Hindsight: thinking about your past.
A series of interviews with members of Bet Tikvah by Lina Fajerman

Interview One: Pearl Miller, aged 83, founder member

What were the happiest times in your life?

Pearl: Being a wife and mother and now a grandmother – I married late  and thought I had missed  having children. I especially enjoyed the children. They were a lot of fun  and I enjoyed their company.

I enjoyed going to teachers’ training college in the 1950s for two years. As well as teaching infants I became a part-time youth leader for a few years at Stamford  Hill youth club.

What were the saddest times in your life?

Pearl: To lose family members especially my younger brother, Adrian who died when he was just 53. I was especially close to him. When he was about six and I was 13, we went together for evacuation  during the war to Marlow in Buckinghamshire.  I looked after him as he had asthma. The woman who took us in was unkind to us. He was infected with ringworm and the doctor told our mother to take him home to nurse him back to health which she did. The local children who had ringworm on their heads came to school with a handkerchief tied at the four corners to cover their heads.

I went to do war work in a factory that made boring and drilling machines that were sent to Russia. I filed plans and made copies of documents.

What were the loneliest times of your life? 

Pearl: I suppose after the break up of my marriage of 27 years.

Do you think your generation is happier than younger generations?

Pearl: I don’t  know. Perhaps younger people expect more these days.. I am glad for a roof of my own over my head and for my income from my pension.

If you could turn the clock back what would you change?

Pearl: I don’t know if anyone has the ability to change things for the better, but I personally hate a world that continually engages in cruelty, wars and terror. So futile !

 What would you do differently?

Difficult to answer -  as in the Robert Frost poem, The road not taken, you can’t know what the outcome would have been if you had done something different.

Do you have any regrets about any of your actions?

Pearl: I could have been more forceful in certain ways. I was fond of art and my older brother paid for me to go to art school for a time. I never seriously thought of going further and finding out if I had real talent and could do it as a career or if I was just a dabbler.

Do you have any regrets about not taking certain actions?

Pearl: I love music and wish I had learnt to play an instrument.  My mother offered to pay for piano lessons. I turned down her kind offer because I wouldn’t promise to practise. I much regret that now.