AGELESS

One afternoon walking on a narrow street in Shanghai, I passed two elderly women. They were walking arm-in-arm. One of them called my attention. As we grew closer she fixed her sharp gaze on me. The Look was warm yet serious. There was a motherly presence in her expression. Perhaps I was prone to notice this look as my mother had passed away only a few months earlier.

Before I turned the corner, I walked back towards the slow walking couple. I pointed my camera at them carefully and in plain sight to gauge their reaction at being photographed. To my surprise, the women stopped walking and with a kind of pride posed to allow me to take the shot.

For a while one of the women's faces kept haunting me. Back in my studio in New York, I was compelled to recreate that face. I never knew her name nor anything about her life. Lú Qing (Clair) as I named her was the first mezzotint of what later became a series of elderly women portraits.

Eduardo Fausti

My mom is Silvia Faggi. She was born in Argentina in 1924; she currently lives in Miami, Florida.

Her father was born in Florence, Italy and her mother in Argentina. Sylvia lost her father when she was only 5 years old and this impacted her greatly. Her mother never remarried.

Contrary to the way she was raised, my mom was ahead of her times; she was the first woman to wear a bikini and the first divorcee in the family. Once “divorce” and “second marriages” were allowed by the Church and State in Argentina, she immediately remarried. This was very rare at the time – especially amongst women in her Catholic family.

Since she was very young, she worked away from home. During the Presidency of Juan Perón, she worked at the Department of Labor in Buenos Aires and close to the President’s wife, Evita Perón. Years later she drove her own school bus and later, still, was the first woman in the city of Mar del Plata (Argentina) to own and drive her own taxi.

Silvia was always the person I turned to in my adolescence. I trusted her because I knew I could speak to her openly about anything. Her mind was and still is broad and flexible.

Now at 85, there’s still something royal about the way she dresses and carries herself. She’s always had a healthy sense of humor. Her wit and intuition are keen; she adapts remarkably well to new situations. We call her the Phoenix bird, as she always reemerges from the ashes of her life’s difficulties relying on her experience to continue growing and evolving.

The many years with mom have taught me to love and appreciate her, and to be proud of her eccentricity and courage. Life has taught me to accept her for who she is: a beautiful human being, my mom Silvia.

Marta Schneider

So the story goes, Josephine Brock was swinging on a swing set in the park when her water broke. She ran home to give birth to a 14-lb baby, my grandmother. Estelle Terry was born Estelle Brock on July 18th, 1915 in South Orange, New Jersey to Josephine and Henry Brock. She spent her childhood in South Orange, New Jersey.

She met her husband-to-be, Robert Terry, while attending Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey. Estelle always said she was a party girl – “the life of the party” and her husband-to-be would attend dances where she danced to her heart’s content while he patiently waited for her to finish.

After graduating from high school, she moved to Greensboro, North Carolina with her husband who taught Aviation at A&T College. She drove a bus on campus for the students. In 1942, they moved to Tuskegee, Alabama where her husband joined the United States Air Force as a flight instructor; Estelle became a parachute rigger on the airbase. During the war, she was awarded two “Caterpillars” – an award given to those who had their chutes jumped in combat.

In 1945, Estelle and her husband gave birth to their only child, Robert Reese Terry. After the war, Estelle and family moved back to New Jersey where she opened the first beauty shop in South Orange. She was also a member of the South Orange Rescue Squad; she drove their ambulance. Estelle currently lives in Salem, Alabama. Her son and grandchildren are still subject to her witty sarcasm at 93 years young.

Malika Ra

Vera was born in Itajaí, Santa Catarina, Brazil, on February 16, 1921. She was the daughter of Ernesto Meyer and Rachel Liberato Meyer. In Itajaí she married José Luiz Pereira and had three children.

As a child she moved to Florianópolis, an island located in southern Brazil and known also as “Magic Island.”

At age 89, Vera currently lives in Curitiba, Brazil. She prides herself on preserving our family’s legacy and history by maintaining many collectibles and antique furnishings stretching far back into our family’s past; she uses family antique pieces and heirlooms to tell us stories that are connected to them, deliberately connecting us to our fammily's past.

She is fond of recalling a story for her three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren whcih had been passed down to her by her mother, Rachel, about one of the family’s furniture pieces in particular.

“My old étagère” I’ve always remembered this particular family piece since it was at my grandfather’s home and stored special treats for us kids. When my widowed grandmother died, my mom and Aunt Alice divided her belongings amongst themselves. Mom liked the étagère and it stayed with her.

In my most distant memories, I can visualize it in our dining room; I remember coming in tired of playing in our backyard and asking:

“Mommy, mommy, where is the pumpkin candy?”

Her sweet unforgettable voice would reply:

“It’s in the jar, on top of the étagère...”

Rachel Liberato Meyer (Vera’s Mother)

Born in Itajaí, May 17, 1895. Died in Florianópolis, March 24, 1959.

Luiz Ernesto Meyer Pereira

A few facts about my grandmother:

She liked persimmons. She loved to garden. She could kill a chicken with her bare hands. She saved string and rubber bands and sometimes used the same napkin for several days in a row. When we called her on the telephone on Sundays, the line was often busy. Her English, though not perfect, was good. She was born in 1900 in Kagoshima, Japan, the fifth of six daughters. She was not the prettiest daughter. She was not the smartest. Nor was she her mother’s favorite. Her father, a Methodist preacher, did not want her to marry. She had one brother – handsome, smart, much loved – who died of tuberculosis at 21. In 1929 she bribed a customs official with five pounds of sugar and left for America. In 1930 she married Shigeharu Nozaka, the general manager of an import-export company in San Francisco. On December 8, 1941, he was arrested by the FBI as a suspected spy for Japan. Several months later she and her two children were removed from their home in Berkeley, California and sent to an internment camp in Topaz, Utah. They returned to Berkeley at the end of the war, in 1945, and for the next 30 years she worked as a domestic. Every evening, on her way home from work, the bus driver would drop her off in front of her house, even though this was not a scheduled stop on his route. She was widowed in 1970 and moved to a retirement home in 1988. On moving day, the following items were found in her fireplace: a pair of long white gloves, a white wedding veil, and a box of letters her husband had written to her during the first year of the war. Nothing was burned. She died twelve years later, in 2000, in a nursing home in Gardena, California. She was almost 101 years old. She never returned to Japan.

Julie Otsuka

Labanyaprobha Ghosh Dastidar was born in Batajore, India, present day Bangladesh, in 1903. We called her “Didama,” which means grandmother in Bengali. Bengalis, Hindus and Muslims lived together in the eastern part of British India.

My grandmother lived a hard but fulfilling life. She had a large family; she gave birth to eleven children; nine survived to adulthood. On August 15, 1947, India gained its independence. India and Pakistan separated placing Bangladesh in eastern Pakistan. This is where most Bengali-Muslims settled.

My grandparents, being Hindus, were forced to move West to Calcutta (now Kolkata) along with other Bengali-Hindus. On arriving in Calcutta they lived in a small garage, where Didama cooked by candlelight for her extended family. Over the years, my grandparents’ situation improved and they eventually moved into a house in Calcutta where they remained for the rest of their lives. My grandfather died when my mother was 20.

For the next 40 years, Didama, alone, raised and supported her family. For as long as I can recall, Didama wore a white sari (the sign of widowhood) and dark-rimmed glasses. She always believed that anything was possible if you put your mind to it. I remember her great strength, her feistiness, and the enormous respect she was paid by those around her. I remember Didama’s wonderful cooking – she made the best Bengali meals, sweets and pickles from scratch. I remember so well the way Didama smelled – a sweet mixture of her favorite moisturizing cream and baby powder. She had the softest skin. Didama always wore her few remaining strands of hair in a long braid down her back; her hair smelled of coconut oil. She had great insight about people, and would advise her children and grandchildren about who would or would not make good life-partners. Most of all she shared an incredible warmth and love with everyone around her.

I saw her a few weeks before she passed away. While physically weak, her mind was as sharp as ever. Didama died on 4 March 1997, at 94 years of age.

Srabani Roy

My mother was born Beverly Selzer in the Bronx, New York on December 12, 1927. Beverly was a wonderful person – a loving mother to us, a second mother to others, a devoted wife and best friend to many. She brightened the lives of all who came in contact with her; she was unbelievably kind and warm. Her enormous heart and love caused her friends to joke that she had wings like an angel. She surely has them now.

Beverly Sokolow embodied the spirit, success and mobility of the first and second generation of American-born Jews who came to the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Arriving with next to nothing, she, like many, embraced the American dream; through hard work and perseverance, many were able to establish comfortable lives for themselves and their children.

Like many women of her generation, Beverly graduated high school and went directly into the workforce. Unlike most, she continued to work after marriage while raising two sons, myself and Richard. She was a bookkeeper for a millenary (hat maker), a gas station, and finally a prestigious automobile dealership, where she was promoted to office manager. During that time, Beverly and her family moved from the Bronx to Jackson Heights, Queens and then to suburban Spring Valley, New York. She also managed to return to school where she earned a degree from Empire State College.

Beverly loved to travel, see the world and meet all sorts of people. With her husband Martin, she visited Africa, Europe and Asia. They were among the first American tourists to visit China and Russia after barriers were lifted. Retiring to Florida in the mid-1990's, she remained active in her community, Newport Cove. Only weeks before her untimely death, she was on a Caribbean cruise.

Beverly battled breast cancer three times over a period of twenty years. Despite these battles, she was always concerned more for others than for herself. My mother’s legacy to us was the realization that the heart knows no bounds; there isn’t a finite amount of love to give; and, if you open your heart, you will be loved in return. She died on January 24, 2009 in Delray Beach, Florida.

Michael Sokolow

My mother-in-law, Diki Lhazi Surkhang, was born in 1919 in Lhasa, Tibet into the aristocratic family of Yabshi Yuthok. She was raised to attend to her mother’s needs such as helping to arrange her wardrobe and ensuring that their home was kept clean. Her mother’s love for Tibetan traditional music greatly influenced her and from a young age she learned to play the Tibetan string instrument “dranyen” and loved singing “Nangma Toeshey,” popular songs from central Tibet.

At age 16 she was married into the Surkhang family where overnight she had to take responsibility for a large household. Until 1959 life was comfortable as the wife of a senior Tibetan government official, Surkhang Shabpe. However, in 1959, with the incursion and occupation of the Chinese military, the entire family emigrated to nearby India where they lived as refugees until 1964.

In 1964 she and her husband moved to Seattle, Washington where he was offered a post in the Far East Department at the University of Washington. Since first coming to this country forty-five years ago, the number of Tibetans in the United States has increased greatly as is reflected in the sprouting of numerous Tibetan Buddhist Centers and many personal visits paid by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the United States. Consequently, Mrs. Surkhang feels truly happy and blessed. She is deeply spiritual and attends the teachings of H.H. the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist teachers when they visit the United States. Presently, Mrs. Surkhang is living in Oakland, California with her son and daughter. She says the weather there suits her much better than in Seattle.

Tenzin Norbu Nangsal

Ita ta win (Wind Woman), the daughter of Pretty Woman, was born around 1830. It is difficult to know for sure because it was before records were kept, before Indians were corralled onto reservations and before Indian Agents took a census of Indian populations. She was married many times and according to her daughter, Josephine McCarthy Waggoner (my great grandmother), she was lucky with good husbands.

She was an excellent bead worker and was a good business woman, getting hides to trade or sell. (Her first husband, Ben Arnold, was a fur trapper and Indian guide and was presumed dead, so she then married Joseph McCarthy my great great grandfather; but later, Ben turned up!) Because her second husband, Joseph McCarthy, had a good job and also owned some land, they lived in a log cabin at Ft. Yates, where my great grandmother was born. Ita ta win was responsible for encouraging her daughters to attend the newly opened schools on the reservation, which were mostly run by missionaries.

She also stored guns under her floorboards when the Indian agency made the Indians give up their guns and horses. She made moccasins and leggings and had the best hides tanned to make clothes that would resist rain, as well as making winter clothes with rabbit fur around the hoods.

What is most interesting about Ita ta win is that she was part of Sitting Bull’s clan, the Ircira (one of 4 bands) of the Hunkpapa of the Oglala band of Sioux Indians. During the Indian Wars, when the American government signed many treaties and then broke them, the Indians realized that the whites were going to take their land. After the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull took the Ircira up into Canada to join the Canadian bands of Sioux, and tried to get the Canadian government to give him a reservation since he was a wanted man by the American government.

Ita ta win was part of this band, along with two brothers, that went to Canada. When Sitting Bull realized that the Canadians weren’t going to allow him to stay, he retreated back to the Dakota Territory and gave himself up and Ita ta win returned with him. Ita ta win later moved away from Ft. Yates. We do not know where or when she died.

Lynne Allen