Award-winning writer Elly Fishman contacted me from her Montreal home a few months ago. A magazine editor in Chicago before moving to Canada, Elly is freelancing now. She had an idea for a story that would require some research in Chicago. Could she visit her grandmother’s memoir-writing class while she was in town?

That’s Elaine Fishman in our class at the Chicago Cultural Center. Photo by Darlene Schweitzer.

Thoughtful, playful, and humble, Elly’s grandmother, Elaine Fishman, has a kindness that immediately makes you feel like you’ve been friends for years. I told Elly I’d have to ask the class first. “I’m sure they’ll approve.” They did.

Elly sat quietly during her visit, listening intently to every essay she heard. Until she thanked us all at the end, I’d forgotten she was there.

My Grandmother’s Chicago, Elly’s beautiful story about her love for her grandmother and the tales she tells of a long-gone Chicago, was published in Chicago Magazine this month. Reading it leaves me with that wonderful feeling, you know, where you want to smile and cry at the same time. Here’s how it starts:

Three years ago, at the age of 87, my grandmother Elaine Fishman decided to take a memoir-writing class. She’d always been an avid reader, but who knew she was also a prolific writer? Since starting the class, she’s written dozens of stories — usually vignettes of just a few paragraphs — chronicling her long life, which began in Albany Park in the 1920s, back when there were still people around who remembered the Great Chicago Fire. Reading her anecdotes, I’ve learned a lot about the origins of my family, going back to my grandmother’s parents, Russian Jews who immigrated at the turn of the 20th century, and their parents too. More than that, though, I’ve been able to gaze across the years at a younger Chicago, one that sounds a lot more like the Old World than the New.

In “My Grandmother’s Chicago,” Elly creates a double-memoir of sorts. She gives readers bits and pieces of her own story, sprinkles in excerpts of Elaine’s essays, and lets us in on what her grandma’s written stories teach her. When introducing an excerpt of Elaine’s essay about a memorable long ago walk with her father, for example, Elly points out “Grandma’s stories depict a city where life happened on sidewalks and stoops, not on smartphones, and simple things like a walk to a faraway neighborhood counted as a big deal.” After that intro comes this excerpt from the 500-word essay her Grandma wrote for class:

My father grew up in a family of seven sisters, who all lived in Rogers Park. One lovely summer day, my father asked me to join him on a walk to visit them. When I started to tire and complain, he urged me on, saying we were coming to a famous taffy apple shop. Shoemaker’s, what heaven! The day grew warmer and I was thirsty. We stopped in a bar. There was sawdust on the floor and a bowl of hard-boiled eggs on the counter. My father had a beer and the bartender gave me a Coke. My aunts could not believe that my father and I had walked all that way, but for me, walking hand in hand with my father is one of my happiest memories.

Elly writes that some of her grandmother’s best writing is about the lifelong love affair with her husband, Elly’s “Papa Guy.” I have to agree. The ones Elly singles out in the article are class favorites, both of them taking place when her grandparents were still courting — Elaine dancing with Guy in her parents’ kitchen while dressed in magenta taffeta pajamas, and the letters her young GI sent her while overseas during WWII. “He was a gifted artist and adorned the envelopes with drawings,” Elly writes about her beloved Papa Guy. “Eventually, the postman knew where to deliver the letters without having to look at the address.”

Elaine married young, just after Guy returned from World War II. Elly met her own husband, Jonah, when she was just 22. “At the time, my mother worried I’d met him too soon,” Elly writes. “My grandmother never thought so.” Elly began her wedding day with her grandma, spending the morning at Elaine’s Chicago apartment. Before they left for the wedding, Elaine slipped her granddaughter a folded sheet of paper: Elaine had written a story about her own wedding, entitled “No Regrets,” especially for Elly.

“Now, a year into my own marriage, as my husband and I continue to navigate our newly entwined lives, I unfold that piece of paper sometimes,” Elly says to end her article. “Like all of Grandma’s stories, it makes me feel the past is something worth holding on to.”

I ran across an article last week that tackled, or attempted to tackle, a meaningless question that lingers nonetheless, like a musical earworm: What’s with all the mattress stores? And for that matter, with the onslaught of mattress ads?

You can read or listen to the NPR story here, but in the end, it really didn’t answer my question. When I Googled it to get the link for this post, I found that I’m not alone: There were scads of links to stories, like this one at Marketplace, and this one at Freakonomics. I’ve learned that there’s a high profit margin on mattresses, but really, I still don’t get it. Apart from the Ubiquitous Mattress Firm stores, there are the online “bed in a box” companies like Leesa, Casper, etc. Who’s buying these things? At least some people in my building, as our door people stack some of the enormous boxes near their desk when they’re processing them. I guess sleep is hot.

Nor do I get the explosion of niche products, typically sold online only, that purpose that through new technology, they’ve come up with a breakthrough, best-ever, deluxe version of a heretofore everyday utilitarian item. “These socks with change your life!” There’s just no end to products designed to solve problems I didn’t know I have. Men’s underwear appears to be a new focus. You may have seen the Duluth Trading Company commercials—like this one, which makes a guy squirm a bit but at least yields a laugh:

But then there’s the David Archy Dual Pouch Micro Modal Fly Trunks, a diagram of which confuses in a disturbing way. Michael Jordan got me long ago, I’m a Hanes man, and I don’t need no stinking pouches.

It’s also fun and sometimes disturbing to see what guesses marketers make about you. I listen to sports radio off and on, so the biggest assumption is that I’m male, it’s very clear. If you’re looking for a place to get a vasectomy, boost your testosterone, or get an online prescription for generic Viagra, just listen for five or 10 minutes to get all your answers via commercials.

When I’m lucky enough to catch Jeopardy, I learn a lot about stair lifts and reverse mortgages.

And online, well, we’ve all had that eerie feeling when after seemingly only thinking, “Hmm, I need to replace that bathroom faucet,” an avalanche of ads for plumbing fixtures fills the social media feed.

I understand, business is business, and products must be sold. In another life in another galaxy long, long ago (1990), I took a seminar in how to do direct mail. It was enlightening; the experts had a formula, and instructed us to replicate it. You know, with those four-page letters set in typewriter type with phrases like, “But read on, you can save even more!” And little inserts that fell out of the envelope that amplified some product features. Or described a free giveaway. The instructors’ argument more or less went like, “Yeah, it’s cheesy, but it’s what people are used to, and they really want to feel like they’re getting a deal.”

Only problem? Our product was a sophisticated piece of scientific data visualization software. And our audience was largely research scientists in geophysics, astrophysics, hydrology and the like.

We thought, no way is offering a discount and giving a free T-shirt if they order by a certain date going to work. But we tried it a couple times.

And it worked.

Illustration By Anthony Letourneau from “Hanni & Beth, Safe & Sound.” .

Our son was diagnosed with developmental and physical disabilities when he was just one month old. Gus was immediately scheduled for physical, occupational and speech therapy, and when I confided my concerns about his lack of progress to my sister Cheryl, she introduced me to a friend of hers who had an eight-year-old daughter with severe disabilities. The first thing this woman recommended? “Start going to church.” She insisted this wasn’t for religious reasons. “You’re with Gus every day, it can be hard for you to notice some of the little changes,” she said, explaining that people who see her daughter and her in church just once a week notice Susan’s progress. “They tell me so, and that can make me feel better.”

Worth a try.

I started checking out different churches to see where we might feel most comfortable, and the day I visited a nearby Presbyterian church, the pastor’s sermon happened to be a slide show of a construction project the church was sponsoring at a Down’s Syndrome institute in the Yucatan Peninsula. Gus and I would fit in well here. I started attending.

Two loaves of egg braid bread.

A month or two in to our religion experiment, it came time for the church’s yearly phonathon. I signed up to help. A fellow volunteer read names and phone numbers onto a tape recorder for me, I made the calls, raised money with the best of them, and we were so busy that none of us ever got around to eating the treats provided. At the end of the night all of us were asked if we’d like to take any treats home. Never shy when it comes to free food, I shouted “Yes!” and brought home a whole loaf of fancy, untouched, homemade bread.

The bread smelled sweet. I have Type 1 diabetes. I was afraid to eat it. Mike wasn’t interested in it, either, so I told him to take it with him to work the next morning. “Tell them I made it myself,” I instructed. He’d just started a new job, and I wanted to impress his coworkers.

Ah, what a tangled web we weave. The coworkers loved the bread. “Tell her we want more!” One of his new colleagues even asked if she could come over and watch me so she could try making it herself.

Admit my lie, or learn to bake bread? I went with option #2. I called the church secretary to ask if she knew who’d provided the bread the night of the phonathon. “Oh, of course!” she said. “Charlie always bakes bread for the phonathon.”

Charlie? She didn’t mean Charlie, the Pastor, did she? “Yes,” she said. “the pastor.”

Lucky for me, Charlie had a sense of humor. I called him, confessed my sin, he laughed and assured me I could bake bread on my own. Bread bakers rely strongly on the sense of touch, he said. Fingers confirm the water is lukewarm, you feel the dough to see if its risen, and you know you’re done kneading when the dough is easy to stretch, but not too sticky. “When would be a good time for me to come over and teach you?”

At my first and only lesson with Charlie, we used a recipe for a bread called “egg braid.” Charlie guided my hands through the stirring, kneading, baking, and glazing. He even taught me how to separate an egg (crack it in half, keep the yolk in one half of the shell, then just let the white drain into a cup below).

No need to teach me how to braid, though – I wore my hair long back then and had braided it for years. Once we were done assembling the loaves, he reviewed all the steps so I could translate them on tape in my own words.

Ever since the winter Charlie taught me to bake bread, I’ve baked loaves of homemade egg braid to share with friends and family during the holidays. To my Jewish friends, it’s Challah. So here’s the transcript of the recipe I recorded on tape back then. You might notice it does not list the ingredients and amounts at the top – Mike recorded it that way because the conventional method requires constant rewinding, difficult to do when your hands are full of bread dough!

Egg Braid Bread

Put one-half cup lukewarm water in a large coffee cup. Add one package yeast, stir a bit and let it rise. While you’re waiting, get out a large bowl that’s safe in the microwave. Put 2 cups milk, 2 Tablespoons sugar, 1 Tablespoon salt and one-half stick butter into that bowl. Place it in a microwave, turn the microwave on for 30 seconds, take the bowl out and blend with a big spoon. Touch the mixture lightly with your fingers, and if it’s not lukewarm yet, put it back in. Keep checking every 30 seconds or so, and when the liquid feels lukewarm, take the bowl out and blend three egg yolks and two egg whites into the mixture (save the extra egg white in a small bowl in the refrigerator for glazing later).

In a different bowl, put 4 cups flour, gently push your fist into the middle of the flour to make a well. Put your yeast & water mixture in the well, then add the lukewarm milk mixture. Stir, and once it’s blended start kneading it with your hands while it’s still in the bowl –this prevents flour from getting all over the kitchen, hard to clean when you can’t see!

Once you’re done kneading, take the ball of dough out of the bowl, rub that bowl with butter, place the kneaded ball back into the buttered bowl, roll the dough around the bowl so it’s slightly buttered, place a dry dishtowel over the ball and set it aside to rise for about two hours. While it’s rising, butter two cookie sheets. When the dough is risen, gently deflate it with a fist and then split the ball into six relatively even pieces.

Using both hands, Roll each piece against the counter top into a rope about one foot long. Place three of the ropes side by side on one cookie sheet and braid them. Do the same on the other cookie sheet with the leftover three ropes. Cover each braided loaf with plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator for anywhere from 2 to 24 hours.

When you’re ready to bake the bread, set the oven for 375 º. Take the loaf you want to bake out of the refrigerator. Let it sit for a bit while you make the glaze. Use a fork to stir a Tablespoon or so of water into the cup with the egg white (remember, it’s in the refrigerator, too). Use your hands to lightly brush the glaze over the loaf. Bake it in the oven for 35 minutes, or until it feels set. You can double-check if it’s done by thumping the loaf. If you hear a hollow sound, it’s done. Remove the bread from the oven, place it on a rack to cool, and then…Eat!

The essays writers bring to our weekly memoir-writing classes teach me a lot about history, geography, and civil rights. Gabriela Freese and her twin sister grew up in South America — their parents had emigrated from Germany to Paraguay during the European depression after World War I. “I grew up in a German household,” she says in a very slight –and very lovely — accent., Explaining they spoke German at home and adhered to as many German traditions as possible, she adds, “including Christmas cookie-baking marathons!”

Gabriela, on the left, with her twin sister.

Gabriela immigrated from Paraguay to the United States some 60 years ago. She studied dentistry in Chicago, had a dental practice in Oak Park, Illinois and met Uwe Freese, an immigrant from Germany, at a New Year’s Eve party in Chicago. They wed in 1959 and had been married 49 years when Uwe died in 2010.

Our 2018 classes are coming to a close, and Gabriela generously agreed to let me share the essay she wrote when I asked members of her class at The Admiral at the Lake to write about something they’d lost, broken, or destroyed, and explain why that thing was meaningful to them. Enjoy!

Something I broke and what it meant to me -a.k.a. The Button.

by Gabriela Freese

Coming from a household that survived two world wars and the great depression, it was a natural thing for my husband to treasure the first jacket bought with his own money. It was a sport jacket in a grey two-toned herringbone pattern, with a narrow collar and one button slightly above the waist. The tailor who made it used the true and tried styles of heavy shoulder pads and heavy padding in the front to create a more respectable appearance to an otherwise very thin tall man. The jacket was ubiquitous, he wore it everywhere and, as we were getting to know each other, I found out it was the only jacket he had.

Forward a decade, and the jacket was still around. The heavy padding in the front made itself known: the jacket kept getting longer and longer in the front, while getting shorter in the back. By then our fortunes had improved a bit. Other jackets began to take its place, but my husband continued wearing his old one.

I started looking for spaces to make that old jacket more difficult to find, to no avail. Wherever I hid the jacket, it would always reappear. We moved to another house, and in the move the jacket found a new home in the bedding closet. But then it reappeared.

One day a brilliant thought came to me. What about that button? I cut it off. When asked to please sew the button on again, I just could not find the time to do so.

Actually, this illustrates the tug of war between couples over different sets of values. To him the jacket was a symbol of the power money avails to demonstrate independence, assert personality and distinguish yourself from the rest. A sort of first step up the ladder — both professionally and personally — and the clear division of labor between what a husband has to do and what a wife needs to do.

To me, the cutting off of that button meant that I had discovered the soft power of a wife. Up until that point, I had just tried to fit into a predestined position, a position that expected me to follow the examples of the past. Looking back, this button fit right in with the women’s liberation, Ms. Magazine, the National Organization for Women, the shouts to burn the bra. Though I was hesitant to follow all the new rights feminism had wrested from the good ol’ boys, my choice of profession, dentistry, still demanded women walk a very fine line to protect our credibility and ability to succeed.

That was all in the 60’s. The button is now lost, but I still treasure how this small act of rebellion opened up a whole new world to me. Long live the buttons!

NASA InSight Mission crew celebrates the successful landing on Mars.

Back in grade school, there were exciting days when our teacher would wheel a battleship-grey cart carrying a big black-and-white TV into the corner of our classroom. The teacher would tune to CBS and Walter Cronkite, or sometimes to ABC and Jules Bergman, and together, we’d watch a manned space mission blast off from Cape Canaveral.

Whether at school or at home, I always, always watched those blastoffs in wonder.

I followed every EVA (extravehicular activity, or space walk as they were more commonly called) and knew that every thing they were doing was designed to test what needed to be tested to go farther—to the moon. I was a heartbroken 10-year-old when my favorite astronaut, Gus Grissom, was one of three astronauts in training who died in a flash fire. Finally there was Apollo 8, when we first orbited the moon and earth got its first selfie, and 9 and 10, which got oh so close. I kept thinking, why don’t we just land there already?

At last, my family and I huddled around the TV for the Apollo 11 moon landing and walk.

Years later, the company I worked at put on an employee event and had James Lovell speak about his book “Lost Moon,” on which the movie “Apollo 13” was based. I usually tune out motivational speakers at corporate events. Not this time. The story about how much a group of people working together can accomplish really resonated.

When I recall the space race days, I tend to use language like, “When we landed on the moon,” “when we walked in space.” Because, as a kid, it felt that way. “We” as in the USA. “We” as in Americans. “We,” as in we all had a stake in it, and all of us (well, our parents) funded this endeavor.

Those were turbulent times culturally and divisive times politically. Each mission provided a kind of a time-out, an oasis. We were all looking in the same direction, and pulling for the same team. Those moments were otherwise few and far between.

Interest waned. Ho-hum, space. The Shuttle program, which was wrought with problems from its conception, didn’t spark the wonder that the early missions did.

Still, I’ve maintained a passing interest in our space program, enough that I was tracking the NASA InSight Mission landing on Mars this past November 26. I got those old familiar feelings: of awe, of pride, of us.

The landing was a phenomenal accomplishment—the mission launched back on May 5. But in a real way, it was just the latest pinnacle of accomplishment built on the discoveries, curiosity and hard work of humankind. You can draw a line from Mars back to Newton and Galileo. It depends on generations of hard work and steady advancement in a zillion fields.

The InSight Mission goes on, and the data and images roll in. You can track it here. If you need a break from cable news, social media, or the headlines, and you need a shot of inspiration, give it a look and fly away to Mars for a while.