Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is my cousin.
After my mother’s death, an entire world closed up to me. The story is as complicated and sad as you might imagine. But, I moved on, and my new world gives a story equally as complicated, and for as much as the old one is sad, the new story is equally joyful.
This week, with President Obama’s nomination of Merrick to the U.S. Supreme Court, the old world came roaring back.
Merrick and I share great grandparents on my mother’s father’s side. Mordecai, to be exact, and Rebecca, if I recall correctly — my family wasn’t into record keeping. Given what they endured to survive, perhaps we can understand, or at least accept that.
Rebecca lives on in one of Merrick’s daughters, much like my maternal grandmother lives on in me, as the Ida in IdaRose. Jessica, my mother’s name, is the name of his other daughter, and I learned for the first time it is likely a family name, and Jessica lives on, for the world to know.
Merrick looks exactly like my grandfather Samuel. He sounds exactly like everyone I grew up with, not just the Chicago accent, but a particular accent likely influenced by the immigrant tongue, and bred within the closeness of the family. In him I hear my mother, and I weep.
In accepting his Supreme Court nomination at a press conference in the Rose Garden, Merrick, eloquently breaking through a wall of emotion, told the story of his grandparents escaping persecution. Those are my grandparents and my story, too. They lived in a Russian pogrom, somewhere in modern-day Poland.
Grandfather Samuel’s sisters, one who is Merrick’s grandmother, said life was just like “Fiddler on the Roof ,” without the soundtrack. Merrick also talked about his parents, whom I loved, and the role of their entrepreneurialism in shaping his life, another family heritage pounding strongly inside both of us, living on, reflected in all the children of our grandparents, and now, strongly in me.
I have never read my family story or heard it spoken for the entire world to hear. My story. Across the world to hear. Frankly, in my isolation from that particular world that closed up when my mother died, I internalized that history, my history, as if it were completely my own — for in all respects, it had become that.
I thought it would die with me. But when Merrick spoke at the White House last week, it re-emerged as ours. His. Mine. Shared between us. All of us. Today, my story, his story, our story, is the story of all of us.
I am of course intensely proud of this man whose graduation, wedding and birth announcements always graced our mailbox, whose name was uttered in my household frequently, often around a complex discussion of how I needed to be more like him. Merrick went to Harvard. Merrick got a great job. Merrick is a judge. Merrick, Merrick, Merrick.
And now, from the grave, I hear my mother, God rest her soul: “Merrick is going to be on the Supreme Court, what are you doing now?” I always had a response to her comparison questions. Now, frankly, I do not.
Merrick has no idea of the influence that his life has had on mine, simply by his act of being, and frankly, being great by any measure. I became who I am in no small part due to his influence, a fight between embracing his greatness and rebelling against it. It shaped who I am today. I didn’t go to Harvard, but I did marry a two-time Harvard grad, and I have to wonder, was I living up indirectly to the standard my mother held for greatness? These legacy issues bear the most complicated story here.
When people tell me his speech was one of the most eloquent and powerful speeches they have ever heard, that they teared up to hear it, all I can say is “That is my cousin.” That’s his story. That’s my story. That’s our story.
They say you can never go home again. I am starting to believe that’s because home never leaves you; you cannot go back to a place you never left.
I’m home again.
And in the middle of the political fighting about Merrick’s nomination, I hope the Senate remembers who and what is behind this man.
His story. My story. Our story.
IdaRose Sylvester is a corporate expander, teacher, mentor, speaker, leader, polymath careerist, lover of cats, dogs, storytelling, cooking, photography, hiking, travel, and people. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
