Susan Senator

Typing on Precious' keyboard is a zen-like experience, because half of the letters are completely gone, rubbed away from so much sweaty use. I find I have no problem with accuracy, however, because I learned to touch-type while in high school, a skill that earned me many an unsatisfying temp job as a young woman. It is my acrylic fingernails that get in the way of perfect typing, far more than the lack of letters.

Ned, Max, and Laura often laugh or exclaim over my odd keyboard and my ability to use it anyway. It is a small but satisfying example of how well humans adapt to their surroundings. I also understand increasingly how much I have adapted to living with Nat, and how easy it is to know him, while others feel mystified by him. Does he find it easy to live with us, who obviously adore him, or is it easier for him to be at school, where his day is full and regimented into predictable time blocks? These days I am able to understand his "silly talk" and interpret it, and he always looks startled and yet happy. He is so happy in general these days, knock wood, it is a joy to see. He is in a peak right now, eminently adaptable, flexible, talkative, charming. It is a growth phase, where I can learn more and more about him, and he can take in more and more around him, effortlessly it seems.

At Thanksgiving the other night Dad told a story of a Polish woman whom some relatives knew who had hidden dozens of Jews during the Holocaust. For years they had hidden in her house, and because she was friends with the Chief of Police, he would warn her whenever the Nazis ("those Devils," as my Polish Grandma called them) were coming, and they would travel through tunnels that had been dug, out into the woods. This enabled them to survive.

I was thinking about conditions that people have to adapt to. Sometimes I wonder how (God forbid) I would do in a situation like the Holocaust. Would I have figured out a way to survive those camps? Apparently a relative of mine (whom everyone always thought of as crazy) Joe Glotzer, a Provincetown artist, survived a mass execution during the Holocaust. He hid under several dead bodies and lay there for a while until it was safe to burrow out. (When I asked in what way was he crazy, Mom said he made inappropriate remarks, often asked women if he could paint them nude. I wondered out loud if perhaps he was always inappropriate, and that maybe it was not the Holocaust that did it to him but genetics? But of course, who could blame him for being "inappropriate" anyway? Imagine surviving such a horror!)

And yet also, in the same family (Dad's side, the Senators), his parents and sisters remained in Warsaw rather than come to America with Irving (Grandpa), Nathan, and Jerry. They perished in the camps. Unbelievable. Why would they stay?

I often wonder if I would know, were something terrible like the Holocaust to come here, (God forbid). Would I feel that this was the time to leave, or would I fall back on hope and optimism and remain behind?

Why am I thinking about this the night that I got back from Thanksgiving? You decide.