"Call The Midwife:" Nurse Matilda

Recently I heard of several women in their early 40s who grew weary of the business world and decided to go back to school and study nursing. They felt an urge to make a difference and to do a meaningful work. Hospitals in Israel offer today a shortened nursing course for university graduates in mid-career who are ready to make such a change.

Traditionally nursing, together with teaching and social work, was one of the few career choices open for women. The inspiring book by Jennifer Worth, and BBC British TV series it is based on “Call the Midwife,” portray a vivid and accurate picture of life of a nurse in the East End of London in the 1950s. At that time in Britain only 1% of women went to university and only 2% went to professional training courses like nursing.  

A few years earlier across the sea, my mother was such a nurse  in Mandatory Palestine . Like Worth’s midwives, she was always passionate about nursing and proud of her vocation. In 1936 two new hospitals were founded in Palestine, one in Jerusalem and one in the area of Tel Aviv,  and they also offered nursing training. My mother, who immigrated with her family a year earlier, was one of the first nurses to be trained in Palestine.  At that time nurses had to board at the dorms in the hospital and were not allowed to marry in the 3 years of their training. Although my mother had met my father soon after she arrived to Palestine, she only married him 7 years later after graduating from nursing school.

I know that my grandfather insisted that my mother, his only daughter, would pursue further education, but am not sure why, especially as her brothers did not go to university.  I would like to think that he believed in education and wanted her to have a profession so she could be financially independent and would not have to rely on a man. But perhaps, like Rachel’s father Laban, he wanted to test my father's love and endurance.

Only when I grew up I started to appreciate my mother's  determination and diligence; it was close to impossible to be accepted to nursing school in Palestine at that time. There were only the two schools and being a new immigrant she didn’t know the necessary Hebrew. She applied at least two times, but as her Hebrew was not good enough, her application was rejected.  She worked even harder on her language skills and finally was accepted in 1939. 

Like in Britain in the 1950s where only 25% of the mothers worked outside the home, growing up in the in Israel at that time, not many of our mothers worked outside the home. My mother worked as a nurse in our community until she retired, and even afterwards she continued to attend professional lectures because she was curious to learn about new professional developments.

 Although as a child I complained when we went out and people would stop my mother in the street  asking  for medical and personal advice,  I was proud of her knowledge and empathy. I believe that these  two qualities are essential for a nurse, and perhaps they explain my grandfather’s decision: he was sure that my mother had the empathy but helped her acquire the necessary knowledge.  

In honor of my mother, nurse Matilda

Photos: my mother in the hospital during nursing training, with a friend on the right side, graduation my mother is in the center.

PS. The British Mandate in Palestine lasted  from 1920 until 1948, at that year David Ben Gurion declared its independence and the state of Israel was established..

There Is Always More To The Story

Normally we have certain expectations from our friends, and if those are not met we reconsider the relationship and reach our own conclusions. Earlier this week I was discussing the issue of expectations with a friend and to illustrate a point I gave the example of a remarkable woman I once knew.

We met during the late 70s as graduate students at the University of Toronto Drama Center. She was involved in puppet theater and it became her chosen field of study. Like me she was a foreigner, but she was older than me, and already had a school-age daughter. 

We became good friends, actually she impressed me so much that I even took a workshop in puppetry to  get to know her world better. And she told me about her life, how, in the dark days of Communism,  she escaped from Rumania on her own. She shared her experience at a refugee camp  in Austria where she stayed for several months. Luckily her story had a happy ending, she was granted a political asylum in Sweden where she met her Canadian future husband and he brought her to Toronto.

I had never met such a strong and brave woman, I used to read about women like her in books.

In spite of our plans to stay in town, it transpired that the University of Toronto was not the best fit for my husband and I, and we had to move away. On our last night there we were invited to my friend’s home for dinner. We had a lovely time with her family and when we parted I expressed my wishes that we would keep in touch.

To my dismay my friend said no, that this was it: she explained that although she enjoyed being my friend, as a refugee who had left her family behind, she just never kept in touch. She added that it wasn't personal, those words stung,  I was sad that she didn't make an exception in my case. Still I appreciated her honesty.

Although I listened  to my friend's stories, obviously I never really understood what she has been through and was not aware of the implications of her past experience. How could I?

The impossibility of seeing the big picture was recently demonstrated in a scene from the excellent film Prisoners (2013). The film tells the story of the disappearance of two young girls and the enormous difficulties in locating them. At one point a suspect is held hostage by the fathers of the two girls. In order to get information out of that suspect one of the fathers  psychically tortures him, but to no avail.  What the fathers do not know is that the suspect fears something  much greater  than just physical pain, thus breaking down and talking is not considered an option for him. 

This is an extreme example of a certain kind of blindness, but even in our daily life it is easy to forget that what we see is only partial, and that there is always so much more which we don't know.

Throughout the years I remembered my friend's courage and determination, but her refusal to keep me in her life was even more significant as it taught me an important lesson about my limitations and about  humility.