, using a plate that was not cleaned according to the kosher rules. He had made his own private considerations where this was concerned. My aunt, however, tried very, very hard to create a happy birthday for one of her children. She would go to Rosenbloom’s on Murray Avenue and buy a cake there and that was OK, my grandparents bought cookies and cakes there themselves. Then she used only plastic forks, spoons, and knives plus paper plates. She was really exhausted at the end of one of these family parties. I admired her just SO much for trying hard to keep us together as a family. Did my mother ever try to do the same? Go through all the complications with paper, plastic, etc? Nope. I can visualize the scene that took place between my parents. My mother would ask my father if he wanted her to do what Martha was doing and he would have said a firm NO. I will write about what was happening, but this was my father’s way of rebelling. My mother would have emulated my aunt without question if my father asked her to. They really loved each other. But it could never happen in our house and I knew that my father, in his own quiet way, admired Martha and what motivated her.
lgmwriting 