All Good Things Are Surprises

Are you a Jew or a Nudist?

Given the season, I thought I’d share a story I wrote a while back that was first broadcast on NPR’s “Chanukah Lights” and then published in Narrative.com. While I’ve fictionalized aspects, it’s largely a true story. My grandmother was indeed named Ida and the incident in the antique store happened. What can I say? I’ve always like things that are colorful and bold. And old cans of beans.

IN NEW YORK, I knew only Christmas and Easter. But when we moved to Iowa, my parents banned those holidays. When I asked my mother why the change, she said, “It’s more important that you know what being a Jew is in Iowa than in New York.” When I pressed her to tell me what a Jew was, she shrugged and said, “Someone who doesn’t believe in Christmas, someone who gets eight presents instead of one.” Not that that made sense, but the explanation contained some key words that made it mostly acceptable to me. We lived in See the Rabbits, Iowa, or at least that’s how my parents tricked me into moving there. “We’re going to See the Rabbits,” my father had announced one day a year earlier at Easter dinner. I loved the Easter bunny and Easter egg hunts, so this sounded like a good move to me.

“My God,” said my grandmother Ida. “All the way to see the rabbits? How will the children grow up? It’s bad enough all this Easter stuff, but at least it’s New York.”

Ida turned out to be very anti-rabbit and wouldn’t visit us for the first year. I didn’t go to visit her either. Ida lived in Long Beach, Long Island, and I spent most of my summers there before the move. But not anymore. I didn’t blame her for not visiting. There were no rabbits here, and even its correct name didn’t make much sense. “Cedar” was a kind of tree, and “Rapid” meant fast. What kind of nonsense was that?

But one day Ida arrived in Cedar Rapids by Greyhound bus from Chicago, where the train had let her off. My first words to her were, “So, Ida, are you a Jew or a nudist? Do you believe in Hanukkah?” The reason I asked her was because she didn’t seem to have so much in the way of luggage—just two small bags, and that didn’t seem to be enough to hold eight presents each for me, my sister, and my brother and still have enough room for her clothes. Maybe Ida was a nudist and didn’t need so many clothes. Nudist was a word I had learned recently when my mother had argued with my older sister, who didn’t want to wear bras. The god of the nudists was a fat naked man named Nuddha.

“A nudist!” my mother said. “Where do you get such ideas?”

“Don’t you know anything?” my older sister, Judy, asked.

Luckily, Ida was hard of hearing and half-blind and only wanted a kiss from me on her bristly cheek at that moment.

“Have you been a good boy?” she asked, clutching my head like it was a magic eight ball.

“This one’s a handful, Mother,” my mom said.

“Nonsense. He’s a good boy, aren’t you, Andy?”

“Did you bring me Hanukkah presents, Ida?” I asked.

“You’ll have to wait until Hanukkah to find out,” she said.

“Ah,” I moaned.

“What is it you want for Hanukkah, anyway?” she asked.

“Antiques,” I shouted.

Why some kids grow up with a passion for chess, I’ll never know. Or obsessed with dinosaurs. Or race cars, football, basketball. For me, it was antiques. I don’t know why, but antiques had fascinated me from the first time I set foot in an antique store two summers earlier in Long Beach. The antique store was owned by a woman named Marie and her son, Devon. I spent my afternoons there, turning over yellowed newspapers from the twenties or magazines with long-dead silent film stars. I loved the newspapers most because they were filled with photos shaped into ovals, with things you didn’t see every day, like men walking on the wings of biplanes, elephants, pigmies, and dictators. My grandmother let me spend the better part of every afternoon in that store, and so did Marie, even though I didn’t have any money except the dollar Ida sometimes gave me or that I stole from her purse when she didn’t. Why I stole from her, I don’t know. Ida refused me nothing.

The evening Ida arrived, I made sure to wake her up in the middle of the night so she could give me a midnight snack, a ritual she wouldn’t have wanted me to skip.

“Murderers!” she shouted, her good eye and her skunky one snapping open as she put her hand on her heart.

Ida often said funny things when I shook her awake. But she always seemed so happy to see me, even in the middle of the night, and so she put on her robe over her nightgown and I led her into the kitchen, where she fixed a snack for me and watched me eat. One thing about my grandmother Ida I really appreciated was that she shared all my interests. She loved midnight snacks. She loved falling asleep in front of the TV. She loved going to the beach and to the boardwalk. She loved knishes, pizza, and sesame candy. And, she loved antiques.

The next day, she took me antiquing. We went to my favorite store, and I showed her my favorite things. A hundred-year-old can of beans, a three-cornered hat with a feather in it, old green and brown bottles that shimmered in the sunlight, lead soldiers, a child’s printing press, a rocking horse, stacks of newspapers, wagon wheels, Victrolas and other old phonographs, brass beds, and stuffed animals—a fox, a badger, a bobcat. Helmets from World Wars I and II, and a gas mask.

Ida told me I could pick out anything I wanted for Hanukkah. She said I could have seven small presents and one big one. She’d pick out the small ones, but I could pick out anything I wanted in the store as my big present. “Then we’ll forget you picked it out.”

“Why should I forget about it?” I asked.

“Because then it will be a surprise, and all good things are surprises.”

That made sense, but just to make sure, I asked her: “I can have anything?”

Of course I wanted something really big, so I looked around for the biggest things I could find. Maybe the Victrola. That was big, but not big enough. The biggest things in the store were giant china cabinets and sideboards, but those were boring grown-up things. The thing I really wanted was the can of hundred-year-old beans, and I told Ida, but she shook her head.

“What will you do with a can of dry beans? That so small. I said you could get something big so get something big.”

I wandered off uncertainly, wondering what I could find that we both agreed upon. Then I noticed something I’d never seen before hanging on the wall in back of the store. I’d been in the store a dozen times—it must have just been put up because it was not the type of thing you’d forget about. It was the biggest flag I’d ever seen. It took up half the wall, and it was so colorful, so big, so bold looking I knew I had to have it. Of course, I’d want to hang it in the room I shared with my brother, but I was a little concerned that once my parents saw it, they’d want to hang it in the living room or at the bottom of the stairs. “No, it’s my flag,” I’d tell them. “Ida gave it to me, for Hanukkah.” The flag was red and black and consisted of two bold black lines intersecting, forming a kind of pinwheel. I loved pinwheels.

I took Ida by the hand. “I know what I want,” I said. “But you have to close your eyes.”

She did as I said, and I led her a few steps so that she faced the wall with the flag.

“Now open them,” I said.

She opened her eyes—only one could see, and the other looked uncertainly in front of her. “What?” she said. “I don’t see anything.”

“There,” I said. “That flag.”

“What flag? I don’t see . . .” and then she saw it and she put her hand on her heart the way she did when I woke her for midnight snacks.

“No, never,” she said. “Never, never, never. And don’t ask anymore or you’ll get nothing.”Ida grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the store.

“But Ida,” I said. “It’ll be a surprise. I’ll forget about it if you buy it for me. You promised I could have anything.”

“Nothing,” she screamed at me. “You’ll get nothing for Hanukkah.”

Her screaming at me was stranger than having no presents, and I cried against her side while she stroked my head silently as we waited a half hour in the parking lot for my parents to pick us up. She could have said something to my parents and my brother and sister that would have humiliated me, but she said nothing publicly. Still, that night as I was drying dishes after dinner, my mother told me quietly about the flag and why it was not the best choice for a Chanukah gift. The next night, Ida presented to me as though it were a treasure chest the hundred year old can of beans . I’m baffled to this day why I loved it so much, but I don’t know that any gift I’ve received since has surprised or gratified me more.