Day 1 in Toronto

I worked remotely most of the day. I had a nice lunch with my mom and my brother, Harrison. I ate three boiled eggs, bean salad, and leftover pasta with peruvian beans that I had brought for the plane ride over.

Lizy had lunch with my cousin, Sarah, to learn more about my family tree. Sarah brought out a printed family tree that had been compiled by a distant cousin of ours in New York. She also had a document from Yad Vashem showing my great-great grandfather had died in the Treblinka death camp.

In the evening we had a dinner of tacos before sitting together outside in the backyard. My mom had spent a lot of time reorganizing the garden and she was very glad that Lizy noticed and appreciated the changes she had made. They walked around the garden and my mom pointed out all the changes she had made. I sat in a chair on the deck watching them and trying to swat at the mosquitoes with little success.

Harrison talked to us about some of his highschool classes. One of his teachers had told him she would never go to a Chinese restaurant owned and operated by a white person because a white person running a Chinese restaurant was cultural appropriation. I wasn’t so sure how I felt.

Day 2 Lunch

My mom, Harrison, Lizy, Jordan, and I went to North of Brooklyn for lunch. My mom wanted to take us there because David Portnoy named it the best pizza place in Toronto as part of his YouTube series One Bite Pizza Reviews. Here is a link to his review.

We ordered one large Margarita pizza at the counter and sat at one of the few tables in the restaurant. Before we knew it the pizza was delivered to our table. The pizza had a thick layer of rich tomato sauce, patches of mozzarella, and large pieces of charred basil.

Lizy thought it was amazing pizza. She had once eaten this pizza for delivery and commented that the crust was way crispier if you ate it at the restaurant.

Visiting Buby and Zaidy at the Cemetery

Buby and Zaidy are buried together in a cemetery up north. The drive took around forty five minutes. My mom kept saying as we drove that maybe I should go home, if I had too much work, and shouldn’t feel compelled to come with. I was already in the car most of the way there, so what was the point in rehashing an already made decision?

It rained the entire drive. Maybe that’s why the traffic was so slow or maybe that was just every day in Toronto. I couldn’t believe how much traffic there was on a Friday afternoon.

When we finally got to the grave the rain decided to stop and the sun came out. It really seemed they had come out to greet us. My mom had been collecting some unique looking stones over the past couple of weeks and she handed them out among us and we put them on top of the tombstone.

Their tombstone stretched across both graves. It had their hebrew names, their english names, and epigraphs. Zaidy’s epigraph was “Beloved husband, father, Zaidy, and Uncle.” My mom wondered if she should’ve added friend to the epigraph. Lizy pointed out it was missing commas at the line breaks. I thought it looked nice the way it was.

Lizy said, it was too bad they were gone. They would’ve been so excited for the baby.

My mom said she was right.

Lizy later said to me, that she knew I didn’t think ghosts were real, but they’re the ones that stopped the rain. They stopped the rain because they were glad we came.

I agreed with her.

Dinner Later That Evening

We had dinner altogether in the dining room. We normally didn’t eat dinner in the dining room, except maybe on passover so it felt special. My mom had prepared a unique collection of dishes at Lizy’s request since she was pregnant. We ate fish, hummus, bagels, perogies, green beans, and asparagus. Lizy loved the meal because it consisted of all the foods she was craving. I enjoyed the meal as well.

After helping my mom clean up, we sat together for a while. She talked about her parents. She told me a story I had never heard before. Her Dad had decided to leave his whole estate to his second wife. He decided while in the hospital and had made my mom bring the papers to the hospital so he could update his will. In the end it didn’t matter since she died first. So it goes.

She talked about how her parents weren’t into sports.

She brought up a good parallel between her and my dad’s father. My dad’s father, Gerry, loved being an accountant, but no one really knew when he had ever worked as an accountant, whereas her father, Marvin, hated being an accountant, but went into his accounting office to the very end.

My mom talked about her grandparents too. I’ll quote what I can remember,

“My grandparents on my mothers side came from Poland. Her father was in a Polish bike club. I remember that. He loved cycling, but he wasn’t very fast since he was under five feet tall. He was so short because of malnutrition in his youth. He was one of eleven children I think. He was the only one that survived. He was the youngest, so they sent him to Canada when it looked like things were going south in Poland. His brothers and sisters either didn’t have enough money or felt they were already too established to emigrate. It’s scary to go out and seek a new life, especially back then.

“He worked in a fur factory for a long time. He worked hard and saved up money so he was eventually able to bring his wife over from Poland.

“His sister was a lawyer, which was a big deal at the time for a Jewish woman in Poland, but then she died with everyone else. My mom was an only child. They lived for many years in an apartment, but after saving up they bought a house.

“My father’s parents came from Russia. My grandmother, Molly, was always in charge of that household. She handled the properties they owned and the cigar store. She was sort of a slum lord. Her husband was the jokester.

“I really wish I knew more about my heritage.”