Ida & Julius

In 1899, Humphrey Bogart was born and William McKinley was President; the Boer War began and the Spanish-American War ended; the world sat on the cusp of a new century, and Ida Smigelsky and Julius Cantor were embarking on a new life together. Ida is seventeen on her wedding day. Her full curly hair is pulled up into a soft mound, exposing her ears, each pierced with a single pearl earring. Her Victorian dress covers her arms and her body all the way up to her neck, ending under the soft curve of her chin. The bodice is styled in pleats and lace, modest and formal. Although the photograph is sepia, I imagine the dress a soft pink, as feminine as the young woman who wears it. She is graceful, stylish in the manner of the belle epoch. A simple floral brooch with a stone at its center and one on each of its eight petals is pinned at her throat. Over her heart she wears another ornament, shaped like a fleur-de-lis, from which a round brass watch or locket hangs. Or is it silver? If I could open it, would I see her father’s timepiece, or perhaps a photograph of her beloved Julius? Ida’s face, partly in shadow, is serene. She looks just beyond the camera. Her eyes appear brown but perhaps they are blue, like those of her great-great-grandchildren.

Julius looks as dashing as Ida looks elegant. A dark pinstriped tie is knotted around his white starched collar, and tucked into a pale silk vest. A dark wool jacket completes his formal attire. His curly black hair is parted in the center, and like Ida he looks off beyond the camera. Do they see their lives ahead of them?

Old photographs hide color, disclosing only varying shades of brown. The photo conceals the vibrancy of life. It does not reveal that in 1893, Julius left the Polish city of Grodno, at 17, to come to America. If he had stayed, would he have become a merchant in that city’s vibrant Jewish community? Might he have been among the 29,000 Jews of Grodno murdered by the Germans between 1941 and 1943? But he did not stay. In America, he joined the army to learn English, and fought in the Spanish-American War. He met a distant cousin named Ida. In 1899, the year he begins his new life with Ida, the Treaty of Paris will be signed, ending the conflict between the U.S. and Spain.

Ida’s lips are full, and her expression is one of contentment. She leans toward her young husband, and their heads touch, gently. She is seated in front of him and his shoulder falls behind hers. I think they are holding hands. If the marriage has been arranged for them, they seem to be satisfied with the idea. The marriage lasted 57 years, ending when Ida died at the age of 74. On September 24, 1968, on the day his great-grandson Jonathan turned 7, Julius died at the age of 92.

Ida & Julius

Early September

The pool in the woods is almost empty now. The clear blue water, once a riot of children swimming, splashing, diving, is reduced to a standing pond of emerald green, quiet, disturbed only by winged insects alighting on its surface. The only sound is a faint rustling of leaves, a portent of changes to come. Lawn chairs are stacked one atop the other, preparing for storage over the long cold months ahead. The three ping-pong tables remain fixed to the ground, like green rectangles pasted on a child’s construction paper. They will endure through the winter, awaiting next season and the return of carefree games played late into the afternoon. Maintenance equipment sits idle by the tool shed. There is no rush now to prepare the grounds for visitors, who, like winged migrants, won’t return for months. And the waterslide that provided cool delight to the more adventurous bathers is dry. It collects twigs instead of children that tumble into the empty basin below.

The changing of the seasons is almost tangible here. Though the air is still warm and the leaves have not yet begun to turn, the light is different, somehow brighter and lower in the sky, and the children have gone back to school. This place will sit dormant until May, when the children return to breathe life back into it.

I walk up the hill above the pool, reflecting on the decade of summers spent by its waters. I began at the shallow end, a haven where babes just out of diapers could test their mettle, wading bravely up to their necks to the very depths, where the strategically placed rope set firm boundaries beyond which only older siblings were allowed to venture. “Look at me, Mom, look at me!” they’d call, and the heads of a dozen mothers would turn at once. I spent days, years at the shallow end. I watched other mothers some distance away whose children didn’t seem to need them anymore. They read magazines and chatted, while I chased and soothed and dried small bodies with chattering blue lips. I envied them.

As the years passed one by one, I left the shallow end and I became the one young mothers watch. I recline, read, chat and doze, interrupted only by the occasional request for snacks from the overpriced concession stand. I grant their wishes, sometimes just to see their delight at the prospect of getting what they want, just because they’ve asked. I well recall the simple pleasure of snacks at the pool when my mother granted my wishes, so many years ago.

I continue walking up the road, leaving the pool and summer behind me. Turning the corner toward home, I can’t help but regret the passing of those long light-filled days by the water. But though the seasons are changing, I know the pool in the woods quietly awaits our return at the end of each winter, as surely as I now await my children’s return home from school at the end of each day.