by Steve Pollack (Woxall, PA)
“I met your mechuteneste today,” my mom’s father stated, as if a simple matter-of-fact. All of us recognized that Yiddish word, but something wasn’t translating. Poppy’s eyes announced a playful intent and he unfolded the story like a riddle. Soon, we learned that Poppy had visited the mother of his grandson’s girlfriend.
I was dating 16-year-old Linda Donecoff for about a month, when I offered her my mezuzah, originally a bar-mitzvah gift. Linda tied a “lover’s knot” in the sterling chain, which made it way cooler. We tied up our parents’ phone lines, discussing nothing more substantial than what to do that week-end. We were discovering our relationship, not contemplating marriage, not ready to be intimate. Linda’s senior prom was not penciled on our calendar.
A girlfriend is not a partner blessed by sacred vows, not a betrothed—her mother not really a mechuteneste! Yet, Poppy was confident in a destiny no one else around our kitchen table could foresee. Life experience and the faith he wore, comfortable as a vest, taught him patient optimism. Linda and I were “going steady” for three, maybe four months, when he decided to meet my other half in the person of her mother.
Attired in sports jacket with buttoned vest, creased hat atop silver white hair, Reuben Mazer carried himself in a posture that fooled a diminutive stature. Stretching his legs, greeting neighbors on his way, he was known as “the Mayor of Oakland Street”, not because he won an election or had political ambitions. Words of this humble tailor soothed us at stressful moments: “Don’t worry, everything will press-ach-oyes!”
At that kitchen-table-moment in 1964, Mom collected her thoughts and inquired further, “Did you just go to her front door, uninvited—knock like a peddler?”
Poppy volunteered that he had approached her house the previous week, but “her gotkes were hanging out”. That word less familiar, but Poppy clarified, “it was her cleaning day”. He observed a bathroom rug airing out a second story window, and postponed meeting the woman who he predicted would be his daughter’s mechuteneste.
Seated around the faux-marble table, we all begged in accidental unison: “PLEASE, Poppy— tell us the whole story!” We savored his news of the day like the evening meal. Poppy revealed he had walked to the Donecoff’s home at 7275 Rutland Street, a handful of streets away. Observing no gotkes, he considered it a good day to knock, and introduced himself as Steven’s grandfather. Miriam Donecoff had no hesitation inviting a well-dressed elderly gentleman into her home, even though her husband was away at work.
How Poppy knew the exact address we didn’t ask. I don’t recall that detail during our frequent nighttime chats. Our relationship was close as twin beds. Had I confided the nearest corner—the block —the family name? I imagine Poppy politely stopping a stranger: “Can you tell me in which house the Donecoff family lives?”
To my Mom and Dad, each born in America, his bold pilgrimage was unthinkable and intriguing. Perhaps, Mom was envious of his initiative. She had been asking me about Linda for weeks, hinting that I invite her for Shabbat dinner, but tiptoed a nuanced ballet on that subject.
To Poppy, informed by old-world se’khel, an intuition to push things forward, this was a normal call of the family patriarch. He was no peddler selling rags. This was the sociable way of checking the household where his grandson’s girlfriend lived. He noted only positive impressions, and believed our attraction was bashert.
In Miriam, he discovered a gregarious hostess whose infectious laughter could vibrate a room. She was delighted to sit with him in her velvet, forest-green living room. Poppy liked this woman, a balabusta in charge of her neat household—a woman who also arrived by boat to America and found his visit not at all bold. Miriam welcomed the opportunity to share a glezel tei and discuss the kinder. Since first meeting her daughter at a Sweet Sixteen party across narrow Rutland Street, she placed me at the top—a respectful college bokher, a nice Jewish boy with a charming Jewish grandfather! Reuben Mazer’s visit, no doubt, enhanced her evaluation of me.
Miriam and Poppy had each suffered loss that could not heal. They trusted neither bitterness nor fairy tales, but believed in happy endings. They understood the meaning of bashert. Throughout history, difficult circumstances often compelled decisions. Poppy made us believe that everything will iron out; that meant to be will find a way. We make choices. We change our minds. Call it random chance or coincidence, if you prefer. Fate is a gem of many facets.
Linda & I, and the generations before (or after) us, would never be born, but for a perfectly aligned sequence of disconnected events—necessary one to the next. We regret not knowing folks who never boarded a boat, those before our immigrant grandparents. From bleached beginnings, people identified only by names passed forward, or those in Biblical narratives—their experience somehow inhabits my bones and my psyche. Blessings most fine sift through an intricate mesh.
***
Poppy passed away the following Spring, within weeks after witnessing Linda & I off to her high school formal, dressed as if atop a tiered buttercream cake. He did not see us four years later, at my college graduation or under the chupah. Miriam lived another ten years, enough to count toes of her first grandchild.She and Poppy had adapted the art of shtetl matchmaking to a modern American model.
Linda still keeps the mezuzah, my first gift for her, in a jewelry box filled with precious gems, none as bashert. I recognize meant to be only in hindsight. Now, we have new names, Bubbe & Zayde, old names we choose to honor. Though our lives are profoundly different than parents and grandparents, we celebrate many flowering branches. We kvell with ancestors, and call upon Poppy’s satin chutzpah, Miriam’s bottomless laughter, as our grandchildren search their destinies.
Editor’s Note: A much longer version of this story appeared under a different title in The Jewish Literary Journal in April 2022. It’s reprinted here with the permission of the author.
Steve Pollack hit half-balls with broomsticks, rode the Frankford El to Drexel University, sailed the equator on the USS Enterprise. He advised governments, directed an affordable housing co-op, built hospitals, science labs and public schools. His poetry has recently appeared in Schuylkill Valley Journal, Jewish Poets Collective, and Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. His chapbook, L’dor Vador–From Generation to Generation, was published by Finishing Line Press. He was named the 2025 Montgomery County (PA) Poet Laureate. He volunteers on the One Book One Jewish Community team sponsored by Gratz College and sings bass with Nashirah: the Jewish Chorale of Greater Philadelphia. He and Linda live in suburban Philly, where they celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary on November 2, 2025.
To read more and Steve Pollack and his work, visit: Steve Pollack Montgomery County poet laureate and From generation to generation: l’dor v’dor
The Jewish Writing Project 