Uncle Julius Gifts Me with Awe
by Fran Markover
Nights, I’d wait for Julius’ descent downstairs for dinner. I watched
as he bobbed up and down at the table, hummed Ofyn Pripetchik in an
undecipherable language. Julius with his long white beard, few teeth, faded
black yarmulke. He lived in my grandparents’ attic like the loneliest poet,
looking out his window at the yellow-starred sky, shadowy cornfields,
the chicken coops. To my four-year-old self, this was god, scary, ancient,
unknowable. God a singer who wailed strange lyrics up past the widow’s
watch toward the heavens. After we ate, if I listened carefully, I discerned
some words− Sh’ma, Y’Israel, Adonai. Sometimes, Julius jumped from his seat,
flailed his arms as if he could shoo away light, heat, ashes from the candles.
I’d find refuge behind wings of the biggest armchair or scoot under the table.
God must be a dancer, too, a dancer who wrapped a white cloth with fringes
like a curtain around his shoulders. As if burned temples, as if brothers
and sisters could be hidden and protected behind worn wool. A god
never missing mealtimes, who drank schnapps and burped, who favored
sardines and honey cake. This is how I glimpsed the enigmatic, from this
dark old man, robed in moonlight. Something in him, in us, nodding yes,
something larger than old age and senility, than hushed villages or lost babies.
I was sure if we looked out from narrow rooms or peeked into everyday
kitchens, if we were quiet as angels, we might witness our elders, the people
around us, close their clouded eyes, conjuring a farm, fields of sunflowers,
a rooster awakening the children from a great, great distance.
Fran is a retired psychotherapist who lives in Ithaca, NY. Her poems have been published in many journals. She has a chapbook, and has published two books, History's Trail (Finishing Line Press) and Grandfather's Mandolin (Passager Press), which was a finalist for the Henry Morgenthau III First Book Prize.
