Harry Bernstein started chronicling his life at the age of ninety-four, after the death of his beloved wife, Ruby. In his first book, The Invisible Wall, he told a haunting story of forbidden love in World War I-era England. Then Bernstein wrote The Dream, the touching tale of his family's immigrant experience in Depression-era Chicago and New York. Now Bernstein completes the saga with The Golden Willow, a heart-lifting memoir of his life with Ruby, a romance that lasted nearly seventy years.

They met at a dance at New York's legendary Webster Hall, fell instantly and madly in love, and embarked on a rich and rewarding life together. From their first tiny rented room on the Upper West Side to their years in Greenwich Village, immersed in the art scene, surrounded by dancers, musicians, and writers, to their life in the newly burgeoning suburbs, Harry and Ruby pursued the American dream with gusto, much as Harry's late mother would have wanted.

Together, through a depression, a world war, and the McCarthy era, through job losses and race riots and the joyous births of their two children, Harry and Ruby weathered much and shared an incredible love. But then the inevitable happened. One of them had to go first. When Ruby was ninety-one, she contracted leukemia and died. Alone for the first time in his life, Harry felt the loss acutely and terribly, and for a long while, despite continued good health, he was uncertain about whether he could go on without Ruby. It was then that he turned to the past for solace--and ended up fulfilling a lifelong dream of becoming a published author.

Delightful and hopeful, tender and moving, The Golden Willow is Harry's tribute to his beloved Ruby, to their long, happy life together, to the impact her parting had on his heart and his soul, and to the surprises and unexpected pleasures that continue to await him.

From the Hardcover edition.

2000

On the morning of my ninetieth birthday I awoke very early and to a rather strange experience. The moment I opened my eyes I was blinded by a curtain of dancing, dazzling spots of light of different colors and shapes. They sometimes merged into one another, forming new shapes and sizes and colors, and never remained still. It was like looking through a kaleidoscope, and not at all unpleasant, and so I remained still for a while, looking into this magic, surrounded by a deep silence that was broken only by the sound of birds singing outside in the garden.

And as I did so, a curious thought ran through my head: that this was how the world was at the very beginning, before people came, just these colors and this deep silence, and nothing else.

Then I shifted my head slightly on the pillow, and the phenomenon vanished instantly. It was, after all, only the sun bursting through the window and stabbing right into my eyes. I could now lie with everything quite normal, and I was careful not to shift about too much lest I disturb my wife, who was sleeping quietly at my side, her still-dark hair tumbled about her head on the pillow, her breathing light and barely audible.

I lay there listening to the sound of the birds singing outside, one bird seeming to dominate all the others with its sweet, trilling notes-a mockingbird, I have no doubt. It was altogether a pleasant spring day, and I could not have wanted anything better for my birthday. Yet as my thoughts came awake, I was conscious of a certain heaviness growing inside me.

I was suddenly becoming aware of the fact that I was ninety years old that day, and that in turn gave my mind a morbid twist, for ninety was old, it was very old. At one time I would have considered anyone of that age as good as dead. Certainly it was the end of things. And what had I done in all those years to justify my existence? I had wanted to be a writer. But the best I had done so far were some short stories published in little magazines that few people read, some freelance writing for newspaper Sunday supplement magazines, and a short novel published by a small press that nobody had read except myself and the publisher, who went bankrupt right after he published my book. True, I had written dozens of other novels, but none of them had ever been published.

I thought of all that as I lay there that morning, and gloom swept over me. It was too late now. I could never be the writer I had wanted to be. There was nothing really to celebrate about this birthday.

Then I heard a faint stirring at my side. I turned my head a little. It was my wife. She was still sleeping, but was evidently in the process of beginning to awaken. As I looked at her and listened to her quiet breathing, I thought, Well, here's some compensation for all the things I haven't done. I had married her in 1935, during the Depression, and I'd had a wonderful life with her.

I remembered something of those early days, and a smile came to my face. Our first home was a furnished room in a brownstone on West 68th Street, and it was there one day, while we were still in the passionate throes of our honeymoon, that I led Ruby to the mirror that hung over the dresser.

I told her to look into it, and I stepped behind her, took both her cheeks between my fingers, and pulled, distorting the lovely features.

"When you are older, maybe sixty or seventy"-who could get older than that?-"you may look like this," I said, "but I'll love you as much then as I do now."

Well, I had kept my promise: I did love her as much now as I had then. But she never looked the way I had predicted. In my eyes, she was as beautiful now as the...

 

"Mr. Bernstein's success in writing may have come late in life, but his success in life began in 1935, the moment he met Ruby. The Golden Willow is a loving tribute to her. For those of us who fear old age, Mr. Bernstein's memoir reminds us that even growing old has its own rewards. Writing this book is one of them. So is reading it."

 

Ninety-nine-year-old Harry Bernstein immigrated to the United States with his family after World War I. He is the author of The Invisible Wall and The Dream and has been published in "My Turn" in Newsweek. Bernstein lives in Brick, New Jersey, where he is working on another book.

From the Hardcover...