The Woman I Wanted to Be Read Free Page A

sky-blue and navy American Chevrolet Impala convertible, a bicolor combination that was very popular in the late fifties. In that era, before seat belts were common, I would kneel on the front seat instead of sitting, because I thought that that would make people think I was a grown-up. I always, always wanted to be older than my age. I never wanted to be a little girl. I wanted to be a woman, a sophisticated woman, a glamorous woman. I wanted to be important.
    My father, unknowingly, hastened that wish. When he came to say good night to me and kiss me in my bed, he was often cautioned by my mother. “Be careful, don’t wake up her senses,” she’d say. My father used to think my mother’s warning was hysterically funny. How could he, a man, wake up the senses of a little girl? Looking back now, however, no matter how funny he thought it was, he did wake up my senses. My father made me feel like a woman, so my mother was clever actually to say that.
    The feelings were not sexual. It was the awareness that he was a man and that my relationship with him was therefore different fromone I’d have with a woman. How lucky I was that this first man in my life loved me uncritically, unguardedly, without judging. I did not have to work for his love, I did not have to please him; his approval required no effort. That made an important impact on my life, and though I didn’t know it then, I now know it has made my relationships with men much easier. What I owe my father, and what I am so thankful for, is how comfortable I always feel with men. He gave me confidence.
    That first love and affection marks the way I presume men feel toward me. I simply take their fondness for granted, neither expecting nor looking for it. The biggest gift my father gave me was not to be needy. I had so much love from him that I didn’t really need any more. In fact, I sometimes had to push it away because his display of affection in front of people embarrassed me.
    My father was a successful businessman, a distributor of General Electric electronic tubes and semiconductors. He did well, so we lived very comfortably.
    My parents were a striking couple. My father was very good-looking with high cheekbones and a mischievous smile. My mother had an elegant build and beautiful legs. She dressed very well and had a lot of allure. She was very much the boss of the house and I always saw her as the brains of the family. As much as I adored my father it was to her I went for advice.
    She was not a traditional housewife, and only on Sundays, the housekeeper’s day off, did I occasionally see her in the kitchen. She would make a delicious grilled chicken with crispy potatoes and my father would bring pastries for dessert. My favorite petit gâteau was called a Merveilleux and was made of meringue, chocolate, and whipped cream. We were, after all, in Belgium, the land of chocolate. In fact, most of what my mother did at home was to instruct everyone else, but she did it very well. Our apartment was beautifully decorated,full of antiques she had collected. I have a clear memory of her looking for and finally finding the Empire chandelier she so desired. It now illuminates my Mayfair shop in London.
    Since my mother died, my father having died six years before, I have searched for clues in my parents’ lives as to what formed them and why I am who I am. That quest has taken me to Eastern Europe and the city of Kishinev, then the capital of Bessarabia, now the capital of Moldova, where my father was born in 1912, and to Salonika, Greece, where my mother was born in 1922.
    Both my parents’ families were in the textile business. My father’s father, a wealthy Russian merchant whose relatives included many intellectuals and artists—one relative, Lewis Milestone, directed the 1930 Academy Award–winning war film All Quiet on the Western Front —owned several fabric stores in Kishinev. My mother’s father, Moshe Nahmias, a Sephardic Jew (a Jew of Spanish