Nelly Murstein and Benjamin Wolozin

00:02 Owning. My name is Lily Marston. I am 88 years old and today is Saturday, January 16th, 2021. I am in Auburndale, Massachusetts and I would be joking with Ben who is my son-in-law my first son.

00:28 Good morning. I am Ben Wallace and I am 62 years old and it's the same date Saturday January 16th. 2021. I live in Newton Massachusetts. Nelly. Burstyn is my conversation partner and she is my mother-in-law and my friend.

00:50 Self Nelly. I'm thrilled to be able to interview you. So let's start out who had the greatest impact on you my mother. How did your mom I've heard so many stories about your mom. But how is your mom going to professional career?

01:16 Single mother raising five of us and how did your mom influence you

01:31 You know, I am sorry, but I did not understand the end of the question. Can you let me start again? So your mom had the greatest impact on you tell me about her. Okay, thank you. As I said, my mother was is was left as a single mother at age 29 30.

01:51 Raising five children and her brother and so she had to go to work. Luckily. She had to film us. She was a teacher Where What Where were you located at that time at that time? I was living in Beirut Lebanon and it was a French protectorate at the time and my mother was a teacher at their collect but there's no first edition see which was young girls college which was attached college and where the president of the Republic of the chiefs of the high-class people in Beirut with send their daughters. And the reason I was able to go there is because my mother was teaching there and I wasn't coming Street.

02:40 My mother was my teacher in the septic attitude when I was 10 years old and she became my role model. I think that if I had a career starting in the cities before women's lib is because I had my mother as a role model. So I was able to be both to have both additional marriage and full-time professional career at the time when it was not, so let's pause for a moment first Wallace go back a little bit, you know, I grew up in Massachusetts, but you grew up in Lebanon which to me is like so different. What was it like growing up in Lebanon at that time? When was the Paris of the Middle East?

03:38 There was as I said was it sent protectorate and Lebanon has over 23 different kind of religious cults in the school. I was went to I was I haven't my classmates.

03:55 Christians Jews and Muslims and Jews

03:59 In the most of them you had whatever it was. I want the Christians you have Catholics take Orthodox that would night and on and on and there was absolutely no sense of division because of religion we were old classmates and we all sang in the morning the Protestant hymns and we all sang the did the whole entire world war uniforms butter in the morning. What was that like and my mother would send me to get the butter and the button would come in huge blocks and on my way home. I would be biting in the butter and itching it and then she would send me to buy some cash card. So I Would by Tim it on my way home.

05:00 And those were some of my Fondest Memories at home. We cooked French, but at my friend's house, I had a chance to eat Lebanese food. Should I put in love with who Morrison TB and all those jarrah what you still make peach iced tea maker Thanksgiving and I still have that the states of my childhood, which I'll spend my favorite food. I actually prefer them to send food simply because my memories of the Lebanon of the time is the composer of proust in other words. It is my last Paradise Lebanon time. That's like a paradise to me because it was the happiest years of my life.

05:54 In spite of the war in spite of everything else simply because

06:03 From the point of view of climate first in Beirut chicken swim one day and then go to the mountain is ski, you know, we need a few hours and because on my in my teachers there or so.

06:23 What can I say equality in loving and the scooty Seth was a wonderful School. You could help you paint an idyllic scenario, but you also have stories about the Civil War in Beirut, right? It was a Civil War and that's when the French were kicked out and that's when we left Lebanon. But what was it like during the Civil War? Like I think you were sometimes in the basement and your mom would rather you together. The basement was something totally different and there was a problem between at one point the Vichy France and the English and right next door to our house. There was a huge.

07:14 Apartment house and at the top of the apartment house you had with a coded DCA which was an empty battery. And so when the sirens would ring we all would have to go to shelters after a while. My mother got tired of going to the Chesters with the six of us. So she would take us all in one room and she would put several mattresses on the floor and we would all sleep because it was usually at night on those mattresses and my mother would say this way we will be very safe in that one room with all of us together and she said we don't have to worry because this way we're all safe together and if we go we all go together and nobody will be left behind.

08:12 And that was very important to me because I've been being abandoned by my father. I felt very safe that my mother would never abandon me as what it next morning. We would go to the garden and we would make a collection of the scrap knows because I never was anything like that. So Lebanon in your mind was just like I do like Christian paradise and then you ended up in, Texas.

08:49 Go from Lebanon to Texas after the war when my mother got remarried and her second husband.

09:03 Was a violin in the Houston Symphony?

09:09 So she joined him and she left us in boarding school in Paris. So my sister and I were in boarding school. My older sister was in nursing school my two younger brothers when living with my uncle

09:27 And when she was and so when I was in Paris, I went to boarding school and I got my back, LOL.

09:36 My mother was able to get the immigration papers after my Baccalaureate and we all joined her in Houston, Texas where her husband was playing in the Houston Symphony, and that's how I ended up in Texas and I arrived in Texas in

09:59 October not knowing that in America that University started much earlier than implants as a result. I didn't go to school and at least at home and I have to say it was pretty miserable. You did go to school you went to rice and you got a PhD in French, Yeah. It was very fortunate. My mother was giving private lessons to the wife of Coach Newley who was the football coach and she told my mother why wouldn't he go to Rice?

10:47 So I took the entrance exam and the good thing is that at the time rice was called rice Institute, and it was all on scholarships and my mother could not afford University. She's so I took the entrance exam which was a math exam. Why did very well because in France my back and let her have been more advanced than the high school here and it was in English where I knew all the hard words because of the same in Spanish and in English, but I got in trouble with the everyday words and in general culture, why did very well so they took into account. That's my everyday English was not that good at the time.

11:35 And I was admitted that try so I went to Rice I entered as a sophomore and I went there as an undergraduate for two years. Then I got married as a junior and folded my husband in Texas. So tell me about meeting Bernard your husband and about your courtship, you know, Bernard is great. So

12:05 After I got my Master's at Rice University bid, I got my

12:13 I was admitted to the PHD program but in the summer the University of Texas had Martha Graham dance classes, and I wanted to take him off at Graham dance class. So I moved to Texas to Austin, Texas for this summer. And as I was moving in with a classmate who was helping me.

12:42 I seen the next apartment the young men coming out of a car and I say you see this man.

12:52 This is the guy I'm going to marry so he looks at this guy and he told me it would be easy and sure enough that same summer a good to what do you call those dances where you meet people and make sure I go to a mixture of graduate students because I'm that point I already had the Masters and one of the person's identity is happens to be Bernard.

13:22 Well, he asked me for a date I go our first date was on the 4th of July at Barton Springs. What year?

13:33 1964 and I said, I don't know this guy what if he's a bull or so, I think some books with me and I say she's a ball at 10 p.m. That I have to prepare for an exam and not be reading my books. So I go to the car and I see that you're not had a whole bunch of books and the back seat. And I said, oh you thought that might be a boy and you were going to tell me that you had an extensive repair. And you said how did you know and he was so terribly impressed and I told him was because I think the same thing.

14:25 However, we spend the whole day talking and he was explaining to me. I guess it was either Pogo peanuts. I don't remember what the comics where because I have a very hard time with American Comics. I don't understand a lot of the references and we never open the book either one of us. Then he invited me on the second date.

14:53 And after the second base, we talked to a lot that means she talks a lot and he told me it was and what his life is good friends with a cop. So whatever it is and then he thought that was a very good conversationalist and then he asked me to marry him. It was a second date and I said but Bernard you don't even know me and he said I am a psychologist because you wasn't conscious student in Psychology and I can tell and I said, okay, so I put two conditions because at that point I had been admitted in the doctoral program as I put I have two conditions.

15:38 One of them witches pot that you wouldn't I would die first because I didn't know the time that I was worried about being abandoned decorate ring. My mother died. I just had a bending meal though. She promised. Nobody would be left behind so I didn't want him to leave me behind but not the point it now because Bernard died in November to me, he said, I'm sorry. I can't keep my promise. However, he did tell the social worker.

16:14 Who was talking to him? If you told her he will never abandon me and the social worker repeated that to me and I felt that this was a way of his not abandoning me.

16:31 To say that. Yeah, and the other promise was that I would finish my guy to work and I would have a career and I have to say that they're not kept that promise that he's on expense. I don't know any man of his generation. Who did what she did he accepted we had children image Italy.

17:02 And so when Danielle a first born was born he got a job at Louisiana State University and I was exaggerated student graduate assistant at rice with was like Institute at the Time Rush University.

17:21 And he accepted to live alone in Louisiana while I was living in Houston, Texas next door to my mother having all my friends all my classmates or my professors. My mother took care of Danielle the baby as soon as first language was French and yellows my wife your daughter and the

17:47 So I had everything and Bernard would come once a month to visit and it was like having a love her which was wonderful and at the same time I was going to school and had only when you moved and we're going to go to talk about your life in Connecticut in the moment, but when you did move to Connecticut, he made a big sacrifice their yes, what happened is something we could get jobs almost together and then he moved to Connecticut College to be with me and why is there

18:32 He had a fantastic job offer. Bernard is essentially is color and the Searcher and he wrote a lot to do. Of research. Now you need to pick University to do that kind of research and he used to get very large Grande when she join me at Connecticut College. You couldn't get last chance. And also when he went that absolutely extraordinary offer from the University where he when he made more money than the two of us together as soon as you go to college and where he could watch his own program. There was nothing for me except the teaching of language and he knew that what I loved was literature.

19:19 And he refused the job and he said Nelly I could not look at myself in the mirror.

19:29 Thinking that you're not doing what you love and I know no man of his generation.

19:37 Who could do that kind of sacrifice?

19:44 And I realize the kind of love he had for me.

19:51 I mean histame. I was the love of his life and he was in love with my life. So let's talk about I had to traditional marriage and people would say including your wife been then. You know, why do you serve your dad all the time? Why do you do that? What do that? Because I really didn't care. You didn't mind. I love doing it because when things were really important but not has not been a traditional husband.

20:25 I have to say that so I'm I want to because of x if over the part about being a professional young Fresno woman and move on and we'll come back to that night. Okay, so important at this stage, so I want to go to a question. You know, when I think of you I just love hearing you talk about, you know French literature about the life of of when we go to Paris and but I want you to spend a moment. There's something special about a special person literature that you love and so I want to say after a question. Where is your mind wander to when you need to seek kind of emotional refuge for wisdom Solace pleasure.

21:25 Paris just to relax

21:27 Thank you. Cuz literature is my constellation any particular post tell me about okay. I work a lot from you. I was miserable in Houston and I was going to the UC library reading the same section from a on and when I arrive at the West Coast and that's why I fell in love with post but I'm not going to go on because I can give lectures about it. All I want to say is that what you said about his work and I expect almost a quote to let each reader of my book is reader of himself and herself and I will know whether I have been successful with her if it is true and I have to say that

22:21 Was that a metaphoric and metaphors are ways of communicating, but you cannot communicate in experience.

22:33 Who translates for me?

22:36 Emotions

22:39 Set up sometime too complicated or that I cannot understand he puts in words for me my experiences and my emotions and this translation of complicated emotion into words for some reason bring me a tremendous amount of satisfaction. So I know you listen to cruise night as you go to sleep. Give me a example of listening to Kristen how your mind wanders

23:11 But anytime I had a question. I have time by answering pust and recently something that has happened.

23:21 But it's interesting that this morning NPR to mention the involuntary memory several times.

23:34 A few days ago as I was looking at my husband's at Bernards desk.

23:44 Suddenly I See the glasses that he was using

23:49 When you look at his computer and I had to push an experience. I had to push him if anyone talked to him mod, and of course I burst crying and I understood and that helped me to understand what was happening because

24:10 I did not expect to see them and important.

24:18 The memory of Bernard

24:23 Death but the actual experience of it and my understanding of it has to be Jean with it and it's constant in my life. I mean, he's not just pust I know that's when they was. I was in the G lot of pain. I feel that by the writer Colette who said that welcome my pain because you just find that I'm alive. I'm thinking about the poem by aquilina where he says joy always came after pain. So old that literature I having my head in every situation of my life if I can translate them into words,

25:06 Maybe I don't I don't understand exactly why I accept that because it explains to me rationally my experiences.

25:17 I find you to choose a new constellation and the support and a health that's wonderful for you. And I would like to talk about you will get there. But I couple other things for so many students you are and always will be. Hammerstein the professor French literature from Connecticut College. So I know you were a chair of the Department of French and dance and also for a French and for 1 year, you are a chair of interim chair of dance one semester and you can let up Moroccan studies program. So with can you kind of just some of the highlights from that you don't have to go into details?

26:17 Give me some Snippets rising and Billy getting so the way I did is delegate and I had some wonderful people who was the latest arrival was very up-to-date on a different way of looking at literature and of organizing literature instead of organizing. It lets Say by Century, you know, we used to teach the 16th century. So I have I give her the job afraid of agonizing with you each of them until 4 or so West Valley Credit Union and I gave an equal voice to the instructors is ETSU the food processors.

27:07 So I think that's my best about.

27:13 Note, my best quality Department was organization and delegation couple other experiences. You have great stories Prince and the American Dance Festival was at Connecticut College for years. Could you just tell some stories about that? But I have to say that's one reason that I left you that I went from Reed College in Oregon to Connecticut College. I mean to have to reason once Connecticut college has the reputation of being an excellent girls school and intellectually very good school intellectually and that it was also a teaching college and I think my first patient teaching

28:05 And the other reason was the American Dance Festival because since that first summer when I met Bernard by going to dance class at the University of Texas, I've always loved dancing. So I went there in parts of the American Dance Festival and I was really fortunate in having dances with and my fat gram and hurt.

28:31 And I will tell you something about her and her company does he leave me alone Alvin Ailey Lucas housing and on and on that's was a wonderful privilege, but we must a gram.

28:44 The first class. I was an instructor at Connecticut College. It was my first year.

28:52 And the debts plastic didn't have yet the dance class for math exam. The first class was in the gym room and the gym home had stents Underside.

29:08 And Martha Graham used to teach the first class and after that it would be dancers from her company who took over. So for the first class of Martha Graham, that's first summer at Connecticut College as a young instructor for the first time.

29:28 I am sitting there in the most advanced class and

29:34 President Shane the president of the college is there watching so as I'm sitting there with my legs wide open and straightening up and I have been wearing a bun for years because when I started as a

29:52 Teaching assistant that Rice I was 19 years old years old and I had to teach students who are older than me. So I wore a bun to make myself feel colder. So this is important for the story. So I'm sitting there and comes to me and she gives me a kick in the back and she pushed my buttons and she say straighten up as I'm still straightening up and

30:23 And I was going to die because she was looking at it and he was most like ham.

30:31 Pulling back bun and kicking the NSA for God, please. Please open a big hole. Even if it has to go to hell and I'm going to go down in that hole.

30:46 Was my first memory of my first class my first year at Connecticut College. Wow that

31:00 The high point in my career actually West satyr statue which way it was a program that clear good journey. The president of the college had organized organized several programs of international studies. She was aware of what's important in the global world, and she was ahead of her time. It would it would be important for the students to know the foreign language and to do International Studies.

31:35 And this program was study away away where you where was let it go ahead, look up because it was time for the program that developed both students and teachers and it was so now I'm just moving around cuz we're running out of time. So what was it about Morocco that really struck you.

32:08 So many things with mice coming to my mind now, I don't know if I should say and you can if you want to I had just had and that puts a cool sculpting surgery on my knee and in spite of all the

32:29 Therapy the physical therapy. I had I could not bend my knee.

32:33 And we had an apartment with a regular bathroom. But then I took a trip around Malco and a lot of the bathroom where this Turkish bathroom where you had to squat when I had no choice. I had to squat it was the most horrible pain in my life, but he fixed my knee. That's what I think in the culture of Morocco was to learn the first lines of the Koran and it was interesting to me that

33:17 The taxi driver in my Village and I said, I'm Jewish and he said I am Muslim and we are brothers.

33:28 Is that somebody gave me a djellaba and I tell about that. I know we're going to run out of time. I'm so I want to go to the personal.

33:45 You know I'm messing with you.

33:50 Sure. I also want to talk about you do my daughters and their interactions with you. But if you looks like you're dying to talk about your meeting with me. Let's go ahead and then and then another fast and we're both.

34:11 First-year medical students at Albert Einstein and genius to Ben's father and could we stop in New London and have dinner and I said, of course and here comes Danielle Danielle is very tall and both benefit. Wish you were a little bit shorter. So buttressed by these two strong MD Ph.D people and we're having dinner and you know, it was pretty interested in knowing about you being an awesome another question and all styles and Danielle told me the answer.

35:06 So I was even more impressed by Ben I say or Ben you are a dancer.

35:12 Tell me about it. Okay? Well it make a long story short. Let me you reaction about that. So I know she and I are both MD PhD students now scientists and strong strongly identify with science and I did take dance classes and dance, but I was pretty bad. So when and what I noticed was you were spent lots of time asking Hiroshi about his size and then you turned to me and you say Ben you're a dancer and think to myself what I'm not a scientist and I said, I would love to have been for a son-in-law and my dad he's my best friend.

36:09 Are you are very prescient Nelly, I love and adore. You also. You mean more to me than you mean as much to me. As anyone is Danielle or Jackie or Becky, you know, I'm just I've just been enlightened and just grown so much knowing you and and I adore you, but I want to spend a moment.

36:44 Have talking about the relationship you have with my daughters that can Jackie cuz Danielle loves you and I have always adored you and I wanted nothing more than to have. My daughter's be able to experience you. So, can you give me some story and they did so can you give me some stories of your experiences with Becky and Jackie is my older daughter and Jackie years old is 3 minutes. OK quickly. I am alone sitting on the couch and Jackie interviews me doing the interviewing and this was the first time that somebody spend some of them asking me question. So I told Jack he would you be my partner because I've never had to partner and Jackie said yes.

37:44 What is being my partner must have meant something to her because Jackie was not an easy child and she never wanted to do anything. But anytime I say Jackie, you're my partner Elizabeth sing Come hand-in-hand as the end of this and like The Owl and the Pussycat and I could make her do anything. I want you to I think with your help Jackie has grown up to be just such an amazing woman, especially my sister had just died and I was crying and then your text I can give it to me as a gift. I don't know what to say about Becky. We have travelled together. We have done things together. It has last together. I don't know what you started to take more than 5 minutes that supposed to hit me one story about and because I was

38:44 In so I go in and I show my professors card and I say I'm a professor and the dishes to buy student and I go in and thank you. And I think what a mess of Becky. She said, you have used your Subway card.

39:06 Exactly, and I have to say that all of you, you know, Danielle then Becky Jackie Collett and at this time.

39:28 I don't know that I could have survived then Granada Theater. What's 68-67 I don't know Joseph without you all well as the final comment, I will say that.

39:49 You have meant so much to me. I have learned almost had to exist because of you. You know how to be real as best I can I'm not you but what it means to understand people what it means to listen to people and also because of you even though I'm a scientist. I appreciate that the French culture. I appreciate literature. I know the proust was a neuroscientist and I have learned how to how to teach empathy with people. So thank you. Thank you been I have to tell you that.

40:34 This Sunday walks that you took me for every morning and still do help me Liz.

40:43 Likewise and I'll never find the words to tell you by touching food. Thank you. You too.

40:56 What is Tantra?