Revisiting My Mother’s Childhood Home in Magnolia
By Karen Treiger
One day my mom, Betty Lou (Friedlander) Treiger, and I found ourselves in Magnolia picking up her car.
“Mom,“ I said, “we’re in Magnolia. Let’s find the house you grew up in.“
“Sure,“ she said, and without hesitation she blurted out the address: “4216 West Barrett.“
Sometimes, my mom can’t remember what she ate for breakfast, and yet she threw out the address from her childhood home without a second thought. We drove through the quiet streets of Magnolia and found the brick house. We went up a few steps and knocked on the door. A teenage girl answered.
“Hi, I’m Karen, and this is my mom, Betty Lou. She grew up in this house and we were wondering if we could come in and look around?“
“Sure,“ she said. “My mom is on a phone call for work right now, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.“
We entered the home and walked into a light-filled living room. My mom said that the house was the same as when she grew up. I was surprised to find it was not grand as I had imagined it; everything I’d heard about the cook and maid made me think it was larger. There was a hallway to the right of the door, leading to three bedrooms and a bathroom. My mom pointed out the primary bedroom at the end of the hall as her parents’ room, and one on the right, her sister Jackie’s. Then we turned to the room on the left.
Sisters Betty Lou and Jackie Treiger circa 1939.
Photo courtesy of Karen Treiger.
“That’s my room,“ the teenage girl told us.
“It was my room too,“ my mom said, “when I was growing up here.“
“Could we go in your room?“ I asked.
“Sure,“ she said.
“Yeah, this was my room,“ my mom said wistfully.
“That’s the closet.“
“That’s the closet?“ I asked. “It’s so small.“
My mom and aunt told us the story many times of how the maid locked them in the closet when my grandmother wasn’t home. She would put a dresser up against the door so that my mom and aunt couldn’t get out. They were stuck inside, sometimes for hours. Like the house, the closet was much smaller than I had imagined.
“We hid flashlights, games, and cigarettes in there,“ my mom explained. “It happened a lot when Mother wasn’t home.“
“Cigarettes?“ I asked. “How did you put them out?“
“I left a glass of water in there, to put them out after I was done smoking.“
To me, the closet is a metaphor for my mom’s life and all she had to overcome to be the remarkable person and mother that she was to me and my two brothers. She was locked in that dark closet for hours at a time, but she and her sister made the best of it. They played games, smoked, and made it a place to have fun. My mom took her challenging childhood experiences and imperfect family life and found her way. She is one of the most optimistic people I know, always looking on the bright side.
I have learned many life lessons from my mother, but this one is powerful: If you find yourself stuck in a dark closet (whether real or metaphorical), make the best of it—play games, have a flashlight and glass of water ready (be prepared), and always get along with your siblings.
We returned to the living room and I stood there, looking out at Puget Sound, the islands across the way, and the majestic Olympic Mountains looming. I felt time collapse. It was some seventy years ago that my mom lived here and looked out at this same view. Straight across the water, I noticed Alki Beach in West Seattle, where my mom’s great-grandparents, Sam and Augusta Friedlander, lived. Although Augusta died in 1931, before my mom and aunt were born, Sam lived until 1943. Sam was a short, bald man with a thick Latvian accent. He and Augusta had married in Latvia and traveled across the Atlantic, still teenagers (16 and 17 years old). After a sojourn in Rochester, New York, and then Columbus, Ohio, they made their way to Seattle, arriving in 1906. Now my mom is eighty-nine and living out the last chapter of her life. The harsh reality that we are merely visitors on this Earth slapped me in the face. I wondered, when will my mom’s visitor’s visa expire? When will mine? Why was I granted the visa in the first place?
I was lost in thought with these unanswerable questions when my mom touched my arm and brought me back to the living room. She pointed to houses down the street, telling me who lived there and which friends she played with.
“Our family was the first on the block to have a TV,“ she told me. “All the neighborhood kids came over to watch. It was black and white. We loved it.“
Lifting my eyes again to the bay, I imagine my mother growing up in this lovely home in Magnolia, and I wonder what stories her family told as they looked across the bay at West Seattle, where Sam and Augusta had lived.
What are the stories they chose to tell? What are the stories we choose to tell now? Our choices say much about our lives and our relationship with time and place. Standing here on Magnolia Bluff, we can look across the bay, remember the past, and live life to its fullest now, in the present.
Karen Treiger was born in Seattle and attended Barnard College and NYU Law School, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review. She left her law practice in 2015 to write My Soul is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story, which chronicles her in-laws’ survival during World War II. The book won the PNWA Nancy Pearl Book Award for Best Memoir and the Bronze Medal in World History from the Independent Book Publishers Association. Her new book, Standing on the Crack, released in August 2025, explores her immigrant Jewish family’s unique history and their contributions to Seattle’s business and Jewish communities, while inviting readers to reflect on the enduring importance of knowing one’s family story. Karen has lived in Seattle’s Seward Park neighborhood for thirty-seven years, where she and her husband raised four children. Today, she cherishes her role as Bubbi (grandmother).