In the spring of 1950, when I was eight years old, Zaideh Abe was up to “K” in the encyclopedia. If I had been behaving especially well—helpful to my mom and her mom, Bubbeh Bessie—he’d let me sit beside him on the couch, open the chosen volume, and take a turn reading out loud. If I stumbled over a big word, Zaideh helped me sound it out.
I remember one rainy, dreary Sunday when we read about a magician named Harry Kellar, who was internationally famous at the end of the nineteenth century. The article mentioned his most popular stage illusions but gave only a few details about how he did them. It was little more than a list headed by his top acts: The Levitation of Princess Karnack, The Vanishing Lamp, The Floating Head. I thought the latter sounded like the silliest of his tricks and told Zaideh so.
“When I was little,” I explained, “I used to believe in magic, but now I know it’s all just trickery. That’s because my dad took me to a magic show where a lady in a box was sawed in half and put back together again, but she wasn’t hurt one bit. Dad said she was scrunched up in one end of the box, and that’s why she didn’t even get a scratch.”
“Oh, my,” Zaideh Abe said, feigning horror, “I certainly agree that’s not real magic. “That’s only someone performing tricks for money. But I can assure you there’s real magic all around us, and even if you can’t see it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Can you see happiness, sadness, anger? No. But you can see the consequences—a smile, a tear, a frown. Remember when Bubbeh Bessie summoned Freileck? What else could that be but magic?”
Freileck was Jake Finklestein’s cat. I knew that when it went missing, the whole neighborhood searched. For two days, Jake sat on his front steps and cried while everyone else peered into cellars and garages or poked under porches and every bush in every yard. But no Freileck.
On the third day, Bubbeh Bessie got up from her afternoon nap and walked to Jake’s house. “Can you guess vhat I have in my apron pocket,” she asked little Jake in her slightly accented English that mispronounced “w’s.”
Then she gently pulled out a tiny, furry thing who protested with a loud Meowww.
“We searched every inch of everywhere for that cat,” Zaideh Abe told me now. “He wasn’t anywhere. So how come your bubbeh all of sudden found him?”
“Luck,” I said. “He was going home just as Bubbeh went outside.”
“Nonsense,” Zaideh said. “When Bubbeh Bessie saw how sad Jake was, she used her magic to summon Freileck home. Maybe no one saw her work her magic, but the result proves she did. I can tell you for sure that luck is one thing, but magic is quite another.”
“Stop filling her head with silly stories,” my bubbeh said as she came into the room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She was only five feet tall and as round as Zaideh Abe was thin and all angles, and she was always smiling.
She extended her hand to me. “It’s lunch time,” she said. “I made beet borscht and there’s black bread fresh out of the oven to smear with sveet butter.”
I hopped to my feet and was following her into the kitchen when she turned half-around towards Zaideh Abe. “If I could do magic,” she said softly, “I could have vhisked avay the family I left behind before those Nazi murderers… before….” But Bubbeh Bessie didn’t finish her thought. Instead, she leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “No more sadness,” she said. “I’m here and you’re here and my foolish husband is here and ve’re all hungry. So let’s eat lunch.”
One day, years later after Zaideh Abe had passed away and I was in high school, I joined my mother and aunt to watch Bubbeh Bessie make kuchen for the Yom Kippur break-fast. We took notes from the moment she began to knead the yeast dough to the final sprinkling of cinnamon sugar over the fat pastry rolls she’d stuffed with apples, coconut, raisins, and chopped nuts.
Bubbeh never measured anything, so we decided to watch her bake in order to quantify in standard measurements what a handful of this and a pinch of that was equal to. Her amazing desserts were our family’s legacy, and we wanted the recipes to live on as long as there was a sweet tooth to savor them.
That afternoon as the kuchen baked and a buttery, yeasty aroma filled Bubbeh’s kitchen, I had the sudden thought that maybe Bubbeh Bessie could do magic after all. Not the spectacular kind that rescues lost cats or whisks people across an ocean and out of danger, but the everyday kind of magic that transforms ordinary things like flour and eggs and apples into an almost otherworldly experience.
I know Zaideh Abe would agree.
I remember one rainy, dreary Sunday when we read about a magician named Harry Kellar, who was internationally famous at the end of the nineteenth century. The article mentioned his most popular stage illusions but gave only a few details about how he did them. It was little more than a list headed by his top acts: The Levitation of Princess Karnack, The Vanishing Lamp, The Floating Head. I thought the latter sounded like the silliest of his tricks and told Zaideh so.
“When I was little,” I explained, “I used to believe in magic, but now I know it’s all just trickery. That’s because my dad took me to a magic show where a lady in a box was sawed in half and put back together again, but she wasn’t hurt one bit. Dad said she was scrunched up in one end of the box, and that’s why she didn’t even get a scratch.”
“Oh, my,” Zaideh Abe said, feigning horror, “I certainly agree that’s not real magic. “That’s only someone performing tricks for money. But I can assure you there’s real magic all around us, and even if you can’t see it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Can you see happiness, sadness, anger? No. But you can see the consequences—a smile, a tear, a frown. Remember when Bubbeh Bessie summoned Freileck? What else could that be but magic?”
Freileck was Jake Finklestein’s cat. I knew that when it went missing, the whole neighborhood searched. For two days, Jake sat on his front steps and cried while everyone else peered into cellars and garages or poked under porches and every bush in every yard. But no Freileck.
On the third day, Bubbeh Bessie got up from her afternoon nap and walked to Jake’s house. “Can you guess vhat I have in my apron pocket,” she asked little Jake in her slightly accented English that mispronounced “w’s.”
Then she gently pulled out a tiny, furry thing who protested with a loud Meowww.
“We searched every inch of everywhere for that cat,” Zaideh Abe told me now. “He wasn’t anywhere. So how come your bubbeh all of sudden found him?”
“Luck,” I said. “He was going home just as Bubbeh went outside.”
“Nonsense,” Zaideh said. “When Bubbeh Bessie saw how sad Jake was, she used her magic to summon Freileck home. Maybe no one saw her work her magic, but the result proves she did. I can tell you for sure that luck is one thing, but magic is quite another.”
“Stop filling her head with silly stories,” my bubbeh said as she came into the room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She was only five feet tall and as round as Zaideh Abe was thin and all angles, and she was always smiling.
She extended her hand to me. “It’s lunch time,” she said. “I made beet borscht and there’s black bread fresh out of the oven to smear with sveet butter.”
I hopped to my feet and was following her into the kitchen when she turned half-around towards Zaideh Abe. “If I could do magic,” she said softly, “I could have vhisked avay the family I left behind before those Nazi murderers… before….” But Bubbeh Bessie didn’t finish her thought. Instead, she leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “No more sadness,” she said. “I’m here and you’re here and my foolish husband is here and ve’re all hungry. So let’s eat lunch.”
One day, years later after Zaideh Abe had passed away and I was in high school, I joined my mother and aunt to watch Bubbeh Bessie make kuchen for the Yom Kippur break-fast. We took notes from the moment she began to knead the yeast dough to the final sprinkling of cinnamon sugar over the fat pastry rolls she’d stuffed with apples, coconut, raisins, and chopped nuts.
Bubbeh never measured anything, so we decided to watch her bake in order to quantify in standard measurements what a handful of this and a pinch of that was equal to. Her amazing desserts were our family’s legacy, and we wanted the recipes to live on as long as there was a sweet tooth to savor them.
That afternoon as the kuchen baked and a buttery, yeasty aroma filled Bubbeh’s kitchen, I had the sudden thought that maybe Bubbeh Bessie could do magic after all. Not the spectacular kind that rescues lost cats or whisks people across an ocean and out of danger, but the everyday kind of magic that transforms ordinary things like flour and eggs and apples into an almost otherworldly experience.
I know Zaideh Abe would agree.
