Excerpts from a Memoir

by Karen Kisslinger Dweck

Introduction

     ...from a recent email I sent to Max:     

"I think one of the most refreshing memories sent in to the site was Hannah Priwer saying she remembers making out with you. I think many of our deepest memories and fascinations have to do with libido, love for our school and all the other cool things we did there notwithstanding We had, after all, biologically destined roles that made that so.

   Some of my strongest memories have to do with the way we were together as boys and girls, which by today's standards was very gentle and safe. In my own experience it was also all wrapped up with not being (completely) Jewish and yes, all those parents who didn’t want me around their sons  were right guys. I did end up marrying a Jewish guy, but his dad was a Syrian Jew who got in trouble with his community for marrying a Russian Jew...and on and on..." (*Karen elaborates on this theme)
     
     
      Reconnecting with my high school classmates through the U CITY '66 website has reinforced my belief that we really did have a special, fun, amazing high school where one could wend her way through adolescence without the trauma and frustration too many kids are experiencing today. In response to this feeling, I've written the following pieces, from a memoir I've been working on.

*****

1. Slow Dancing

     Imagine knowing that you could be held...gently, safely…with no expectations other than a slow dance, and probably a few words of chatting and laughing before and after. Of all the good and happy memories I have of U. City High, of music and great teachers and cheerleading and GAA and playing basketball and Taberna and Wigwam nights doing the twist and the jerk to hot live bands, I think slow dancing was one of my favorite things to do.

     These days, I teach in high schools a lot. I'm brought in to do modules on stress reduction, relaxation, meditation and healthy living. I teach the kids about slow dancing, and I think it's news to many of them who have been raised in a climate of precocious sexual activity and sexually charged media...the idea that you can just stand and hold someone, even someone with whom you aren't going to have any particular relationship other than, perhaps, friendship.
      Slow dancing seems quintessentially vintage and tender. I admit there were certain people you didn't want to slow dance with, but the ones you did were not necessarily going to be the loves of your life. (though for some of you they were!) They were people you liked to talk to, to laugh with, and then to just sway with for a few minutes.
      Am I naïve to think it wasn't particularly charged? Well, sometimes it was, but even then it could stay in the realm of the sweet and safe, and we could choose, and I long for that safe holding for kids today, at least as one part of the vocabulary of understanding what friendship and social life can involve.

2. A Boy

     I was twelve and a half when I found out I could feel a certain way about a boy. I liked to talk to some boys and had found it interesting that I could actually have conversations with them, but I hadn't yet felt the squishy stomach and the perky interest that keeps your eye on someone even when he's behind you or in a different part of town.
      Every school in the district sent kids to the regional band practice rehearsals to prepare for the annual concert. As we stood around waiting with our instruments, I saw a certain boy and immediately felt a heart-buzzing thrill and wide-eyed distraction. I can still see and feel the mustard-gold, soft wool sweater that he was wearing when we slow danced together at a party a year later, and the white sport coat he wore when we went to the Spring Dance together in eighth grade. I haven't seen him in almost forty years. I'm curious how his life has gone.

3. The Road Less Taken

     I was 15 when I memorized the words to “The Road Less Taken” by Robert Frost as part of an a cappella concert of the “Frostiana” medley. I was intensely curious about what it would mean ”ages and ages hence” to have taken the road that was grassy and wanted wear. I was silently drawn to explore healing, feelings, tenderness, nurture and compassion along the "less traveled" fork in the road — that after awhile, quite a few other people wound up choosing, too. Youth may be the time of life when you believe that you will live to see the road less taken, which you have chosen out of idealism, become the road most taken.

4. Global Matters
(this one is from just after high school)

When I was seventeen, I learned to take my own position on global matters. Having had to deal at age seven with whether or not the Book of Genesis was literally correct and whether my father was going to have to go to hell for being Jewish, it was relatively easy for me to get informed about, and then hate, the Vietnam War, as well as the French presence in Vietnam before the Americans came in with their domino obsession.
      You want to love your country, and of course I do, but when this Dorothy stepped out of Kansas (actually Missouri) into the community at the International Christian University in Tokyo, she stepped right into an anti-war protest at an American professor's lecture.
      "Wow," thought Dorothy..."Not everybody loves America! And there seem to be good reasons for that."
      Back in the states, I had been aware of teach-ins and what seemed to be a growing opposition to the war, and so I naively assumed that as moral, thinking people, Americans were going to take care of this one from the inside and not require external admonishments. Identifying myself as a person who aspired to be ethical in all spheres of life, I adopted a global common-good stance over a narrowly one-country patriotic stance. I convened a sort of personal World Social Forum in my head in 1967...and committed to “the people”.

5. Learning To Relax

     I learned how to relax at 16. One spring day in 1964, Kitty Underwood walked into gym class in her white Bermuda shorts, white blouse and whistle, and announced that instead of basketball today, we were going to learn “concentrated relaxation”.
      We all lay down on the floor, closed our eyes, and created mental images of our breath coming and going. Then we progressively relaxed our whole bodies.      
      My life was changed. Tense since before birth, I was rocked out of my life-long knot of inner tension by the gentle rhythm of my own breath and a newly quiet mind.
      Good class.

6. Mike Darnell

     I was 12 years old when I learned that I had a good figure. I had befriended Mike (short for Michelle) Darnell, a controversial new girl who wore nylon stockings and make-up, as did her very glamorous, divorced mother. Mike being so exotic in our non-divorcing world, I was immediately drawn to her.
     One day her mother and her mother's boyfriend were going to take us to the Heman Park Pool to swim, and I didn't have a swimming suit with me, so Mike said she'd lend me one. As I put it one she looked at me and said, “You have a good figure”
      No sentence I've heard before or since has ever had quite the same authority. Mike's presence may have scandalized the neighborhood and sparked debate about make-up on 12 year old girls, but her proclamation was emblazoned in my brain and stayed with me, through pregnancies, heavy breasted baby nursing, and the changes of aging. We shouldn't need permission to love our bodies, it should just happen. But all the same, we're lucky when that permission just shows up when we're a kid, like the prize at the bottom of a crackerjack box.

7. Healing Hands

     I was 14 when I learned that my hands could heal. This was a big plus for a cheerleader who liked to hang out with the wrestling team — all those big, beautiful shoulder muscles to help relax. Touching this way was safer than other touching, and at the same time was an excuse for touching at a time when touch was all anybody really wanted.
      As I got older, I learned which points to release and hold to dismiss headaches and other congestions. I was both curious and pleased with this soft power. Much of healing is allowing people to be touched in a way that allows relaxation, balance and safety....the ultimate pleasures.

 (*Appendix: Karen amplifies on being “not completely Jewish”: A lot of boys were not supposed to hang out with me and Susan once we got past about 7th grade because we weren't completely Jewish, even though our father and grandparents in St. Louis were Jewish, my mother was Lutheran and my parents had decided before we were born to raise us Lutheran...and really the best thing about that has been that I understand Garrison Keillor's jokes better than anyone else I know.. and rejecting Missouri Synod Lutheran-ness at an early age OPENED UP MY MIND.   

So this "not-being-completely-Jewish" thing   was a big deal, because in fact we did go out with and hang out with a lot of Jewish boys, and I considered many of them to be real friends.   I went to a billion Bar Mitzvahs and belonged to the JCCA club and went to Achim parties and swam at the JCCA, etc.  So, I was just saying that for parents who were concerned that I was so irresistible that their sons would end up wanting to marry me,  a partial shiksa.....they were right...I did end up marrying a nice Jewish boy...a doctor even.....and then I went on to  mention that I find it both sad and ironic that Rob's  (my husband's)  parents caused discord in their families because they weren't from the SAME Jewish background.  So,  the "on and on"....... has to do with  human beings letting too many things get in the way of love and friendship and ultimately peacefulness.)

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