A.R. Koheen

Family legend says that in the middle of World War II, with its rationing, and its need for self reliance, my twenty-four year old mother lay on my Grandmother Emma Laughton Larkin’s kitchen table in rural Fallen, Nevada for an emergency C-Section by the old school, Chief Surgical R.N. to save the life of her willful, middle daughter and the multiple fetuses trapped inside her, after a failed suicide attempt by Nancy in throwing herself off a running horse. Her step-father, my beloved grandfather, Lou Larkin, dripped ether over a metal kitchen strainer and a piece of cheesecloth, a new towel intended for drying dishes, trying not to pass out himself, while “Big Ed” Simpson came in, saw the six, viable pink infants with which her mother was attempting to cope, having sent the usually unflappable rancher outside to puke. Her quick actions saved the miniature babies from certain death when the solitary doctor in town was unable to respond. Then Big Ed noticed the small, blue lump at the bottom of a freshly scoured milking pail that was to be buried under a tree outside as soon as the needs of the living were attended. He is said to have picked it up, breathed air and life into its motionless lungs, and placed it in a man’s woolen sock next to his heart, saying “This one is mine.” His mother Mariette being from Canada, fifty-year-old Ed Simpson was only too mindful of how the Dion ‘Qunits’ had been taken from their mother and father by the Government, refusing to allow them to live in the family house across the road, but in a government-built house with doctors and nurses long after any health crisis in being born premature had passed. All but two of the surviving children were raised by other members of Nancy's extended family until the end of the War, and knowing how Nancy despised the thought of having given the rich man identical daughters rather than the son she’d promised him, there was little change he would be allowed to be a part of their lives, as he was the two daughters he and nancy raised for two and a half years, after getting married in January of the next year, but in time, he saw to it that he was. He even had to milk the strong willed Nanny goat when the child proved lactose intolerant and couldn’t handle cow’s milk. With a start like that I destined to become a writer!

        In the end, he remained true to his new wife and the surviving children; true to the Quaker faith which eased his rebellious passed, and helped me to remain true to my Jewish Roots as the family of the man who claimed to be our father, to save his best friend’s reputation in the Observant Community, folded us in with the other refugees from horror little understood unless you lived through it, or were intimately involved with someone who did. Of my biological father’s family, only he and an aged Auntie survived, so I understood his need to protect the ‘purity’ of his legitimate line, a single daughter, but as I was Observant and being Jewish meant so much to me then, as it does now, he gave me permission to use his last name some day as long as I made no attempt to ‘seize’ any of the property due to his rightful heir. In the end, I chose a close approximation, legally combining my family name of Asia, with the Kohenite Clan, which DNA proved us to be linked too, so that I might ‘Honor my father’ as the LORD GOD of Eternity demanded, without having to ‘choose’ between my fathers: The one who gave me form, or the one who gave me life. Though I jealously attempted to believe I was an only child ~ for where were the children I heard about in the Family Stories told when they supposed ‘little ears’ were fastened with sleep? ~ Though Big Ed took me to events and family gatherings where I was supposed to be the child of that kindly man, and he helped me to keep alive my Jewish roots, he would always whisper: “Don’t let them take the best part of being Jewish away from you, the Messiah and Savior, Jesus of Nazareth”. As I rebelled, as my mother had before me, I learned more about the reality of a living GOD who cared for a world gone insane with violence and greed for possessions in the 1950’s Post War World than I ever imagined could reach past my anger and defensive longing to ‘belong’ …. somewhere. When I had a scaled down Bat Mitzvah, a card table and some expensive smoked salmon pressed into a Jell-o mold, which I demanded be shaped as a fish, so no one touched it, it was blasphemous. The attitude changed toward me in other and I was shunted aside again, a bleeding female destined for copulation and ‘revenge’ against Hitler I was bluntly told to decide to be ‘A Christian or a Jew’, ‘No more kid gloves, no more of this “Sweet Baby Jesus stuff.”’ Though I was being raised by Nuns in a convent boarding school all week, which was amazingly convenient for people with busy lives, since I was ‘getting such an education!’ in a Society that honors scholars and learned thinkers. Only Big Ed sought me out on the weekends, and many time I had to leave him to go to Family Events where Gentiles were scorned, just as multiplied thousands of fellow Jews had been scorned and ignored to death in the concentration camps of Europe, denied entry into countries where they had been passionate citizens of the world, but I only partially understood until the day I was challenged to choose ~ in effect, chose between fathers as I had managed not to do until that day when I turned thirteen and became an adult in the eyes of my Community.

     I chose the GOD I’d seen modeled in love by my Dad, through the actions and living witness of this flawed, but to me, magnificent, Quaker man. Having seen throughout my childhood, the personal cost to him, to keep faith in the Quaker belief in peace and brotherhood, things I had been taught to esteem by my father’s world as well. May these imaginative tales, the essence of me which will survive long after bone and tissue have returned to the comforting arms of Mother Earth and my soul winged skyward to exist supernaturally in eternal love, somehow lead Thee to the One who loved You more than life itself.

      Shalom Aleikhem in our living LORD and Savior,

       Y’shua ha Mashiach,

         Asia Rachael Cohen