An improvised life

The man peers through his jeweler’s loupe, poker faced and focused behind the glass counter. “These are gold,” his employee had said when he opened the small chainmail coin purse I found among the flotsam in my parents’ basement. It was blackened and greasy, and when I opened it I saw what looked like foreign currency. I snapped it shut and threw it in the box with the old silver, the maybe-silver, the half-filled cardboard coin collection booklets, and other odds and ends.  “We take it all,” a Slavic-accented man had told me over the phone. Broken jewelry, doesn’t matter, it gets melted down for the gold and silver. No appointment needed, we’re here until 4.  We scurried around the house combing for unneeded items that might be gold or silver. My mom found an old ziplock bag of currency and threw it in the box. (They turned out to be quarters - worth 25 cents each.) My dad scoured his dresser. Might as well take it all. We’re on the front end of emptying their home of 56 year...

I’m in a plane bumping through the skies toward Juneau, returning from Los Angeles. At my feet is a leather bag containing wafer-thin papers signed by Nazi storm troopers in 1938. One document informs my grandfather, the Jewish Doctor Rudolf Braun, he is no longer permitted to treat Aryan patients. Another document discharges his Aryan household staff because it is, according to the Third Reich, sullying to work for a Jew. I carried these documents to LA and to the Austrian consulate. I presented them alongside my birth certificate, my parents’ marriage certificate, my son’s birth certificate, my husband’s death certificate, and other papers produced by other units of government of various type and vintage. In 2020 Austria passed a law granting citizenship to victims of Nazi persecution and their direct descendants. Unlike most citizenship processes, this one does not require that one speak German, reside in or even visit Austria, take any test, or pay any fees. It is, the country says...

Last week a friend who doesn't live in Juneau sent me screenshots of an online rant and said, “I think our neighbors complained about us on Reddit!!!” The Reddit post began, “Hello neighbor from the [redacted] block, Launching mortars last night was a really inconsiderate move.”   Uh oh. It was my friend’s block, and while my friend had not been home, her family had apparently launched New Year’s Eve fireworks.   The post incited a predictable onslaught of anonymous vitriol. Outrage and allegations built. At some point the original poster added: “The thing that gets me the most is that they are a very nuclear family with a bunch of rowdy teen boys and the parents were the ones lighting them off. These are the same people that threw a rager and left beer cans and puke in my yard.”   Most of this did not sound right. “I don’t think it’s you,” I reassured my friend.   “Yeah,” she said, “We haven’t had a party here in years.”   But soon a hand-written note showed up...

I lived in a co-op for my last two years of college. I left the dorm and my sweet roommates for various reasons including a generalized anti-establishment streak, but it was mostly about food. I couldn't deal with the mass-market feel of the dining hall, I wanted to make toast in the middle of the night, and I needed to bake cookies for therapy.   The co-op was a glutton's paradise. We snacked on chocolate chips from a 25-pound box. Eight loaves of fresh bread came out of the oven every night. I developed an addiction to hot chili sesame oil, which we ordered by the case, and which I smothered on rice and ramen. When I graduated and moved out, I forgot my laundry in the dryer and literally lost all of my favorite clothes, but I remembered to grab a bottle of hot chili sesame oil.  I was leaving Boston and heading to Alaska for a summer job studying the temperate rainforest. There would be bears and big trees and whales and glaciers. There would not, I feared, be a ready supply...