Tania Grossinger - Memoir of an Independent Woman: An Unconventional Life Well Lived

Tania Grossinger

Skyhorse Publishing

In memory and honor of Art DLugoff whose encouragement, love, and
support made everything possible.

Copyright 2013 by Tania Grossinger

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-62087-615-2

Printed in the United States of America

M y life, by many standards, can be described as unconventional. I grew up as the daughter of a single mother at the famous Grossingers Hotel in New Yorks Catskill Mountains; married early, briefly, and disastrously; beach bummed in Mexico; spent the best part of the swinging 1960s doing public relations for Playboy; wrote four books and numerous travel articles; had a long-lived affair with a married man; crossed paths with Ayn Rand, Jackie Robinson, Hugh Hefner, Betty Friedan, Tim Leary, and Elizabeth Taylor; and survived more dramatic escapades than I probably deserve. What I didnt have, by choice, was a child.

As a teenager I assumed, as did most girls my age, that I would grow up, marry, raise a family, and, of course, live happily ever after. Real life intervened. It was not that I didnt have maternal feelings, that my career came first, or that I never loved a man profoundly enough to bear his child. My decision was based on intuitive knowledge, a deepseated, almost molecular awareness that even as my biological clock gave me the choice, not having a child was the wisest path to take. The reasons run deep, as do most things of value in life, and only now am I beginning to understand how complicated they were.

As I reach the age where there is more to look back at than forward to, I cant help but reflect on how different my life would have been had it gone in another direction, had I not been so dreadfully afraid, despite my many accomplishments, of not being good enough to raise a real daughter, of passing on to her the detritus of my emotional past. But that was years ago.

Things are different now, and though I proudly stand behind all the choices Ive made, Id be less than honest if I didnt admit to moments when I find myself starved for an emotional connection that only a child can bestow. That, of course, I will never have. As an alternative, however, I have Natashathe daughter who exists solely in my imagination and heart.

I t occurs to me that before our odyssey begins, you might want to know how I came upon your name. I could be melodramatic and say that it was in honor of a beloved relative or romantic literary heroine. But I named you Natasha because Ive always loved the way it sounds. Natasha! Strong! Proud! I also believe you to be open, sensitive, bold, thoughtful, fearless, tolerant, decent, kind, loyal, proud, generous, slightly bawdy, trusting, and trustworthy. You have a delicious sense of humor.

How old are you as I write this? Im not sure. Old enough, I hope, to have experienced enough of life to accept at least some of mine. The color of your hair escapes me. Are you short or tall? I have no idea. I dont know whether you are single, whether you have a family, or what kind of life you lead. You are the child I might have wished for, the daughter who, in another life, might have shared some degree of happiness with me.

I was born in Evanston, Illinois, on February 17, 1937. My mother, Karla Seifer Grossinger, had, in her seventh month, been hospitalized for observation. The pregnancy, her first, was not going well. My father, Max, had been admitted to a separate wing ten days earlier with a second heart attack. She overheard two nurses speaking outside her door. Isnt it a shame that Mr. Grossinger is dying. My mother told me this story when I was six years old; it was one of the rare times she ever mentioned my father. She begged the nurses to let her see him but was warned she might lose the baby if she left her bed. Two minutes later they picked her up from the floor. My heartbeat was undetectable, and a caesarean section was performed, ostensibly to bring out a dead fetus.

Such was my introduction to the world!

My father, who had just turned forty, died six months later.

A friend brought my mother a gift, a baby diary, which I discovered many years later. My birth certificate, Number 252, was filed at the county clerks office in Chicago, where we then lived. I weighed 5 pounds, 1 ounce. Color of hair: blonde. Color of eyes: blue. I doubled my weight at three months. Saw for the first time on Easter Sunday, my mother wrote, while I listened to a radio concert of Parsifal. Later in the evening, her first tears. Smiled for the first time on March 31 when she was six weeks old.

Considering her husband was near death and she would soon be a thirty-eight-year-old widow with a baby and no family support, the fact that she kept a record of my early months was likely the most maternal gesture she ever made.

My father was the eldest of four children; he was born in 1896 in a small village called Balnicz on the Austrian side of the Hungarian border. His father, Solomon Grossinger, had a general store on the outskirts of town that sold a bit of everythingclothing, pig feed, tools, and groceries. His older brother, Herman, escaped the Holocaust, barely, and settled in Montreal with his wife, Binka, and young daughter, Rose. There were also two sisters, who I believe died with their families in the concentration camps.

I have a few frayed photos of my father together with my mother, and from all appearances, he was a snappy dresser and attractive man. Relatives who knew him say I bear a strong resemblance; those who never met him say I look more like my mom. They could all be correct. In each of the pictures, my parents look like twins.

I know nothing about his young life, what he studied in school, what sports he liked, what ambitions he might have had. My mother was always uncomfortable when I asked, and early on, not wanting to make her sad, I knew to keep such questions to myself.

At some point he left Balnicz for Vienna, where he met and became engaged to my mother, a philosophy major at the citys prestigious university. In one of the many journals she kept at various stages of her life, she describes what happened when she told her father of her desire to get married. My father was very disappointed when I wrote him about Max. Max was a businessman, but he didnt have a college education, and because of that, my father was against the marriage. When I brought him home to Poland to meet my family, Max insisted on renting a big car so we could arrive in style. My father and mother, both unassuming people, were not impressed. But it did not take long for him to win them over, and they grew to adore him.