Esther Feldman Icikson - October 23 & 29, November 5 & 12, 2001
Reunited with Father (continued)
Starving?
No, I don't think so. You sing, uh.
So you distracted yourself.
Oh yeah. You talk, You look outside and see tiny little lights. That's one thing that when I travel at night...
You look...
It reminds me of Siberia when I traveled down the Chulym because if the lights are very tiny, I say, oh my God, it's just like Siberia when I--because you see it, there a very tiny little light.
Not very populated--Siberia.
Yeah.
No one still lives there, right?
Right. And so what happened was my daddy found out that we're there and my mom came back. She was, we were all laying under a feather bed because it was extremely cold. And my sister was sitting, she made a little fire you know, you make a few sticks and two little uh, um, bricks, you see, we put two little bricks together. And then you put a little bit of uh, sticks or wood, whatever you have in between, you put a pot on top of it.
And this was in your father's dwelling.
No, no, no, this was by the shore.
By the shore.
We are ourselves. We are still hungry. We had a few potatoes. My sister's peeling potatoes and she's going to put out the potatoes to cook so we can have something to eat. My mom is exhausted because she is cold and freezing ???. And my sister was there and she picked up her hat and suddenly she sees daddy is coming. She says, in Yiddish she says ???. Well, you've never seen anything like it. My mom couldn't get up, she was just standing like a statue.
Frozen.
Frozen. Us kids, we jumped up, we started screaming, you know. It was a very emotional meeting.
You were very close to your father?
Oh yeah, I had a wonderful daddy, wonderful daddy.
Did he survive the war?
Oh yeah! My daddy died when he was eighty--eighty-eight here in the United States. My mom died when she was ninety-three. Just four years ago.
Um, just let me ask you one more time. Is there anything that renews those feelings ever? I mean, I understand September 11th did. But is that...
To think about the war, you mean?
To think about the war. About your own, I mean, do you see yourself every now and then as a child again in the war?
No.
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