I never got to know my great-grandparents. They all died before I was born.
The last one to go died just a few months before I was born.
I saw a Super Eight movie of her patting my mother’s belly.
She was saying something, but the movie had no sound.
Even if I could read lips, the film quality was poor, and it hadn’t been preserved well.
I asked my mom if she could remember what my great-grandmother had said.
“It was an old Yiddish curse,” she said.
Seeing how my life has turned out, it has probably come true.