Make Your Own Destiny

By Isabel

“My mom's stories of women's resilience, strength and independence left me inspired. Even after betrayal, heartbreak and loss of loved ones, my ancestors survived and thrived.”

Mom: My mother never liked to bake. It was awful, when you had to bake things for school, we'd always have to buy them. Cause she was like, “I don't have patience for that baking!” Cause my mother liked to throw in a dash of this and a dash of that and “Oh, let me taste it. It needs a little bit.” You can't do that. When you're baking, you have to follow a recipe.

Isabel: Not following recipes is more than a funny anecdote about my grandmother, but a metaphor for the women in our family. My mom told me the story of her great-grandmother Rose Katz.

Mom: Rose came over on the boat, looking for her husband who left Romania to come for a better life in New York, and left her there with her two sons, and then never sent for her. So she, she was a tough cookie and she's like, rolling cigars in a factory in Romania, saved up her money, took her kids and got on the boat and found that he was shacked up with another woman. Kind of a theme in my family.

And so, she started a new life for herself and she had a boyfriend who was a detective. His name was Cliff. He went on some investigation or, I don't know what his story was, but he disappeared. He went on the Staten Island ferry and never came back. And so she was heartbroken. And then her name after that was Cliff. She saved her money, opened up a hotel, upstate New York, and became very successful.

Isabel: Then my mom told me about her grandma Sally, Rose's daughter-in-law.

Mom: My grandmother, Sally, was a real tearaway. They gave her money and instead of spending it on what she was supposed to, she went and got a bob haircut in the 1920s, one of those pixie cuts. She would climb out the window at night and sneak out and go to parties, [laughs] get in so much trouble. My mother had told me that she was real Wildcat. Sally got married to my mother's birth father. They divorced when my mother was a baby. I don't know if he left, if he was abusive, I don't know the story, but even my great-grandmother didn't speak to her son, this Harry Katz. And he died when my mother was younger, because she said that they wanted her to go to his funeral and put a black ribbon on, because the family always wears a black ribbon. And then she was like, I'm not wearing it, she ripped it off. She's like, he's not my father. Sally remarried when my mother was a little girl, my Papi Mac, and he was a mailman. He used to deliver mail to my grandmother, and she was single with these two little kids, and ,he felt bad for them because they didn't have a lot of money.

And, he would bring leg of lamb, like a roast beef and drop it off for her and they started dating. He was a bachelor, he was older, and… they got married and he adopted my mother, because my mother felt self-conscious. Cause her name was Katz, Sophie Katz. And her mother was Sally Garner. Cause Garner was Papi Mac's last name. And my mother said she was so embarrassed, at school. ,Cause could you imagine growing up then, I mean, now everybody has 500 different names, you know, you could have five kids in the family and the all from different fathers, especially if you're a Kardashian, but then, it was such a Shonda, you know, such a shame to have a different last name than your mother. And my mother was mortified. She was so embarrassed and, he adopted her and she changed her name to Garner. So then my mother got married to my father, Shep Friedman, and she became Sophie Friedman.

And when she got divorced, she didn't want to change her name back. She kept the name Friedman because of what happened to her when she was a kid.

Isabel: My grandmother Sophie passed away many years ago. So I asked my mom what she would say if she saw our family today.

Mom: Oh, I think she'd say, Oh my God, your kids, they're so effing smart! Oh my God, and she's gorgeous and a genius! Yeah, Isabel. That's what she would say.

Isabel: Aww.

Mom: She would be very proud. She'd be telling everyone in Brooklyn, would know about you. I mean, when we would come back to visit, people would come up to me and like, Oh, you must be Cindy how's medical school? How's that job at the CDC? I'm like, who are you? [both laugh]. Everyone in Brooklyn. She was kind of the mayor. Of that park, where she hung out with her friends.

Isabel: Finally, I asked my mom what lessons she learned from the women in her family.

Mom: My great grandmother, Cliff, her story always inspired me as the way my mother told it to me was that she was a strong, independent woman who, despite having all these things happen to her, losing love twice, raising two children alone, and then her boyfriend who she adored being taken from her by death. She still overcame all that and made a successful life for herself independently without a man. And then, my mother always said you need to never depend on a man, you need to make your own way. Education is the key. And maybe that's why it inspired me to be who I am. I always say that, no one tells me I can't do something. I never wanted to be someone who was a victim, who would give up and say, this happened to me, and this is my lot in life. I think that you make your own destiny

Isabel: My mom's stories of women's resilience, strength, and independence left me inspired. Even after betrayal, heartbreak and the loss of loved ones, my ancestors survived and thrived. Now more than ever, in times of injustice, sickness and pain, I will keep my mother's words close, and remember where I come from and to make my own destiny.