My Aunt Hannibelle – Hannibelle Goldberg – was not really my aunt, but rather one of those far-reaching cousins, married in an absolutely inexplicable way to yet another distant cousin, so that when push came to shove, it was just easier to call her Aunt!
Silver-haired, wealthy, chic, always smelling of expensive department stores, she was one of my two perfect Aunts to hang my niece-hood on….and her luxe bedroom was absolutely, totally, richly various shades of pink! Her huge rosy-carpeted bedroom, much like going to rest each night in a large, (again fragrant), pink womb, complete with silk sheets and a dressing room with lights around her mirror like a movie star.
I think maybe her father Al Hirsch ( who shot himself in his expensive bed when he turned 80, old age depressing him so)…anyway,Uncle Al was brother to my father’s mother…so ,yeah, Al’s daughter Hannibelle was my grand-cousin, or whatever….some cousin removed in a numerical procession I’ve never been able to figure out.
What I do know is that she was Aunt Hannibelle to me and her daughter Sandra was my nearest girl pal, though a decade older than me…i always wanted to be tall, slender and fashionable like Sandra when I grew up. And so, I sort of accomplished that, always amazed that Sandra loved me all through her life as much as she did. She loved that I had a successful acting career, something she always coveted.
She’s gone now.
As is that entire genteel Southern Jewish scene – gone at least from my life, though still thoroughly entrenched in the social landscape of a vaguely anti-semitic Atlanta, I’ve no doubt. My family, the Baron’s , were always sort of the poorer cousins, underscored by the fact that my father was an art restorer, not a real-estate mogul like all the other men in our crowd. In fact, Hannibelle’s husband Sam Goldberg was the gold standard of land ownership in downtown Atlanta, owning as much of Peachtree Street as he could grab when he was up and coming and holding onto it come hell or High Holy Days, no matter what. I’m pretty sure he was some sort of gangster.
Sam and Hannibelle: glory and graciousness personified…Passover seders with actual gold-plated knives, forks and spoons, and show tunes always playing on their blonde wood stereo system. The dinner plates were edged in gold as well. I was dazzled.
It was only later I learned and understood how very imperfect they all were, those kin of mine: Hannibelle having an affair with my mustachioed uncle Ed behind Sam’s back, Sam having an affair with my namesake Aunt Evalyn behind Hannibelle’s back, Cousin Sandra sleeping with every boy in town ’til she snagged a tall one who was wealthy enough not to care who she had sex with, a mysterious suicide here and there scattered throughout the decades in the lofty region of Buckhead Atlanta…..my family, like all others, would make a great prime time soap opera, if only I cared enough to write it.
Odd, that the very first thing I thought of this morning was my Goldberg relatives….odd…as i’ve spent none of my life ever really remembering them or thinking about them in any way….until, this morning.
Maybe I WILL write that TV script after all.
Or not.
Memories are deep, revealing and sticky, but nothing to hang these present times on…no, I’m too busy growing older and wiser for that…thank God…and the Goldbergs.