I keep seeing posts in which people talk about whether they have asked their non Jewish friends “would you hide my family” and shake my head.
Not because I fault them for asking nor because I am angry it is a question people feel necessary to ask because I understand why they want to know.
I understand those who have declared they would fight and why they have responded that way too.
It is not a question I intend to ask anyone because I know the answer. I am certain there are people that would do so for my family and certain some of them would fight alongside me.
Won’t say I am foolish enough to say it is impossible for such things to take place again because I don’t think it is impossible but I believe it is unlikely, at least it is here in the US.
Still when I hit the gym today I used the possibility of my having to engage in a physical confrontation to push me and thought about how that shouldn’t be a thing.
If I am wrong about the people that I think would hide and fight alongside me than I know nothing at all about anything and anyone.
The Questions I Do Ask
Some people have told me they are concerned about questions and whether I would interrogate them. They have spoken about mixed feelings and I have smiled and shaken my head at some of that.
I hear Tevye asking Golda if she loves him and how she says something about “after 25 years” and snort. That used to sound like such a long time to me, 25 years.
It is no longer even half my life and depending on how things go I might not even have that many years left.
Though I am pleased to say in my latest blood work the doc says I went from having multiple liver enzymes that were only questionable to just one. And that one is better than it was, so let’s hear it for working out and lifestyle changes.
This past week someone asked me how many more questions I had and I laughed and said at least a dozen. I wasn’t kidding and as I began to rattle them off they asked if I was like this in every area of my life and I shook my head no.
“I find that difficult to believe. You rolled out questions with no hesitation and really never slowed down.”
I nodded my head and explained in my personal life I don’t have to break everything down the way I did there. I don’t feel the need to have the same sort of in depth understanding based upon hard data.
“I know things on a gut level. Sometimes I have questions about what I think I know. Sometimes I may want to hear certain responses based upon questions, but I know. I just do. It is not logical, rational or necessarily reasonable to some people, but I know.
And the funny thing to me is it only applies to a few.”
They shrugged and grunted something at me and I waited a moment to see if they would ask any follow up questions.
There was one and I said I had no interest because it wasn’t my business to know. Didn’t think twice or hesitate with that one.
Sometimes you are very interested in people and very comfortable talking and or spending time with them. Those are people who you can just sit with.
And sometimes you never notice the absence of others. That is a general rule of thumb for me. If I never notice your presence or absence you are not important.
Anyhoo, the question of who will or won’t hide me irks me a bit from a different perspective because it means we didn’t plan well for the time that came before that.
It means we failed to work on doing the things that would prevent such a moment from coming to fruition. So the questions I want asked are all tied to proactively working towards preventing that from ever becoming a reality.
This also ties into whether I am licensed to carry and what I do or do not have in the car or around the house. It is not a conversation I engage in with just anyone.
You don’t need to know but you ought to figure it is not going to end well for you if you try to find out.
Ties into plausible deniability and something other thing that I can’t recall right now or maybe it doesn’t. My head is kind of swimming. Got a few more nasty messages from people regarding my lineage and ethnicity.
Kind of appreciate the free rent I must have in their heads considering the time they keep putting into reaching out to connect.
Echoes Of My Grandfathers
We’re a few days past what would have been my paternal grandfather’s 109th birthday. I thought about him and it led me to a memory of my maternal grandfather’s 94th birthday.
My grandparents had all sorts of family pictures around the room. Grandpa showed my then four-year-old daughter a picture of me when I was much younger.
He laughed when she referred to it as a picture of “baby daddy” and waited for her older brother to comment too.
He said he knew it was me, but it didn’t look right. That was all the time the kids had for pictures and so they ran off.
Grandpa pointed to a picture of his grandparents and told me it was strange that I had never gotten to know them. I asked him if he knew my name or what year it was and he laughed and called me a ‘wise guy.’
“You know Josh, when you look at your grandmother you see an old lady, but I see the girl I married.”
He made me me promise that if died before her I would make sure she was taken care of. I said of course and as things turned out she went first, which in some ways made sense because she was more adventurous than he was.
Reminds me of how people complimented my grandparents on their dancing and made remarks about grandpa.
Mom always reminded me that grandma had to do everything backwards.
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We are off in the wilds now and time is filled with more than a bit of chaos and uncertainty. I am grateful to say that I have more than just good memories from the past to occupy my time.
There have been several moments recently where the younger Mr. Wilner and I laughed hard enough for my stomach to hurt.
I am not going to stop living my life and doing all I can to enjoy it just because crap is flying around me and neither should you.
We can do things to push things in the right direction and still live. The end of dreams isn’t here and won’t be until we take our final breaths.
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