Something New

Diminutive, brassy hair stiffly coiffed, Oma was serving me her specialty: Gruenebaum’s rye bread, fresh from the freezer, lightly toasted and schmeared with Fleischmann’s salted margarine.

Oma lived diagonally across from the school I attended from preschool through 12th grade, the school my father, too, had attended from preschool through 12th grade.

I can’t say I enjoyed visiting Oma in her dingy, ground-floor apartment, but I knew she relished my visits. I was, for seven years, her only granddaughter, and I was named after her mother. So when either my conscience or appetite was particularly insistent, I’d spend my lunch break with Oma. She’d usher me from the front door to the kitchen, shutting each light behind her as we went. Frugality was a living member of the family.

As the news on the television set in the background distracted me, Oma faced me expectantly. “Nyu?” she would prompt, sounding every bit the German that she was. “Tell me sumsing nyew.” But I could find nothing to say to this woman with whom I couldn’t connect. Yes, Oma wanted only something new. The past was bitter and best left alone. But somehow, the window she had closed on her past shut off connection in the present.