After My Father Survived The Holocaust, He Embraced A Life of Wonder

As I got older, I developed a clearer understanding of what had happened to Dad; that he’d been rounded up and sent first to a ghetto, then a concentration camp. “But look,” he said, dimples flashing, huge hand covering mine. “I’m okay. I’m a living miracle, and you’re my miracle child!” I felt special but uneasy. I wasn’t sure what a miracle child was supposed to do.

***

Our household was never steeped in the gray tones of tragedy. In fact, life was painted with almost too much color in an effort to brighten what had come before. My parents liked shiny new cars and modern appliances and “continental” food. Our house wasn’t huge or super fancy, but Mom kept it immaculate. She threw everything she had into “gracious living,” the name she gave to the idealized way of being she and my dad wanted for all of us. There were plants and paintings and a brilliant cleanliness that, she said, reflected our self-respect. I now see this was part of the striving Mom herself was brought up with. In my mind’s eye, her childhood home is dark and threadbare except for Baba Sarah’s gleaming teacups in ornate patterns of pink or green or blue, and a floor so well polished it shines in the dim light. Baba has her lady friends over for tea, serving properly brewed Red Rose in those delicate cups. She got up before dawn to bake sour cream coffee cake and Turkish delight strudel and pecan puffs dusted in icing sugar. Leaning heavily on Emily Post, Baba figured out how to behave in her adopted country, how to rise above her lowly economic status and her lack of education with manners and social niceties and flawless domestic skills.

***

I was surrounded by bubbly extroverts and I was expected to like them: vivacious, outgoing, and happy. And sometimes, I was. Offsetting the small, dark weight I carried in my chest were beams of light, many of them found with my best friend. Her name was Cathy and together we went to a little Jewish school that smelled like glue. In winter, the vents along the walls blew so hot, it took my breath away. Cathy was the smartest kid in the class. If I stuck close to her, maybe I could be the second smartest.

Cathy was Jewish, too, but she had a dad who worked at an office and a mom who was finishing a master’s degree. Instead of sisters, she had two older brothers and the talk around the dinner table at her house was quick and clever. Nobody spoke with an accent.

It was easy for me to see that they were normal, which meant we were not. I knew nothing of the communities of Holocaust survivors around the world; of places where survivors banded together to cope and share stories, their children growing up in a pack, with a wider perspective. Dad had wanted to marry a Canadian girl and start a new life. In her own way, Mom wanted a new life, too. As a result, I grew up feeling there was nobody quite like us—a Holocaust survivor father, a Canadian mother, a family tipping toward newness and pleasure in any way we could.

***

Cathy and I took dance together and when I think of joy in childhood, I think of Thursday nights, when I was transported into a realm of ease and weightlessness. My leg floated up at the barre; the teacher, Myrna, put “Jamming” on the hi-fi and my rib cage moved left-right, left-right. Myrna wore a bodysuit in a silky fabric, cut high on the hip, with leg warmers and black jazz shoes with heels instead of soft soles. I traded my plain black leotard for a purple Danskin and jazz shoes as soon as I could, and worked up a sweat trying to perfect my double pirouettes. Cathy’s split leaps were higher but as soon as the music came on, my body had no bones. I felt like a liquid, moving from shape to shape as the thoughts left my head. I could not believe the pleasure of flying around the stage doing a ring of posé coupé turns; the freedom and thrill of taking up too much space.

I spent endless hours at Cathy’s house, exploring the strange contents of the kitchen cupboards: packaged macaroni and cheese, white bread, Hamburger Helper, jars of spaghetti sauce. Nobody ate smoked fish or knishes or cabbage rolls. There was no black bread or sweet homemade mustard or slices of beef tongue. Instead, we got to make Chef Boyardee pizza from a box with Cathy’s mom, pressing the dough into a cookie sheet and tearing open the bag of powdered cheese.

Cathy spent plenty of time at our house, too, but even better was when she came with me to the restaurants [my]. At that time, Dad was working on plans to transform Teddy’s into a two-story food emporium with a deli, bar, dining room, and discotheque. He walked around with blueprints tucked under his arm and a cigarette in his mouth. There would be a DJ booth! And a disco ball! And a dance floor—our very own stage to dance on!

Meanwhile, the Carousel had moved locations and now catered to a downtown business crowd. It was closed on Sundays, when Dad would go to take care of things and that, I knew, was the best possible time to be there. While Dad opened the safe and looked in the till, Cathy and I slipped behind the swinging door of the kitchen. “Ordering,” I yelled, picking up an invisible steak with tongs. “One New York, medium rare!” Cathy stood beside me at the cool flat top, playing with the spatulas.

We yanked open the heavy door of the walk-in cooler, careful not to let it latch behind us. “What if we get locked in here?” Cathy said.

“At least we’ll have a lot to eat.”

Shivering, we stuck our fingers into plastic buckets, hotel pans, and baking sheets, tasting blue cheese dressing, jellied beef jus, whipped cream. There were piles of raw steaks and buckets of anchovies, but I didn’t eat stuff like that in front of my friend.

We came out of the kitchen and wandered into the bar, where the soda gun glowed in the dim light. We shot Coke, Sprite, and tonic into tall glasses. We poured grenadine, thick and syrupy, through the little spout attached to the top of the bottle into a little metal cup on a stick. When I dumped the syrup into our glasses, the mixture that had been dull and brown turned a beautiful pink. I shook in Tabasco and grabbed maraschino cherries from the fridge below the counter.

The first sip was the worst, but I knew I wouldn’t throw up. Cathy touched her glass to her lips and put it down. “You’re going to drink it?” she said, her eyes huge.

“Oh yes. It’s delicious!”

She stared at me as I finished my own drink and reached for hers. We did not waste food. Ever.

***

Mom was away on a bridge weekend the night the renovated Teddy’s reopened. Dad toured me through the new kitchens—one upstairs and one downstairs—and he showed me the dumbwaiter—an actual elevator!—the cooks would use to move supplies up or down.

On the main floor, in addition to the deli, where we would serve our classics, there was a bar with dark wood and Tiffany lamps. Upstairs featured a book-lined dining room and, at the back, the pièce de ré-sistance, a small dance floor with a DJ booth and disco ball, just as Dad had promised.

The reopening party was packed and sweaty. “What should I do?” I yelled, so Dad could hear me over the music.

“Whatever you want,” he shouted back, grinning. In black velvet pants and a sparkly top, I roamed from room to room, floor to floor, kitchen to kitchen. Donna Summer crooning from the speakers and waiters pushing through the dance floor with platters of garlic shrimp and filet skewers. At the center of it all, Dad was the happiest I’d ever seen him—dancing, laughing, hugging, shaking hands—and I was there to soak up his glow.

Excerpted from How to Share an Egg by Bonny Reichert. Copyright © 2025 Bonny Reichert. Published by Appetite by Random House®, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.