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June 13, 2003
My dad sits in his vinyl recliner
A father's love and his many accomplishments make a daughter proud.
SARA NUSS-GALLES SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
My father is stretched out in his turquoise vinyl recliner, swaddled
like a mummy with a second blanket protecting his lap against a
chill. It could be 1951 when he crossed the ocean to America with
my mother and four children as refugees crammed into the hammock-filled
holds of the USS General Muir. We were those huddled masses cited
in the poem by Emma Lazarus that I later had to memorize for an
English class. But, this is a lifetime later. It is the year 2000
and we sit in my father's living room in Skokie, Ill., with the
heat turned up high and dim light cast by the gilt-shaded table-lamps.
My father's dear head is cocked toward me, his eyes bright at this
moment, his entire universe focused on the words I read aloud to
him. The broken foot rest on the lounger forces his once wiry, now
gaunt, body askew, but there's no point in buying a new chair, he
insists. This is not an issue I choose to push with him.
I read to him about our life according to me. I write memory pieces
of an immigrant child with no aunts, uncles, cousins and only an
evil called Hitler to blame for the destruction of a world before
I was born. It was a world I warmed to from my father's character-filled
tales, people with names like Chasha Beila, Chaim Tsudik, Kalte
Tuches; but his telling came later in my life.
He listens intently as I read about life in the backroom of the
little grocery he and my mother tended 14 hours a day during my
childhood. No labor was too heavy and no hours too long. I describe
the Sunday afternoon they reopened the just-locked door for a customer
in desperate need of a pint of sour cream. We were about to have
a rare family outing at the beach, but after the sour cream lady,
another person came and then another – a gallon of milk, a
half pound of sugar wafers, kaiser rolls for tomorrow's lunch. They
dribbled in, the afternoon passed, my father rolled up the awning,
and it was too late for the beach. The store closed at 11 p.m.,
as usual.
The cardiologist says my 88-year-old father's heart function is
extremely diminished. He is also near kidney failure, this man who
was so nimble in mind and body that he studied with the Gere Rebbe
and helped his grandfather repair roofs. As a child, I marvelled
that he knew the siddur frontwards and backwards. Occasionally,
he glanced at the page, but mainly he davened from his head and
his now-failing heart, at a pace beyond my ability to follow. He
was an ardent Zionist, saw Pilsudski in person, knew both literary
Singer brothers from Warsaw and he and my mother survived Siberian
labor camp by felling trees. In Chicago, he sold groceries and,
later, dry goods, to support his family, and he read the Yiddish
Forward for five decades. He loved progress and technology and figuring
out how things work. After his retirement, he audited classes at
the community college, prompting his grandchildren to recite a poem
at his 70th birthday party that proudly announced, "Zayde Goes
to College."
I, too, am proud. A ballroom dancer with a deep sense of politics
and history, my father began kicking a soccer ball with my children
when they were barely more than toddlers. He introduced them to
schmaltz herring which grossed them out, and they introduced him
to McDonald's which he wouldn't try. In me, he instilled a love
of nature and animals and empathy toward all living creatures. Most
particularly, he gifted me with his sense of humor, his intellectual
curiosity and an individual view of the world. Recently, Marina,
the kindly nurse who visits him at home each week, observed that
he wasn't having a good day.
"Herman," she said, as she checked the tubing that delivered
oxygen into his nose. "You're accumulating a little fluid in
your lungs, but we're going to fix that and get you all better."
My father wiped absently at the rawness where life-sustaining plastic
met flesh. An impish smile played around his mouth.
"Thank you, Marina," he said. "You know I want to
be in perfect health when I die."
Herman Nuss passed away in his bed in September of 2000. He was
proud to have seen the new millennium.
Sara Nuss-Galles, recently a commentator on National Public
Radio's MarketPlace, has published widely in the Jewish press,
the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among
others. She has just completed an illustrated collection of short
stories, What About Those Seven Deadly Sins?
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