At the same time, I grew up haunted. I gravitated towards stories of war, in particular the stories of children who had survived -- or didn't survive -- World War II. I read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Mischling Second Degree, My Hiroshima, I am Rosemarie, The House of 60 Fathers, and of course The Diary of Anne Frank. When I was 12, I remember reading a story about a boy who survived a concentration camp, and how he wandered around lost after the war. I remember reading a book about an Armenian girl who somehow managed to survive the massacres. I played "refugee" with my Barbie dolls. Poor Hawaiian Barbie had to flee her home with only her long pink dress and high heels. I was also haunted by "Roots" and slavery (which I can blog about another time), but somehow it was the specter of war and total dislocation that really drew me in.
And I wonder why. It may have started when my 3rd-grade teacher assigned me to do a report on any event that had happened on September 1, and I chose September 1, 1939 (you know that was when Hitler invaded Poland, right?). That got me interested in World War II. But obviously it's also because I'm Jewish. It's not that any of my known relatives perished in the Holocaust, or that I even had much contact with Jews who weren't relatives when I was growing up. But I do remember my friend Miriam talking about Hitler when we were about 10, and having her say "You know, if he was alive today he would kill us." I remember sort of blocking out my response to that. Of course he wouldn't kill us, I thought, or at least he wouldn't succeed. Because we were American, with all of the security that the nationality entailed. So, I pushed those thoughts away. But the idea that life as we knew it could be totally upended overnight has remained with me to this day. The waters may seem calm, but beware the undertow, or the undertoad, as John Irving wrote. God forbid.
Because why should something be impossible just because it has never happened? I also grew up in the nuclear age, living near what could have been (God forbid again) ground zero. I remember that the first Wednesday of the month at 11:30 am, the county always tested the emergency siren. It was located near my nursery school and my elementary school. I recall one girl peed in her pants when the siren went off because the sound scared her so much. It always reminded me of a documentary I had seen as a child on the Battle of Britain, in which black and white footage showed Brits crowding into deep subway stations and fire engines trying to quell greedy flames as air raid sirens went off all around them.
It never occurred to me as a child to tell myself that it could never happen here, so I went and asked my mom which New York subway station we could go to if someone started bombing. She said the 34th Street station near Macy's was pretty deep. Never mind that we lived in the DC area -- New York was closer to my heart. That was in the days when I would ask my father about my worries, and he would jokingly say, "What if? What if? What if an airplane crashed into this building right now?" Something like that would never happen...until it did. After 9/11 one mother told me that her son said, "I feel like the fabric of space-time has been warped", and I could see what he meant. But part of me also felt like, why not? Why shouldn't it happen here? Once something happens, it's totally possible in retrospect.
So, how do you evaluate risk? This is a particularly timely question right now. I am imbued with the spirit of American optimism -- "If you build it, they will come." "A man, a plan, a canal -- Panama." At the same time, sh*t happens, and as the Jews say, "Why does this sh*t keep happening to us?". I want to believe that the stock market will always go up, along with my income, but why should it? I want to believe that I will never be a bag lady. I want to believe that I will never be a refugee. I feel a sense of entitlement, but so have a hell of a lot of other people throughout history, and in the end it's just a word. Just ask my refugee friends from ex-Yugoslavia who lived good lives before the wars there, or pensioners in eastern Europe -- and hey, here as well -- who thought their lives and their plans were rock-solid.
I suppose there are no guarantees, even in so-called good times. And good times for me and for my nation are undoubtedly hellish for some other people around the world. I guess the thing to do is to press on, and try to gather enough information to make wise choices. I think about the Jews in Berlin who left as Hitler came to power, as well as my ancestors who fled the Russian Empire before the turn of the last century. Was their survival due to their intelligence, their connections, their dumb luck, or a combination of it all? Who knows... My religious Christian friend Tonya says what's meant to happen will happen, but that's a hard concept to struggle with. And in the end all you can do is keep moving forward in the face of these fears and try to take action based on some hope or spirit inside you. In the words of Barbara Kingsolver:
Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, a loss of a limb or a job or a loved one...it's impossible to think at first how all this will be possible. Eventually, what moves it all forward is the subterranean ebb and flow of being alive among the living...We hold tight to the old passions of endurance that buckle and creak beneath us, dovetailed, tight as a good wooden boat to carry us onward. And onward full tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore.
So, blast the undertoad and all of these fears. Focus on moving through life thoughtfully and joyously. Prayer can help too, if that's what floats your boat. God willing and the creeks don't rise (another quote from Barbara Kingsolver), inshallah, and all that. Life is simply risky, whether you're American or anyone else. But, as they say, it's better than the alternative. If we can get beyond our fears, if we can act in spite of them rather than in reaction to them, then maybe it will be enough.
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