Esther Feldman Icikson - October 23 & 29, November 5 & 12, 2001
Grandmother
What kind of memories do you have of your grandmother?
I don't remember her. You know what I remember only? You see, she lost sight in one of her eyes. Um, years later when my daddy grew old and he had trouble with his eyes, turned out that he had glaucoma. And, you know, this is in the genes, and evidently that's what went wrong with her. Uh, glaucoma uh, stress will bring it out.
Mm-hm.
And probably that's what happened, but who knew? So the doctor said that cold compresses would help. So my job was to put on cold compresses on my grandma's eye. That's all I remember about my bobe Gitel. Um, I don't remember her face. I know she was a tall woman.
But your mother was very short you said.
Yeah. But my, my bobe Gitel was tall. My mom was short. Um, when we were very hungry in Siberia my brother would go out. Interesting--the Russians are interesting people. They had potatoes. Instead of giving it or selling it to the people they would bury it in the ground for the winter. But they didn't give it to us. Well, I don't know how my brother discovered it, that there are potatoes buried in the ground. And he would go out at night and he was stealing these potatoes. He would take a screwdriver and chop up the snow and get into the ground and pull out some potatoes.
Do you know why they were burying them?
I don't know, for safekeeping? And then, he would put in--he would wear long pants and they would be tied in the bottom around his ankle, so he would toss them inside there...
Yeah.
...you see, and....
[interruption in interview]
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