Cnfusion

 

 

 

 



One chapter, two chapters, three... I look at them every so often and I am never satisfied. Something is not right, can't put my finger on it. I read and rearead and fix, and write again and it is still there. Sleeky, invisible, and yet the feeling so strong.

Leave behind a book

Still wrestling with this idea of creating a book about my research, I keep avoiding the work itself. It's not that I do not write I do so profusely. I write all kind of things, my future book not being one of them.

Another option to create family tree

The other day I discovered, the hard way, that a cyber family, much like a real one, develops over time and acquires unique lifelike qualities. It happened when I found in my inbox letters from people suggesting that I will update, fix, resolve duplicates and respond to birthdays. I don’t know them, I don’t believe we ever met in real life or otherwise. My carful and polite inquiries as to our relationship did not produce satisfying results, and then it dawned on me. 

It happened when, so and so (whose name is completely unfamiliar) wanted to merge with me…merging with a complete stranger would seem rather hasty, and quite peculiar, to every normal person except those surfing on Geni (an online family tree creator). And so without further ado I ‘approved’ the procedure which granted me access to his tree with hundreds of new relatives.

So far so good until I noticed, few months into it, that these people I opened my heart and family tree to, are inching, ever so slowly, into my nicely organized creation contaminating it with their inaccurate information and endless requests . Franticly I tried to unmerge and almost like in real life, found that merged tree cannot be severed without destroying the whole tree.  

***

The whole thing started more than three years ago when one night, on a wild impulse, I keyed- in my name into the Google search box, pressed enter and came up with nothing.

It was a terrifying moment I do not care to relive.

I can still sense the cold chill, the feeling of deep limitless emptiness, being overcome with the pressing need to send my hand and reach out, call aloud, anything to relieve the panic.

  It was the first time I really understood the phrase ‘if you are not on the internet you do not exist’. I cursed myself for giving up to the cheap temptation, seeking fake reassurance of myself in the huge limitless cyber space, but it was already too late.

And so about three years ago, in the middle of the night, I did the only thing I could do to alleviate the situation and ‘created’ myself.

It was not as difficult as I originally feared.

All I had to do was to let go of the old notion that the mere fact that I breathe, sleep, eat, and see my reflection in the mirror, and other people eyes, is a sufficient proof of my existence. Instead I pressed on the empty rectangle box in the center of the computer screen and typed my name in –

 Ariela Levia Bilitzer Zucker, born – and for all we know still alive.

I kept typing and inserting other names; my parents, my husband, my children, and in front of my eyes like some sort of magic, my family, with me in the center, was coming alive.

Blue rectangles for the men, pink rectangles for the women (what else) many lines running horizontally and vertically connecting them all to one elaborate net, growing and growing and filling the screen.

The sense of relief was immediate and so rewarding.

When I last checked, my family tree (on Geni) had 543 people; out of which 355 blood relatives (the computer never lie) 18 ancestors and 5 decedents.

 I passed my eyes over the elaborate constellation, created mostly by me. I looked at names most of which are fourth cousins twice, trice or even four times removed. People I don’t know, will never know, and frankly don’t even care to meet.

Still in the middle of the night when the quiet disturbs my sleep and all by myself I surf, I am surrounded by my cyber family, I exist. 

A family tree

What's in a name

"Every person has a name
that God gave him
and which his father and mother gave him " Zelda

“My aunt Eva, historian at heart, claims that our first ancestor was King David. Yes, the red head, brave, sometimes questionable David. King David, the one who conquered Jerusalem, then just an unknown village and made it its capitol. Jerusalem then became the home to the tribe of Judea and till this day carries its’ symbol, the lion. Jerusalem is where I was born almost 3000 years later and was named after my grandmother, Ariela, Levia. Both names mean the same in Hebrew, a lioness of G-d.

This is part of what I wrote for the first meeting of our creative writing group and it was lying quietly in my drawer until about two weeks ago when I happened to reread it and suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks. This makes no sense at all. By “this” I mean the story I told myself and others about the origin of my name. I remember, distantly, how my mother explained it to me. Well, it was almost fifty years ago so it is hard for me to remember her exact words. She told me how she and my father wanted to name me after my grandmother Livia, my mothers’ mother. They were however concerned with the old country ring it had and decided to change it to Levia, which was more up to date. And then as an afterthought made another change and named me Ariela with levia as my middle name. I carried this story with me all these years only for one flawed detail I did not pay attention to. Jews do not name their children after live relatives and my grandmother was alive when I was born. I clearly remember her sharing our tiny apartment in Jerusalem. So if she was alive, who was I named after?

Both my parents are dead now, so is my aunt, Lea, who was my moms’ only sister. There are no other live relatives except for my cousin Miki who lives in Israel. So, I picked up the phone and called her. “Miky” I said. And at that moment I realized, I don’t really know where her name came from either. I pushed the embarrassing thought aside and proceeded with my mission. I explained the name issue only to find out she knew even less then I did and had no idea I even had a middle name.

We departed with a decision that each one of us will try to find as much information as possible. She through her father, my uncle Zerubabel (his name is another mystery waiting to be resolved) and I, by talking to my two elderly aunts, my fathers’ sisters.

After the unfruitful phone conversation I dug out my birth certificate, just to be sure. It was written there, black on white. Ariela, Levia, born on March 1949 in Jerusalem. I also located, after racking my brain, a card box full of old papers and photos I took from my parent’s apartment in Jerusalem, after my fathers’ death. It was found unharmed, tucked at the back of a closet.

In spite of the clear displeasure of my husband, who kept telling me that a name is a name and I am making a big deal over nothing, I spent a whole morning sorting through falling apart yellowing documents.  They were all written in either German or Hungarian, none of which I read or understand. I was looking for any clue, running my eyes along lines and lines of incoherent sentences.

I found my mother birth certificate and my grandmothers’. I found my grandfathers’ wedding certificate and a picture of his grave in Budapest. I tried to make sense out of school papers, more marriage certificates and piles of pictures of people I did not know.  None of these findings shed any light on the name confusion.

So here I am, stuck with a name I made my own for sixty years and suddenly am not sure about.

It makes me sad and confused. I wonder why this never came up in a conversation with my parents while I could still talk to them. It makes me want to tell my daughters “Hey, I am still here, take a moment, let’s talk”.

But deep inside I am thinking, maybe my husband is right and a name is just a name. The thought makes me feel somehow lighter. I can see the humor and fun in this strange situation. “I am free!!!!” I am no longer a captive of a name I did not choose. I don’t have to carry on my shoulders old unknown relatives with a long and troubled past .I can even decide to change this old name and pick a new one. I can find a name that will reflect my real personality better then the old one, a name that will do justice to my sixty years of life experiences.

My grandmother Ethel

One of my favorite pictures.

The young woman in the photo is my grandmother on my mothers’ side. When I look at her picture, one of only few I have of my mother's side of the family, I am amazed and owed thinking that the picture was taken almost a hundred years ago.

I like the picture even though it does not match up to any of my memories of this woman who died when I was three years old, or maybe precisely because of that.

This elegant women, dressed according to the time latest fashion is beautiful and daring. The dark, rather formal overcoat is softened by the white lacy lapel, and it is at the same time somber but also festive. I like the white gloves and the hat, dress items not often seen nowadays.

But best of all I like this woman’s stature and bright eyes. She appears soft and confident at the same time.

She, beside my parents (and me) is the first person I remember. It’s a strange kind of memory based on my first three years of life. It is a limited collection of very few visuals, if any, combined with a vague notion of a person who was there and gone. More than anything it's a memory of a void sprinkled with some stories I heard later on but never completely manage to fill it up. It is also my first memory of death.

While a picture occupies only a tiny fraction of time it can tell a whole story. If I had to choose I’ll pick this one of hers, in her late twenties, right after she left her hometown and married a man from another town. They settled in the big town, Vienna, and open their own business. I know from the stories that she was the mind behind the business operation.

I like this story more than the ones coming next of her struggle to survive during the war, the death of her husband (my grandfather) and her last years in Israel living, with no space of her own, in our tiny apartment. An old heavyset woman with a head cover, but that’s already from another picture.