A Life in Motion

19. My New York Family of Choice

— 534 — 19 My New York Family of Choice The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight . . . The pitcher cries for water to carry And a person for work that is real. —Marge Piercy,“To Be of Use” In late September, 1987, I flew to the University of Alaska at Anchorage, then on to Fairfax for ten days of lectures, at the end of which I had agreed to an hour-long, live interview on a PBS radio station. The young woman in charge, who I assumed knew nothing about me, opened the conversation by saying, “I’d like you to tell people how the Feminist Press became your family.” Astonished by the question, I challenged her for a source. “I have no source,” she said,“I came to all your lectures, and this is what I made of them.” She was right, of course, though I bristled at the time and told her she had made it up. But afterwards I thought about what she had guessed. After 1982 and the breakup of my last marriage, my office had become my home, my work had become my life, and all who worked with me—on the board as well as on the staff—had become my family, though I was clear that this perception was singularly mine and not shared. — 535 — The next spring I accepted an invitation from Alida Brill, a Feminist Press supporter, to celebrate Passover in her large East Hampton home. I knew perhaps two of her twenty guests, and I remember one moment vividly. Alida, a tall beautiful red-haired woman, stood at one end of the dinner table to propose her opening toast: “Most people celebrate holidays with their families. Not me. Here’s to all of you, my family of choice.” I, the inevitable outsider, did not for a second consider that I might be one of her family members, but perhaps her words curled round my brain, suggesting paths I might follow. It all began with two very different women,Helene Goldfarb and Mariam Chamberlain, then two more, Joanne Markell and Shirley Mow. Each of these women had one thing in common: they lived alone, and if they had close family ties, they were not in New York City. As the 1980s moved forward, I began to have a small social life in Manhattan, leisurely dinners with Mariam; and dinner then theater or ballet with Helene. Beginning in the early 1990s, Joanne would come into Manhattan for a weekend of museum going with me. And a little after that, I began to go to films or plays with Shirley .With each of these women I continue to have a unique relationship . I have traveled with each of them separately, for work or for pleasure, though they have not traveled with each other. All have been—and three still are—members of the Board of Directors of the Feminist Press. When each of the three women proposed a birthday dinner for me one March, I suggested that they do it together. They certainly knew each other, since by then all four were on the Feminist Press board. Probably I was at least minimally conscious about wanting a“family” dinner, but I do not recall the occasion as a great success. On holidays, having at least one of the four available to celebrate withwasespeciallyimportant.AtThanksgivingeachyear,asHelene flew to Los Angeles, Joanne to Memphis, and Shirley to Denver or Palo Alto, Mariam began to invite me to join her for Thanksgiving dinner at the Cosmopolitan Club. She asked me also to join her in inviting others from the international feminist community who happened to be in town. Thus, Kosuko Watanabi, for example, a — 536 — leading Japanese women’s studies scholar, was often with us. And then, in the mid-1990s, four of us—Mariam, Helene, Joanne, and I—began to go out together on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, sometimes to a film or play as well as dinner. For me, these began to feel like family occasions. I want to describe these women and two men who have become my New York family. Their ages range from sixty-three to ninety-two. Though they are part of my family, I am not necessarily part of theirs. Helene D. Goldfarb Assigned by lot, Helene...