The Men Brought In the Food

I was born in my mother’s bed at home during a blizzard.

On the day I was born, my father ran down the street many times through the snow to a telephone booth outside the house to call the doctor. In those days, people may have had one telephone in a house, but in this case the telephone was down the street somewhere. The doctor refused to come. He was afraid he would slip on the ice and fall down.

The doctor came later. My parents did not have a name ready for me, since I had been born 63 or 64 days early. On my birth certificate, the doctor wrote: NO NAME.   

So I was born upstairs in my grandparents' house, a large rooming house in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, New York. My father's two older sisters lived in the house, and each of them had one child. They were both divorced from their first husbands. My father’s younger brother lived there, too. He had not gotten married yet.  A number of lodgers also lived in this large house.  

Nowadays people in New York City rent or buy apartments, but in those days average people were more likely to live in a  boarding house and pay room and board. Meals were included in the room and board. 

My grandfather owned two restaurants in Brooklyn, and he cooked the food himself. He was an excellent cook.  

After I was born, my mother continued to work at her full-time job. Arriving home at the end of the day, she came upstairs to change out of  her work clothes and rest. Then she would take my hand and we would walk down the stairs together to dinner. Grandpa would be busy bringing in the food. Everybody sat around a big table and the conversation was lively, indeed.

When I was three years old, my sister was born. We moved out of grandpa's house to a small place of our own a few blocks away.

Babies do not remember their lives and I had no memory of all this. My mother told me the story of the day I was born on Mother's Day many decades later, when she and I started to speak long-distance.

My father's parents had come to the U.S. as immigrants. My father was born in this country, so he was a first generation American. I imagine he spent his childhood peeling potatoes and mopping floors for his father. Immigrants and first generation Americas are known for working exceptionally hard. They are striving to establish themselves and fit into a culture that is new to them.

My mother’s family had been in this country for many generations. But we don’t go by our mothers in counting generations. We go by our father’s line, so I am called a second generation American.

The lives of my parents were shaped by the Great Depression and World War Two. My grandfather's rooming house, my mother's mother's house, and the first house my father bought for us were all demolished a long time ago. My four grandparents are dead. My father, his two sisters, and his brother are dead; and so are their spouses. My mother was the eighth of nine children, and she is the only one still alive.
I am so lucky that my mother lived long enough to tell me the history of my own family. I am not sure if everyone in my family knows the family history, because the children tended to scatter in every direction away from New York City. People here are constantly on the move.

Let me tell you something funny. I still believe deep in my bones that the men should do the cooking and bring in the food! And then we should all sit around a big table, relaxing. Thus we can be nourished in many ways: with food, with seeing each others' faces and hearing each others' voices, and by losing ourselves in the discussions of the day.

Some Questions for Discussion:

1. Do you think the first few years of our lives—even if we cannot remember those years—give us our beliefs about the way life is supposed to be?

2. What do you think is better for the baby: being born in a hospital or being born at home?

3. What do you think is better for the mother: when the baby is born in a hospital, or when the baby is born at home?

4. What do you think is better for the father: when the baby is born in a hospital, or when the baby is born at home?

5. Almost everywhere in the world, women do most of the cooking but a few men are considered great chefs. When you were growing up, who did the cooking?

6. In your culture, do people talk around the dinner table? Or are people supposed to be silent when they eat?

Copyright © 2011          Barbara A. English          All rights reserved.