Stories I Tell Myself

Linda Brody Bakst on Brooklyn, growing up, identity and more

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Author | Brooklyn-born Jewish American on a search for identity & deeper meaning. Debut book “More than Matzoh Balls” out 2/15.

  • My Eyes – My Achilles Heel

    Everyone has stuff that they deal with – sometimes it is invisible to others and sometimes it is painfully obvious. I’m not sure which is worse.

    The image that is the banner for this blog is of my brothers and me in the style of the time, lined up in age order. Today I look at that picture and smile. When I was young I looked at it and cringed. All I could see were my crossed eyes and it felt like a personal failing.

    I had my first surgery when I was one. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. I had another when I was in kindergarten. I remember waking up from that surgery with the cloying smell of ether still in my nose, the nausea overwhelming. I was released from the hospital wearing an eye patch with hopes that it would force the strengthening of the weaker eye muscle. Perhaps there are children who could pull off wearing an eye patch, making it cool, but I wasn’t one of them. Fortunately I didn’t have to wear it for long.

    After that surgery, instead of fixing inward on my nose, my right eye drifted out, especially when I was tired. “You talkin’ to me?” was a question I heard often, long before it was used in a different context in Taxi Driver. Like the movie, though, the question had a very unsettling affect. I would take a deep breath, close my eyes in a kind of prayer, concentrate really hard and hope my eyes would go in the same direction when I opened them. Mostly in that moment I wanted to be swallowed up by the floor.

    At least once a year I would go with my mom into Manhattan to see the eye doctor, Dr. Snyder. The trek to ‘the city’ from Canarsie was a long one. A long walk across blustery Seaview Park, a long bus ride to Eastern Parkway and then the 4 or 5 train to the Upper East Side. That trip may be a reason some Canarsiens didn’t bother going into the city.

    On the one hand it was special to have my Mom all to myself for the day. We would have lunch out and window-shop. On the other hand, the subway, with its screeching wheels, the smell of metal on metal and the crowds of humanity, filled me with dread. I was terrified of getting separated from her.

    Dr. Snyder’s office was just off Park Avenue. The waiting room had red leather chairs and, to my delight, Highlights magazines. I would find the hidden animals in the pictures while we waited to be seen. Dr. Snyder was gentle. There was one part of the exam that confounded me. He showed me a picture of a fly; it was enlarged, the details of the fly in blue against a silver background. He would ask me if it looked raised or flat. I could never decide. I would just pick one and looked at him to see if I got it right, but he never let on one way or another. This went on every year. Turns out I couldn’t see in three dimensions. I used one eye at a time and still do.

    I was assigned exercises to strengthen my eye muscles. I was supposed to stare at my index finger as I moved it slowly toward my nose. I’m not sure that we followed the doctor’s directions as faithfully as we should have, but I don’t know that it would have made a difference.

    As I got older other problems with my eyes emerged. In graduate school I was having recurring migraines and as part of the work up I had my eyes examined. Unrelated to the migraines the eye doctor found that my retinas had areas of weakness – he called it lattice. He advised against skydiving (no loss for me since as anyone who knows me would agree, I’m no adrenaline junkie!). He said, “Your retinas are your Achilles heel,” and recommended a surgical procedure to freeze them. I had the surgery. (Another story for another blog entry☺)

    I think having crossed eyes, and then a lazy eye, and weak retinas shaped me in important ways. It added to feeling like an outsider. I always identified with those who felt different. I was also terribly self-conscious and received more than my share of teasing from other kids, especially in my neighborhood. More than once my brothers were called upon to defend me from bullies.

    I can’t help but think that my eyes played an important part in creating the sensitive, introspective and insecure little girl that I was, the girl who sought comfort from Nana.

    As my father pointed out, as I got older, some of those same qualities were a blessing, not just a cross to bear. It’s been a journey, but I can smile at that picture today, despite the fact that my eyes are still my Achilles heel.

  • Nana’s Kitchen

    After renting various apartments in Brooklyn, my mom and dad took a leap of faith and bought a new house in a new neighborhood, built on landfill, in Canarsie, Brooklyn in 1964. They were not at all sure that they could afford it on my Dad’s teacher’s salary. We, my parents and two older brothers, moved into the two-family semi-attached house on East 91st Street, a street that had yet to be paved. Every time it rained the street was awash with mud, puddles and rocks. Nana, Zada and my two uncles, who were teenagers at the time, would take the apartment upstairs, leaving their home in Crown Heights.

    Zada, my grandfather and master bread baker, bought Miller’s Bakery on Rochester Avenue in 1941 and the family lived above the store. His challah and rye bread were outstanding, in fact he had trucks delivering his product across the borough. One of my first memories is of standing in front of the display cases in the bakery, eyeing the goodies. I took my time deciding: a brownie? an éclair? a large chocolate chip cookie? Nana waited patiently. She took a break from waiting on other customers to give her grandchildren their chosen treats.

    By 1962 the neighborhood in which Miller’s sat was changing. Zada thought that the new people, mostly from the Caribbean, would buy his high quality rye, pumpernickel and challah. But, they didn’t. He didn’t change his product and he didn’t follow his customers to Long Island either. So, for the second time in his life, he lost everything – he went bankrupt. (The first time was in the hurricane of 1938 in New London, Connecticut.) At the age of 61 he went to work for a commercial bakery, moved his wife and two teenage sons and rented the upstairs apartment in our Canarsie home.

    Though it was a two family house, with separate apartments, I lived in it as if it was one. The door to Nana and Zada’s apartment was always unlocked. Each day when I came home from school, I dropped my stuff off in my bedroom, climbed the stairs that separated our apartments and let myself in. Nana sat at a small, round marble table. The gold threads in the marble caught and reflected the light from the amber glass fixture suspended above it. The marble table top sat on a black cast iron pedestal. Both were unforgiving on misplaced elbows and knees.

    Nana sat with her arthritic hands wrapped around a large teacup with steam rising from it. “Hello, Sunshine,” my daily greeting. She lifted herself from her chair and shuffled across the yellow linoleum floor toward the refrigerator. I settled into a chair next to hers.

    “Zada brought home a chocolate crème pie. Do you want a piece?” She was already removing the pie from the refrigerator shelf, getting a plate and fork – she knew my answer.

    Zada often brought home surplus goods from the bakery – large black and white cookies, corn muffins or assorted pies. It is no wonder that everyone in my family struggles to this day with their weight.

    A small black and white television set sat on the table, tuned to the Dinah Shore show. The Mike Douglas Show came shortly after. I ate my pie. Nana sat back down. We talked about our days, her aches and pains, the performers on the shows. Occasionally I would adjust the rabbit ear antenna so we’d get better reception.

    “Lindale, bring me my aspirin,” Zada bellowed from the back bedroom.

    Another part of my daily ritual. Zada worked an early morning shift and was resting in bed while I visited with Nana.

    “Coming!” I would get a glass of water, go into the bathroom and pour three aspirin from a huge bottle and bring it to him. Zada was propped up in bed, his long legs crossed at the ankles, wearing his sleeveless t-shirt, boxer shorts and horn-rimmed glasses, reading the Daily News. He took all three pills at once and washed them down with a gulp of water.

    “Did you have the chocolate crème pie?” Zada asked.

    “Yup, it was delicious.”

    “Good.”

    I took the glass back and returned to the kitchen. The four o’clock sun streamed through the slats of the shutters of the window. I sat in my golden cocoon with Nana until my mom called me down for dinner.