‘90s Family : When Harry Met Goldie : While Some of Us Struggle to Find One Person to Marry, Grandma Has Found Love Four Times
For years, I’ve been humming along as my favorite funky feminist folk singer Christine Lavin croons, “Everyone I know is getting married . . . Living together just isn’t enough, I guess.” Now, it’s happening to me.
My closest friend here in California announced her engagement in September, followed quickly by my cousin, a scant six months older than myself, with whom I am captured forever on home movies fighting over a doll. Then, around Christmas, the floodgates burst: Weddings loom for a couple I work with and my first editor here at The Times. And my 77-year-old paternal grandmother was married this month..
Yup. Grandma Goldie--twice widowed, once divorced--has signed up for Round Four. Doing the honors was the Rabbi Meyer Strassfeld--who officiated at wedding No. 3 and, like Goldie, has since retired to Florida. There’s nothing like tradition.
Originally, Goldie and Harry Lebowitz were going to elope, not telling anyone until the deed was done. But then the groom spilled the beans to his son and word went out on the nationwide Wilgoren telephone and e-mail loop.
Dad is joking that Goldie should form a one-woman law firm: Dantowitz, Berkowitz and Lebowitz (and that’s just three of the five names she can rightfully lay claim to). I made no assumptions that she would be changing her name again. After all, this is the ‘90s. As it turned out, she did take Harry’s name. So much for my feminist influence.
Dad, himself a 33-year veteran of the marriage he started with, foraged for the perfect wedding card. But he had no luck finding one with the number 4 emblazoned on the cover. So much for Hallmark.
Personally, the thing I’m most worried about is whether there’s some finite storehouse of marriages allotted to each family and whether Goldie has used up her share and started in on mine.
A brief scorecard:
Like most of her generation, sons and daughters of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Goldie Dantowitz married a nice boy from a nearby neighborhood in 1939 and figured it would last forever. But while Goldie was busy with the babies--Dad and his two sisters were born inside of 39 months--Sam Wilgoren always seemed to be elsewhere. Before they finally divorced in 1951, she had to take in other people’s sewing to put food on the table.
Luckily for everyone, along came Julius Berkowitz, who had some money in his pocket and vowed at the 1951 wedding to love not only Goldie, but also little Richard, Arlene and Rena.
Julius’ heart wore out in 1963. But Goldie was not born to be single.
Along came Papa Al Gilbert. He was an honest man who made killer clams casino. A quiet man whose face looked a bit like Kermit the frog. A gentle man whose first wife had died years before and was more than a little bit lonely.
They got hitched in 1966.
Goldie and Al shared their golden years. The children were getting married and making grandchildren. They were also making dinner on holidays, saving Goldie a lot of work. Goldie and Al were making money.
Soon they retired and moved south, where they played golf and shuffleboard and gin rummy, and became good friends with a couple named Sid and Yetta. Who could have it better?
But Papa Al, the only grandfather we ever knew, developed Alzheimer’s. He kept getting lost walking around the golf course, and once while visiting my house for Passover, he came downstairs wearing a pair of my jeans by mistake. He died in 1992.
Goldie was immediately flooded with invitations for dates, starting with a proposition from her dead sister’s husband during the post-funeral smorgasbord. My two sisters and I, single twentysomethings all, were baffled: How come Grandma was getting more play than us?
It wasn’t long before Goldie met Harry and had a steady Saturday-night date and a cruise every winter. This one didn’t cook like Al, so they picked up meals from the supermarket’s prepared food counter. In a tipsy moment, she whispered something to my mom about her sex life--she was smiling.
Still, she shied away from the huppah. Three husbands were more than enough, she said. She couldn’t bear to bury another husband. Julius had been 20 years her senior; Al, 11. Harry was older too. (He claims not to know whether he’s really 83 or 84. Who cares?)
Harry wanted them to move in together, but Goldie wouldn’t hear of it. So they moseyed along, catching early-bird dinner specials and taking each other to doctor appointments, and finally Goldie decided to marry Harry.
Before the wedding I asked the blushing bride what changed her mind. She just giggled something about how they wanted to move out of their condo complex because of rising crime.
Then I asked what she was planning to wear. Cream, of course. No veil. She was all set with the “something old” part--her former wedding rings.
As for me, I’m still scrounging for dates and shopping for wedding gifts, totally mystified by Goldie’s marital prowess. The only thing I can figure is she catches her own bouquets.