A Piece of Her Heart

Book excerpt: My bubbe's house was filled with photos of all the children and grandchildren she would not count. The photo gallery was a mirror of the life cycle of the family ... The lost family, the family in Russia, was frozen in the moment of the only portrait we had. That photo stood by itself on a small window sill at the right corner of the dining room. To us, they were always a little girl, a little boy, and two young parents, all of them staring somberly at us. None of them were included in the count of "not one, not two," of my grandmother's children and grandchildren. Why didn't my mother and her siblings talk about their lost sister in all the years of my childhood? How could my grandmother have tucked away the memory of the daughter who was her first child? How could she see that photo every day and yet never speak of Frayda? They, especially my grandmother, must have buried her deep within their hearts so that they could cope with the sorrow, the loss, and the guilt of being safe in America.