Mimi Schwartz and What her Father Always Said...

People who lived through (and associate themselves with) a particular past generation carry a sense of how it was in the “good old days.” More often than not, these people are our parents, grandparents, older relatives or even older siblings (my older brother is 18 years older than I). You’ll always catch people like these saying things that put their generation (or decade, in the case of my brother and sisters) in a higher platform than your own. Lines like “it was better then” or “back in the day, it wasn’t as bad” are always thrown around when these particular people talk about the things that are going on in today’s world. To Mimi Schwartz, her father was one of these who came from a past generation. And in the tradition of those from past generations, Schwartz’s father had a favorite saying, “In Rindheim, you didn’t do such things!” The line is clearly a reflection of how things change through time and Mimi Schwartz, at first, did not understand why this was such a big deal for her father. In her essay “My Father Always Said,” Schwartz explains to us how she had come to terms with her father’s constant comments about how different it was in Rindheim, and in the process, she came to understand her family and even herself.

Schwartz’s essay is subtly separated into six sections. The first section serves as an introduction for the piece. It introduced who she was when she was a teenager and who her dad was then (albeit it was just the tip of the iceberg). She also touched on how things were where she grew up (Forest Hills, Queens). She finishes the introduction by explaining to us that the rest of the piece was to be about her first trip to Rindheim with her father and mother.

The second section deals with her initial impressions of Rindheim. She expressively remembers how different the town was to cities like Stuttgart where her mother was from. The section also tells us a little bit of what Schwartz’ father did as a young man in his old town. The rest of the section deals with how different Rindheim has become in 1993 than the Rindheim she remembers in 1953. However, I believe that the point of the section is the comparison that we get between the life of Schwartz’s father as young man and her young life in America.

The third section goes more into the old synagogue that her father had brought Schwartz and her mother to. Schwartz, being a young and curious girl, asked her father if they were going to go inside the temple. Her father explains that the synagogue was merely a shell of its former self as it was “gutted by fire during kristallnacht.” Not knowing what it was, she asked her father and received an answer that she really wasn’t expecting. The section shows us that the teenage version of Schwartz was beginning to understand a little but more of her history and heritage. It also explained the anxiety her father had about visiting certain places in Rindheim (his old house and the synagogue). Despite the fact that her father’s catch phrase was “In Rindheim, you didn’t do such things,” Schwartz’s father had many stories about Rindheim better left untouched. Schwartz’s father left in 1933, before things became really bad in Rindheim. But a lot of Rindheim Jews did not leave until kristallnacht. The idyllic town was certainly not isolated from the evils brought upon by Nazi Germany.

The fourth section was a little less somber than the previous one. The relatively short section deals with Schwartz’s parents as they told her a few stories from their youth. Schwartz reiterates the fact that life in Rindheim was very different for her father than her life in Queens. She marvels at the fact that her father’s school was not separated by age but rather by religion. But she does feel some comfort in knowing that they all got along. She also receives some comfort from the fact that her mother and father did have some fun when they young.

The fifth section sees a return to somberness. The section is about her visit to the Jewish cemetery in which a lot of her relatives were buried. In actuality, the initial purpose of this trip was to visit their relatives rather than visiting Schwartz’s father’s hometown. Schwartz explains that as much as she tried, she couldn’t put faces to the relatives (especially grandparents) she had never met but essentially she also lost. All she could think of were the grandparents she did know, her maternal grandparents (I assume) who lived three blocks away from their house in Queens. Even when the real tragedy and sadness of the cemetery is explained by her father by describing what happened to tante Rosa, teenaged Schwartz thought it to be not so bad since they were people that she did not know (the existence of tante Rosa was only made known to her when they visited the cemetery).

The sixth section ties all the other sections together. In this section, Schwartz explains how she’s finally accepted her father’s signature line, how it gave her a sense of her own history and sense of legitimacy. However, after the trip, she realized that her father had changed. He no longer said his often repeated line; in its place was a happier one that goes “Smile, Smile! You are a lucky girl to be here!” Although she doesn’t say it quite explicitly, the last paragraph of the section explains to us that her father, during their trip, was able to find some sort of closure that let him let go of Rindheim.

Schwartz writes the piece in a rather exquisite manner. It is quite reflective, like most of the creative nonfiction works I have read thus far. But, perhaps, the main difference lies in Schwartz’s ability to write seemingly disconnected (they were in a way disconnected despite it being about the same trip) sections and brining it all together in the end. It’s as if each sections were like separate pieces of colorful beads. By itself, they are pleasant to read but they lack a beginning and an ending and thus it seems like they are floating (perhaps the first section doesn’t suffer so much from this since it was essentially a “beginning”). However, the last section is like the string that goes through the beads and makes the entire ensemble into a necklace (or bracelet). The gaps in between the sections serve like bookends for the several snippets of Schwartz’s memories of her first trip to Rindheim. The gaps are like smaller, plain beads that emphasize the difference between other beads, making them standout.