Birth Date:
Dodo was always an awesome Grandmother to me, in part because she was always very supportive of my pursuing fine art as a career (as crazy a career move as that is). Maybe so, but for Dodo, it was a very respectable dream to pursue. And the more that I have learned about Dodo (in this past year that she had been with us in Durham), the more I understand that the reason that she supported me in these wild ambitions might have had something to do with her own story.
My Grandma Dodo was born into a family, in which, maybe in some ways, she did not belong.
As she herself explained to me, her Czech Jewish family's main focus was amassing wealth and status (which, for a people who had been beaten down and kicked around Europe for hundreds of years, was maybe an understandable ambition). But Dodo, maybe sort of a black sheep in the family, was more interested in the world of ideas. And for these curiosities, her only real source of acceptance and encouragement came from her Uncle Jenda, and her Aunt Marenka, who stayed behind to live in Prague, while the rest of the family moved to Austria, to pursue their industrial enterprises (running hat and furniture factories).
However, her father did support her interests in Science, and so she was able to persuade her family to let her go off to college, where she studied Physics. It was there that she met my Grandpa, Robert Cohn, with whom she had my Dad, Steve, and my Uncle, Rick.
She then went on to get her graduate degree at Harvard, while raising these two upstanding young men on her own! And this was at a time when women were not readily accepted in Universities- Dorrit was one of the first 5 women to obtain tenure at Harvard!
There, Dorrit taught for many years, gaining the friendship and admiration of her colleagues, and many a graduate student! Dorrit's field was French and German Comparative Literature, specifically, Narratology. (she once recently passed onto me a book entitled "The Narrative Strategies of The Bible"! (I still have it). She also published several books, which are still so revered in her field, that she recently was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to the study of literature. For this, she would attribute some of her contribution to her studies in Physics, which she once told me gave her a methodology for looking (at complex things).
In the past years, Dodo developed Parkinson's disease, which made it increasingly hard for her do basic physical tasks, like cook, walk and finally talk (not that that ever stopped her from trying, up to the end!) I can only imagine the frustration of having such a superior command over 3 different languages, and not being able to use any of them!
However, I feel very grateful that this past year, Dodo moved down to a Nursing Home in Durham, giving my family the chance to see her more. This gave me the chance to spend more time with her than I had ever gotten previously, and it was nice to have the chance get to know Dodo on a more regular basis than I had ever really had previously (she had lived in Boston).
Dodo was always very curious to hear reports about all of my minor and major successes as a visual artist. She seemed somewhat amazed, somewhat gratified, and, I think maybe even a little bit proud.
I miss my Grandma Dodo. In a way, I feel like I was, or am, just getting to know her...
