When I was very young, my father was afflicted with a strange kind of wanderlust that impelled him to move his growing family often.  We lived in eleven homes before I was nine.  Fortunately for me, in those early postwar years, as they adjusted to their American lifestyle and learned to trust their safety, my mother and her sisters were virtually inseparable.  My grandparents bought a large faux Tudor house in Bayside, Queens, which had a revolving door for the three sisters and their children. My first first cousins and I were treated as near-siblings, and we lived in that house at various intervals, and for several years, we all but breathed in unison. Each of the sisters had married a man from a different culture, and we navigated a polyglot world, overseen by our Pater familias Henri Robinson, whom we all called Papa.

Papa was short and round.  In those days, over breakfast, we’d read the Sunday comics together, and I especially liked “The Little King,” a cartoon by Otto Soglow.

“He looks like Papa when Papa wears his long red bathrobe,” I told my mother.

“Oh, dear, please don’t say that to Papa.  You’ll hurt his feelings.”

I did tell him, but instead of being hurt, he was amused. He looked at me with a rare twinkle in his eye and laughed a deep, belly laugh that I don’t think I had ever heard from him before.  He hugged me, showing me an affection that was rare for the Old World man that he was.

Papa was a flawed man.  We all knew that, and instead of judging him, his wife and daughters laughed at behaviors that were anything but funny.  We admired him and understood that he meant well even when he did terrible things. I was, however, perplexed at times. It especially confused me that they all — including my mother — thought it was hilarious that he ran away from home when my mother, his third daughter, was born. 

It was one of the many stories Grandma loved to tell.

“He was so upset that I didn’t give him a son, he ran away, and I did not see him till six months later!”  She’d laugh until an emphysema-hacking fit interceded.  “I punished him, though.  I had the last word. He got Ruthi before he finally got our Johnny.”

Some of the stories were more understandably funny.  My favorite was what we called “The Accord Story,” another one that Grandma loved to tell.

“You know. We came in 1939, when we escaped from Europe. My brother Joe was our first sponsor. You’d think he was the one who saved us. He did get us our first place. A two-bedroom apartment like the one we had in Vienna. Only this one was in Wadley Heights, Harlem.

“Papa was in Cuba. His passport from Poland, where he was born, and the Polish quota was filled. So what else could he do? He traveled to Cuba.”

“That lovely Harlem flat was too small for all us.”

At the time, the family included my grandmother, my mother, age 16, her sister Ruth, age 13, John, age 10, and Herma, her oldest sister, who was in the second trimester of pregnancy.  Herma’s husband Borislav, a Serbian painter, was with Papa in Cuba; the two of them would join the others as soon as their visas were approved.

“You couldn’t argue with the facts. We had to move.” 

Papa’s brothers offered a rescue plan. 

“Those two — the scheisters! Your papa saw what was happening all around us. He had some money in American banks, and those two found out a way to swindle us. They got a quarry in Accord, NY. A quarry!! That they put in Papa’s name. They told us they got us a big new house, and we believed them. When Papa and Borislav arrived in the States, they had us settled in the quarry farmhouse.

“I knew that when Papa would see what they did, he would go . . . there’s no good word in English.  Zornig. Deadly. He could murder those two.  A quarry was the last thing my Henri would want. Furthermore, everyone hated the farmhouse.

It was a true country homestead.  No electricity, no indoor plumbing, no privacy.  Large and looming, the house had no bedroom doors and no place to take baths without open exposure. Not a suitable home in any way.

“I told them, ‘As soon as Henri gets here, you better make this right.'”

The brothers were never put to the test.  When Papa was back for less than a week, a fire broke out.

Grandma and the sisters were all in various parts of the first floor. Papa was upstairs in the room where he and Grandma slept.  John was outside. It was he who saw the flames shooting from the house and screamed at my grandmother, who screamed at the others.

“My china,” yelled Grandma.

“Henri!!  Get what you can from the bedroom.  And get outside!”

“The baby things,” screamed Herma. 

“MY cello,” wailed my mother.

“Oh, no, the cat!”  howled Ruth.

John joined the frenzy to get out as much of what mattered as possible. The kids carried linens, dishware, jewelry, clothing. Borislav saved his easel and canvases. But Papa was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s your father?”  called my grandmother.

“Last I saw, he went back to get things from the bedroom.” 

“Get out, Herma,” scolded Grandma.  “The smoke is getting thick.  Protect your baby.”

“Mama,” cried John.  “I keep calling Papa, and he doesn’t answer.”

“Get out, John.  Your father will find his way.”

Having saved as much as they could, the members of the family converged on the front lawn.  

Ruth worried. “I still don’t know where Papa went,” she whined.

My mother, who had walked around the house to assess the extent of the fire, said, “I won’t miss this house, that’s for sure.”  Then she looked up. “Omigod, Mama, look, up on the roof.”

There was Papa. Standing on the sloped roof of the house.  Calmly looking for a place to slide down.

“Henri,” called my grandmother.  “What are you doing up there?”

“I went back to the bedroom,” he called, “And when I started down the stairs, I saw that there were flames in the center of the house, so I came up here.”

“What have you rescued, Henry?” asked my grandmother. 

At this point of her narration, Grandma always stopped and looked us in the eye. 

“There he stood,” she would say.  “My brilliant bald husband.  Holding his hairbrush and his hand mirror.”  If we failed to laugh, she was crestfallen.  We made it a point to laugh.

The house was damaged beyond repair.  The family moved to Kingston in time for my cousin to be born there. And the story remains a moment of levity for a family that was otherwise plagued by tragedy.

But that’s not what this story is about.