Judith Helfand’s beautiful little film about excavating her mother’s apartment after her death plays in mind as I unearth a number of finds among my mother’s papers: a 1935 letter from her German pen-pal, full of schoolboy boasting about Latin, German and Hitler Jugand achievements. A 1943 note from a smitten college boy teasing her about “wanting to kiss Stalin.” Have to imagine a by-product of collective euphoria at the Russians inflicting Germany’s first great defeat.
I’ve found letters from my father’s former girlfriend, referencing his wish to marry for “social and financial advantages,” as well as a diary in which my mother pours out her desperation, as an all-but-dissertation Ph.D., airing her kids in the park, years before Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born would show up to confirm she was not alone.
Meeting the people my parents were before I was born is an exercise in empathy for these aspiring souls whose idiocy seems no greater than mine was, nor more naïve than most American 20-somethings who bound after happiness with such enthusiasm and are so ill equipped to find it.