This Is Where I Came in This Is Where I Came In

This Is Where I Came In Erens This Is Where I Came In Patricia Erens THIS IS WHERE I CAME IN by Patricia Brett Erens Chicago 2014 For my children, my grandchildren and whoever follows this is where i came in 5 Preface I am not sure why other people write a memoir, but in my case I wanted to document my life so that I could pass on some history about myself and other members of our family. Many of these stories and anecdotes have now become family legends. But others will be new. A full family genealogy is provided in the Appendix for those who are interested. The celebrated news reporter, Barbara Walters, claimed that the best time to release an autobiography is in your 70s, so my timing is right. Although I begin with my earliest memory and progress chronologically, this is not an autobiography that seeks to objectively and dispassionately cover every aspect of my life. Rather it is a memoir in the French sense meaning memory or reminiscence. As readers will discover, I frequently jump back and forth in time when I want to make connections between the past and later events and the reason for these jumps is associative and emotional. What appears on the following pages are the important events as I remember them and the people who played a significant part in my life. Most importantly I have tried to reconstruct my feelings at the time about what happened. Obviously everything derives from my perspective with all its limitations. I may be mistaken about some of what I have recorded and may have forgotten to include many things. I have tried to be as honest about myself as possible and to be truthful about others as well. Hopefully I will not create any ill will. Surely some readers will disagree with my interpretations. Another motivating factor for taking on this project is as a way of summing up: what kind of life have I lived, what did I accomplish, what did it all mean? What might I have done differently and what regrets do I now have? In looking at the arc of my life I was surprised to discover that I am almost exactly the same person I was as a young child. I do think I remember reading that about age three 6 our personalities are set. I believe I am the same curious, enthusiastic, somewhat rebellious person I was when I was quite young. Which is not to say I have not learned anything over the last 75 years. Happily I can report that I have few regrets. Of the many dreams I had, I have accomplished most of them. I believe that I have lived an active and fully engaged life. There were several academic degrees, many scholarly books, lots of organizational work, and a great deal of world travel. But the meaningful aspect of my life is my family - my two children, Pamela and Bradley, and my five grandchildren, Jacki, Abraham, Hannah, Sam and Willy - and my dear friends, who have supported and nurtured me for so long, especially Shom Klaff, who I have known for over fifty years. A few more thanks. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Edward Goldfarb who took over where Harold Balikov left off, helping me go backward so I could move forward, helping me discover new insights that gave me options for living a fuller, happier life. And to Sigalit Zetouni and Amy Doubet-Devitt, my two intrepid book designers who stayed with me for the long haul, never complaining about the endless changes and never allowing me to compromise for other than the most beautiful book ever. I began working on this memoir in 2001 and many things have changed since then. I have lost some dear friends, most importantly Ophira ben Arieh, whose intelligence, humor and independence I always admired. Also, as I finish writing, Bradley and Lisa Erens are sadly in the progress of divorce. In closing, I would like to thank Pamela Erens for the time she took from her own writing to copyedit my manuscript. This book would not have been the same without her input. this is where i came in 7 From the Beginning Here is the story of my life as best I remember it. How truthful should I be; how truthful can I be? What is the story I want to tell? It seems to me that my life divides into three equal parts. First there is my childhood and growing up which took about 22 years. This ends with my marriage, although I’m not so sure how grown up I really was when that took place. Next came the middle years, children and advanced degrees. This ends 24 years later in divorce. And the last quarter covers my years as a single woman. Being single does not mean that I was alone, however. There were several men in my life after Jay, but more about that later. What is my first memory? I recall being in a hotel room at some seaside resort. It was probably Wildwood, a beach in New Jersey that my parents went to every summer in the 1940s. I was probably about three. I seem to picture myself running away from my mother, round and round the beds. She evidently wanted to put some alcohol (or whatever they used at that time) on a mosquito bite and I was trying to avoid the sting. Round and round I went. I am sure she eventually caught me. Odd that such a trivial event would stick in my mind after all these years. However, to a certain degree it is illustrative of the rest of my life or at least my relationship with my mother. She was always trying to perform some task on me which usually hurt, but, of course, was for my own good. To be fair, that is the role of a good mother. On the other hand, I was always thwarting her, running the other way. I always felt trapped by her, as I was in that little hotel room. And in the end, she always caught me, until I was old enough to leave home. But little did I understand that I never really got away from her. Wherever I went, I took her along inside. There are probably four events that have defined my life and the most profound was, not surprisingly, the earliest, which occurred when I was one month shy of three. To avoid suspense, I will name the other three, although I will write about them later where they most properly belong: number two has to be my marriage to 8 Jay that not only brought me to Chicago, a city I dearly love, but also helped create Pamela and Bradley, the heart of my heart and the bone of my bones. I cannot imagine any two more wonderful human beings. They have not only been there for me without question, but they have grown into responsible, mature adults, who have created families of their own and are leading meaningful lives. And to give credit to where credit is due, Jay provided me with a wonderful lifestyle during our twenty years together and was in part responsible for providing with the means to continue that lifestyle (with some other help) for the rest of my life. The third event was my psychoanalysis with Harold Balikov, a kind and compassionate man and a terrific analyst. I credit him with saving my life or the emotional part of my life, helping me finally grow into a self-confident woman who was able to find inner peace, although the full extent of that peace was not evident until many years later. The fourth event was my choice to pursue a doctorate in the new discipline of film studies at Northwestern University which eventually led to a career as a university professor that took me all over the world. It not only brought me a small degree of recognition and needed income in the latter half of my life, but it became a vital part of my physical and mental well-being, organizing my weeks, stimulating my intellectual curiosity and putting me in touch with young people and new ideas. Despite the many pleasures my life has provided, there is no place I would rather be than in the classroom. And finally, it is hard to sum up my life without including my friend Shom, who is not simply a best friend, but something between a sister and a lover. By now I understand that there are all kinds of love and certainly there is a place for a love between two people of the same sex that is not homosexual. I don’t remember when Shom and I began checking in with each other every night to share the day’s events and to process whatever was on our minds, but it has been decades and I can’t imagine that I could have gotten through my life without her. Pity the poor souls that don’t have a friend like that. So to begin at the beginning or rather at two years, 11 months. While most every other event in my life has been a positive, the initial event was traumatic. It has sadly marked almost every relationship in my life and left its impression on my emotional life. The details are as follows. Our family had just moved into 1606 Nicholson Street and my mother was eight or so months pregnant.

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