Learning The Truth
In every individual’s life, there is a lingering feeling of regret left behind. For Samuel Freedman it was not learning about his mother’s life until after her death. In his attempt to search for the truths about his mother, Samuel Freedman opens his heart and his mind to the stories and accounts of his mother’s through those who were acquainted with her. He compiles all of this in his book Who She Was.
At the time of his mother’s death, Samuel Freedman knew very little about his mother and his mother divulged very little about herself. This thought struck a cord with him and sent Freedman on a relentless journey to discover what he could not learn when she was alive. Freedman amusingly described his experience writing this book with the experience he had on a trip to China. Finding himself in a foreign place with foreign customs, he was nudged to eat a duck’s brain split in half, a delicacy in the country. He experienced the idea of a split brain while writing this book because he could not remove either emotion or craft from his writing. Freedman incorporated both head and heart in an effort to tell his mother’s story; an act of penance and also an act of discovery.
Freedman committed himself in doing anything possible to learn about his mother’s past; even tedious tasks such as reading local newspapers at the time. He delved into taxes and social security archives dating back to 1937. This led him to a number of discoveries about the unsettling financial circumstances that his mother had to grow up in. Surprisingly, he was able to view his grandfather’s income during the depression, sometimes earning less than $800 in six months. For the first time, Freedman was able to visualize the desperation and burdensome environment his mother faced. As the brains of the family and even earning a New York State scholarship to attend college, Eleanor Hatkins had to give it all up to be the primary breadwinner.
Aside from the academics of his mother’s life, Samuel Freedman also learned about his mother’s love life. He did not shy away from any areas because his ambition was to conquer a regret he had for a long time. He interviewed numbers of her mother’s old boyfriend, including Hy Keltz and Charlie Greco. However, he could not get an interview with mother’s first husband, Leonard Schulman. Freedman’s discoveries about his mother’s past boyfriends gave a livelier image of his mother for him to appreciate. He realized his mother was yearning for that love that she was forbidden to have; she was in essence, a rebel.
Samuel Freedman learned more about his mother in his three-year research process than he ever had in his twenty years of living in her presence. Her rebellious nature was a complete opposite to the usually motherly countenance she presented herself as. Her secret love affairs and popularity amongst men and women brought an image of his mother that he never encountered when he was growing up. He realized that all his mother’s dreams and aspirations were never achieved but rather, she constantly put them on hold, waiting for that ship to sail in and for her exciting life to begin. Even to her death, Freedman can still see that his mother is waiting for her life to begin.