Simone Plastrik: 1919 - 1999
Phillips, Maxine
WHENEVER THE conversation around the Dissent lunch table would go on too long or get too heated over some non-political matter (Should we put in another phone line for the fax? What color...
...Still, she would be the first one there, the last to leave, making sure the wine was plentiful, the hors d'oeuvres were passed, the conversation flowing...
...What color should the next cover be...
...Soon enough, however, we were sipping cafés au lait in her apartment early on Thursday mornings in front of a French book-talk show called Apostrophes...
...No regrets...
...At her memorial service Deborah Meier spoke of the parenting she provided all her friends, no matter what their age...
...The phrase was a direct translation from the French and meant "Don't make a big thing out of this...
...my friends asked...
...She never minced words...
...Nor did she give up on her politics...
...I knew she'd been a French teacher and her demeanor merged with not-so-pleasant memories of my own high school French teacher...
...How can you stand it...
...and the discussion was over...
...I wondered if the time she spent tending to friendships was possible because her family was grown, but it was clear that she cultivated friends from her youth...
...But I don't want to move on...
...And it is searing and personal...
...A new beginning for an enduring passion...
...You need it...
...MAXINE PHILLIPS is managing editor of Dissent...
...She was intimidating on our first encounter: brusque, no-nonsense...
...I want to "exaggerate," because I know I will never have another friend like her or a comrade of her equal...
...She was of the old school, the ones who didn't dwell on grief, who moved on to the task at hand...
...Simone worked hard at being a friend...
...Our only contact with such events now was the annual Dissent holiday party, a pleasant enough affair, but, she asserted, not on a par with those of earlier days or of her youth...
...No "exaggeration...
...You don't have that culture," she would lament as she recalled socialist summer camps and excursions...
...Simone would say, "Don't exaggerate...
...None of us was prepared, although we certainly knew it would happen...
...Rarely in our adult lives do we find another adult who looks at us and accepts us as we are but sees what we could be and commits herself to helping us...
...Stop wearing those schmates...
...She's not my mother," I would laugh, knowing that if she were, no amount of common sense and good taste on her part would have allowed the messages to get through...
...Here's the phone number of a good hair cutter...
...Of course she made it look easy...
...DISSENT / Winter 2000 n 97...
...Her parents were bundists and she joined the socialist youth group, the Red Falcons, as a teenager...
...Simone was born into a world and a culture that no longer exist...
...WHENEVER THE conversation around the Dissent lunch table would go on too long or get too heated over some non-political matter (Should we put in another phone line for the fax...
...In June, when it looked as if she might not make it, she said, "I'm ready to die, but my children aren't ready for me to die...
...Some may have moved to the right, some may have wavered in their commitment, but she never gave up on them...
...We have work to do...
...Her apartment housed the magazine for the length of its existence...
...now, literally and figuratively, we have to leave home...
...I was delighted to be with a fluent speaker whose patience and knowledge pushed me to a higher level of fluency...
...We're on our own...
...Her passing is symbolic, for she was the last of Dissent's founding generation in New York...
...Through all the splits in the socialist movement she stayed faithful to her friends...
...Always, there would be a circle around her: the newest intern in the office, a friend from forty years back, a former student...
...You know how to put the social into socialist," we joked, and she would smile as she described the parties and the camaraderie...
...Who knew, I told my friends, that working for Dissent would turn out to improve my French, help me re-organize and redecorate my apartment, and lead to a wardrobe makeover...
...Thank you, Simone...
...As I try to put on paper what knowing Simone meant to me, I can hear her voice: "Don't exaggerate...
Vol. 47 • January 2000 • No. 1
