I could hear my grandmother packing my things, readying for my departure.
“I’ve packed all your things. When you’ve finished your nosh, wash your hands.”
I often was sent to stay with my grandmother, Lola Beatrice, when I was young. My grandmother was my mom’s mother and though she sent her kids to Catholic school, she used several Yiddish words all the time. These words were passed down in her family for generations, a trickle-down effect.
During my childhood stays with my grandmother Beatrice, I would accompany her to the nearby Anglican church. As she swept and washed the floors, I was given a rag to wipe the wooden pews. When we were done, we’d walk home and have lunch with my grandfather. While the lunch dishes were being done, I’d go down to the basement to play. Markie, or Mark Anthony as my aunt named him, was a little 10-pound Maltese terrier. I was the lion tamer, bravely leaping at him with a small chair in one hand and a tea towel as my cape and whip. I would lunge and riposte, taming the little white lion.
During my stays, the routine seldom varied. Once the kitchen was tidy, my grandmother would come downstairs to watch her TV soap, The Edge of Night. She’d lay down on the couch, I’d curl up beside her and with Markie at our feet we’d have an hour rest. I felt safe and loved.
As I grew older, I wondered why my grandmother volunteered to clean the church but didn’t attend Sunday services. As children we had little spiritual guidance. Before we were school age we attended church twice. Both trips were for Easter celebrations. When asked, in doctors offices or hospitals, my mother answered we were Anglican.
My family left Saskatchewan in 1969 and resettled in Ladner. Every summer we’d drive back to Saskatchewan to visit our extended families. When I was older, I made a point to visit every year. My childhood bond with my grandmother was strong.
It wasn’t until I was 40 that my grandmother worked up her courage and asked me to share what I knew of Jewish traditions. When I first moved to Montreal for postgraduate studies in nursing there were Jewish students everywhere. Men wearing yarmulkas. It was the High Holidays. At the Jewish General Hospital where I trained, the elevators stopped automatically on each floor so no one needed to violate the Sabbath restriction on using electrical switches. The cafeteria was kosher. This was my first exposure to Jewish heritage. I was intrigued by the rich culture and traditions.
When my grandmother finally asked me to light the candles with her, I asked why. She said she remembered as a child the menorah being lit at her grandmother’s house in rural Nova Scotia. There was pleading in her voice and I sensed shame in her eyes with this request to discuss Jewish traditions. I was bewildered, then the dominoes began to fall into place. Was this why my grandmother volunteered to clean a church but never attended Sunday services? Did she need to keep secrets?
Before 1800, Beatrice’s family, the Eisens, immigrated to the new world from what is now Germany. They settled on the east coast of Canada and the United States. The Eisens populated an area called Ships Harbour, Nova Scotia.
In 1910, grandmother’s parents decided to leave Ships Harbour. They bundled up Beatrice and her seven siblings and trekked by horse cart and train across the country to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Within six months my great-grandfather died leaving my great-grandmother a widow. To support her children Great Gramma Dean rented out rooms at the top of the house to “boarders.”
My grandparents were in their 90s living in the Greater Vancouver area when they and my parents decided to explore their roots. Beatrice was excited to go back after all those years, but she’d had a stroke so had to stay home. On their pilgrimage to the East Coast, they searched the graveyards around Ships Harbour and Halifax, finding tombstones of deceased family members. They found the house where grandma and her seven siblings were born and also found her grandparents’ house. Eisens dotted the area. The search for relatives expanded to knocking on strangers’ doors and finding a few second cousins. These people were Jewish and though they did not have a synagogue, the Jewish families gathered for High Holidays.
When I came home after my studies in Montreal, I told my mother what grandmother had told me. My mother adamantly denied that her mother was Jewish and therefore that she was Jewish.
Then my mother had genetic testing through 23andMe which proved she was incorrect. She never wavered.
My mother is 93 now, and blurted out to me a few months ago, “Why didn’t she tell me we were Jewish?” Many answers popped into my head.
I replied, “I don’t know.”
Funny how family secrets can alter the lives of future generations.
