The Art of Words: “Rain” and “What If?”

When I was twelve years old, my family moved to a small town in western Massachusetts. My father had been hired to teach the history and philosophy of science at the local women’s college. No faculty housing would be available for six months. But the college had just been given a mansion, and that became our interim home.

And what a home! Three stories tall, forty-two rooms set on half an acre. Grand central staircase carpeted in deep red. A living room with floor-to-ceiling book shelves and a grand piano. French doors that opened onto the outdoor badminton court. Industrial size
kitchen. My two brothers and I were in heaven.

Now, my father and mother were older parents, fifty-two at the time. They had met in Palestine at the end of WW2. My mom, a Jew, had grown up in South Africa. My father, a German Jew, had just finished his PhD under Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger
at Berlin’s main university when the Nazis came to power. He managed to escape just in time. Science and philosophy were his life. He was not a playful father, often spending six or seven days a week on his research. As my mother used to tell us, “Your
father is doing “IMPORTANT WORK.”

One day, my brothers and I were playing with our toy cars in the yard in front of the porch. My father, in a suit as usual, had just returned from teaching, and he and my mother had come out to the porch. Suddenly it began to rain, then to pour. My brothers
and I started to dance in the rain. And – to our utter surprise – our father stepped forward into the rain. Drenched, he began laughing with us, as did our mother though she held back from getting wet.

The mansion. My father in the rain, he and my mother laughing with us. They are the happiest memories of my childhood.