Elisa Brodinsky Miller - When the River Ice Flows, I Will Come Home

When the River Ice Flows,
I Will Come Home

A Memoir

Elisa Brodinsky Miller

Boston
2020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Brodinsky Miller, Elisa, author.

Title: When the river ice flows, I will come home : a memoir / Elisa Brodinsky Miller.

Description: Boston : Cherry Orchard Books, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019046140 (print) | LCCN 2019046141 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644692790 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781644692806 (paperback) | ISBN 9781644692813 (adobe pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Brodinsky Miller, ElisaFamily. | Jewish womenUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC E184.37.M545 A3 2020 (print) | LCC E184.37.M545 (ebook) | DDC 929.20947dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046140

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046141

Copyright 2020 Elisa Brodinsky Miller, text, illustrations, maps All rights reserved.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Tony Kushner for permission to reprint an excerpt from Angels in America by Tony Kushner. Copyright 1992, 1994, 1996, 2013 by Tony Kushner. Published by Theatre Communications Group. Used by permission of Theatre Communications Group.

ISBN 978-1-644692-79-0 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-644692-80-6 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-644692-81-3 (adobe pdf)

ISBN 978-1-644693-53-7 (ePub)

Book design by Tatiana Vernikov

Cover design by Joe Menth

Published by Cherry Orchard Books (imprint of Academic Studies Press)

1577 Beacon Street

Brookline, MA 02446, USA

www.academicstudiespress.com

To

Rachael and Amos
Tillie and Aditieh

Though for no other cause, yet for this,
that posterity may know we have not loosely
through silence permitted things to pass away
as in a dream.

Richard Hooker,
Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

F OREWORD

I do not know this woman....
I do not know her and yet I know her.
She was... not a person but a whole kind of person,
the ones who crossed the ocean,
who brought with us to America
the villages of Russia and Lithuania....

Descendants of this immigrant woman,
you do not grow up in America,
you and your children and their children
with the goyische names,
you do not live in America, no such place exists.
Your clay is the clay of Litvak shtetl,
your air the air of the steppes.

Because she carried the old world
on her back across the ocean, in a boat,
and put down on Grand Concourse Avenue, or in Flatbush,
and she worked that earth into your bones,
and you pass it to your children, this ancient,
ancient culture and home....

You can never make that crossing that she made,
for such Great Voyages in this world do not any more exist.
But every day of your lives the miles that voyage
between that place and this one you cross.
Every day. You understand me?
In you that journey is.

Tony Kushner,
selections from Angels in America

1. A C ACHE OF L ETTERS

By the rules of the retirement center in Bloomfield, Connecticut where my father had lived, the family was allotted five working days after his death to clear out the belongings from his cottage. My brother and I had agreed: we wouldnt save any furniture, just the china, the stemware, the samovar, and the contents of his study. It all was to go into a storage unit near his home in Wallingford, CT. Together, later, we three siblings would sort through it all. Each of us would take what we wanted and wed toss the rest. We doubted there would be any scraps between us; we three are much too different. Exactly a year after our fathers death, I traveled from Seattle, my sister came from Charlotte, to stay with my brother and his wife.

I knew the contents of many of those boxes marked Booksfrom study. During my visits to my father I had often looked at his books, on occasion he would gift me one or two. It was torment to stand in the storage unit and watch both my brother and my sister tear through these. Nothing seemed to matter to them. Especially the books. Even before I got a chance to say I want it, my brother was ready to put a book in the toss pile. Books that meant a lot to my father and books I wanted to keep. Once, my brother who was trying to send an oversized book into the toss bin, misjudged and instead of the toss bin the book landed on the concrete floor flat open with its spine broken and pages awry. Like kicking someone down the stairs and watching them land sprawled out and hurt. Aggression. Like when the pogromschiks entered a synagogue to tear it apart and hurled all the sacred books to the sidewalk to be burnt.

Angry I was, and now nothing much left to do except to say Ill take all his books, his notes, papers and sort through them more leisurely later. But Annie doesnt want any of this in her house. There might be silverfish in the books or in the papers, my sister Molly says. My sister who took the name of my grandmother, Manya. You cant take all this there, Annie and Mike dont like clutter.

Silverfish notwithstanding, the whole shebang was now under my gaze in the basement of my brothers house. There were scores of postcards and letters. Amongst those letters was a small notebook wrapped in pink tissue paper. Written on the pink paper was the word Ucraine. I opened this small notebook of 68 numbered pages written in Russian and noted the title page: Travel Notes. The pages were brittle but the Russian handwriting was clear enough. I read the first sentence of the entry, dated August 29, 1922. We left Kiev at 12:00 noon. I turned to the last page 68 and read the last entry. We waited on the benches [of Ellis Island] until our names were called... . My father, always the journalist, had left me the perfect gift. Id have him all to myself for quite a while. I couldnt wait to take everything back to Seattle.

Finding so many letters and postcards as well as my fathers travel diary in Russian intensified my delight in the art of translation. I knew I eventually would be able to master the various handwritings and gain meaning and context from what I read. Translation was a tool I used in my work: beginning with my dissertation research and also my subsequent writings about contemporary Russia.

Once back at home, I was disciplined and patient. I had just sold my business, a small company publishing commercial intelligence on the Russian Far East. I would have the time. This was going to be a big project and I would start carefully, methodically. The letters and postcards addressed to Eli Brodinsky, my grandfather, in Wilmington Delaware, start just days after Elis ship (the m/v Carminia) left Liverpool on May 23, 1914, and continued for eight years until the week when those he left behindhis wife and six children (but one)boarded their ship on September 26, 1922 (the m/v Lithuania) to join him.

Eli leaves his wife and six children, 1914.

Eight Years.

Eight very long years.

I could read Russian. But I couldnt read Yiddish and the first letters to Eli were entirely in Yiddish. I could not even confirm the dates. I was helpless amongst these scribbles. I could see that many voices were present. Paragraphs showed distinct handwriting stylesslanted this way, slanted that way. Some timid. Some bold. Yet, still all squiggles. Scribbles. Helpless, indeed!