Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

79 Air. Monday and Other Tales of Jewish Amsterdam

Then that letter came from London in which the daughter wrote,"... in about four months, I expect the baby."

From that moment on, Grandmother became restless. Her daughter was going to have a baby, and she would not be there. Impossible, she told herself, that had never happened before. At all previous confinements in the family, she had assisted the mid-wife. But now her daughter was in a strange land, far from family and friends, and she would not be there to stand at the bedside and tell everybody what was to be done.

So Grandma Gittel made the biggest decision of her life, she herself would go to London. She had saved some money, and it was enough to pay the fare.

My mother objected, "You are utterly meshugah.At your age, a woman in her eighties who cannot speak a word of English.You can't even read or write. They should put you in jail."

Mother called our family together. Grandma sat like a Queen among her courtiers and listened. Everybody spoke at the same time and nobody approved her plan. But they could talk, for all Grandma cared. She only said, "I'm going, and that's that."

And she went, of course. All by herself. The whole family saw her off at the train, as if she were a small child. She had a straw suitcase with some clothes, and bread and butter cake. It was her food for the trip, to live on until she could get food that her daughter had prepared. From strange kitchens Grandmother did not eat.

That was before the First World War, when people could travel between countries without much difficulty. From the train, she transferred to a steamer. She was not a