The Properties of Silver: A tribute to the women in my life

ORT's Kilimanjaro campaign was designed as a way for women to inspire and empower other women.  Since signing up for the climb,  I have had the opportunity to reflect on the important women in my  own life, the people who have shaped me and through their examples inspired and determined my actions and attitudes. My list was not a short one.

My silver candlesticks

On the sideboard in our dining room, stands a pair of antique Russian silver candlesticks. They once belonged to my maternal grandmother’s grandmother, and have been passed from mother to daughter as our family’s only real heirloom. They were given to me on the occasion of my marriage, just over twelve years ago and aside from my wedding and engagement rings they are my most prized material possessions.  They are of course beautiful and because they are pure silver, retain all the unique properties of that precious metal that also somehow seem to resemble the qualities of the women who have lit them for a century of Friday nights.

Of all the metals and materials, silver has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity known. While it is incredibly strong, it is also malleable and ductile, meaning that it can be easily shaped or stretched into thin sheets and wire.  It can endure extreme temperature ranges and because of its soft, white lustrous appearance, reflects light very well. Though it tarnishes easily, the patina that forms is a surface phenomenon, which  unlike rust is self limiting and actually seals and protects the underlying layers.  Tarnish can be removed easily, without scratching or damaging the silver itself. Silver has long been valued as a  precious metal and is therefore used to make ornaments, jewellery, high-value tableware, utensils and currency coins. But silver is not just decorative. Today, silver metal is also used in electrical contacts and conductors, in mirrors and in catalysis of chemical reactions. Its compounds are used in photographic film and dilute silver nitrate solutions and other silver compounds are used as disinfectants. Silver has even been used for medical purposes and further research into its clinical potential continues.



Rivka

The original owner of the candlesticks, was my great great grandmother Rivka, a resident of Sereijai, Lithuania . In 1928, her daughter, Chiena, her husband Gershon along with their three daughters, Emma, Sarah and Miriam (my Bobba) arrived in South Africa bringing with them Rivka, the candlesticks and their hopes and dreams for prosperity, just as the world economy was poised to crash. They made their home in Jagersfontein, a diamond mining town almost 70km south west of Bloemfontein.  There, they opened a general store selling all kinds of things in effort to keep the family afloat.

Family lore has it that Chiena, was a formidable woman. Strong, resilient, adaptable - just like her mother’s silver candlesticks, which she inherited after Rivka's passing,  she held the family together through the Great Depression. There is a story my mother tells about her that I think of often. She once ordered a consignment of sewing machines to sell in their shop. The shipment arrived, but all the machines were broken and unusable. She could have thrown up her hands in despair, bewailed the wasted expense of importing damaged goods but instead she stayed up night after night taking them apart, figuring out their internal mechanism and painstakingly fixing every one of them until she had sold each and every single unit in perfect working order. She passed her technical gift on to her eldest daughter Emma who once took apart her stove and successfully rewired it, instead of calling an electrician to do the job for her.  Emma, widely acknowledged to be the most beautiful of the three daughters was clearly not merely decorative either but industrious and productive. Glimpses of Chiena's iron determination and tenacity were evident in her second daughter Sarah who put herself through university to become a chartered accountant. She and her daughter Lola became South Africa’s first ever mother-daughter pair to be registered CAs.  

Chiena

My Bobba Miriam, the baby of the family, apparently always wanted to be a social worker but times were tough and money was scarce. So instead, Miriam went to work. She may never have actually qualified with a degree in Social Work, but it never stopped her from practising it as a vocation her whole life. If the definition of a social worker is someone who seeks to improve the quality of life and well being of people, if it is opposing social injustice, teaching and assisting those afflicted by poverty or uplifting those who have had their human rights violated, then there was no better example of a social worker than my Bobba. She was a one woman ORT organisation! To be near her was to be imbued with the warmth of her personality, the electricity of her wit and humour. She radiated heat in much the same way her candlesticks conduct electricity.

My Bobba

It isn't really remotely surprising that my Bobba's only child, my mother, inherited her strength of character. When my parents married, they had an agreement. My father would not impose his religious beliefs on my mother and my mom in return would give my father the freedom to keep Shabbat and a kosher home. And then they had children. Slowly, my mother's lifestyle began to change. Soon after I was born, she started keeping kosher all the time when she realised that there are some incongruities you can't really explain to a small child. She shed her jeans when she looked around at the  parent body of the religious day school at which they had chosen to educate us. There was a time I can recall from my early childhood when it was customary for my father to leave the TV on over Shabbat so that he could keep an eye on Saturday afternoon Wimbledon and other equally compelling viewing. Technically  we were not breaking Shabbat, but it was my mother who insisted that it was not in the spirit of the day and so the TV was eventually turned (and stayed) off.




My mom

My mother stretched herself into new shapes and forms, reinventing herself so that her family would have the security of consistency and symmetry. She along with my father taught my siblings and me about the importance of fulfilling a promise and honouring a commitment. We learnt to finish the things we started, to always work towards our potential, to be dissatisfied with underachievement and to honour integrity. In a community where marriage was - and still is for all intents and purposes -  exalted as the pinnacle of feminine achievement - my mother gently, quietly, consistently assured me that I was important in and of myself. She was unambiguous about the fact that while finding a husband and having a family of my own could be a wonderful blessing, I should never measure my self-worth in terms of my relationship status. When I am overwhelmed with work and my children and exhaustion due to the unwise number of community projects I tend to adopt, it is my mother's voice that assures me that I will not break, that I can and will endure and that I need no saviour other than the reserves she so painstakingly spent my childhood building. My husband and brother in law often joke that my sister and I are frightening female specimens. I don't know about my sister, but I choose to take that as a compliment.

So my sister. Seven years my junior, but my superior in life experience, wisdom, compassion and grace. To say that my parents were concerned when she announced her engagement at the tender age of 18 would be a significant understatement. My mother was a little troubled that she had only just begun her first year of Occupational Therapy and the likelihood of her actually graduating after getting married would be slim. Full blown panic would be a more accurate description of what my parents felt. But they should have known better. They raised their girls to be made of stern stuff. Not only did Ayelet pass her first year, before getting married, but she passed the next three years equally smoothly and completed her year of community service without fuss, without drama, without spectacle. She then calmly gave birth to her first child, a perfect baby girl. 


Ayelet and her girls

Two years ago my sister suffered an indescribable loss. We stood by uselessly. There was nothing to say and nothing to do but be there in her presence and watch her hurt. We looked on as grief tarnished her bright surface and pain dulled her exterior. But just like my candlesticks, the patina was self-limiting. I watched incredulously as my brave sister never succumbed to despair. Every day she got up. Every day she got dressed. Every day she went to work. Every day she looked after her children, cooked for them, played with them, laughed with them. Every day she held herself together with pure will. And when enough time had passed, she gently wiped herself off, and shone more brightly than ever before.  It was the only time I had been so close a witness to that much pain, endured so courageously  and with such dignity. Ayelet will turn 29 this year. When you see her with her three children, she looks like their older sister - youthful, beautiful, energetic.  What you won't see, is that she is made of the most durable materials. She can withstand unbearable pressure. There is a core of pure silver metal that runs through her being. She is courageous and resilient and she is stronger than you can ever know. I am awed and inspired by her every day.

Which brings me to the future recipient of the silver candlesticks – my daughter Amalia, currently three years old. There has not been a single time that I can remember recently when I have not been stopped when I’m out with my daughter, for someone to comment on how exquisite she is. And it’s true, we have been blessed with a beautiful child. To me though, it isn’t her wide blue eyes framed with endless thick black lashes, or her perfect complexion or the way the sun seems to thread through her hair in a mass of shimmering light that makes her gorgeous – although those things don’t hurt. What makes her utterly bewitching is the animation that lights her face when she experiences something new. It’s the determined set of her chin when she decides she wants to do something by herself. It’s the tenacity she brings to every fibre of her 3 year old being when challenged to do something difficult for the first time. It’s the easy, contagious laughter that ripples through the air when she finds something belly-achingly funny. It's the way she dances with total abandon and the pure delight on her face as she urges me to push the swing higher, higher. It's the mischievous gleam that creeps into her eyes when she knows she's pulling my leg.  It’s the affectionate tug of small arms clutched around my neck and the sweetest murmur of her declaration, ‘I love my Mommy!’

I watch her with barely contained frustration as she breaks apart a 30 piece puzzle to start over because I had the nerve to assist her with a single piece. I have to check my need for efficiency and promptness when I watch her struggle with her socks determined to dress herself. I bite my tongue a dozen times a day while she insists on choosing her own wardrobe, buckling herself into her car seat, putting toothpaste on her own toothbrush, and generally doing things her own way. I’ll admit that her independence, her stubbornness, her insistence on wearing Spiderman rather than Barbie pyjamas, her feisty temperament and her fierce protection of her rights can be exasperating, infuriating. But there’s another part of me, the larger part (and yes, sometimes only fractionally larger) that looks on proudly, cheering for her  and whispering ‘That’s my girl!’ My strong daughter, a precious metal, malleable enough now for me to shape and influence. I pray that through my life I can set the example that my luminous bloodline has set for me. In three months' time I will climb a mountain. I am doing this for many reasons, several of which are too elusive to articulate coherently. I do know this though. When it comes down to it, I want to be someone my daughter can be proud of. I want to teach her all she needs to know about being self-sufficient and self-believing. I want her to have the confidence to allow her immense light to  reflect and shine on those around her, always, so that she too can climb any mountain she chooses.

Amali

by Tali Frankel