Page 96 - Layout 1

HORTENSE JANET LEE LIPSKY SALTER my story!
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME IS STILL A ROSE
by Janet
I was born in Los Angeles on December 11, 1923. My dad wanted a boy but was so happy with me that he was always a devoted, loving father. My mother named me Hortense because, she said, we were French since her father was born in Alsace-Lorraine. She also wanted to honor her deceased father, Hyman. But I hated the name. Both my mother and I only had first names, so I sometimes joked, “We were too poor to have a middle name.” She also bathed me in milk and cream because Lillian Russell, a famous actress, took milk baths.
I endured “Hortense” throughout grammar school, where some of the older boys taunted me, asking each other, “Is That Whore Tense?” Others decided “Horsie” was a perfect nickname. It was dreadful. So, when I enrolled in junior high, I took the name “Janet,” which was the closest I could come to “Plain Jane.” Seventy years later, I still run into old classmates who whisper in my ear, “Hello, Horsie!”
“ZEEZINKA”
My mother told me she always bathed me in cow’s cream because she heard it was good for one’s complexion. When my mother was healthy and happy, my life was fine, but when she was sad, she couldn’t care for me, so I often slept at my grandma’s house. When I was a baby and could sit up, my grandma told me I swayed to the rhythms of her voice as she chanted “Zeezinka,” sweet one, and other Yiddish words of endearment.