Silent Refuge by Margrit Rosenberg Stenge

Author:Margrit Rosenberg Stenge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Azrieli Foundation
Published: 2017-07-26T00:01:46+00:00

Family Life

Once we were settled in our new home, I began to have a real sense of permanency such as I had never had before. Even on Bedford Road, I had always known that we would have to move again sooner or later because we did not have separate bedrooms for the children. But now we had it all, including a beautiful office downstairs for Stefan. In years to come, I would often dream about having to leave this house and would wake up in a sweat. Over time, we made many improvements to our home, which made it even more dear to me.

That fall, Helen started nursery school at the “Y,” and Marvin went to kindergarten at Talmud Torah School in Saint-Laurent. It was hard to leave my little girl in a stranger’s care — for both of us. But the teacher, Mr. Segal, soon put Helen at ease. When I picked her up a few hours later, she was all smiles, and my own separation anxieties evaporated, too, in no time.

Now that I had a few hours to call my own, as well as a room in our basement that could easily be converted into an office, the time seemed ripe for me to start working for Stefan, as he had asked me to do many times before. I still had misgivings and would have preferred to work part-time elsewhere, but I did not seem to have much of a choice. Stefan wanted me to be at home to take care of the children after school, besides which it was I who picked them up.

We acquired a used desk and office chair. I already owned a typewriter, and we bought an adding machine and a used filing cabinet. My office was ready. It was not exactly the office I had dreamt about at the Handelsgymnasium in Oslo; in fact, neither the work nor my surroundings came anywhere near my original plans. Stefan had started to rent out the apartments on Gold Street, and my work consisted mainly of typing rent statements and doing minor bookkeeping. As his workload grew, so did mine. Later I typed listings, which were the bane of my existence. For each property for sale, there were several listings at different times, depending on the circumstances, and all the details had to be typed over and over again. And I, who had decided in school that I would never work with numbers, did little else.

I soon got used to my new routine, and I came to like the idea that I was contributing something to our business while still being able to come and go as I pleased. I joined a Hadassah chapter, a branch of a Jewish women’s organization, whose members were young women like me. Since we were all busy during the day, we met every second week in the evening. Most of our programs concerned Israel and the planning of fundraising events for Israeli institutions that urgently needed financial help. I also spent a lot of time on my hobby — knitting.

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