Stories that hold trauma: Considering when/how to tell children

by Sachi Feris

I must have been around sixteen because my grandmother, Mary, died a few months after my seventeenth birthday. She was sitting at the far, right corner of the dining table, where my mom usually sat. More often, I remember her sitting in the, now broken, rocking chair near the piano. No one ever sat there and the click of the rocking grated my nerves. I could feel, somehow, a breeze generated from her rocking and a stale, too sweet scent traveled to me no matter where I was in the room.

On this day, I had some strange, sixteen-year-old sense not to ignore her, an understanding that she wouldn’t be around forever. That it was now or never. I sat down at the head of the table, where no one ever sat.

“Hi Grandma,” I began. Now I traced the square, wood pattern of the table with my fingertip. Conversation did not come easily. It took effort not to get up and retreat to my room. It took effort to stay.

I’m not sure how long I sat there with her or what we talked about. Maybe I asked her to tell me about her life. Maybe I asked about when she was little, in Warsaw, Poland. This is the story she told:

She was young, maybe 10 or 11 years old. Some time towards the end or shortly after World War One. Back then, her name was Malka. She had to take care of her little brother, Mordcha. He was four or five years old. Their mother, Tauba, asked her to go get the bread rations. She had to bring Morcha with her. They had to walk there. In my mind, it was summer and boiling hot. She had to carry her brother when he got tired.

When they arrived, they had to wait a long time for their bread. Hot, tired, and thirsty, Malka made her brother drink from the jug of water she’d brought and then gulped down the last drop. Put the empty jug in her shoulder bag. Still waiting.

Now they were near the front of the line and she remembered her stomach, unbearable now that the loaves of bread were in sight. Malka showed her mother’s ration card and the man gave her two loaves. She withdrew from the line, storing one loaf in her bag and breaking the other in half, then quarters. She gave a quarter to Mordcha and greedily ate her quarter.

Now she walked ahead of Mordcha and started eating the other half of bread. She could hear him behind her, yelling to wait, he couldn’t catch up. She walked faster, eating as she went, until she only had one bite left. Mordcha whined behind her. She stopped. She waited.

“Here,” she raised the last, small bite to his mouth.

“I thought to myself, ‘my stomach is bigger than his, I am hungrier,” my grandmother recounted. “But I ate my brother’s ration. I ate it, and now he is dead and I lived.”

I don’t know if these were her actual words or how my memory puts them together, but I remember a feeling of hopelessness sitting at my childhood dining table, having no idea what to say, unable to get up.

“I’m sorry, Grandma. It wasn’t your fault,” I think I said.

I don’t know how I finally escaped to my room. Maybe my dad re-entered the room or sat down with us. Maybe she re-told the story, as she had so many times when my dad was a child.

“When I was little, I told my mom I would buy her a mink coat when I grew up. Guess we didn’t know about the anti-fur movement back then. Anyway, she always liked that, it made her smile,” my dad shared.

“Did you ever buy it for her?”

“Nope,” my dad replied, “and she liked to remind me of that, too…”

When my daughter was in third grade, I read aloud the Wonder books by by R.J. Palacio, a series about “a boy with a severe facial difference.” Happenstance had us read the Julian chapter, the bully’s story, first which includes the story of Julian’s grandmother who was a hidden child during the Holocaust. We also read the graphic novel of the grandmother’s story, and this year, we read The Diary of Anne Frank.

Both books refer to food rations which was not a concept with which my nine-year-old was familiar. And so I shared my grandmother’s story.

After sharing her story, I wondered about its impact on my nine-year-old, reflecting on the anxiety and hopelessness I had felt when my grandmother shared this same story with me as an older teenager. Through various conversations with trusted and knowledgeable friends and colleagues, I differentiated my grandmother’s sharing of unprocessed and unresolved feelings with how I told the same story to my nine-year-old.

I have been cautious, as I’ve written about before, about sharing the history of the Holocaust with my children. I remember, vividly, when my then five-year-old daughter found The Cats of Krasinski Square on our bookshelf, a book about a young Jewish girl who “passes” as Polish and helps fellow Jews in the ghetto. I explained that the book that had a connection to her great grandmother’s family who had lived in Poland, too, during a time that was scary and sad—but that it also showed how people tried to help to make things better. After hearing this explanation, my then five-year-old declined and returned the book to the shelf.

My middle son happened upon The Cats of Krasinski Square when he was around five as well. He wanted to read, so we did, acknowledging the situation in the book as really unfair and sad—and concentrating on the many people who tried to help. I mentioned, but did not go into detail, about the connection this book had to our family.

As I reflect on stories that hold trauma and when and how I will share them with my children, it has also been helpful for me to think of a timeline from early childhood to adulthood. My grandmother’s “bread” story, felt okay to share with my nine-year-old, but not with my five-year-old. There are a few family stories in my reservoir that I know I will share with my children…but likely not until they are older teens.

As a young teacher, I was deeply inspired by Facing History and Ourselves, using history/herstory to inspire young people to stand up to present-day injustice, and for years, I developed curriculum for elementary school students using this model. As a parent, I likewise bridge my children’s Jewish identity in the context of the history of anti-semitism with their privilege in Brooklyn 2022 as White Latino/a/x Jews.

I come from memories of my dad “scaring me” into having a Jewish identity by alerting me, “there are millions of people who would happily see you drop dead simply because you are Jewish.” I’m not sure if even my Dad could tell you his intention in these words—but I do know he regrets them.

Through the power of storytelling, including stories that hold trauma, we have an opportunity to create new stories. To tell stories about the a person’s ability to change, to regret, to try again, and to do better. To talk about what it really means to say “Never again” on Holocaust Remembrance day.

As for my grandmother, she survived every living relative she had and never forgave herself for living. I dedicate this post to the memory of Malka “Mary” Frenk. May she surrender and live on with grace. May her memory be a blessing.

Today, I will be making a donation to the Movement for Black Lives in her honor and I invite you to join me.

If you would like to reflect/engage on telling your own stories to your children around race/racism and trauma, join Raising Race Conscious Children’s new, four-part workshop series in March/April 2022, Writing for your children: Storytelling to support racial identity development.