Life Begins at Ninety #13 Breakfast Adventure

 Daughter Alicia comments:

My mother Nika cannot leave her house without having an adventure.  She talks to strangers and they become friends.  She crosses the street or goes to the post office and people respond, help, laugh, and give her yet another story to tell.  Here is the adventure of the day:

 

 

Late last night, I got hungry and ate cereal with fruit at 2 am; then went back to sleep. This story would not have happened if I had my normal 6 a.m. breakfast.  Was not hungry in the morning so I left home to See Eric Haggard (talented  physiotherapist) working on my balance.    

   

Eric made me jump on the trampoline, then I tried to walk  touching one foot in front of the other with closed eyes, etc.   All very  tiring.

Eric never gives up.  He is  a natural healer and a nice man who cares  - a rare bird.

  

Then I got to rest a little and Eric brought water in a champagne glass--- round delicious  goat cheese and little chocolate with nuts.  Thus revived, I started again walking, jumping, feeling silly. For a former gymnast and a dancer not to be able to hold my balance perfectly, who would have thought it possible? 

 

After an hour of this torture (not really) I walked  down to New Frontiers health store, and bought goat cheese and other delicious items and decided to have well-deserved breakfast.  In front of me at the coffee  table was a young man helping himself  to delicious, strong coffee and sat down at the first table.  When I was through fixing my brew, I asked if I could  join the young man at same table.  He looked like many other young people visiting Sedona, searching for a different kind of life.  Sedona  provides  many alternatives, I understand.

   

To my delight this young man, Thomas Klien, an architect, told me a bit about himslef.  He came from Vienna to join a dance group and see the wonders around Sedona and the almost-frozen Grand Canyon national park.

 

We spoke German and I told him the story of my broken hip at 15 years of age, when I fell from a boy’s bike that was way too high for me.  No one could fix such a break at that time.  The prognosis was that the leg will get  shorter and one has to wear a big ugly black boot. 

 

When my father listened to all the  doctors explaining the sad situation, he immediately  bought a ticket to Vienna for us, carrying me on his arms to the railroad. He used a passport of his brother and brother’s daughter since it would have been impossible on such short notice to get passports for us. My cousin Minna   (daughter of his sister Mala)  worked in Unfallkrankenhouse  (hospital for fixing broken bones) in Vienna.  She was a young doctor working there, and explained  that there is a new great doctor Boehler experimenting with screws, nails, and weights on pulleys to fix a broken hip, preventing it from getting shorter, and thus permitting a normal life after therapy.  It was just in an experimental stage but we had nothing to lose, so the good doctor did everything to save my leg.

   

I was hanging all day ....well, my leg was hanging, strapped on a pulley with a weight pulling, pulling, pulling, and causing constant pain, but preventing my leg from receding  2 1/2 inches, and keeping it in the right place after the leg was reset. The pain was constant, and worse in the evening, when all pillows were removed so it really pulled.  I promised to be so good the rest of my life if only this pain would go away.

  

Well cheer up, from all this pain came a great advantage: I learned speaking  Viennese-German very well.  They put a huge cast on after a few weeks, and I could  hobble around  and saw theater where they gave me a special seat. 

 

I lived for this year in a palatial home of my Aunt and Uncle – across from the French consulate, a life  so different from our Krakow medieval lovely town in Poland.

 

I was permitted to sit around the table and look at these  lovely  actresses and actors and writers discussing their professional troubles and good things, all that helped me forget all my suffering. I was a young teenager and so grateful for being allowed to be in the company of these sophisticated bohemians!

  

Imagine telling this story from 1935 to the young man as we were eating our breakfast in the store so many years  later!  I asked  Thomas  when he  returns to Vienna to look up  Gusshausstr  17  to see if it really was as grand as I remember it.  This was “bashert”  I explained  -  it means  “it had to happen.” This was my first time ever having breakfast so late and not at home.

 

New adventures  every day -  WOW.

 

 

- Nika Fleissig

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Rabbi Alicia Magalwww.jcsvv.org
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"A Jewel of a Shul"

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