Redheads

When my grandmother was young, she was told her red hair was a curse. They said the devil lived in it. The old women in her superstitious Transylvania village would spit at her to remove it. It was something different and therefore ugly…and scary.

Even her mother tried to dye her hair. My grandmother told me stories about sitting in the garden with her eyes closed as nut oil ran down from her scalp to her chin. She would pray the whole time that it wouldn’t work. She loved her red hair. When the dye treatment was finished, she would hold her breath and walk to the mirror, only exhaling when she saw her hair was still red. “Don’t listen to what anyone says. You are so beautiful,” she told her reflection again and again.

When she got to Auschwitz, one of the first things the Nazis did was shave her head. I called the book, The Redhead of Auschwitz because they could never shave the redhead from her spirit. She stayed stubborn and proud throughout. As much as they tried to snuff her fire out, she burned brighter.

But I am not a redhead and when I started writing my grandmother’s story, I was not sure I was strong enough to continue. Then I found this piece from Elizebeth Barret Browning’s poem, Aurora Leigh. I even made a collage with it and kept it on my writing desk.

It went like this:

“Earth is crammed with Heaven.

Every common bush afire with God

But only he who sees it.

Takes off his shoes.”

For me, “takes off his shoes” means letting go of control. Our shoes are sturdy, they help us walk where we want to go, and they hold us up to stand on our own two feet. But there are times in life that we need to take our shoes off which to me means humbly stepping out of the need to understand, intellectualize and control.

I loved this poem because as I was writing my grandmother’s story, she made me aware of the heaven that was crammed into her life on this earth. For her, every common bush was afire with wonder, joy, and the love of life and the Creator of it. But her life story also gave us so many questions. Questions that grew with any answer anyone tried to give. How could the Holocaust happen? How could a million and a half children be murdered only for being Jewish. How could there be so much intense pain. The only answer for me was no answer. The only way to keep seeing the heaven crammed into the earth was to take off my shoes. To not understand. To give up control.

“It’s hard to believe,” my grandmother would say. “But it is even harder not to.”

This past week it felt like we had to take off more than our shoes. We had to peel off the skin around our feet. I wish I have answers but I don’t. I don’t know anything. All I know is it hurts. It hurt for my grandmother too. It hurts and I do not know what to say. It hurts that two beautiful redhead babies and their mother were killed so brutally, only for the crime of being Jewish. It hurts that we live in a world where this happened. It hurts on an existential level and on a people level. We are all family, and it hurts that this happened to us.

I think right now, we all have to be redheads. We need to be stubborn and persistent. We all have to look at our reflection and say, “You are so beautiful,” no matter how many people spit in our faces.

And maybe we have to think of the world as redhead too and find the beauty that is crammed in it no matter how easy it feels to call it ugly or a curse.

This is a comfort for me and I hope it can be a comfort for you.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. It is an honor sharing mine with you.