Brooklyn, New York, in the 1940s was bubbling over with Italian, Jewish, and Irish immigrants, and their first-generation children. Tenements are bursting at the seams, spitting kids out onto cemented, dingy streets. They played stickball, triangle, stoopball, and Johnny on the Pony- Shadowed by mountains of brick and small kids’ heads poking out of gated windowsills. Where smells of immigrant cooking permeates the hallways and reminded us where we came from.

I’m up at bat, tapped broomstick in hand when from the 6th floor my name is screeched out echoed through the chamber of buildings. Michael, I need you to buy a loaf of bread. “I’m in the middle of a game” I don’t care what your in the middle of; we’re getting company tomorrow; go now, or your Father will hear about this. So now, the biggest play of the day was not two sewer lids up in the outfield but catching my Mother’s change purse containing 18 cents in nickels and pennies. Which feels like 10 pounds when it’s rocketing down from the 6th floor into my hands.

The holidays. 

The entourage descending on us for the Jewish Holidays was my Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and Grand Parents, usually from my Mothers side of the family. Occasionally those from Dad’s family that she anointed were invited. Since my dad worked for a Deli we could afford the throng of 24 or more who crammed into our one-bedroom apartment, where we played musical chairs and could smell the garlic on each other’s breath. They sat on the floor, on the bed, in the hall, wherever there was an inch of space.

If you were sardined in the hallway, you could hear the toilets chain yanked every 5 minutes. Niagara Falls was tranquil in comparison. I think waiting their turn is where most of my relatives learned to dance. 

Our Family.

We could walk to almost all of my relative’s homes or friends of theirs. They continuously surrounded us. It was hard to get in trouble without these guardians of the American Dream finding out. Our safety net covered most of Brownsville, Brooklyn. When my Aunt got Polio, her two boys stayed with us in our one-bedroom apartment for a month, so my Uncle could get on his feet and figure out how he would survive without her help.

We were poor but weren’t crippled by it. On the contrary, it brought us all together. We lavishly celebrated weddings and Bar Mitzvahs on a grand scale, with as many as 150 people. It was the culmination of a Jewish immigrant’s success in the new country. I remember my Bar Mitzvah, where without telling my father, my Grandfather, in his joy, invited the landlord and his wife, the local butcher, the grocer, and his boss, who owned the tailor shop where he worked 6 days a week, 10 hours a day.

Then there was my cousin Murray, whose Mother insisted he plays the accordion at every affair. He was about 11 years old and as wide as he was tall, so getting down on one knee with his accordion and singing Mammy was as stressful as listening to him, but he was family.

During the summer, our tribe escaped the tenements and two family brick attached homes and vacationed in the Catskill area of upstate NY. We rented one-bedroom bungalows which included a mini refrigerator, a tiny rust, stained sink and a closet sized bathroom with a pull-down chain and wooden handle to flush the toilet. Air conditioning was the holes in the screens, which were there to let the flies out. We slept well on old lumpy mattresses. 

The husbands usually came up on the weekends while we were there with our mothers and aunts, cousins, and friends for the whole summer. We picked fresh berries together, swam in the lake, and explored the forests. Generally we ate in the communal kitchen next to a rec area playroom where on the weekends our family would create their own shows. We sang, we danced, we made fun of ourselves, we were alive and breathing the fresh mountain air, for many of us this was the gift of America.  

Chasing the American Dream.

Eventually, my father and uncle with the help of a loan from my grandfather, who raised five children in a one-bedroom apartment, bought a Deli Restaurant in Bed Sty, Brooklyn. If we needed extra hands during holidays when we did a lot of catering and take out business, our family chipped in. If a relative needed extra money or food, or work they were always welcomed in the deli. 

I started working in the Deli when I was about 11 years old; it’s where I learned about the world. It’s where I met Spanish and Black families who wanted the same American Dream and had the same strong family core values we did. The Deli was the neighborhood’s social gathering place. Stories, music, laughter, heartaches, and troubles blended over a beer and a hot dog.

At thirteen, my family moved to an upscale, two-family, three-bedroom apartment on a tree-lined street in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, where I went to Junior High School. Now we traveled to see family by car. With our brand new 1952 Studebaker, the one where it was hard to tell if we were coming or going. Our families started spreading out as they saw more sunlight, dinned out, and vacationed in Florida instead of the Catskills. We were riding the dream. The next step for my parents was brainwashing my Brother, and me to become the cliché of Americanized Jewish families. We must become Doctors or Lawyers, and if you were not that smart, an accountant would be acceptable. If you’re female, marry a Doctor or Lawyer and or become a teacher or social worker. Either way college was a given. 

In the middle of this acceleration, my Fathers friend talked him into purchasing a log cabin home in the wilds of New Jersey. He loaned my father the $1,000.00 down payment on this-one bedroom cabin with an enclosed porch that faced a creek in the woods running through the property. He showed my father how renting it would more than cover the mortgage, which it did. The first couple of weeks we stayed there, no one could sleep. The sounds of nature, water running through the creek, and the symphony of the wind singing through the night made us zombies. We were used to the trucks and honking cars echoing up to our old 6^th-floor apartment.

Now we spent summers in Lake Hiawatha, NJ, where we fished, swam and built tree forts in the woods. During holidays and the summer months our Catskill clan would fight the Lincoln tunnel traffic, and visit us for long weekends. Our communal, cabin home, became much like sleep away camp. While my Brother and I slept on the porch and my parents in the one-bedroom, the rest found space on the large living room floor. Sometimes the sound of someone expelling gas would penetrate the silence, and the whole house shook with laughter. We all cooked and ate together, played together, took long bicycle trips and explored the wilds of what was to become our families new home town.  

We eventually moved to Lake Hiawatha, NJ, full time, where I was the first graduating class of Parsippany High School. The school was built on a farm which was sold like many other farms to make way for urbanization and the pattern of America’s growth. 

Families are growing apart.

Space between families grew as we all found ourselves adapting to the American Dream, making new connections while losing our tribal connectivity. And yes, my Brother became a Lawyer, Graduating from the University of Tennessee, meeting his wife there, and eventually settling in an upscale-developed suburb in New Jersey. I met my wife at College in Manhattan. We raised our family on Long Island, where I commuted to my VP job in New York City working in Advertising.

Florida is calling my parents. 

Like many Jewish and Italian first generation Americans, Florida was there retirement mecca. We visited with them once a year with our kids, and they drove up to us once a year. All the while, my Father complained that the Long Island Expressway was a racetrack. The older he got, the slower he drove, until at age 75, he realized the trip was too exhausting for them. He would drive 45 miles an hour in the expressways 60 miles an hour zone, wondering why irate drivers were giving him twisted head looks.

Driving to Florida with our kids for two days, and the occasional hurricane- like rainstorms was always a challenge. One time we drove in tandem with friends of ours who were also visiting their parents. Our kids were losing their patients and misbehaving, so we came up with the ultimate solution. We switched kids in our cars and achieved golden silence for hours.

We finally arrived in Florida and couldn’t help but notice the tears of joy in my parents’ eyes. The glow of seeing their Grandkids and us was unmistakable and heart rendering.

The Cousins Club.

My parents had a cousins club, which met almost every month in Brooklyn for over 25 years. As theirs disbanded, my cousins and I formed our own group, which also lasted about 25 years. The difference was that we were now spread out and traveled to New Jersey, Statin Island, Manhattan, and Long Island to meet once a month. We paid $25 dues at each meeting, which went into a savings account. The monies were used to go to the Catskill Mountains for a weekend, eat dinner out in Manhattan, or see a Broadway show. During the summer we had a picnic with all our kids. We clung to our past and talked about the future. We were all family. None of our parents went to college. All of their children did. We chased the dream, and most of us had our own homes, two cars, and upper-middle-class lifestyles. 

We watched our kids grow up and assimilate as we pushed them through college and careers to chase our version of the American Dream. 

Their dreams delivered them to Los Angeles and Fort Wayne, Indiana, where they live with their spouses and our Grandchildren. Our cousin’s children live in Las Vegas, California, Colorado, Florida, Upstate NY, Long Island, New Jersey, and North Carolina. 

Facebook and Zoom are now the vehicles for our hugs, kisses, laughter, stories, and tribulations of assimilating.

There is nothing wrong with pursuing the American Dream. What’s wrong, perhaps, is the way we interpreted and chased it.

Now, like my parents, our kids visit us once a year, and we visit them once a year.

Last year we had a zoom conference to fill the void when forty of us met to remember my cousin’s young wife, who died of cancer. Usually, we would have had an unveiling at the cemetery and would come to his house afterward to console him and catch up with family. Being scattered all over the country and Covid forced us to meet through a vehicle that has a brain but no heart. 

This service was for the wife of the same cousin who stayed with us when his Mother was hospitalized with Polio at eight years old. I would have given anything to be there in person to give him a big hug and cry with him.

My wife and I are retired to a planned adult community in Tennessee, where the sunsets on our lake in front of the stately clubhouse, with tree lined walkways and picturesque flowers starring at us along its nature trails. We are 20 minutes from the world’s music capital; a stone throw from rural and historic America and are truly grateful for our new, cherished friends. 

We grasped the dream and executed its demands; however, the warmth of our family womb has been replaced by a light blanket during a cold winter’s night.

Mike Rosen