"Boxes in the Attic - An Immigrant's Story"
Voice of San Francisco
John Rothmann interviews Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, author of "Boxes in the Attic - An Immigrant's Story"
This is John Rothman, and you are listening to The Voice of San Francisco. One of the things that makes what we do so interesting is the people we meet, and the interviews we're able to do. And we have people locally who write wonderful books, wonderful memoirs, and I have one such author with me today. Miriam Friedman wrote a book called "Boxes from the Attic." Now, you might wonder, what does it mean, "Boxes from the Attic?" Miriam lives now in Palo Alto, but she has lived all over the world. And what I wanted to do was to spend a few minutes with Miriam, okay, you have these boxes in the Attic, and these are your mother's boxes, and she's long gone. What motivated you to write this book? Tell us about it. Thank you. Well, honestly, what motivated me was the fact that public storage raised their fees, and that's where the boxes were, so I had to get them out. So then all of a sudden, all these boxes of, and what's in the boxes? Papers, diaries, photos, snippets here, and notepaper, all kinds of writings. My mother was continually writing all the time. So then I have all these boxes sitting in my living room, which doesn't make me or my husband too happy. And then, as luck would have it, COVID hit. So I was stuck at home, I had lots of time, and I had a good motivation to get the book started, and that's what it was. And your mother had a remarkable wife, and I want you to describe Thea Arons, who I have the pleasure of knowing. I want you to describe for me her journey. Where was she born? Where did she live? Tell us the story. Now, my mother was born four days after the queen in The Hague, Holland, and one of her fond memories was... The queen of Holland. The queen of Holland. Why? Let's be clear. Why? Juliana, and I think it's Juliana, I'm not so good in my Dutch history. But anyway, one of her fond memories was when she was a little girl in the park in The Hague, which is a beautiful upper-middle class, grand government city, playing with this other little girl until the girl's nursemaid took her away. So that was my mom. I would say she was an adventure. And the little girl she played with was? The queen. Ultimately, the queen. I mean, let's get to the heart of it here. Fascinating. So that was cute. But you know, as cozy and wonderful as Holland was, and one of her favorite stories to me was, "It is so cozy," and in Dutch the word for cozy is chazellech. Everything is chazellech. So she said, "Even the tablecloths have rugs on them to keep them warm." Anyway, she had enough of that wonderful lifestyle, and she was an adventurous. So when she was in her early 20s, she told her father, "I am going to Palestine." "What? You can't go to Palestine. It's not safe now," he said. And we all know that Palestine she was going to is now Israel. It's not safe now. You can't go. And she said, "Well, then I guess I will never go." And she went, and she was 24 years old. And what year was that? And I was born in Palestine. And that was 1933. 1933. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hitler is rising in Germany. Right. She occupies the area where you live. Right. But your mother was smart enough, and she went to Palestine. She met your father. They had a wonderful romance. They loved each other deeply. You were born. And then your mother decides, after your father's death, to leave Palestine. And where did she go? So my mother, yes, she definitely wanted to leave. And she had the American dream in her head. Everything would be better in the USA. Mostly what would be better was good education for her children. That is what drove her. So how to get to, how to get from a small farming village in Israel, now it had become Israel, to the United States, she figured out that she would have a much better time doing it from her native Holland, because she was on a Dutch passport. And so we went to Holland. We waited around for two years. She got a job there. We did fine. And then in 1951, we boarded the new amps to them in Rotterdam, Holland. And for a week, we were sailed until we got to the Statue of Liberty first, and then Hoboken New Jersey. Do you remember seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time? Actually, I don't. But my mother tells me, again, her stories, that she woke me up. It was three in the morning. And she was so touched by it and so moved by the encouragement that that statue gave her. So it was the American dream, which opened up for her. And you were born in Palestine. You come to America. You also had great familiarity with the Hague. What was it like coming to America? Well I can tell you, the first day was incredible. So I built lands in Hoboken, which is right across the Hudson River from New York City. And two cousins came to greet us. We call them Tanta Ants. So Tanta Lily and Tanta Miriam. And right there on the dock, Tanta Miriam gave me Bezuka Bubblegum. Oh my goodness. And you know, with the pink wrapper that had the cartoon in it, of course, it couldn't read it, because it was in English, not Hebrew or Dutch. But you know, I started chewing it. My mother had never let us chew gum in the old country ever, and she could say nothing. And for me, my first day in America told me that it would be so wonderful, the land of the free, the home of the brave, and it has been wonderful. And your mother was a remarkable woman. She adjusted, she married a second time, your father has passed away. Go ahead. So my mother used advertisements in newspapers very well. When we got to New York, cousins had given us an apartment for, you know, months. And she started job hunting and didn't go so well pounding the pavement. So then she said, "Oh, I'll put an ad in the New York Times." And she did. So for a job as a housekeeper, because she wanted a job, but she wanted a roof over our head. That was important. And sure enough, we had a response from a wonderful guy who lived in Princeton, New Jersey, wealthy stockbroker on a lovely piece of property. And within two weeks of coming to America, we were living in this idyllic place. The American Dream. We were in the maid's quarters, each of us had our own room, and you know, it was just amazing. And we went to the public school, which was great, and it all worked out. But then she's thinking, she's thinking, you know, this worked really well, this ad. So I'm going to advertise for a husband. And so she target marketed to a different newspaper. Wait, wait. We have to point out there was no matchmaking by Internet in those days. Right. There was no matchmaking. We had to meet somebody. Okay, go ahead. And being a maid in a home with, you know, I think they had four sons and five dogs and the husband and wife, very busy, she was not about to meet any eligible men. So, okay, so she advertised in the newspaper. The ad goes something like this, charming. I mean, farmer's widow, charming, 42 years old, charming children, looking to remarry, poultry farmer in a lovely countryside preferred. I wish I could ask her why she wanted the poultry farmer. But my lucky mother, who always thought of herself as lucky, sure enough, she met a guy who was a poultry farmer in New Jersey in a lovely town called Flemington. They married. She always knew what she wanted and tried to figure out a way to get what she needed. She raised you and your brother and you guys turned out okay. We did great. My brother ended up at MIT. He was the only student in the county to get a straight 800 on the math test if you recall that. On the SAT. I do remember. Do you want to know why I remember? Why? You know what I got on the math section of the SAT? Yeah. 232. Oh my God. I got 800, I got 798 on the English, but the math was a disaster. And his English score was a disaster also, you know, the flip side, the two of you. Yeah, we were perfect match. So she marries George Aaron's and they had a very happy marriage. Wonderful time. Now tell us your mother wrote everything down. She wanted people to remember. What was her intent really and truly? Well, it's very interesting. I once, I did it, you know, people say you should interview your parents and I think you should. I mean, if you can. And I did. And we talked a lot about her writing and I once asked her mom, why do you write all the time? What are you doing? All she said was, why does a fountain bubble? Excuse me. Say it again. Why does a fountain bubble? I love it. How interesting. I know. It's amazing. She did want her story told. And she was in the book, you'll see a note she wrote to herself. Shall I publish? Not for you, but for publication. In other words, she was really thinking of getting it out there, but she never did. She died at 96 in Palo Alto, actually. And all that she left, other than a book or someone, were all these wonderful diaries and notebooks and notes and that's where the title of the book comes from, boxes from the attic. What did you learn writing this book about your mother? That's a funny question because what did I learn? I feel like people ask me whether any surprises, like anything in the closet that you didn't know about. No, because she was writing because she was a really good storyteller. So I have to say that all these notes confirmed the stories I had, and I guess what I learned was how adventurous she was and how brave and how she just grabbed life. She loved life. She loved flowers. She loved the weather. She loved, you know, she'd go outside and say, "Hairlich," which is a Dutch for good smell and so on, when she was very old - no, in her 70s, not so old, but you know, this love of flowers, she finally got this flower stand that she just propped up in the middle of University Avenue in Palo Alto right at the corner of the varsity theater building, and there she is, selling her flowers. So she kind of did what she wanted. In the limits, I would say, the limits of her as a 20th century woman, like she didn't discover the cure for cancer, but I guess I learned that. And I have to say, I learned to appreciate her even more than I had. And with her flaws, with her flaws, she was a tough, tough mother. She was not a - she didn't demonstrate love, but we knew she loved us. Now, that flower stand became an institution, and people still remember that stand. I think they do. Some of them do. It was from the early 70s. Yeah, and it's hilarious. Yeah, well, no, but it's wonderful because when we talk about immigration, which is a major issue in this presidential campaign, in the saga of America, what is the lesson that people should take away about your mother who lived on several different continents and who had to learn a variety of languages, had to raise two children and had to bury one husband, then marry and bury another husband, and yet still go on. What's the lesson? Well, the lesson that she would tell me and the way I grew up was, you know, when you are in Rome, do what the Romans do. So I always remember, for example, the first - so we lived on a chicken farm. And we raised scrawny chickens, leg horns. They are raised for eggs, not for chicken meat. And so there is Thanksgiving. What are we going to have for dinner? So we had chicken, but my mother told us, if anybody asks, if you had turkey for Thanksgiving, you say yes, because it's so important, people know that these traditions are really important. I want to hear about scrawny chickens. I think she taught me to fit in, to be flexible. I think it's the flexibility. It's the flexibility to take it as it comes, to make the best of every situation. I think a lot of immigrants learn that. Sometimes the hard way, and sometimes that's how they're wired. And I think she was wired that way. But when you now look back at taking those boxes from the attic and really going through them, what is your advice to people who have boxes in their attics? I'm glad you asked that, because one of my goals in writing this book is to encourage people to go through their boxes. I think we all have them. Sometimes now they're on the computer. Sometimes they're in a storage unit, in your building, whatever. Because it's enriching, it's enriching. And if you possibly can, you go through the boxes while people are still alive, because a lot of questions came up that I wish I could have asked my mom, but she's been gone for almost 20 years, so I could not ask her. It was a very, you didn't ask me what I learned about myself, which is another story, and I don't need to go into it. But I think you'll learn a lot about your own self when you do it also, and I think it helps. Now you have a grandchild. I do. And she just turned 13. Right. And when she grows up and she reads this book, what do you want her to take from it? It's funny that you ask, because I just sent her an autograph copy. And I have to tell you, I have my autograph copy right here. I just sent her an autograph copy. I want her to be proud of her family, because she comes from a very mixed nationality family. So she's got roots in what my story, which is Germany, Holland, and Israel. She's got roots in Germany also, and Ireland. And I just want her to be happy with who she is. And I think my mother's life ends up being kind of a happy life. And I think that's a real blessing that I can give my granddaughter actually. The book is wonderful. It's boxes from the attic, an immigrant story. It could not be more timely in terms of our understanding what makes this country great. And the author, Miriam Kurtzig Friedman, has done just a splendid job with it. Now you have to tell us, where can we get the book? Thank you. Two easy places to get, and one is Amazon, and the other one is bonds and noble. And when people read it, and by the way, you can look on Amazon, they're wonderful reviews of the book. People love the book. And I want to thank you. I think at a time when we are debating and discussing the question of immigration and traditions that people bring with them, it couldn't be more timely. So thank you, Miriam, for taking the time to do this. I am John Rothman, Miriam, by the way, lives in Palo Alto. And we're doing this on the voice of San Francisco, because, well, we all have our stories. And what is Northern California, like the United States? We are a community of immigrants coming from all parts of the world. And it is that vital fabric, which makes us such a vital community. And this book, boxes from the attic, well, it gives us a whole other thread. And I'm very grateful for the fact that you've taken the time to be with me. Thank you. I'm grateful too. Thank you. I am John Rothman. You are listening to the voice of San Francisco. Oh, by the way, almost all of you listening to the sound of my voice, your immigrants and your families have immigration stories. And that's what makes it so compelling. All right. I'll talk to you again soon. Thank you, Miriam. And thanks to all of you. And again, boxes from the attic, an immigrants story, a great book, a great read, go to Amazon, and you can read about it, find out about it, and order it. I am John Rothman, and you are listening to the voice of San Francisco. [BLANK_AUDIO]