Bling

The Dress I Yessed

30 years ago, I had my wedding dress professionally preserved. I was told that a lot of women make this investment for two reasons: 1) you paid a shitload for the dress, so why not? And 2) if you have a daughter, she may wear it one day. At the time, I think it cost me a hefty $250.00 for this service.

It took about 6 weeks to preserve the dress and it arrived at my doorstep in a sealed, archival bridal box that immediately went into my spare closet of no return.

I have a good friend who wore her mothers wedding dress to her own wedding. When she speaks of it, you can tell that she cherished it. The possibility of that never even crossed my mind when I got married and I could have had a choice of three dresses from my mom—need I say more.

When my only daughter got engaged this year, I realized that my archival-ly preserved dress didn’t have a shot at being re-worn. Not only is my daughter much taller than me, she has a specific style gene that definitely does not scream 80’s.

“Maybe we can re-purpose some of it, Mom”, she diplomatically offered.

Well, maybe, but where was that box now?

After some digging in the closet of no return, I found it. I remembered that another friend, who was downsizing after her kids flew the coop, said that she photographed everything memorable before she gave it away or threw it out. I call it the digital preservation of clutter. Because I knew that I wanted to donate this dress, I decided to film the opening of the archival box with my daughter at my side.

A flood of memories hit me when we broke the seal.

On my wedding day, as I was getting dressed for the big event, I carefully stepped into my gown. As I was pulling it up, the elastic on the left sleeve ripped. Since it was an off-the-shoulder number, this elastic was critical to keeping the dress up.

If ever there was a need for a wardrobe supervisor, this was it. I wasn’t smart enough to travel with an emergency sewing kit…the only emergency thing I ever carried with me were tampons. Good luck with that.

I went a little ape-shit in the bathroom, because I had spent a fortune on the dress at the infamous, formally-Brooklyn-based, Kleinfelds. And now, here I was in Pittsburgh, on a Sunday morning with a teeny tiny safety pin that my sister found underneath the vanity in the bathroom at the synagogue. P.S. Major shout out to that pin.

When we opened the archival box, you could see the snapped elastic but the teeny tiny safety pin was gone…it was probably removed during the preservation process.

The dress was clean, but it had yellowed. A lot.

“OMG, Mom, it’s pretty ugly”, my no-filter daughter observed.

“It looks like you were an extra in “WESTWORLD”, my husband chimed in from afar.

I have to admit; it was kind of thrilling to see that dress again. It looked so tiny…but WTF, I was 20 pounds lighter when I got married. Nonetheless, it brought a huge smile to my face and some honest to goodness belly laughter.

We gently pulled the gown out of the box and a small silk flower that was attached to the elastic of the shoulder floated to the ground.

My daughter picked it up and with the straightest face ever said, “I can use this”.

I’ve left the dress hanging in the closet for now. Maybe some fresh air will bring it back to life before I pack it up for donation. If the air doesn’t do it, perhaps a fresh, tiny, body will.

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And here is the short film:

 

 

 

 

The Great Grandma Google

Seven years ago, I wrote an essay about the time I accidentally threw away my Great Grandmother’s cherished engagement ring in the garbage and how I luckily found it in the dump before it got sent out to sea. It was a miracle of sorts and an episode that I revisit from time to time when I think about what I would have done if I hadn’t found it. That ring conjures up so many memories of my growing up in Pittsburgh with my loving, but oh-so-domineering, Grandmother. Who would have thought that some old jewelry could do that to you?

The other morning, I was thinking about how little I knew about my Great Grandmother, the original owner of that ring. She died the year I was born and nobody really talked about her. I kind of remember my Dad telling me things like, “She wasn’t very nice” and my Mother’s recollection which was a little more descriptive: “She was ten times meaner than your Grandmother, and that’s sugar coating it.” But for the most part, she remained a mystery. My Grandmother never spoke much about her except to tell me that she was extremely smart, followed by a knowing wink. It was almost if she was letting me in on a secret, without telling me what it was.

There was one unusual thing that she did mention to me back then, but I never really followed up on that because I thought it fell into the pool of my Grandmother’s other expert exaggerations like, If you cross your eyeballs they’ll freeze, Your Dad could have been a professional tap dancer, Sit up straight or you’ll be a hunchback by the time your 20, My podiatrist is madly in love with me, and so on. But today, in this easy age of Google, I felt like this story was worth looking into.

When I was ten years old, and practicing my memorization of the Gettysburg address, my Grandmother told me that during the Civil War, her mother’s family was kicked out of Kentucky by Ulysses S. Grant because they were Jewish. Why this came to my mind now, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s all this immigration talk in the news or maybe it’s because I don’t sleep and have many early mornings to sit and think about life.

It took more than a few hours on the Internet and a couple of phone calls to Paducah, Kentucky to find out that THIS WAS TRUE!

My Great Grandmother, Bertha Livingston Newman, was born in Paducah, Kentucky on June 18th, 1877. Her father, Mangold Livingston came from Germany around 1850 and settled briefly in Smithland, Kentucky. When the railroad came to Paducah in 1850, he relocated there and set up a wholesale dry goods and fruit operation, the M. Livingston Co. (think early Costco). He married his wife, Amelia Friedberg, also from Germany, around 1861. During the Civil War, Paducah was a Union stronghold but it became the place of smuggling and illegal trading with the Confederate South. Apparently, Ulysses S. Grant was super pissed about that. Some reported that Union soldiers were the ones doing the illegal trading, but somehow the Jews got blamed for it and Ulysses S. Grant issued his infamous, anti-Semitic General Order No. 11 in 1862, which expelled all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. Given 24 hours to leave, Jewish families had to pack-up and head north. Bertha wasn’t born yet, but her parents and older siblings began to make their way toward Ohio. A Paducah man by the name of Cesar Kaskel, immediately traveled to Washington to meet with Abraham Lincoln and report this unconstitutional decree. Upon hearing this, Lincoln ordered Grant to revoke the order. Within a week, the Jewish families returned to Paducah and resumed their lives. My Great Grandmother was born there 12 years later. She grew up in Paducah, met her husband, Sam Newman, a businessman from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Enter the ring…hello, 1895) They relocated there (that’s where my Grandmother was born) and eventually moved to Pittsburgh in the early 1900’s, where my Great Grandfather started the Keystone Grinder & Manufacturing Company, an outfit that made gadgets, which fixed busted Railroad Tracks. Old documents, county certificates and voting registries enable you to track movements, but without primary sources or saved correspondence, it is impossible to investigate “intelligence”. All this great history and my Great Grandmother didn’t leave a trail. What made her “smart”? Why didn’t I follow up on that with my Grandmother while she was still alive? The only thing that I can surmise is that Bertha had something to do with my Great Grandfather’s successful business, but I have no way of fact checking that one. We all know that behind-the-scenes women were seldom recognized in those days. Is that what the knowing wink meant?

I have to believe it was. Bertha deserves a story.

The photo I’ve attached to this essay is Bertha’s wedding picture. To think that she was wearing the ring that I tossed in the garbage in this beautiful shot, gives me eternal chills…especially when I envision her supervising the repair of broken railroad tracks.

Sentimental Garbage

(This is the original article that appeared in Women’s Health Magazine. Reprinted with Permission by Rodale Press)

Over the years, I have acquired some nice jewelry. I’m not a bling person, but I treasure jewelry with sentimental value. My high school ring, my mother’s pearls, my wedding band, and my all-time favorite, my great-grandmother’s platinum, old European-cut, diamond engagement ring, which I wear all the time. I don’t remember meeting my great-grandmother (she passed away when I was three), but my grandmother wore it every day. I used to play with it on her finger. Often she would let me wear it and I would run around claiming to be royalty.

My entire family was scared to death of my grandmother, who at 4’11” was opinionated and judgmental and not known for her sense of humor. In 1963, four years after her mother passed away, her husband (my grandfather) died from cancer and bitterness consumed her. Around this time, at the age of seven, I started to accompany my father on weekly visits to her apartment. She was always angry. My father listened dutifully while I sat quietly drawing cartoons on scraps of paper from her desk.

I was never afraid of her. Maybe it was her size, I’m not quite sure. My grandmother must have picked up on this and soon asked me to come to her weekly painting classes at the Carnegie Museum of Art, in Pittsburgh, Pa. She was an amateur painter of endless landscapes. Prolific is not the word; excessive seems better. Her many works hung all over our house and my father’s office. I later figured out that no one was brave enough to tell her no thank you.

I rather enjoyed the attention of this mean old woman. She would let me carry her blank 18×24 canvas into class, which at the time, was about half my size. I remember taking great care weaving through the other easels as I followed my grandmother to her painting spot. When I would catch the stolen stares of the other adults in the class, my grandmother would bellow out, “What are you looking at?” It was a harsh response for sure, but I smiled politely. I didn’t want people to think I was scared because I wasn’t. I sat there for three hours every Saturday doodling away. Occasionally, she’d ask for my opinion. “I don’t think water looks like that, Grandma,” I offered once. The entire class became deadly silent. She turned to me and asked, “Do you think it needs more green?” I became her sidekick and midget muse. For the first time, I saw what it was like to lift the sadness from a person. She was different around me, and I liked that she found me worthy enough to accompany her.

When my grandmother died 28 years later in 1993, my father gave me the ring and I became the keeper of something whose value could never be measured. I immediately got it insured, but the document said nothing about its true worth. When I put it on my finger, I was flooded with the all the memories of my grandmother’s deep affection for me. There was magic in that ring and now it was my turn to wear it. The thought that I would pass this on to my daughter one day became almost spiritual.

I like to keep the ring shiny because that’s how I remember it on my grandmother’s finger. One night last spring, it was exceptionally dirty so I took it off, cleaned it thoroughly and left it wrapped in a tissue on my bathroom counter. When I awoke in the morning, I forgot it was there as I tidied up the bathroom, and swept it into the trash, along with a few q-tips, random tissues, and an empty mouthwash bottle.

Moments later, I heard the garbage truck rumble down the street. I swept quickly through the house and dragged the trash to the driveway. Twenty minutes later when I woke my youngest for school, he let out a tremendous sneeze. “Ewww,” I said, “Use a tissue.” And with that, I looked at my finger and stopped dead in my tracks. “What’s wrong?” my son asked, but I couldn’t speak. I ran to my bathroom and looked at the counter. Empty. No tissues. I looked in the wastebasket. Empty. No liner. I looked out my front window at the garbage bins. Empty. Clean. Tipped over. The blood left my body.

There was no time for tears. I immediately called the carting company. The truck had compacted the garbage and was headed to the transfer station. I gave a succinct but passionate summary of what had occurred and begged the dispatcher to radio the driver. I would meet him at the transfer station. I would pay the extra costs, but I had to recover that ring. The dispatcher, a lovely woman named Lillian, heard the distress in my voice. “Hang on,” she said, “Let me see what I can do.”

I waited for 110 seconds. I did not breathe until she got back on the line. “How fast can you get to the transfer station?” Lillian asked. “Four minutes” I lied. (If you drive the speed limit, it’s eight.) “He’ll meet you there, but don’t stop for coffee,” she said. I left my house in my ratty pajamas, no bra, tousled hair, and very bad breath. I grabbed my dish gloves, a sweatshirt, and sneakers. I screamed out to my son to make sure he got on the bus.

I got to the transfer station in 5 minutes and 30 seconds. I was led by the gate guard to a huge building where several large refuse trucks were backing in and dumping into a cavernous rectangular compacting pit at the back. I was instructed to wait for all the trucks to finish dumping and that my truck (note the possessive) would then dump its contents onto the floor of the garage where I could sift through the entire load.

As we were waiting, I asked my driver how many more houses he had picked up since mine. I think he said 12, which meant approximately 120 bags were on top of my 10. “Your wedding ring?” he asked. “My great-grandmother’s ring,” I said with reverence. I stared at the garbage. My senses were numb. I put on my dish gloves. I sifted my mind for strategies. I remembered that I used white plastic bags with red ties. My truck backed into the enormous shed and dumped its contents. My heart sank. One half of the load was white garbage bags with red ties. Does everyone shop at Costco?

I asked the driver which heap might be my street. He pointed to somewhere in the middle and I jumped in. The bags were all compacted so you had to shake them to get them to expand. “You should rip them open and check the addresses,” said the attendant. “If you find your street, you’ll know that you’re looking in the right place.” This gave me tremendous hope.

Has anyone ever seen a week old chicken wing? An exploded diaper? I ripped open bag after bag. I saw things that I can’t even repeat. Suddenly I came across a soiled envelope with my neighbors address on it. “My street!” I screamed, and my garbage man came over to help me sort through the compacted bags. Soon I had exposed my entire street’s garbage. That’s when I saw it. A compacted, white bag with red ties and an empty mouthwash bottle in it. My hands were shaking. I opened the bag and recognized my garbage.

I gently squeezed each balled up tissue until I felt it. I opened the tissue and there in all its shiny glory, was my great-grandmother’s ring. I burst into tears. Hysterical, sobbing tears. My garbage man came over, patted my back and put his arm around me. In broken English he said, “It’s okay, Miss. No cry. You found ring.” I pulled it together enough to ask him one question. “What is your name?” I sobbed. “Jose,” he said. “Thank you, Jose,” is all that came out.

I walked back to my car and turned to watch the attendant use a backhoe to dump the contents of my garbage truck into the in-ground compacter. I heard the crushing sounds as the 500 cubic feet were reduced to five. I peeled off my gloves and placed the ring on my finger. It glistened in the early morning sunlight. The sentimental value of things can never be measured, but they can remind you of the power of love. I only hope that one day, when this ring belongs to my daughter; she will have an even better story of how she kept it alive.