"In Winter"
by the Ukranian-born Hebrew writer Yosef Haim Brenner (1881-1921), published in 1904, is a collection of stories about the hardships of poor Jewish families living in Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century. Brenner immigrated to Palestine in 1909 where he worked as a farmer and teacher. He was murdered in 1921 in Tel Aviv during the anti-Jewish Arab riots. [Source]
I realize you may not approve of the juxtaposition, but sometimes it is the only way I can begin to grasp the meaning of anything. Sometimes I say, go ahead and compare that apple to that orange. Whatever it takes. Why not. Who cares. I think my dad, posing us out there in the snow, was doing that. He was trying to capture the immensity of it all, what it meant to live here in the middle of nowhere, rural Pennsylvania, in the dead of winter. There we are, half way between the barn and the house, the barren woods beyond, in all that snow, plowed and shoveled and tromped through, cold enough to clump so you know it's January snow, not that wet brown sludge later on. There's this wife of his with a baby in her arms and four other kids -- yes, four, maybe you can't see me but I'm there, I'm the little one in the dark blue snowsuit near the legs of the older kids, looking (typical of me) away. Everyone else is being brave and smiling for the camera, or trying to.
Mid century America, so no, we aren't in danger of any Russian anti-jewish pogrom. We are Methodists, first of all. A nice Protestant family in the middle of nowhere, which is to say rural Western Pennsylvania on a farm in the snow. Who would want to come after us? Well, actually the Russians, or they're supposed to be wanting to, coming to get us that is and as a matter of fact because they are Communists, and perhaps as my father is taking this picture he is thinking of that bombshelter he wants to build in the cellar in case the Cold War really does take a turn for the worse.
What have I done, you can almost hear my father thinking, trying to raise a family in this place, in this time, in this world. He has brought us here recently, soon after I was born. You do not have to ask whose woods these are; they are ours, but does that change the picture? Look at us. Look at the proportions. What are the odds? Look at the scale of the world in comparison to this mother and children. He was responsible for us, for bringing us here. Look at the snow. Feel the cold. Why are we stopping here? How far are we from the nearest neighbor? From town? (Not that far, but it seems far). The lake frozen.
Now, years and years later, I am writing this in sunny California during the invasion of Gaza. I have been to Gaza once. But given where I grew up, the way I grew up, you might imagine I would have trouble understanding what is happening there or what it would be like to be living there, or raising a family there. I was told so. "You have no idea what it is like here," I was told. "You have no way of understanding what is going on here." It was true. True then and still true now. Comparisons are always risky. They fail, they fall short, they don't help.
So maybe there is nothing to be learned here. About anything. Maybe my dad wasn't even trying to capture the daunting, overwhelming enormity of the world and his place in it, with this family of his. Maybe he was just standing too far away when he decided to take a picture. That's all. There is no juxtaposition, no comparison, no apples or oranges, no meaning to be extrapolated and carried like some snow white flag into the future which is the present, even if you wanted to, and no way to say something that will do any good now. I'm being serious. A picture can only say so much, and it may say nothing very important or helpful to you about the nature of family or the place of people and families in the world. Or to me either. You can't even see me in the picture, so why am I even trying? I don't know. It's winter. In winter it's cold and there's snow. In winter the world seems like a dangerous place. A man tries to raise a family in that dangerous world and take care of them and keep them safe. And they try and smile for the camera.
I realize you may not approve of the juxtaposition, but sometimes it is the only way I can begin to grasp the meaning of anything. Sometimes I say, go ahead and compare that apple to that orange. Whatever it takes. Why not. Who cares. I think my dad, posing us out there in the snow, was doing that. He was trying to capture the immensity of it all, what it meant to live here in the middle of nowhere, rural Pennsylvania, in the dead of winter. There we are, half way between the barn and the house, the barren woods beyond, in all that snow, plowed and shoveled and tromped through, cold enough to clump so you know it's January snow, not that wet brown sludge later on. There's this wife of his with a baby in her arms and four other kids -- yes, four, maybe you can't see me but I'm there, I'm the little one in the dark blue snowsuit near the legs of the older kids, looking (typical of me) away. Everyone else is being brave and smiling for the camera, or trying to.
Mid century America, so no, we aren't in danger of any Russian anti-jewish pogrom. We are Methodists, first of all. A nice Protestant family in the middle of nowhere, which is to say rural Western Pennsylvania on a farm in the snow. Who would want to come after us? Well, actually the Russians, or they're supposed to be wanting to, coming to get us that is and as a matter of fact because they are Communists, and perhaps as my father is taking this picture he is thinking of that bombshelter he wants to build in the cellar in case the Cold War really does take a turn for the worse.
What have I done, you can almost hear my father thinking, trying to raise a family in this place, in this time, in this world. He has brought us here recently, soon after I was born. You do not have to ask whose woods these are; they are ours, but does that change the picture? Look at us. Look at the proportions. What are the odds? Look at the scale of the world in comparison to this mother and children. He was responsible for us, for bringing us here. Look at the snow. Feel the cold. Why are we stopping here? How far are we from the nearest neighbor? From town? (Not that far, but it seems far). The lake frozen.
Now, years and years later, I am writing this in sunny California during the invasion of Gaza. I have been to Gaza once. But given where I grew up, the way I grew up, you might imagine I would have trouble understanding what is happening there or what it would be like to be living there, or raising a family there. I was told so. "You have no idea what it is like here," I was told. "You have no way of understanding what is going on here." It was true. True then and still true now. Comparisons are always risky. They fail, they fall short, they don't help.
So maybe there is nothing to be learned here. About anything. Maybe my dad wasn't even trying to capture the daunting, overwhelming enormity of the world and his place in it, with this family of his. Maybe he was just standing too far away when he decided to take a picture. That's all. There is no juxtaposition, no comparison, no apples or oranges, no meaning to be extrapolated and carried like some snow white flag into the future which is the present, even if you wanted to, and no way to say something that will do any good now. I'm being serious. A picture can only say so much, and it may say nothing very important or helpful to you about the nature of family or the place of people and families in the world. Or to me either. You can't even see me in the picture, so why am I even trying? I don't know. It's winter. In winter it's cold and there's snow. In winter the world seems like a dangerous place. A man tries to raise a family in that dangerous world and take care of them and keep them safe. And they try and smile for the camera.
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