Mamou, Maman, et Moi: Knowing as Currency

My mom’s mom (Mamou) was in hiding during the Holocaust in a small house with her two sisters, her brother, and her parents. When she was in hiding, she kept up with her education, even in the 2+ years she couldn’t go to school. After the war was over, she went to university and got a degree in the Classics. I think that it was during this time that knowing became her currency.

It’s not about the knowledge or the quantity, but the fact of knowing, of grasping information and notions and having the drive and yearning to know more, that is valuable—the openness and access to knowing.

My mom (Maman) wrote me a letter when she was five months pregnant with me. In one part, she writes about how the world of my grandfather, her father, is one in which a lot of things are left unsaid, and how she doesn’t want that for me. I haven’t even been able to read the whole letter yet, because I become so overwhelmed by her love and pride in me, as a fetus, but I know that she wants to give me what she knows.

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing” is very much an overused quote (Socrates is to be credited) but there is so much truth to it. I think that in grasping all knowledge in a generation when she had nothing, my grandmother took the knowing and gave my mother the inspiration to let her find out all she could know, which my mother took and, to me she gave the love and access to an emotional “knowing” and now I am left dumbfounded at all that I don’t know. I am not calling myself wise by any means, don’t be fooled. I am just still bewildered by my mom’s letter.

At the time my mom wrote this, she didn’t know, or want to know, what my gender would be. She didn’t know when I would read it, or who I would be. She didn’t know that at nine years old, I would cry when she gave me a Shepherd’s pie because of the poor cow that was killed, vow to never eat meat again, and still eat a hot dog two weeks later, failing to realize that that was also meat. Or she didn’t know that I would be the worst storyteller and that she would someday beg me not to tell her stories anymore (sucks to SUCK). The weirdest part to me is that she had no idea that, within the first eighteen years of my life, she would have had cancer four times (she is alive and well, with only one leg missing, we’re all good). I haven’t found why yet, I just know that it keeps popping in my head so I need to write it down.

I’m making an attempt to reach out to the outside world, that doesn’t know my family or family history, etc., and including a stream of NPR podcasts having to do with the Holocaust. It’s important to me to clarify that I included every podcast in the first two pages of results, besides those having to do with Israel directly. This is due to, what I’m assuming to be obvious, political reasons.

I am drastically different from my grandmother, and my mom lies somewhere in between the both of us, and in some ways I suppose I have to contradict myself and realize that Mamou and I are exactly alike. These images are of Mamou and Maman when they were twenty (my age), along with Mamou’s university class notes and Maman’s letter to me. Since I am still twenty, I don’t feel as though I’ve been concretized and, unlike the images of their writings, since mine is present, I feel comfortable and assertive in having it very much here.

I struggle with loving my family, or acknowledging the love that I have for my family, I think because I can’t digest how lucky I’ve been to be (unreligiously) blessed with them and it puts me in this overwhelmed, speechless, stunted state that I hate not understanding (I have no tolerance for ambiguity, but working on that has been my driving theme this year). All I know (ironically) is that I am so lucky to be able to love, and to receive it as abundantly as my mom and my grandma have been able to give to me.

Also please note how cute my grandma is and how much of a BABE my mom is??