MITL - A TALE INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS

My grandmother Amália was sick in the hospital, very weak, with a feeble memory. I came to visit her, we tried to talk, and luckily she remembered me. But hardly enough. Most of her recollections would dwell in an early past. At some point she said the word "Mitl". I asked her again and she repeated: "Mitl, mitl...” And then fell back to deep sleep.

I had never heard this word before. What could it mean? Grandma spoke Yiddish, so it could be a Yiddish word. Or maybe the name of a relative?  A special recipe from Bessarabia her mom used to cook?

I asked my mom, daughter of grandma. Never heard about Mitl. Asked my dad, known as the family scholar, and also a Yiddish speaker. Never heard it either. What secrets could possibly lie under this mysterious word?

I went for the first resource mankind goes for when faced with an unanswerable question: Google. But I'm pretty sure Amália was not referring to a networks corporation, a tennis league or stock exchange group. 

I called my uncle and aunts. I called grandma's two sisters. I called cousins. I asked the Rabbis. Nothing. Who was this Mitl? I was by then convinced it was a person. Maybe grandma's first love? Or somebody she really liked? Or lived a tragedy with? Or her favorite pet?

But wait. Could it be that I heard it wrong? Grandma was weak and her voice frail. Maybe was it Motl? I looked it up on the internet. Motl is the abbreviation for March of the Living. But I doubt Amália was referring to this event on her hospital bed. I started researching all possible variations, but couldn't reach a satisfactory resolution.

Then I reached out to genealogy groups. These are great people. If they don't know something, they know somebody who does. But even they could not help me. 

Next week I went back to the hospital. Amália didn't say a word. She would just look at my shirt, like trying to read something. "Vlei"she said. I looked at my shirt: it read "fly". It was then I realized! Mitl was not a person, a pet or some dish from Bessarabia, where her family had come from. The day I first visited Amália I had a shirt and on it was written "Midtown". I bought it because it was the name of the neighborhood I used to live in Los Angeles. Well, grandma couldn't speak or read English, so "Midtown" became... MITL! She was just reading my shirt all along.

So, if you ever have a Jewish Brazilian grandmother at the hospital saying "Mitl", it could just be your shirt.

By the way, Amália is already out of the hospital, recovering just fine. I haven't told her this story yet.