How did it happen that a pen pal 60 years my senior and a 1990 Brother fax machine inspired me to become a writer? It could happen when your Bubbie is the pen pal…a pen pal who also happens to be deaf. A 12-hour plane ride, a whole lot of ocean and an entirely different culture separated me, the Americaner grandchild, and Bubbie. Bubbie and Zeidie lived in a tiny onebedroom apartment in Yerushalayim. To me, my grandparents were foreign, archaic people who served a five-course meal each night on china, rewashed their Bounty paper towels and made their own seltzer. They schmoozed, communicating in rapid Yiddish, spiced with the occasional juicy spurts of Hungarian that I couldn’t follow, and they were absurdly scrupulous about waste. I, on the other hand? I just wanted my own bedroom, the latest American Girl doll, and a trip to Eretz Yisrael. A trip halfway across the world just seemed too glamorous and exotic to not want. Daddy made a fine living as the warehouse manager at Grandpa’s paper factory. Still, he couldn’t afford to fly all eight of us from Brooklyn to Eretz Yisrael.
A stroke had left Zeidie paralyzed and with Bubbie as his sole caretaker, having our grandparents fly to us was not an option either. Instead, Daddy traveled to Israel every year with a big pile of family photos in his suitcase, and we kids relied on the good old postal service to deliver our once-a-year perfunctory letters. Writing to Bubbie was not exactly my favorite thing. Come Elul, Daddy would pester me nonstop until finally, several weeks later, when it was already Erev Rosh Hashanah, the deed could be pushed off no longer. I would then select my favorite Hello Kitty stationery and painstakingly pen a letter to her in Yiddish, no less. Writing in Yiddish made the task twice as grinding and a whole lot less fun, but since I didn’t understand Hebrew or Hungarian and she didn’t understand English, I stumbled and grumbled my way through as best and as quickly as I could. I always skipped lines, so Bubbie could read the words more clearly. (Who am I kidding? It was to finish the page licketysplit.) Finally, after telling her how cute my two-year-old brother Moishy was and how much I loved first grade, I would dutifully sign off by drawing a heart and adding some stickers (Hello Kitty, of course). Daddy would mail all our letters in a big manila envelope to which he would affix eight stamps.
Six were really enough, but he always added two extra, “just to be sure,” he said. I would then breathe a sigh of relief. That’ll be it till next year, I thought. The problem was, Bubbie would answer my letter! And her letter consisted only of questions. On an unlined clean white sheet of paper, she peppered me with fiery, breathless questions, written in her precise, tiny, rounded scrawl. …So many questions. “Vus macht der Mama?” How is Mama doing? “Di helfst ihr ois?” Are you helping her out? “Hust freint ?” Do you have friends?” “Di est gezint?…Di bist duch azoi dar!” Are you eating healthy?…You’re so skinny! Any news that I told prompted a whole new set of additional questions. If I told her I got a new dress, she wanted to know what color it was. (Green? That must be stunning with your hazel eyes. Is it short or long? For Shabbos or weekday?) If I didn’t like my Navi teacher, she wanted to know why (Yes, it’s true, sheifela, it’s not necessary to know Shoftim to be a mother, but when you’ll be a mother you’ll need to be able to sit through things you sometimes don’t like. Hmm… what do you think?). At first it felt kind of nice that Bubbie found my boring life interesting so I answered her questions. But eventually, after a letter or two, my eightyear-old self lost interest, tired of waiting for her reply. Squashing the guilt, I would cease writing.
But come Elul, Daddy would once again sweet-talk me into resuming the correspondence. “Bubbie loves your letters! They make her sooo happy. Don’t you just love making people happy?” “Sure,” I nodded affably, and promptly forgot about it. “This is Bubbie’s only way of getting to know you,” he would say a week or two later. “You’re the one who’s missing out. Bubbie is an amazing person and it’s a shame you don’t have a relationship with her.” “Of course, Daddy.” I wholly agreed, solemnly promised… and promptly buried my nose in the latest Hardy Boys mystery. I’m quite sure I wanted to write, but who had time for it when The Boxcar Children and the Nancy Drew mysteries were beckoning? And what about the Game Boy and my Barbies with their fashionable wardrobes? Sadly, writing a letter in a second language and waiting weeks for a response just didn’t make the cut. And then came the ‘90s with all its fascinating technological advances.
Who cared about the digital answering machine or even CDs when there was the fabulous fax machine??? Technically, fax machines had been around for a long time, but it was only in the early ‘90s that fax machines had become affordable and practical for personal home use. I’ll never forget the Sunday afternoon when we three girls and little Moishy piled into our brown and beige Ford station wagon and, with Daddy at the wheel, headed over to Staples for a fax machine. We were so excited we forgot to fight about who gets the coveted trunk seat! We danced inside the store where Daddy had to constantly remind Moishy to “stop touching all those shiny things!” And I seem to recall that the salesman got a bit nervous with our exuberant bunch. But what a trip! Daddy was thrilled to see that Staples carried color paper from Grandpa’s paper factory and after choosing several reams, we made a beeline to the fax machine display. How glossy and streamlined those machines were!Even I, a big girl of a whopping ten years, wanted to touch them all! We all agreed that the white Brother fax machine with the cool, sleek phone was the one meant for us. How hip and groovy we felt! The tenminute car ride home seemed to take forever.
Mommy wanted the fax machine to go upstairs in the guest room, but Daddy wanted it in the dining room perched atop the cherry wood end table. After quite a debate, with us three sisters cheering Daddy on (of course), a doily was put down (G-d forbid, the precious cherry wood should get scratched) and our fax machine was duly set up. “Will you look at that???” Daddy enthused, his eyes shining as he reverently stroked the brand new machine. “A fax machine! How wonderful is that? Now you girls will finally be able to get to know Bubbie,” he gushed so enthusiastically, we all couldn’t help but agree. We each got a chance to press the very cool, bright green copy button and much to Daddy’s delight we squealed with joy over the grainy copies that eventually emerged. Daddy then treated us to a lecture on how expensive the ink was and we all gravely promised never ever to touch the fax machine without explicit permission. Next, Daddy and his brothers all chipped in to buy Bubbie a fax machine.
That very Thursday, and every Thursday thereafter at precisely 7:00 a.m. we would all crowd around Daddy as he unplugged our phone line and connected the fax so we could send off our “Good Shabbos” letters to Bubbie. We never bothered installing a second phone line; for sure this was “not necessary.” Mima Sheva said so, and she knew. After all, she had bought her fax machine a whole week before ours! Now we could hardly wait for Bubbie to send us back our first fax! Though, had we girls known the tumult each fax would entail, we probably would not have been so eager. First, Mima Yittu from Israel would call, informing us that Bubbie was going to fax. Then we would hurry to switch the phone line with the fax line and inevitably someone would pick up the phone just when the fax was coming through. After quick admonitions, a bit of yelling, and a phone call or two to Mima Yittu, we would finally hear the magical beep beep and Bubbie’s familiar scrawl would come crawling through the fax machine. It was nothing short of miraculous!!! I could now answer all of Bubbie’s questions right away, which of course prompted another whole unlined page of questions in return. And so it was. Bubbie would ask and I would answer and every Thursday at 7:00 a.m., Daddy—proud as a peacock—would fax my letter. Even long after the novelty of the fax machine had worn off, after the newness had lost its luster, I still found myself writing.
After all, Bubbie needed answers! It wasn’t a conscious decision, but rather a slow flowering of tenuous correspondence that prompted our weekly exchange to burgeon. It was her warmth and genuine interest however that kept me wanting to write. Writing to Bubbie taught me how to think. How else would I know why I really didn’t like my Navi teacher (’cause she had the most grating, nasal voice) or why I was unhappy with my new seat in class (it was near the steam and I was deathly afraid a mouse might jump out). Writing to Bubbie taught me how to see things. I wasn’t just getting a Shabbos dress; I was getting a green Shabbos dress that matched my eyes, with a sparkly belt and a subtle, sweetheart neckline. I didn’t just want any honey cookies; I wanted Bubbie’s warm and moist honey cookies, freckled with “lots a colorful sprinkles,” to quote one September 1997 correspondence. But mostly, writing to Bubbie taught me how to express myself. For a shy, couchhugging bookworm, it was startling to see how open and forthcoming I could become when writing to Bubbie. She made it easy. She simply listened. For somebody deaf she really knew how to listen.
By the time I was 11 I preempted her questions with breathless, droning, run-on monologues. I didn’t just tell her what Purim costume I wore (Raggedy Ann), but also how my teacher identified me at the Purim masquerade (by my ridiculously skinny hands) and how uncomfortable I imagined Raggedy Ann would be in real life. I was the one who informed Bubbie as soon as we got an electric typewriter, told her how much it cost ($30.00) and why we bought it (’cause it was cheap and Daddy’s a total tech geek). I faxed her copies of my report cards and honor certificates and vented about my failing grades in halachah class and about the bully I wouldn’t dare tell anyone else about. When Zeidie had an infection on his foot and landed in the hospital, I wrote, Don’t worry, Zeidie won’t die. I said Tehillim really, really hard. And of course, when I had the slightest hint of a sniffle, Bubbie would reassure me that she was saying Tehillim for me too. With Bubbie I was able to be my boring, nerdy self and yet still feel confident that I was interesting. To Bubbie, my letters were the most intriguing front page, headline news. (Okay, okay, in her eyes, at least.
Though now I’m quite certain that the magnifying “Bubbie specs” may have been somewhat biased.) And then I got married. I was busy running a household. Having kids. Learning how to cook. No, I didn’t stop writing, but something changed. Bubbie slowed down. No more tending to Zeidie, who had since passed away, no more cooking his favorite meal of pureed beans with lots of sautéed onions. No more volunteering for the local Meals on Wheels, even with her bunions. No more ever revolving door of guests, no more working at the makolet (grocery). But Bubbie matters still. And I know just how to show her. After all, wasn’t it she who taught me how? Now I’m the one who’s asking her the questions. I ask about her Rummy Club. Why it’s so important to her, why a win means so much. She describes how games exercise her brain and jolt it alive. I hear how terrified she is of possibly loosing her faculties. Winning proves that her brain is still intact, unlike Pessel who isn’t “here” and cheats, but they let her play anyway. I ask about the food everyone brings to the Rummy Club. Bubbie tells me that on Mondays she brings light fudge brownies (of course sugar-free, ach, what else?). And on Wednesdays, Etka brings marble cake which is moist, sweet and really delicious, but Bubbie doubts it’s sugar-free, even if Etka proudly touts that it is.
The ladies share pictures of their grandchildren and the competition is fierce. “Sure Bubbie, I’ll send you a picture of the upsherin table, too. Umm, yeah, everything was heimish…” (Well, sort of… “heimish,” made by a wonderful other woman. But shhh, nobody tell.) I ask about her bunions, how she manages the pain, and we agree that beige SAS shoes will match her gold-sequined dress for Rivky’s wedding next week. “Does it really matter?” she writes. “Who looks at the old Bubbie anyway?” But I know she cares. She had her wig reset, and cousin Malky will come early to accompany her to the wedding hall. I ask if her arthritis is worse in the winter, if she’ll be making her trademark cabbage rolls for Purim and if her washing machine has already gotten fixed. I ask about Daddy’s recent visit and she tells of her intense yearning for her children. She says she would have fought harder to keep her family in Eretz Yisrael had she known how the deep longing for them would accompany her always. And I listen. I listen to what she says. I hear what she doesn’t say. I ask and I ask some more because Bubbie trained me so. And that indeed is what writing is all about: speaking through the written, connecting through the unwritten. Because Bubbie needs me now, just like I needed her 20 years ago.