When you floss and get into the apse between opposite teeth, snapping the dental tape, you remove detritus. Reminiscences are like that, they need to be dislodged from crevices if you have a mind to.Thinking of Sidney and Rose is like removing something that has lodged someplace in me. And it needs telling. It has been slightly over 60 years since I last saw them. I am sure no one goes to their gravesites.They were both harmless and good people, doing their earthly business here until they died. I have no idea when they died, or who went first, or where they are buried. I come from that kind of “family.” I was not alienated from them but simply did not keep up any contact and eventually all of us were out of mind of the other. Disparate matter. As my aunt and uncle they were shadow people; they came and went in my childhood and left some benign deposits in me.
It is of note that both of them were born in the 19th century. My father, who was born in 1915, remembered when fire engines were drawn by horses. So they were alive before and during the turn of the century before WW I. I can only speculate what they observed and absorbed during their childhood and how very different it was. I know no one extant now who was born before 1915. Time most assuredly moved much more slowly for Sidney and Rose as they grew up. Art Nouveau was flowering and Art Deco was yet to be.
Sidney was deaf and used a hearing aid; Rose was more deaf and far from “dumb,” and sometimes I remember she would sign with him. (What an interesting phenomena to observe as a child, a mild wonderment.) They had no children and I wonder if they feared they would inflict their disability upon them; or, perhaps Rose or Sidney could not have children. I don’t know. All is projection. In the late forties and early fifties these things were not discussed. Only thought about, only imagined, but never expressed. When the family was together and my grandmother, Flo, had her next heart attack, Sidney would play the ukulele by her bedside and make jokes, for he was an alive human being; this was his mother from her marriage to an earlier husband, Gross was his name. His brother from that marriage was Nat, for it was a blended family from two different husbands. I never felt any distinction between all the children, such as a step-brother, et al. That was very good to experience. I can say that the Grosses were more intelligent than the Freeses, much more so. Just more IQ, simple as that.
Sidney was deft with his hands and things electric before the digital age; indeed, he had wired up a bulb next to the house phone so that an incoming call revealed itself as a blinking light so that Rose would become alerted to that. (I never visited with him and Rose at their home. How strange.)I associate to a lady’s veil to Aunt Rose, for veils in the 40s were still being worn, and I believe she wore one, once. How curious if you think about it. Rose would sit on a chair and take in and not participate except for now and then becoming animated enough to say a few words and these words were said as if she had glue on her tongue, for she gave out the special ruminant sound of someone trying to emulate normal speaking. Her words had an undercurrent of aural paste to them. Dim is my memory of her except to note she was inoffensive, never was harsh or demeaning to me, nor was she affectionate or engaging. She must have thought to herself about how much her mother-in-law was a blustering and powerful person. I have a sneaking impression that she was a powerhouse of feelings behind that disability. How deafness must have frustrated her, inordinately so. Sidney, in many different ways, spoke for her. Whoever died first must have left the other self twice-devastated, truly struck dumb.
If Rose was mutely reserved, silently monumental, Sidney was alive and vibrant, his DNA ever percolating. I have an ancient sepia photo of him during the forties in which he is standing and holding a comb over the top of his lip and beneath his nose , his right hand outstretched in a Nazi salute, his hair draped across his brow in a wicked imitation of Hitler. This is Sidney. I liked Uncle Sidney, he was a kibitzer, as all uncles should be; he once went with me to Coney Island and I enjoyed going into a funhouse with him, gripping his thumbs out of expectation as he guided me from behind.
That photo will disappear when I disappear, for my son will have no use for it or even know who his great Uncle Sidney was.
For Sidney she was his compass rose. Apparently they were well matched. Aunt Rose’s purse probably concealed a box of Chiclets in the yellow box, like teeth to dispense, for she would give gum to those about her, meaning me; she probably had rouge in her purse for that was common for women to use; a glass case for she wore metal spectacles, and tissues, of course. Perhaps a handkerchief doused in a light perfume, for she, in retrospect, seemed to take care of her presentation of self. And I imagine her having a matchbook size of, Sen-Sen, those tiny licorice-tasting black tabs for bad breath or to conceal smoking. I dimly recall she wore dresses that had florals upon them, often black. Aunt Rose wore no hearing-aid unlike Sidney, for she was profoundly deaf and one could watch her with fervor read the lips of others. Sidney wore jackets or suits and I believe he did so because he could slip his hearing-aid pack into a side pocket and from there bring his wire up to his ear. As a child I never viewed him as deaf regardless of this contraption, for he was attuned to me, heard me at all times. He piqued my interest with his ukulele playing and I began to fumble and struggle with a baritone uke my father brought home from his work at a pawnshop. I could never master that damn thing.
In the ninth grade he helped me put together a science project, those horrific assignments we all detest. He took me to a shop where he either worked or knew the owner, and here were all things hearing. (Given his disability, I have no idea what he did for a living. How uninformed we are as children –how uninformed are we are as adults.) He cannibalized hearing aids and earplugs and helped me put together more of a display than a science project; but as I look back it was informative and although not a “science project” as wanted by my teacher, it was different and well executed. Thank you, Uncle Sidney. It isn’t every day that a young boy has an uncle and aunt who are hard of hearing. Did they sign to one another during sex? Did they really have to? What words are necessary in any case. I must note that I have had a significant loss of hearing this past year or so. I will probably be fitted with a device. I can say that I sense the lacunae between sounds to be more pronounced than ever. I am still metabolizing what this loss of hearing means for me.
For the past month or so I have gone over in my mind all the scant reminiscences I have of this quiet couple. I know why. It is the last roundup and I want to have everything neat and tidy, foolish me. But this homage is for them, for they are forgotten except by their 73 year old nephew. Epicurus’s epitaph reads: “I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind.” While I live, I remember!
