The Bold: Ella Holzmann Brown (1882-1971) with daughter Rona and granddaughter Dione

  My great-great grandmother Ella was a very fashionable lady and a very strong-willed one.  It’s likely she didn’t need glasses until she was middle-aged (her side of the family is not generally a near-sighted one), which is when these very classy rimless frames start showing up in photographs.

The Desperate: Ethel Kalisch Hoffer (seated, 2nd from right) with the rest of the Temple Beth Israel (York, Pennsylvania) confirmation class of 1932

Unlike Ella, my grandmother Ethel needed to wear glasses nearly all her life (her side of the family is, unfortunately, a sometimes very near-sighted one) and made the move to contact lenses as soon as she could get them. Clearly, her confirmation in 1932 was before that date and she just really needed to be able to see.  In all of her high school yearbook photos that I’ve seen, she managed to sneak her glasses off before the shutter fired, but obviously not this time.

I wouldn’t have noticed about either of these foremothers wearing or not wearing glasses if it hadn’t been for another excellent lady who wears glasses: the footnoteMaven.  fM, as she is known to her friends, is the founder of Shades of the Departed, one of the most well-written, researched and loved genealogy blogs out there, and she is also the publisher of Shades of the Departed Magazine, where I was fortunate to be a regular columnist.  fM’s skill with words, research chops and passion for photographs are obvious to anyone who has ever read her work, and her generosity, supportiveness and general awesomeness are readily apparent to all who’ve been lucky enough to meet her.

Happy birthday, footnoteMaven!  I hope the coming year brings happiness, health and lots of ladies wearing glasses!

CreativeGene, by Jasia

The Educated Genealogist, by Sheri Fenley

For Your Family Story, by Caroline Pointer

Geneablogie, by Craig Manson

Healing Brush, by Janine Smith

Shades: Birthday Edition — A Teacup Throne at Moultrie Creek, by Denise Olson

What’s Past is Prologue, by Donna Pointkouski

The Family Curator, by Denise Levenick

Thanksgiving 1990?

Sometime right around when this photo was taken (I think this must have been Thanksgiving or sometime around then), my grandparents gave me an aquamarine ring as a Christmas/Hanukkah present.  They died not that long after and for the last 21 years, I have spent almost every minute wearing that ring. It has become almost like a superstition — what if something happened to me and I wasn’t wearing it?  What if I left it at home and my house burned down?  It is a way I can carry them around with me, a mechanism for remembering them, though I don’t really need one.  It is also, I think, a way to remember myself because when they died, I sometimes think my childhood did, too.  I learned what pain was, what loss was, and I have never been the same.

Sometimes I am not even sure what it is that I miss, except that it seems like something essential I once had.

Frank Markus Hoffer (1909-1991) and Ethel Kalisch Hoffer (1918-1991), center,
me, age 9 1/2, top left

It was my grandmother’s 93rd birthday yesterday.

Ethel Kalisch Hoffer (1918-1991)

In my family, we have certain idiosyncratic terms that no one else in the world uses besides us. I’m sure lots of families do.  My sister and I did not realize until some few years ago, however, that this was actually the case. We thought everyone walked around calling the National Council of Jewish Women thrift shop the “Jewish Ladies,” for example. which they don’t.  This is not dissimilar from our mother thinking that her father was just making up nonsense words when he would say, “let’s go schloffen” at bedtime or mix together rice and peas when they were served at dinner and call it risi-pisi.  My family also says “sleep-away camp” to denote a summer camp at which one stays for a period of time (as differentiated from day camp) and my saying this out loud to friends not from California has literally made them laugh. I don’t know if this is a weird family thing, or if it’s just a regional difference, but the fact of the matter remains that I have tried to train myself not to say “sleep-away camp” in front of certain people.

Which brings us to the above photograph, a place holder for a picture I can’t find right now, taken at the sleep-away camp where my mother was in her element, where my parents met, where my cousin fell off a bridge, where a little piece of my heart will always live even though a large percentage of my time there was often lonely and sad. This place is simply known as “Camp.” There are no qualifiers because we all know exactly what we are talking about.

From time to time I think about how I would like to go visit  – which is not very far away at all — but I never do. I will one of these days.

Frank Markus Hoffer (1909-1991), Helene, Ethel Kalisch Hoffer (1918-1991), Mom

My mother’s parents were taken away from me 17 years ago this past Tuesday, and it will never not hurt.

Ethel Kalisch Hoffer (1918-1991), me, Frank Markus Hoffer (1909-1991)

This is my grandmother Ethel and her older brother Arthur in what is possibly my favorite photograph of all time.

Because I like to concoct stories, I like to think that this picture was taken in Baltimore, when Ethel and her parents were visiting Arthur at college. Art was 12 years older than my grandmother and she idolized him. That’s why she’s making this pleased as punch, silly little bunny face, while he is humoring his baby sister even though he feels like he’s too old for this kind of thing.

Ethel Kalisch Hoffer (1918-1991) and Arthur Kalisch (1906-1949)