Searching for Lottie by Susan Ross

Author:Susan Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2019-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

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On the flight home from Florida, Charlie gazed over the clouds. The rest of the weekend with Nana Rose had been great. They’d met some of Nana’s neighbors and taken her shopping at a nearby mall. Charlie and Mom had even spent an hour on Saturday floating in Clover Manor’s pool and playing shuffleboard while Nana rested. Then they’d all gone out for dinner and a movie.

But now, all Charlie could think about was Nana Rose and her sister Lottie’s lives before the war. Nana had described her sister as “fearless.” Lottie was brave enough to perform in a concert with adults and brave enough to leave her family to go study music in Budapest. But was she strong enough to have survived the Holocaust? Charlie shuddered.

“Are you all right?” Mom put down her newspaper.

“It’s just that…” Charlie shook her head. “I just don’t understand why Nana Rose didn’t try harder to find Cousin Nathan. And why didn’t she ever show you all those photographs and Lottie’s concert reviews? You said you’d never seen her scrapbook before.”

Mom sighed and stretched her arm around Charlie’s shoulder. “I know it’s hard to understand. To be honest, when I was your age, it wasn’t easy for me, either. I was an only child, and my parents doted on me; our small family couldn’t have been closer. But there were things I knew I couldn’t—shouldn’t—ask them.” Mom stopped and exhaled slowly, realizing that she hadn’t explained much at all. “Let me put it this way: Imagine if you were Nana Rose and you had lost…well, everything, and you had to start over. You wouldn’t want to always be reminded of the old life that was gone forever, would you?”

“But Nana’s dad was killed by the Nazis! And she lost her sister, too. Why wouldn’t she want to look at their pictures? Why would she put them away?” Charlie frowned.

Mom looked into Charlie’s eyes. “You know how Nana is always so upbeat and cheerful, even when things go wrong?”

Charlie nodded. “Nana never gets mad.” She remembered the time Nana Rose had been babysitting and Jake had decided to make popcorn. He’d left the pan on the stove while he went outside to play basketball. Within minutes, the smoke alarm went off. It was connected to the alarm system, and before Nana could figure out how to turn it off, the fire department had arrived at the door. Instead of scolding Jake, Nana Rose had greeted the firefighters with apricot rugelach and taken Charlie and Jake outside to admire the fire truck.

“After I had children of my own,” Mom said softly, “I realized—or I least, I understood a bit better—that my mother had to bury the sad parts of her life in order to live happily.”

“So Nana tried to forget about everything?” Charlie asked.

“No, not exactly, but she needed to look ahead and, especially, make sure that our lives were full of happiness and not overshadowed by such deep sadness. That was her private way to defeat the Nazis.

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