Dr. Miriam Steinberg had never met a problem she couldn't solve. In fact, sometimes when she couldn't fall asleep at night, she would list all the problems that had crossed her path in her 76 years of life. She gained great solace from imagining what might have happened in each instance if she had not stepped in with her inimitable resolve and intellect to set things right. Though her husband, Phil, died three years ago at the age of 83, she didn't view his death as a failure. After all, she believed that she had almost singlehandedly extended his life twenty-three years when he had been given a fatal cancer diagnosis at the age of sixty. She had scoured the internet and international medical journals in search of new research. She had interviewed cancer specialists all over the globe. She had investigated alternative methods of healing and signed Phil up for yoga and meditation classes. She had completely changed the way they ate, alternately following a Vegan diet one week and a Macrobiotic meal plan the next. When he died, neither of them had eaten a bite of meat for twenty-three years. That night, as soon as she left the hospital, Miriam treated herself to a large filet mignon at one of New York City's finest steak houses.
That was the way Miriam handled life, one problem and one solution at a time. Other people, she thought, can live life, I manage life. Some might call her a control freak, and perhaps that would be fitting, but in Miriam's eyes, she was just a strong woman who had always chosen the role of fighter rather than victim.
When she was a little girl growing up in Chicago, she had dreamed of becoming a doctor. Her parents thought it an odd choice for a girl born in 1936. She came from a family of merchants, and selling was the only career they had ever known. Her grandfather had opened a men's haberdashery on the south side of Chicago at the turn of the century. Her father and mother had taken over Kahn's Menswear when her grandfather died. They made a decent living in retail, though they were certainly not wealthy. Miriam and her brother were their only offspring and they were devoted parents. Leo, her older brother, took over the family business by default, the way he did everything else in his life. He was the antithesis of Miriam. He made no decisions; he simply went with the flow.
When Miriam was applying for college, her father insisted that she attend a woman's college and so she chose one far from Chicago. She loved her four years at Mount Holyoke and found that the life of the mind was the life she felt most comfortable pursuing. Her Biology professor, Dr. Totter, saw a special spark in Miriam and encouraged her to follow her dream of becoming a physician. Her parents tried to dissuade her. "You'll never have a normal life," they argued. "You'll never marry or have children." When Miriam insisted that she would be satisfied with no other life than the life of a doctor, they gave in but with one condition. They told her that she could only go to medical school if she got into Harvard. The graduating class of 1947 was the first class at Harvard Medical School to include women.
Dr. Totter, who had himself graduated from Harvard, was instrumental in helping Miriam attend his alma mater. He wrote her a glowing recommendation which included the terribly hyperbolic line:"If Miriam Kahn is not admitted into Harvard Medical School, the world will suffer a gigantic loss." What exactly did Miriam do to ingratiate herself with Dr. Totter in such a powerful way? Certainly, she was a brilliant and charismatic student, but she was not the only brilliant, charismatic pre-med student at Mount Holyoke in the late 1950's. Perhaps it was all above board and based solely on merit, but we will never know for sure. Dr. Totter died years ago and Miriam has never been one to share her secrets.
The only person who has come close to knowing the inner workings of Miriam Kahn Steinberg's mind is Rona Leavitt, her best friend since they first met in Kindergarten at Bret Harte Elementary School. What about Phil, you might ask. Well, Miriam adored Phil. She enjoyed spending time with him. She loved raising their two daughters, Abigail and Sarah, with him. But she also believed that a long-lasting relationship was based on something she called,"Necessary Honesty." Miriam believed that some things were actually better left unsaid. Truth, she believed, should be shared on a need-to-know basis. Phil was the happy, though clueless, recipient of Miriam's marital policy; what he didn't know couldn't hurt him. Rona, therefore, was probably the only person on the planet with whom Miriam was ever completely open. Their friendship had worked well and consistently for the past 71 years because they were so different. Rona was a calm and spiritual person; she actually enjoyed life's ebbs and flows. She had re-invented herself many times during her life, from stay-at-home mother, to journalist to yoga instructor and finally to her current incarnation as the CEO of a small non-profit organization she founded to address childhood hunger. Miriam loved Rona's approach to life, even though it was the antithesis of her own. She envied Rona's sense of calm and inner peace. In fact, when Rona used to say to her, "You're only as happy as your least happy child," it was an observation not something Rona herself ever experienced. Rona had four children, now all grown and out in the world. Between the four of them, they had experienced, AIDS, divorce, multiple miscarriages, birth defects, and many of the ten plagues God visited on the Egyptians. Yet Rona remained as cool as a cucumber. She didn't try to swoop in and solve everything, as Miriam would have done. She never tried to change them or alter their paths in life. Rather, she offered unconditional love and the firm belief that the next day would be brighter. Miriam loved that about her; she just couldn't emulate it.
So Abigail and Sarah had grown up with two very different parents. Their father, Phil, had been a jovial sort of guy who doted on them even if he never really knew exactly what made them tick. Their mother, Miriam, on the other hand, was a classic micro-manager. If they wanted help, she helped them. If they didn't want help, she helped them. Sometimes, she helped them in overt ways. Sometimes, she worked behind the scenes. Consequently, neither Sarah nor Abigail ever really knew if they had resolved a situation or achieved something on their own. They always had the sneaking suspicion that, like a master puppeteer, Miriam was behind the scenes pulling all the strings.
