When the Nazis came, Bronislava and Herman’s lives would never be the same. They were, as we call it in well-laundered English today, “displaced”.

They didn’t know each other back then, or maybe they did, but they had their own separate lives that the Nazis ended. Bronislava, or grandma Bronia as we called her, was sent to a camp in Siberia. When they ran out of food they ate their horses, and then I don’t know what. Herman, grandpa Shmuel, joined the Red Army and remained an avowed communist to his death.

This isn’t their whole story, these two people smashed together by the aftermath of war, my dad’s parents. It’s the story of what their generation brought to us: the trauma of war, and specifically of hunger.

Oh we’ve had traumas since, trust me. A story for a different time. But food trauma was real and ever present. Old people hiding stale bread in the nooks and crannies of their homes, just in case the Nazis ever came back. “Yeled tov mash’ir tzalahat rey’ka”, a good boy leaves an empty plate. Wasting food, the cardinal sin.

It took me decades to stop leaving leftovers in the fridge until I ate them or they became moldy. It took me years to stop losing my mind over wasted food. And now, the boy forgot to eat his sandwich and it’s going in the trash, not in my mouth. What does he need our trauma for. I call that progress.