Ethical dilemmas in child's play
I wondered how I might apply Kaethe’s teachings to my persistent fear that if I were faced with catastrophe again, I would get stuck in my own suffering and not feel connected to others. I also remembered how Ron and our family were defined by his illness. I hoped that in getting to know Kaethe better I would find ways to address my self- doubts and would broaden my capacity to see beyond illness or whatever other catastrophes might be in my future.
I began our interviews by asking Kaethe what it was like for her growing up.
Kaethe was born in 1947 into a lower-middle-class, secular Jewish family. As a young child she lived in Brooklyn with her parents, Violet and Victor, and her older sister, Jan, as part of a large extended family. Her family had emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900’s from Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary. Family members who had stayed behind had been caught up in the Holocaust. Like many other immigrants, Kaethe’s family resisted telling stories about their painful past, focusing on the present and on how they would make a life for themselves in the United States. Kaethe told me about her grandparents and her extended family:
“I often visited my father’s mother in her small apartment in the Bronx. During a typical visit, I would go to the butcher with my grandmother, who kept a kosher house. She did what she needed to do in her home, but without a lot of conversation about it or her earlier life in Lithuania. She worked hard for her family every day. This life was what was important to her and what she shared with me.
“Being a member of this extended family was part of the good fortune of my childhood. It created a secure childhood. When there were upheavals, I counted on the solid backbone of family. I remember one night when my parents, my sister, and I went to a play in New York City. At the end of the play, as we left the theatre, we found ourselves in the midst of an incredible snowstorm. We realized that we couldn’t get home because we lived an hour outside of the city. My grandmother and aunt still lived in the Bronx in a small apartment. I remember going to their apartment and knocking on the door. It never occurred to me that we wouldn’t be welcome. I assumed that they would be thrilled to see us, and I had no doubts that we could all sleep there. Even in an apartment with only one bedroom, there was always enough room for all of us.”
Not everything in Kaethe’s early life was as predictable as the welcome at her grandmother’s door:
“Growing up in my family, things were both as they seemed, and not as they seemed. No one really was any one way, and the family map had to be understood interaction by interaction. As a child, I navigated these inconsistencies by feeling more deeply and speaking more freely than other family members. I never fully said all that I was feeling, since what I did say pushed the family way beyond its tolerance of me, and they would get very angry with me.
“I was disturbed by what I saw as inconsistencies in ethical relations in our household. In response to this confusion, I lived inside an imagined world, which was an extremely moral and ethical place. This is what I mean by inconsistencies: Although we looked forward to getting together with my mother’s parents, and we got together with them at least twice a month, no one ever spoke about how they went at each other all the time. It was often horrible to be with them, and we were often with them. When my mother was young, my mother’s father had been verbally abusive to her and to her mother. My mother was afraid of him, and I knew it. At the same time, as a grandfather, he was wonderful to me. When I tried to ask my mother to explain how he could be so mean and wonderful at the same time she said, ‘Yes he is a good grandfather, but he was not like that as a father.’ with no other explanation.
“I was also required to spend many hours alone with a close family member on my father’s side of the family whom my father made it clear he didn’t trust. In spite of how he felt about her, she was included in all family events, and, he allowed her close to me. How could he let me spend so much time with someone he didn’t trust?”
When Kaethe commented on these inconsistencies, her mother, although loving, didn’t respond directly to Kaethe’s concerns. In the face of conflict, her mother became “aflutter” and didn’t speak up when, for example, Kaethe’s father, a man who was loving one minute and harshly critical the next, flew into in a fury. Kaethe’s father tried to shut down her questions about what was going on around her. When she would ask about inconsistencies, he would exclaim, “Oh my god, there she goes again.”
For comfort, Kaethe went into her room where she could express all parts of herself in imaginative play. Her best friend there was a stuffed teddy bear she named Teddy Theodore Koala Bear Roosevelt Weingarten. To Kaethe, he was not just an ordinary teddy bear but her source of comfort and her confidant for many years. She told him everything. She had a loving relationship with him that included all her thoughts, feelings, imaginings, based on her ideas about ethics and consistency. In play, Kaethe worked to make things turn out right:
Along with her sense of ethical responsibility, Kaethe developed fears connected to her parents’ active political involvement. During the years of the McCarthy era, the family lived under constant threat, although it was never spoken of in front of the children. Kaethe tried to figure out what was happening. Based on bits of overheard conversations, she imagined frightening scenarios of an unsafe world.
I was struck by the things from Kaethe’s childhood that have been reflected in her life and in her work. She grew up with a sense of danger for herself and for her family that she couldn’t speak about. Alone, she had to figure out ways to make herself feel safe. Since no one wanted to speak with her about her experience, she spoke to Teddy about it and with him found comfort. Speaking out about important things that have been left unsaid has become the cornerstone of her life and her work.
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