My Jewish bubby Carole would joke about herself. And gifted me this postcard with the same sentimnt, a crying woman in pop art style, saying the same.
She also would say, ‘my dear Rosie, you know you were born without the DNA strand for ‘kindness”, and it wouldn’t bother me because she was right.
Carole Lee Bergman met me when I was 19, over 290 lbs. and a student teacher at the High School of Fashion. She called the school to find a tailor and my mentor at the time passed me the phone.
She was full of ideas that required sewing and I labored away stitching up every trend she could think of for pennies, after all she was around 68 years old, living in an SRO (single room occupancy) on Manhattan Ave. with little to no money. I wasn’t compensated monetarily but her wisdom was invaluable. We would spend afternoons and weekends talking about everything and nothing; she was my ‘Tuesday’s with Morrie’.
I shared my secrets with her and like a good mother, listened without judgement and gave me practical advise. I listened to every word without realizing she was changing me. Despite being a teen that hated doing anything ‘extra’, I always made a point to visit her because she was nourishing that part in me that needed care, tenderness while being realistic.
She was able to be objective because she never had children, making her views on life very pragmatic. She gave me the perspective of a woman that lived well and for herself yet gave up so much for love. ‘Albert’ was his name, the man she gave 17 years to and would never forget. I learned to wait on ‘love’ from that love affair.
Carole witnessed my evolution from a morbidly obese teen living with buried sadness and insecurities to a daring young woman that underwent gastric bypass and moved to Italy for 5 years.
Within those 5 years I wrote to her and called her from Florence and she called me and wrote to me in her stylish handwriting, I knew a letter was hers before I could make out the name of the sender.
I returned every summer and made it a priority to see her because she was important to me. We continued our conversations and when the insecurities crept in, she would remind me of the obstacles I had overcome and the achievements obtained. ‘You moved away, across the world and learned a new language! Not everyone has the courage to do that.’ She would say her fears contributed to her failures and they also stopped her from achieving. I couldn’t understand that, how can anyone be afraid of succeeding? She plainly blamed her heritage, the Jewish guilt.
She was a guiding force in my life; she ‘told me like it was’ gently, and I confess there were many times I would distance myself because the ‘force’ was a bit much. Her character was a lot like my grandmother’s, just add tenderness and love, so one woman of that nature was enough for me, aside from my own. I can thank them both for enlightening me to the receiving end of that. Today I tend to step back and ‘let them win’. It’s ok, people like them can have the last word. It never changed how much I love her nor my grandmother, here’s to hoping it can work on how I feel about others.
According to Carole, I wasn’t born with the kindness DNA strand but I credit her, among others for teaching it to me. Kindness comes naturally today towards the children I ‘forgot to have’ but God gave me anyway. Adults? I’m a self professed work in progress.
Last night, after a long day of battling with my life’s events, I took the call of a student-daughter needing help with her resume and voicing her fears about her own life.. I couldn’t say no. We talked and I spoke objectively, gently, with love. I hope I was as helpful as Carole was for me.. after all, isn’t that what this is all about?
Carole Lee Bergman wasn’t a mother but for 21 years, she was for me. She passed in 2016 and continues on in the heart of this daughter.
Rosa Isabel Chavez 