KITCHEN TALK BRINGS FAMILY TO LIFE

Week after week, throughout my formative years, Aunt Fannie sat with Mrs. Nalebuff at the kitchen table in our apartment. Our table looked like the one at the abode the two ladies shared, as depicted here, where Aunt Fannie is pouring a drink from the pitcher.

The weeks rolled into years, and my parents eventually bought a house. Recurring day-long visits from the two women continued, with stories to entertain my mother and her offspring as we dutifully listened to family news and gossip.

My brothers and cousins concur that the picture of Aunt Fannie and Mrs. Nalebuff is from the Lyons Avenue, Newark, New Jersey second-floor, two-bedroom apartment that they shared in the late 50s to mid-60s. The drinking glasses and the flower vase on the table elicit happy memories of our much less frequent short stops at their place.

When the visits were at our house, my father was working, delivering the mail, while my mother was preparing seven-course dinners. Mrs. Nalebuff sat patiently in our kitchen as Aunt Fannie, the maiden sister of my father, led the discussions. Half in English, half in Yiddish, they chatted away with Aunt Fannie sounding her cautionary warning, “Children should be seen and not heard.” We dared not interject.

Mrs. Nalebuff, known as Aunt Sarah to members of the extended family, had a personal interest in some of the stories as she was distantly related to another non-biological relative. One of the few things I could understand the sweet elderly widow saying in her heavily accented English was, “You dasn’t do it,” as I scuffled with my older brothers.

Those weekly talks paved the way for my interest in family history, eventually leading me to write Kitchen Talk, a book filled with family anecdotes about my family as well as my in-law’s. Fueled by endless talks with my mother-in-law about the large extended families on both her side and her husband’s, my passion carried over to my marriage.

My husband and I had 35 biological aunts and uncles before marriages and 63 first cousins. That is seven times as many biological aunts and uncles and seven times as many first cousins as our children have.

Add second and third cousins, pile on cousins once and twice removed, and more, and there are now over 3,500 names in our joint family tree. With limited records of Jewish people in days of yore, that only dates back to about 1809. Just imagine if we could go further in Eastern European records of our ancestors toiling in their shtetls.

With so many relatives to keep track of, someone had to plot them out in a family tree and write a book. While Kitchen Talk tells my stories, it lends itself to anyone by tweaking the names and historical details to fill in the blanks of their family nostalgia. After my literary agent submitted my manuscript to publishers in 2017, the response was “very well-written, very well-organized and very interesting.”

With no publication pending, it may be time to reread and make minor updates before plunging into self-publishing. Stay tuned. The mission I am focused on first is to update all our family tree branches one last time before passing the torch.

Aunt Fannie’s vase filled with flowers in the photograph above has been added to my collection.

Kitchen Talk© 2014 by Sharon Mark Cohen
CHAPTER 1
Digging deep to summon up my earliest memory left me adrift in happy thoughts. Possibly, the coveted weekly ritual of being bathed in the kitchen sink produced that first pleasing aura. Maybe what captivated me was being compared to the cute little curly-haired Shirley Temple.
In my mind’s eye, the scene opens with my mother washing me, much the way she scrubbed kosher chickens. With no pin feathers to remove, she wraps me in a large bath towel and hands me over to my aunt. My paternal aunt, Fannie, then takes the trusty threadbare terrycloth and pats the dripping water from my head. Meticulously, she twists sections of my clean wet hair around her full fingers.
With a look of satisfaction, she curls my long, wavy, blonde locks, leaving them to dry into bouncing pipe curls. Then, without failure, my mother insists, “Shirley Temple, look at those curls.” With that, my mother and Aunt Fannie are trying their darndest to get me to dance like the child actor they loved to watch perform, but a smug me is shy beyond coaxing.

Sharon-Shirley Temple look-a-like as a young toddler

Funny how the slightest memories can make you smile…Singed by the fire that hit their apartment on Lyons Avenue, somehow the traffic light at the bottom of the pull chain from the foyer was saved