I want a historic, enduring, relentless love. The quiet pulse of a lifetime of boring moments, building into a fire of endurance and commitment.
I want the love of Stanley and Dora, the Holocaust survivors who raised me. Their love is captured forever in a black and white photo on my desk. It immortalizes a moment when Stanley left Italy by boat for the United States.
To do that, he had to say goodbye to Dora, not knowing if they would ever reunite. He had already lost, as had she, all those they loved in brutal circumstances. To walk away from love again, to risk forging a new life for both, after these losses was brave, poignant, and seemingly impossible. But they were still young and somehow found love again in Italy. And they mustered hope to chase opportunity risking losing each other all over again. In the photo on my desk, before he got on the boat nearby, he looks at her while brushing her hair from her face with a tenderness that simply makes my heart swoon.
After, while on his journey to America by boat, he continued to use the camera he had taken off a dead Nazi to take photos documenting the long trip. After landing in the States, my Stanley created a book of photos for my mother Dora, narrating his experience. He did not have the money to mail it, or as they said then, to post it to her. Once reunited he gifted it to her, evidence that she was always with him, even when they were apart.
A simple photo of the Statute of Liberty, the polestar for the final freedom of a country they both so appreciated the promise of. The documentation of his moments away from her are such a testament to sharing everything with he, not willing to leave anyone he loved behind ever again. Once he set his feet down on US soil, he found her a scholarship to pursue her chemistry degree, education being her highest value after Nazis robbed her of schooling, as Stanley knew she would never come to America if such opportunity did not exist.
