Five Women Who Raised Me

I’m thinking of my mighty mom this week, a first-generation-American Brooklyn kid, who along with my dad showed me and my brothers the world, or at least a good part of it. Of my mighty wife and the challenges we've faced together, the adventures we’ve had so far, and the ones to come. Of the so-many extraordinary bosses, friends, and leaders who have shaped me, and the partners and colleagues I get to work with every day. And of course, of my superstar daughter Susannah.

But this year I'm also thinking a little farther back, to a generation of women born around 1900.

My Grandma Lilly, a refugee from what is today Ukraine to NYC, who sprinkled some kind of Danny-Kaye joy around the house -- laughing, dancing, singing a Yiddish tune with a "let's-put-on-a-show" smile.

My Great-Aunt Blanche, actually a great-cousin who was like another grandmother, and might as well have been Lilly’s sister. Family. Blanche was also a refugee from Ukraine to NYC. Funny, sharp, acerbic, and treated me like a grown up from age 5 on, which I just loved.

My Sabta (grandmother) Susie, a refugee from Berlin to Israel, who was a whisper away from becoming a lawyer when they had to leave in 1933. Smart and thoughtful and caring. I still have copies of Bertrand Russell and JD Salinger and George Orwell paperbacks with her signature that made the trek from Tel Aviv to my bookshelf in California.

My Great-Aunt Ruth, Susie’s sister, a refugee from Germany to Holland and a survivor of Theresienstadt. Thanks to my mom and dad, I grew up partly near The Hague where Aunt Ruth had a hat shop, and where I was lucky enough to go to family dinners at her apartment and on park walks in Clingendael. Chocolate mousse and apple pie that I was the right age to enjoy, and red cabbage that I was too young to appreciate.

My Great-Aunt Henny, a refugee from Germany to Virginia and then NYC, where she met my Great-Uncle Fritz and they shared a life of opera and museums and the 92nd Street Y. The only one of these wonderful women to spend time with our kids -- us packed in her tiny East Side apartment -- and make the spark gap — that generational connection.

I didn't know what they had lived, really -- and I still can't imagine what was under the surface of those smiles, those jokes, those gentle moments. But I was aware even as a child that I was the fortunate product of mighty, energetic, resilient refugee women who had powered through. Who cared for me, my brothers, my cousins, who filled our lives, let me sleep on their laps on car rides home, talked me out of smoking cigarettes when I was older, coached me on career choices, gave me a retroactive appreciation for red cabbage, who got themselves and my family to safety in times that required it and left me with some of the most precious and formative memories of my life.