Letter from my Father by Dasia Black Page B

camps, which seemed to take forever. Though much time was still spent adjudicating arguments between the two of them, as they invariably blamed one another, we also had the pleasure of seeing them sit for hours co-operating in building complex structures from ever-more-sophisticated building sets, playing table tennis and, as they grew older, talking endlessly about cricket.
    Simon proved a natural at sailing. He seemed to possess the qualities, mysterious to me, which make a good skipper. They included understanding wind direction, water currents and sails – but there was more. The other boys respected his judgement and his decision-making ability. He was not a boy of many words, but they listened to what he said. I spent my Sundays, heart in mouth, sitting with other parents watching the boys race their Manly Juniors and observing how our young sailors managed dangerous situations.
    One memorable Sunday a sudden storm hit the Harbour and literally swept the tiny vessels into the surrounding bays or in the direction of bigger boats, which immediately helped in a rescue effort. As each little boat and its soaked crew were brought in, their names were announced through the loud-speaker. But there was no sign of Simon’s boat. I was dying inside, praying and gritting my teeth. Eventually the boat was located after Simon rang the club from a small bay. Simon had, in fact, come through with flying colours, having calmly steered his craft into a sheltered spot without sustaining any damage at all.
    I tried hard not to show that all this was too much for an anxious mother from a land-locked eastern European country. For me, safety was paramount and anything to do with deep water made me fearful. But I also felt exhilarated that my son, growing up in this peaceful tolerant country, was confident enough to put himself into situations which, to me, spelled danger and risk. To him they were just a challenge to be enjoyed.
    At Woollahra Public, Jonathan took off like a rocket. As he proclaimed one day: At Woollahra school, each lesson is of great interest and compared to my last school, this place is a palace .
    His teacher knew how to nurture my son’s talents. In the entries Jonathan wrote in his diary, there is the sense of a boy bursting out of his skin in excitement at the expanding horizons of his intellectual and social world, and enjoying his successes.
    When he was seven, Jonathan had joined Mrs Shipp’s art school at Watsons Bay. There he painted and drew and made a type of lithograph, showing an intuitive understanding of colour, composition and perspective. During a visit to the school by acclaimed painter Desiderius Orban, his work was singled out for praise. I still have in my study a water-colour wash picture of a yellow house with two red-framed windows and a blue-framed door, set among trees and bushes and bathed in the rays of a prominent sun. That early work of Jonathan’s is a simple little painting, suggesting peace and warmth and love of nature.
    Jonathan and I developed a special relationship, based on the fact that he was my ‘baby’ and on the similarity of our temperaments and academic mindsets. I also felt a genetic connection. Having grown up not knowing anybody who looked like me, I saw in him, this fair-haired, green-eyed boy whose limbs had the same shape as mine, whose hair parted in the same way and who looked at me directly in the way shown in my cherished photograph of my father, a mix of myself and my father Szulem. Jonathan was my first experience of genetic mirroring.
    With two friends Jonathan entered the Bible Quiz run by the Jewish community, the venue being the vast and impressive Great Synagogue. The three boys decided that they were going to show ‘those kids’ at Jewish Day schools such as Moriah, who studied Jewish history and the Torah for years on a daily basis, what boys from a non-denominational school could do. They went about it in a determined,