Dara Kurtz, + Bess Kalb, I AM MY MOTHER'S DAUGHTER + NOBODY WILL TELL YOU THIS BUT ME

[1:49]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zoe Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time To Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. If And all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Owens and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Today's sponsor is the Baby Trend Cover Me four in one Convertible car seat. This car seat is so unique. It addresses the number one complaint by experienced mothers, which I believe I am, which is sun in your kid's eyes, which is something that of course drives them nuts and you're not going to want to put like what baby sunglasses on. That's never really worked for me. Along with the canopy, the cover. Me has a usage rating from four to one hundred pounds, so you can use it for a long time, and can be used infant rear facing, toddler rear facing, forward facing, and belt positioning booster. The Cover Me also has a very convenient recline system, which includes a zero radio base and integrated recline flip foot. I don't exactly know what that means, but that's okay. The system allows the children to find a position comfortable to them and also limits the amount of space taken up by the seat when in rear facing position. Basically, it's just an amazing car seat, and I wish I had had this when my kids were little enough to fit into car seats. It makes parents' and kids' life much easier. It's just amazing, and it has a UPF 50 plus on the canopy so your kids don't get a sunburn either. So your kids will love sitting in it, they can interact with everybody in the car, and it protects you both rear and forward facing. There is a special 20% off code which is CoverMe20 if you go to babytrend.com ossa, O S S A. That's httpsdouble/babytrend.com/ossa and put in the code cover me 20. Capital c, cover, capital m, me, the number 20. Also, I'm giving away one of these car seats. So if you or anyone you know is having a baby soon and would like a new car seat, which is something that you have to get when you as soon as you're pregnant, I am giving one away. To win the giveaway, just write a review and give a rating to my podcast, preferably a five star rating and a really nice review if you don't mind. Extra credit if you do the same thing for my moms don't have time to lose weight podcast and my moms don't have time to have sex podcast. If you could write, if you could do five star ratings and reviews for all of those podcasts, oh my gosh, you will definitely be at the top of the list for entering this giveaway. And then we will pick at random. So enter the giveaway, use the code if you just want to get the percent off and order it right away. And again, baby trend, cover me, four in one convertible car seat. Go for it. Welcome to another day of my podcast Book Blast. Today, I'm featuring a bunch of events that I did live that are now podcasts. So they might have a slightly different audio sound or whatever, but they're all grouped together by recent events I did that are worthwhile listening to for sure on this podcast. So go back and listen. And if you wanna watch them, they're all available on YouTube or Facebook or anywhere you find all my video content and you can get to them also through Instagram. Anyway, enjoy these previously live events now recorded. I recently did a live event with Dara Kurtz and Bess Kolb. Dara is the author of I Am My Wisdom on Life, Loss and Love. And then Bess is the author of Nobody Will Tell You This But Me A True As Told To Me Story. I had Bess on my podcast when her book came out and now it is out in paperback everywhere books are sold. I hope you enjoy our event from the JCC and get to know these two authors better. Hi. Well, it's so nice to be chatting with the two of you. I would love for you to tell the audience a little bit more about your books in case they haven't read them, which they need to hurry up and go do after this. But give a little more background, if you will, on what the book's about and maybe why you were chosen here for a JCC event. Beth, do you want to go first? Oh, I was going to seed the floor here.

[6:19]Bess Kalb: Sure. For a little background, it's a sort of tough book to categorize. It's called A True As Told To Me Story because it's neither a memoir nor a novel, which are generally the two things that books are categorized as. This is my grandmother's life story told in her voice from beyond the grave to me. So it's my grandmother telling me about her life before me, growing up with her mother impoverished in Brooklyn, and then her stratospheric American dream story with my grandfather in New York. And it's a story of a very tough relationship with her daughter, my mother, and a very close relationship with me. And so it's told in dialogue and voicemails and fights at Bloomingdale's dressing rooms and all of the ways that my grandmother and I really interacted in life. It's put into this book. And there are pictures too, so it's a quick read.

[7:09]Dara Kurtz: But that's a summary of a complicated book about a complicated woman. And how about you, Dara? So beautiful, Beth. So my mom passed away a few weeks after I had my first daughter. And I was 28 at the time, and living in the world without her has really been one of the greatest challenges of my life. She was my person and when I had my daughter, I found myself in the space where I was thrilled to be a new mom and just devastated at having lost my mom and didn't know how to navigate through that. Life went on. I was blessed to have another daughter. But I always say that grief followed me around like my shadow because it was always there and could bubble up at just any opportunity. And around the twentieth anniversary of my mom's death. I remembered that I had a ziplock bag of letters in my house and we can talk about later how this all came to be. But the letters were written to me when I first went to camp bluestar when I was nine years old until I graduated from college. They were mostly written by my mom and my two grandmothers, the three Jewish women who had loved and raised me. Finally, one night, having the courage to open that bag, I was blown away by what happened next. Sat literally on the couch cried what Oprah calls the ugly cry, just sobbing, sobbing. But I couldn't stop reading. There were over 100 letters in the back. I felt like I was having a conversation with my mom and my grandmothers. I could feel their personalities. I could hear their voices. It really changed everything for me. I felt like there was a book there. I had absolutely no plans on writing this book. At the time, I was working on another project and I literally sat in this room behind me. Had over 100 letters behind me on the table. They were sorted in different piles, I just sat here and wrote and sobbed and just I'm so grateful for the whole experience,

[9:11]Zibby Owens: really. I mean, both of you really raised the point with your books of how to keep someone's memory alive and how to keep their voice alive, which is so much more specific than just thinking about them. Right? Their voice is what that's what makes us who we are, and it's something that is so elusive after you've passed away. And so finding ways to channel that and and write it or copy and paste it from a letter or pretend that it's this is what she would have said or how she would have thought seems to be one of the most powerful tools that we can use to blunt the impact of grief. Do you find that it's helping even still? Like when you think because now you've taken the memory of a loved one and it's not that you've just cemented it, you've given them to all of us as well.

[10:00]Dara Kurtz: Do you feel how has that been for you personally? Yeah. For me personally, I really struggled with how to bring my mom into my daughter's lives. And I mean, that was something my daughters are now 21 and 18, but at at the time when they were young and I was trying to teach them, you know, this is Grandma Terry. And that's the name that I used to introduce them to my mom. I had pictures of my mom around the house and I would talk about her. But I really struggled with, you know, how can my daughters get to know my mom? Not just a picture of her, but she was and what she sounded like. And, you know, all of the things. And so for me, writing this book and having the ability to sort of put her personality on the page and give my daughters the ability to sort of hear her voice, I think has been just an amazing gift for my family personally. And just so many people have told me how much they can hear their loved ones in my relatives' voices. And I love that so much. Yeah.

[11:08]Bess Kalb: Dara, I mean, I feel like we've had these parallel experiences at different times in our lives. Hearing you talk about this is it's like looking into a mirror. Really and so glad. And that was so beautifully put and exactly the goal that I have. Your daughters are older now. My son is 20 old. And this book happened. I finished this book during the first trimester of my pregnancy with him, and it was exactly the project that you described. It was trying to get him to know my grandmother who raised me, who stepped in and took care of me when my mom went back to work at her medical residency when she was when I was six weeks old. And so my grandmother was this sort of guiding force in my life, and it was unimaginable to me that my son wouldn't know her. And the book ends with this sort of projection of what she would think about me as a mother. And it was really all she talked about. And I mean, I just I relate to this experience in in a different generational way. My it was not my mother. It was my grandmother. I truly can't imagine what it would have been like to not have my mom. And I I I can't I can't empathize with that. I mean, that is a shattering thing. And I can't wait to get into your book and go on that journey with you. But my grandmother was somebody who nudged me in this indirect, non motherly way, a distinctly grandmother way. Of, when are going to have a baby? When are you going have a baby? And that she wasn't there when my son was born was really my nightmare. And so this book is dedicated to two people. The dedication says, thank you, grandma, and for Theo, and for my son. Yeah. So it really was a project to bring them together as much as it was for me to connect to her voice. It was for at at this sort of literary introduction of two people who had never meet. And then to have these people to have this this woman out in the world for so many other people. It's exactly what you said, Dara. It's this idea that the biggest fear is this won't be relatable and this won't be interesting to anyone outside my immediate family. And then to have people write on Instagram and to DM me saying like, this is my grandma. This is my relationship. I feel less crazy because this love story between grandmother and granddaughter, distinctly Jewish grandmother and Jewish granddaughter, feels like it resonates and feels personal to so many other people and starts feeling universal in a way that makes me feel less alone in my grief. And so I'm super grateful for that experience to share her with so many people.

[13:36]Dara Kurtz: Beth, you said something that really resonates with me. You said that the thought that your son wouldn't get to know your grandmother and that she talked about that, like what it was gonna be when you became a mom, I can absolutely relate because my mom would always say to me, one day when I'm a grandmother, I can't wait to be a grandmother. We're gonna do all these amazing fun things, blah blah blah. Literally the same weekend that I found out she had stage four melanoma, which is a form of skin cancer, I found out that I was pregnant. Literally the same weekend. The sicker my mom got, the bigger my belly got. And it was almost like parallel, but I think that's what made it even more devastating, the loss, was just the unrealized dreams, if you will, and all of the fun that she had looked forward to that we were going to have together, just like what you said, that not knowing that she wasn't going to get to be there to see you be a mom. For me, it was just a devastating, really challenging thing for me to I've struggled my whole life with it. And if it wasn't for this bag of letters, I mean, that's really twenty years after my mom's death. That's when I finally was able to sort of

[14:54]Zibby Owens: give myself permission to make peace with her death, and it was a game changer for me. Well, as you guys have been talking, I've been realizing that I also have these bags, and actually it's in a Tupperware type giant box in my closet, but I lost my grandmother recently. She was 97, you know, but we were super close. She's who I would call. My parents went out all the time and I wouldn't be able to sleep and I'd call her in Palm Beach, know, Coggie, I can't sleep. You know, she'd be like, It's okay. Actually, what she said was, Oh, you'll be tired. You know, I'm like, Okay, fine. Anyway, but I have all these camp letters from her, and I'm like, oh, well, maybe I'll I'll blend your books. I'll just, like, have to put my letters of my grandmother together. And there we go. I fully endorse. I mean, I I think that I I I think that we've sort of hit on not just a book strategy, but a grief strategy.

[15:45]Bess Kalb: It's what better way to and I think just as a personal project, whether or not it becomes a book, it's something I really recommend, not from a clinical perspective. I wasn't really going to make a book. I'm not going to. No, but I think it is something that, and maybe people who are joining us today, there is something about reconstructing conversations and diving back into those memories and being reacquainted with the voice of somebody who's gone. That is so healing and also a great way to honor that person. They're not lost in that moment. You are back in that conversation.

[16:21]Zibby Owens: And also, that's great advice she gave. So you'll be tired is kind of exactly what my therapist says. I'm like, I worry about my insomnia. She's like, what's the worst that could happen? You'll be tired. Think about that all the time. All the time. And I often, like, get up in the middle of the night, and I'm like, my brain starts going of all these things I have to do. And I'm like, I'm wasting so much time. Should just get up and do all these things. And I just hear her saying, What's the worst that happens? And I'm like, You're right. Nothing bad is gonna happen. I'm just gonna have a bad day. It's like, Okay.

[16:46]Dara Kurtz: Thank God for grandmas. One of the things I loved so much about reading the letters was that my mom wrote a lot of those letters when was when she was raising her kid, when she was raising me and my brother. And so I was nine years old when she first started writing me letters. And I got to know her from my adult perspective when I went back and I read those letters. Just to be able to get to know my mom better, to get to know things about her that I never knew from my adult perspective, I mean, that for me was such a gift that I I would never have thought. If you had said to me, Dara, you know, you have these letters, because it I've had them for twenty years. It's not like they just randomly appeared. I mean, they've been in my possession. I just didn't pay any attention to them. I didn't think that there was any value there, and I'd forgotten about them. If you had said all of the amazing things that I would've gotten from reading if I had known about that, Oh, I would have opened that bag up a long time ago. But just to be able to get to know someone that you loved so much and you didn't know things about them and they passed away, I mean, me, what a gift.

[18:02]Zibby Owens: This is why I worry about like, because we all have kids. Like, I have four kids. You two I mean, I don't sit down and write long letters, longhand ever to my kids. I don't think there would be a single one. And not just with grandparents. I mean, every time I lose somebody I love, the first thing I do is take an inventory of, like, what I have. Right? Like, I see do I have cards they sent me? Do I have like, what do I what's what's left? And I kinda, like, make a pile or something. And then I'm like, well, maybe I should be writing more letters to my kids. I mean, what are they gonna do? Like, copy and paste from my Instagram account?

[18:35]Bess Kalb: I truly I I I feel that. I'm like, there are some loving tweets that I've sent to make my Exactly. Right? Yeah. This is how you get snowy. Look at what I posted last week. I know it's my cousin who is like a sister to me gave me this baby book when my son was born, she was like, I'm so glad that I had this from from my mom and write down everything. I was like, yes, I will. I will write it. I will write it all down. It literally is like trouble feeding today. And I sort of let him down in that respect. But I I think I love the camp letter format, and I feel like that is something that I still have the camp letters that my parents sent me. And I know that, like, I feel like that's when I'll shine. But I really miss him when he's, a teenager and away for the first time, which is inconceivable. He's, like, on a walk right now, and I'm hyperventilating.

[19:21]Dara Kurtz: But, yeah, I I I will this is all to say, like, I will write him I will write a camp letter so that he writes a book like like like you should, Deborah. So my daughters are older, 21 and 18, and they did go to sleepaway camp. And but they didn't really embrace sleepaway camp like I did, and they didn't go till much later, and that's a whole another thing. But so they didn't have letters, really, because they had by the time they really went to sleepaway camp, they had their phone or they would get a printout like an email or fax And or so after this whole experience, my oldest daughter, Zoe, is in college and I started writing her letters. And I was just like, I want to write her a letter once a week. And so I would write her a letter and she would get it. And I think she was really liking it, but we were doing a Zoom event together during the pandemic. And she was in her dorm at school and we were Zooming in for an event. And someone asked her, do you have any letters from your mom? And she said, I do. And she pulled down this box, like right there. And this was totally like not planned. I didn't know it. And she said, like, I have all the letters that my mom's written to me since I've been in college. And I was just it meant so much to me because I really realized, like, she does even though I'm not getting letters back from her, right? Like, it's not about what you get. It's what you give. And I'm not I'm not doing it to get. I'm doing it because I want her to have these for me. It felt like a full circle moment, but it also, like, touched my heart because I knew that, she really was so happy to have them. So anyone listening, definitely write letters to your kids. I mean, I think there's three different kinds of letters. And I I talk a lot about that in my book, like how to write the letters and blah blah blah. But at the end of the day, just write from your heart. Write from your heart to the people that you love. And I don't think you can ever go wrong.

[21:14]Bess Kalb: I I will say and this I I realized I should have that first of all, I think that's exact I I I will take that advice, and that is something that, like, I will now make a project of for my son's life. And the baby book, I never fill that one page of the baby book. Me neither. Go ahead. I will just like even say rough day. I I have their, like, spine. My They're not even cracked on these baby books. I have like five of them and so many. Yeah, it's so sad seeing the like my first steps. I'm like, Oh, Okay. So my grandmother didn't write letters. There's only one email that's in the book and it was her first email and it's perfect. She gave like a bad review of the Matisse exhibit at the Museum of Crafts and then a great review of the book Brooklyn that she had just read. It was just out. And it just perfectly captures her. But she did leave voicemails, and that was her art form. And it is a digital artifact that is impossible to share and to translate. And there's a picture in the book, I can show you on this Zoom event of how I this is my Tupperware in the closet. This is how I save my grandma's voicemails. And it's why that if I get like four calls in a day, somebody is going to get the obnoxious like the mailbox belonging to best calves full. So this to this day is on my phone. It is. And you can see grandma Palm Beach and then, like, the various places where she live, grandma vineyard, grandma's grandma's Garstale. And this is this is my entire phone, like a and I am not a hoarder. I'm somebody who, like, even like, when my son grows out of the shoes, I'm like, great. There's, a box in the garage. Like, I can't get rid of these, and I can't delete them. They're my they're my Tupperware. I also didn't listen to them when I was writing the voicemails for this book. Those were all like extrapolations. They were from memory. They were riffs on like what a voicemail would be. I've talked about this with Zibby. But that moment of, like, of going back, that moment you had twenty years later of reading your mom's letters happened when my son was about five weeks old and I was recording the audiobook for for Nobody Will Tell You This But Me, which was very emotional. My agent was like or my editor was like, It would be great to include one of the voicemails. Like, that's a smart thing to have in the audiobook. And I was like, Totally makes perfect sense. Great. She was like, Hey, it's been like two weeks and you haven't. I was like, Yep. Sorry, baby. Like, it's full. Get she was like, what's going on? Can you send the voicemail? So I was like, I can't listen to that. It's too painful. And so I sent my husband to the kitchen with our son and drew the curtains and the, like, blackout curtains in my son's room and sat down in the right in, like, the recliner chair. And it was, a very dramatic moment. I was, going to listen to them. And my husband runs into the room five minutes later because he hears me wailing. And he, has a baby. He's like, what's what happened? And I was hysterically laughing with, like, tears going down my face because they were so funny and they were so her. And, like, I can't write comedy this good. One of the voicemails that she left was, Hi, Bess. Grandma, your mother says you have laryngitis. Call me back. It's like, you have 100 comedy writers from like, they would not come up with something like that. So this is to say, I'm glad I went through that box. And I'm sad that I can't share them in the way that but but also, like, having them in that little voice mail box is my it's my special trove of treasures that I'll never get rid of. Today's episode sponsored by Quince.

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[26:45]Zibby Owens: I mean, amazing. There's something also I mean, not to make massive generalizations, but to your earlier point about, like, particularly Jewish grandmothers or Jewish mothers, or there is something similar. There is this common thread of recognition. Like, even just sitting here chatting with the two of you, I feel like yeah. There's, like, stuff you don't need to even explain. Right? It's just sort of, like, understood that would have or no matter how different our individual relationships were, there's, like, that common thing. I'm sure every culture has something similar, but I I feel like the unsanctioned sort of intrusiveness of opinion proffering, if you will, might be something specific here. What do you guys think about that? Or what do you think makes it this particular, our Jewish matriarchs so special?

[27:36]Dara Kurtz: I mean, I think it's, you know, my grandmothers were so real and they would say whatever they felt like they wanted to say, as did my mom with our relationships. So like our relationships were so and I'm like that with my daughters. I mean, you know, we have real, honest relationships. We'll say all the things, but also, like, no one can push my buttons like my daughters and vice versa. Like, I mean, I can push their buttons more than, you know, probably anyone, but at the end of the day, there's just such deep love, and it's just so real. But if I think about, like, my grandmother, every so many letters that she one of my grandmothers, grandma Margaret I have grandma Margaret and grandma Millie, but grandma Margaret came from Germany and her whole family, sadly, my grandparents lost their family in the Holocaust. And that was a whole another layer of the importance that her grandchildren and we were her family. We were we were what she had. But every almost every letter she wrote, she would say all the things, then it was, are you going to the bathroom? If you're not going to the bathroom, make sure you talk to the counselor. You know? Like, can you imagine, like, a 14 year old girl going up to her counselor and saying, excuse me? I mean, you know, but it was just her level of what she worried about with her grandchildren. You know, it's priceless, just like what you said, Bess.

[29:05]Bess Kalb: I mean, it's exactly that that nudging, that over involvement, that, like, bodily involvement where it's more her body than yours at a certain point. Like, well, am I are you wearing an undershirt? Was something that was just, like, breathing for my grandma. She would just say that. I had a little drawer in my house that was like undershirts that I only opened when she was there. And I feel like so my friend Jeff, who is a brilliant writer and grew

[29:37]Bess Kalb: read an early draft of the book and was like, she was so mean to you. And I was like, oh, writer ref, you don't know what it's like to have a Jewish grandmother. That's love. The phrase nobody will tell you this but me is not something that she said in this before dispensing wisdom. She said that before she was like, you'd be gorgeous if you went a little blonder. And that was exactly how she operated. It was giving advice that was at once a criticism, but also said with full authority and in your best interest. And that's love. And it's a very Jewish thing to a non Jew. It can need some explanation. But we're amongst people right now who know exactly what we're talking about. Even the phrase I am my mother's daughter. What you like, that is a Jewish phrase. That's like that's something that I just feel like I immediately know. I know who's saying that and I know why.

[30:30]Dara Kurtz: And, you know, I feel like we could talk about Jewish guilt here a little bit too when we're talking about all of this because all of these things that we've heard from our mother and our grandmothers, and they heard from their mothers and their grandmothers, You know, we can't deny the fact that sometimes it was laced with a little bit of guilt. Right? Like, I mean, it's a real thing and passed on from one generation to the next, really, because the way we hear things, and it was processed, and then that maybe we would talk to our people, and they talk to their people laced with a little bit of guilt. I mean, I've even found myself really trying to be so careful now when I talk to my daughters about things because I'm trying to be intentional about maybe, like, not passing on that Jewish guilt. You know? I mean, we get so many beautiful things from our family members, but I don't wanna pass on, Yes. The brown hair and the brown eyes, but the Jewish guilt, you know, maybe maybe that can stop here a little bit. I'm trying to pass on my my fake highlights. You know?

[31:36]Bess Kalb: But they're beautiful. They look fabulous. My hair is just as dark as both of yours, FYI. No. I'm double gray that I have to cover up the gray with the blonde. I'm double vaccinated, and so my first trip was a family related one, and my second one will be the hair salon to get these highlights back.

[31:53]Zibby Owens: I think you're right. Was, like, my grandmother I I mean, there was no withholding of what she thought about my body and my weight. Like, anytime she saw me and every letter, it's like, I noticed this last you know, I noticed on Passover, you've been putting on weight again. And I'm like, ugh. I mean, no, I just always look like this. Know? Like, this is maybe what I look like. You know? But I actually was so interested because she just passed away at 97. Never for a minute did she stop worrying about her body. And I did this study, actually, study ish, maybe seven years ago when she was in her 90s and still going to curves. And every time we would go out, she would be like, Ah, dessert. I don't know. Should I have this dessert? Guess, okay, I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna have this chocolate cake. And I'm like, You're 90 years old. Have the cake. What is the what are we waiting for here? You know? Anyway, but she would and and we would walk down the street, she would always say, like, does she look fat? Am I fatter than her, is she fatter than me? Like, every time. It's like It's insane. It's insane. So I did this quick study. Sorry. I'll wait. I'll again to see if it was just my grandmother or everybody. So I did this little printout. I was a psych major in college. So I, like, photocopied a survey. I had both my grandmothers in their nursing homes in Florida, put it in everyone's mailbox, like, in the thing to fill out, and then hand it back to me. She was very popular that day. And it was something crazy. Like, seventy percent of women were still weighing themselves all the time. And if you had an eating disorder when you were younger, like, forget about it. You just, like, never got over it. But most people said they still felt guilty eating dessert. And I was like, I am not I cannot do that. Like, I cannot

[33:27]Bess Kalb: live my whole life until I die worrying about chocolate cake. Yeah. Anyway. I think I need to, like, schedule just at my sixtieth birthday, God willing. I will just be like and from now on, no more obsessing. Just get it's only one pieces, which by the way it is now. But I feel like the weight thing is so that that was such a that was something that actually came out in the second draft of this book when I was like, okay, let's put the let's put the grittier parts of our relationship in Because it was also something and that is something that Jeff picked up on in the early draft and the compassion read from a nice person who has my side. He was like, nagging you about, Bessie, you've had enough bread or that's a lot of dressing on your salad. There's, like, a lot of that. I was like, yes, it was constant. And, like, I'm also short. I'm five foot four on my I'm five three. But on my driver's license, I'm five four. And so, like, a pound or two will show up. This is something that I'm saying because it's something that my grandmother said, you're short, you have a small frame like me. So a pound or two on the wrong side and it all goes to your hips. And so it's like, I am just like her project of that worked and I have that and I have to be so careful around my son as he grows up. And I can't imagine with daughters, but, like, knowing how I'm even catching myself now, like, in front of him because he's he's starting to mimic everything that I do. And it is something in terms of what Dara is saying about what not to pass down. And I think the Jewish guilt around food is something that I really I hope my kids don't have at all the same relationship that I had to food and to guilt around it. And fortunately, I have a very chunky boy who's he's not two yet, so he's he's allowed to be. But at the moment where, like, the second that he starts wondering, you know, what's wrong with him, I'll tell him how very right it is with him.

[35:25]Dara Kurtz: I love that. I I think we can't I mean, we can't discount the the role that food plays in our culture. And I mean, favorite memories of some of my favorite childhood memories are sitting around like Friday night dinners at my grandma Millie's house, where she literally made like the same meal every Friday night. And we would get together, whole extended family, and we would sit at the table for hours and we would just talk about everything. And then we would watch Dallas. That was back in the day when Dallas was on, but you know, it was just such beautiful family coming together at the table with, you know, amazing food. Even now my recipes, I mean, that's something that I think is a really beautiful way to carry the past into the future. Even now my daughters will say, you know, mom, will you make grandma Millie's chicken? And I love the fact that they're saying that because basically, I mean, my grandmother would love that and I have her casserole dish. You know, one of the things that I really wanted to have were were the baking dishes that she used, and that's what I use when I make dinner and I make this chicken for my kids. And, you know, to me, that's just like such a beautiful connection of, you know, my grandmother and my daughter's great grandmothers. And, you know, we're all still woman to woman, one generation to the next, ladore by dore, like passing it down, you know, and I think it's so beautiful. Food. Food and food is just such an important way and and means to do that. Was the meal you always had roast chicken and roast Always chicken. I mean, was there anything else? That's our meal. So Oh, chicken salad, green beans, potato casserole, and then chocolate vanilla cake that was purchased from Tollheimer's department store back in the day. Delicious.

[37:23]Bess Kalb: But my grandma is her brisket for me. Like, it's just it's it's brisket. And I accidentally married a non Jew and had a child with him. And so the Christmas dinner that we have is my grandma's brisket as the like I love that. As the like merging of the two cultures. And it's such a special thing. And when I make it, I think about her. And I also think about that brisket and that relationship to food and the idea of abundance and monitoring a granddaughter's weight as an expression of love and also as an equal and opposite reaction to the scarcity that came the generation before. This is also a common thread in many immigrant stories. But, you know, my grandmother's mother escaped the pogroms in in Belarus in the eighteen eighties and came to this country and couldn't afford anything. And so my grandma grew up eating meat that had, like because she had a cousin in the meat packing district. They they like gristle and the awful and like what fell off the truck basically. And so that she was able to monitor her like prized cows weight to make her marriageable and to like make her physically successful in the world was an expression of luxury for her. The idea that there would be too much food carried a lot of, I think, historical intergenerational importance. But nevertheless, a teenager hearing it is like, Okay, maybe rolls are bad. Bread is bad. And that's unfortunately. But understand as an adult who's who's past the teenage relationship to food that I I definitely see where she's coming from for that. And and when I make her brisket, I only think about how proud she was to be able to put on her table in Westchester where she lived the food that her mother would have never been able to afford to make. And I'm I'm proud to serve that and be like Christmas equal to my to my little blonde blue eyed son.

[39:16]Zibby Owens: Well, yeah. It's like a double edged sword though too because you had to eat whatever they made, but you couldn't gain weight from it. Right? So if my grandmother had chocolate roll or my other grandmother had this, like, amazing spongy, like, pound cake with, like, this thick, amazing frosting. Anyways, I'll stop, but, clearly, was like, go make some cake or something. But, like, she would want you to eat at least a slice. And my mother too, by the way. This is still, like, you know, you make if she makes something, I'm eating it. Right? But then, like, watch out. And to your earlier point, Vas, like, you said, like, age 60, you're just gonna stop obsessing, you're actually not. Like, it's just you a day after we were at the end of 59. Like, the only way to stop obsessing is to, like, work on it at some point, I've realized, not that I have, but, you know, that's what I hear because otherwise it just, like, doesn't go away. So, you know, I feel like as a kid, I was like, well, when you get old, like, nobody cares what you look like, and I'm sure old people, like, don't have sex and, you know, what all these things I thought about old people are not true. You know?

[40:14]Bess Kalb: Yeah. A 100%. It it never ends. For us Jewish women, we are who we are till the end. We are our mother's daughters and our grandmother's granddaughters.

[40:23]Zibby Owens: Either of you have new exciting writing projects going on or what are you working on now now that these wonderful books and best your book is on paperback and I see it everywhere now and everything, which is so exciting. What what's coming next for both of you guys?

[40:36]Dara Kurtz: Well, I've always wanted to write fiction. So I've been working on a fiction book through the pandemic, and so I'm having a lot of fun with that. And then just writing, I feel like I'm writing and doing so many podcast interviews right now and doing fun events like this, but my youngest daughter is a senior, and so she's, This is close to the end of her senior year and she's going to be going to school in the fall. I've also been really intentional about trying to be super present. I believe there's you know, different seasons, if you will. And this is my season to sort of embrace, you know, any little bit of morsel of time that she's willing to give to me. So, you know, I feel like it'll a fiction while I'm having so much fun working on it, it's it's okay if it's not done right now because that season will come, you know? But right now, I just wanna be so present with my daughter.

[41:36]Bess Kalb: I totally that's I I'm, like, tearing up thinking about him going to college. He won't. I'll be I'll home college him. He's going to this is very he's going to preschool in September, and he's going to a JCC. He's going to a Jewish preschool. So yes. That's what we do. But I yeah. No. I I feel the same way. We walked by it on the way to the coffee shop in our neighborhood, and I'm like, that's your school next year. But mama mama will like and he's, like, so excited. He sees the other kids. I'm like, but you don't have to go, and mama will be right around the corner. He's just like so, yeah, he's he's going away, and I'm I'm savoring it too. I am also writing a fiction book. I I should have, like, as a prop here. I have my old those old camp letters that we were talking about because they are a primary source for this book. It is they're they're on this massive pile they're on one of the piles here. I'm like, I'm not a hoarder. The it's it's notebooks and papers here. But I actually oddly have camp pictures of myself because this is like the age that I'm trying to channel into this next book, which is also my first fiction book. And it is told from the perspective of a very opinionated, very young woman. And it is about a it is a sort of true crime book about something that did happen in my town growing up, told from the perspective of a child. And I'm working on that. And I, as as Marcy mentioned, am adapting Nobody Will Tell You This Put Me into a film, which is very exciting and in the hands of a lot of people who I trust, a team of women, which is very exciting. That was something that was important to me about going into the film space to have a female director was really important. To have an older woman as the protagonist of a movie, an older Jewish woman who has not played for a comic effect or caricature and was portrayed with tenderness and multifaceted sensitivity, I think is something that really could only be done by a woman. And so I'm super lucky to have extremely talented director who's doing that. And that's the sort of that's the whiteboard over here. Then a couple of TV projects. And one of them is about I don't know if I can say it's about two Jewish women from a very, very, very long time ago. But it is about modern problems today. So I'm so excited about that. And I can't and I'll I can't wait to, I think, legally be able to say more about it, but I'm very excited.

[44:01]Zibby Owens: Who are you going to cast as your grandmother? Have you thought about it? That's the

[44:06]Bess Kalb: question. And I'm just I'm so low on I'm like the writer. I don't even know if I'm on the email when it happens. I'm just like in this office being like, here's some dialogue. And they're like, we'll we'll do what we want with this. But my grandma would say Meryl or nothing. And so but the the the point is and with with that conversation, there are so many amazing actresses of a certain age who would just nail this role and could like fully I feel like every time somebody says a name, I'm like, yes, definitely. Because I'm such a fan of, like, of of Broadway actresses and actresses who, like, who can embody that grit and softness at the same time. And there are just so many, especially Jewish actresses. But yeah, so I'm I'm excited as a fan of movies and my grandma is a fan of movies. And one thing she always said in this book was my mother was always at the movies. So I feel like my great grandmother is excited to, like, sit in a movie theater alone and feel the air conditioning and watch this. And it'll just feel like a very full circle moment if and when it finally happens in a world with where we're going to movie theaters is possible again. And just to add one thing for my grandmother that I think is I try to emulate is she had, like, this great sense of humor

[45:20]Zibby Owens: with me and with everybody. And sometimes I just remind myself not to take this whole thing too seriously. I called her one of the last times I called her before she started losing her memory, was like, so Goggy, you know, what's up? Anything new? And she was like, well, I'm pregnant. I was like, Goggy, come on. Anyway, just we don't have to take lives this seriously. I think that's one of the messages. Anyway. I love that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to part of my June Book Blast. I hope you enjoy it. Come back tomorrow for more. Thanks again to today's sponsor, the Baby Trend Cover Me four in-one convertible car seat. Don't forget to enter my giveaway and the winners will be announced at the end of this week. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.