Category Archives: Mothers

Past and Future

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So, after someone dies, at some point, you just get on with life.   Right?  Not so much.

Eight years ago, my mother died.  I am less ok with it now than I was, let’s say, two years ago.  Time is passing too quickly.  Maybe taking care of my Dad’s monthly and business affairs is taking its toll.  And he found old slides that I am transferring onto the computer.  Some fabulous vintage pictures (and some that so tragically epitomize the 1970s that it is painful to put them in the family album).  And I see my mom, at my age, in the 1960s. I look like her.  I have some of her traits.  Mostly good ones, although the wrinkles are unpleasant.

And then I look to pictures of my family.  My young-ish family: my wonderful son and fabulous spouse.  A life graced with good fortune and love.

Like most days, I look back with pain, sadness and love, and I look forward with gratitude, hope and love.

But these past days my Mom’s loss has been so present, so palpable, that I wasn’t sure I could breathe.  I guess that is the nature of grief: it hits you sometimes lightly, and other times, it lets loose a prizefighter punch.  And it makes the highs higher, the lows, lower and the precious moments that Mom missed ever so more poignant.

Love endures.  Loss sucks, no matter how many years it has been.

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The love that endures

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We are coming up on 8 years since my mother died. 

It is harder this year than in the last two, maybe because we can’t say she’s been gone “about 5 years” anymore.  We are probably going to start saying she’s been gone “almost ten years”. 

A DECADE.
A DECADE. 

A DECADE. 

Last night I was thinking about Mom and I remembered how, when any of her children were sick, sad or scared, she would cup one of our cheeks, look into our eyes and say, “my poor baby, if I could have this for you I would.”  And we knew she meant it.  It was a fierce connection between mother and child(ren).

It was also ferocious on the flip-side.  When Mom was dying of cancer, my sister said to her, “I wish I could take some of it from you because I am strong enough to handle it.”  My mother got so agitated that she looked like she might burst.  My sister got the message:   Mom, until the day she died, would try to protect us.  There was no two-way street in this circumstance.

I still feel my mother’s love.  It endures.  Unfortunately, her voice and her hugs are gone.

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Extreme Family

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On Sunday, just as we and our apartment were recovering from the New Year’s that was, we had two cousins (children of dear cousins Ricky z”l and Judy, and dear, if young, cousins in their own rights). FOB (father of blogger and their great uncle) joined and so it was a multi, collateral-generational event.

It was scheduled for 11am and then re-scheduled for 10:30am by one of my young cousins, so she could catch a train to get upstate for school.  She had lived in New York for a year but in short order we forgot that she is never, ever, ever on time.  If this fact was lost to save another, more necessary fact from slipping out of my memory banks, so be it.  [As a digression (of course), does anyone else fantasize about have one of those 8 GB memory cards inserted in your brain?  Did I just admit that this is the subject of my fantasies?  Ugh, my filter was gone years before I could blame age.]

I didn’t even bother to tell FOB of the earlier start time because, as I have discussed before, as a person gets older, a person arrives earlier and earlier at any event.   So I knew he would be on time, even early, for the rescheduled time.  And FOB did not let me down. I was a little worried that he would be so early as to eat dinner with us on Saturday night, but we aren’t at that stage yet.

POB (partner of blogger) got up early to get provisions.  She is a G-dsend and she reminds me of that daily (the memory thing again).

So while the rest of were all assembled at 10:30am (FOB even earlier and her younger brother exactly on time), my little cousin and her NEW boyfriend arrived at 11am.  We didn’t realize he was ACTUALLY coming — a little mix-up on that score — but we always buy enough lox, bagels and white fish salad.  And we have food on hand if a person is not Jewish — gastronomically or otherwise.

We endured her old boyfriend who was Dutch-Israeli (how did his parents get along long enough to procreate, you might ask, but I really, really can’t go there).  You might be having trouble imagining the effect of a Dutch and Israeli genetic mixture?  Rest easy, I have your answer:  You get someone who tells you his opinions framed as THE TRUTH (there is only one) in a smug and arrogant way.  Really, I am not joking.  But wait, it gets weirder, the old boyfriend works in the hospitality industry. Let’s pause on that point for a moment because you cannot make that stuff up.  There was something undeniably charming about him.  But I digress.  [Sigh] Yes, I digress AGAIN.

So, bottom line, we were prepared for anything. And quite curious.

Also, just some background on her (right) wing of the family.  They are somewhat religious so non-Jewish partners are problematic.

The boyfriend (now, probably, “ex” after meeting us) is not Jewish.  Never letting inappropriate conversation get in the way of a family gathering, my other young cousin reported that his grandparents on the OTHER side of the family have issues with their older brother’s relationship with an older non-Jewish woman who has two kids.  Pause.  I contemplate that both my siblings are happily married to non-Jews and that I, THE LESBIAN, am the only one with a Jewish partner.

Not wanting the new boyfriend to feel toooo bad about this xenophobic-is-it-good-for-the-Jews conversation, I offered helpfully that my cousin’s eggs are Jewish so the family should be ok with a Christian boyfriend (assuming that he wasn’t yet dying to run screaming out the door), but of course we will need some of his blood in order to make wine for Passover.

Did I really mention the blood for Passover wine?  Happily I can say, with little or no guile, that I honestly don’t remember.  Maybe I don’t want that memory chip after all.  [cheesy smile]

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Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland

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Today was the truest snow day ever.  18 inches of snow in New York City.  Stalled car and buses every where.  Blizzard-scale winds that made me believe in Mary Poppins.  Law firm offices closed.  Let me say that again.  LAW FIRM OFFICES CLOSED EVEN AS THEY TRY TO MAKE BUDGET FOR 2010.  Now, that, THAT, is saying something.  I live in the City and there was no way I was going to make it to the office except by walking, and the blizzard-scale winds would have taken me way off-course.  The Upper West Side of Manhattan is not even plowed 12 hours after the last snowflake fell (don’t they realize that we vote with our ballots and pocketbooks?  Has anyone noticed the UWS demographic has changed????)

POB (partner of blogger) was supposed to go east to the beach with our son (SOPOBAB) and his cousin, our nephew.  Oh, I think Mother Nature is a teeny tiny bit stronger than the sheer will of POB.  Although Mother Nature won, she was bruised and hospitalized.  Anyway, my beautiful prizefighter POB thought that we needed to go sledding.  I thought we needed to drug the boys (just kidding, for all the Child Protective Services personnel who read this).  How else do you keep two rambunctious 8 year-old in check?

So, a-sledding we went.  A winter wonderland.  Sheer, treacherous beauty on West 108th Street.

As I was fretting about the absence of protective gear while trying not to fall down the hill at scary velocity (I remember all too well flying down the hill with SOPOBAB when he was a littler kid.  I also remember buying another life insurance policy the following day, because SOPOBAB would bounce, as children do; I would not have survived another run.)

But, then, life has a way of keeping it all real.  A child, whose family apparently fell on hard times (they must have been slumming by spending year-end at home), stated with disgust, “There isn’t even a hot chocolate shack!” If that were my child, he would be enrolled at military school tomorrow.  Yes, I am passing judgment (and also stating a fact).

Toto, I have a feeling we are not in Aspen anymore. It was so pathetic and sad at the same time that I couldn’t, simply couldn’t, take a picture of the spoiled brat who uttered that line.  Ok, I almost did, but G-d intervened and the battery of my camera failed.  Lucky kid, but karma, as we know, is a boomerang.

BUT, THE BATTERY DID NOT DIE BEFORE I GOT A PICTURE OF A SARTORIAL/PSYCHO-SOCIAL TRAGEDY.  Before I share this vignette, I will note that my own outfit could remind a person of Pippy Longstocking — everything was mismatched in that way that you wear whatever will keep you warm.  In fact, I was wearing a serial-killer hat (depicted in every artist sketch in an all-points bulletin) that made me look particularly deranged and very much like a predicate felon.  But that isn’t what I am talking about.

I am talking about an outfit that could scar a child for life.

A MOTHER IN A SUMMER’S PEASANT SKIRT, WINTER JACKET WITH FUR LINING, CARRYING A BRUSHED COPPER COLORED PURSE, TOTALLY IGNORANT OF THE GRAVE EMBARRASSMENT AND LIFETIME TRAUMA SHE WAS CAUSING HER LITTLE SON:

Later she yelled at her son who is out of control as he sled down the hill, “watch your kepilah [head]!!!” as if summoning G-d to deliver her from this pagan ritual that assimilation has thrust upon them. The only saving Grace is that this the Upper West Side of New York, with a Jewish population larger than the whole of Israel.  So, we understand.  Because was heard these humiliating stories from our parents as part of their own, very personal, Exodus stories.

A bastardized adage still holds true:

One person’s winter’s wonderland is another person’s proof that Hell DOES freeze over.

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All quiet on the Upper West Side

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Our son is sick and so POB (partner of blogger) and I have split the task of caring for him so we can have at least a half-day at work.

Sometimes, the delicate balance maintained by two working parents is thrown off and you have to deal.  I was able to be on conference calls and do some work, all the while hugging and kissing my child and saying things my mother would say, “My poor tsatskela, I am so sorry you are sick.  If I could have it for you, I would!”

Our son wanted to watch a nature video on the Grand Canyon.  So, I am watching as a tarantula hawk wasp (as in insect) paralyzes a tarantula (as in huge, hairy and gross) and drags it off so the wasp’s larvae can feed on the tarantula.  Something small dragging something comparatively elephantine is quite extraordinary.  It is also quite disgusting.  But it is better than a SpongeBob SquarePants marathon.  I am grateful for life’s small graces.

Now, the nature show has moved to the effect of human intervention on the natural course of the Grand Canyon on humpback suckerfish and chuckwallises (sp?).  I keep returning to reading proposed model changes to credit agreements made necessary by the lessons (??) learned in the economic downturn.

Suckerfish and chuckwallises are more interesting.  Now, that is a statement.

We are now looking at the ecosystems of the Everglades.  Two many reptiles and I keep thinking of Horatio Caine and CSI: Miami.  This, I can tune out.  Work wins this round.

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Bringing in the Joni [Mitchell]

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It is that time of year again, when the days get darker and the weather colder.  And the despair.  Same despair as every year since 2002 when Mom started down that slippery slope to the end of her life.  The dark days, my sister and I call them.

Dear Mom:

We moved eight times ’round the seasons since you died.  We have rode those stupid, stinking, painted ponies eight times ’round the carousel of time.  And still, tears well up in both your daughters’ eyes just thinking about the fact that you are gone.

We have a lovely party for Dad’s 90th birthday.  We tried to keep the photo montage balanced so it wouldn’t be a shrine to you.  Your eldest (SOB, to my blogging friends) was strong and held me back.  We had to remember (ok, I had to remember) that we needed to be all about Dad that day, even though somehow being all about Dad means being all about you, too.

SOB tries to think that these past years allowed us to get to know Dad and allowed him to shine.  That is true. He is a wonderful, kind and generous man.  (Ok, generous in spirit, and in his gifts to his family, but on a day-to-day basis, a person needs a crowbar to open up his wallet.)  And don’t let those years of his croaking out notes on the saxophone fool you, he is a maestro when it comes to pushing our buttons in a tour de force — a veritable Liberace, but without the candelabra, crazy outfits or the ookiness.  But, he is aging more quickly these days.  And he will forever be lost without you.  As are we all to some extent.

Your grandchildren are fabulous young men.  BOB’s (brother of blogger’s) elder son asked us recently, “what do you remember most about Mamaw?”  I could see SOB’s eyes welling up.  Mine were, too.  I think we were caught off-guard by the question.  We were sitting at the dining room table — your table — and we were so awed by our nephew’s desire to know more about his grandmother.  Sometimes my son asks, “what would grandma say?” in a given situation.  I do my best imitation although I am scared that I can’t summon up your voice as well any more.

We’ve lost a fair amount of family since we lost you — Ricky, Uncle Billy, POB’s (partner of blogger’s) mom, Rudy and Yvette, among others.  Rudy and Yvette needed me and I hope I made you proud by my actions.  We have had some notable additions.  SOB now has HOSOB (husband of SOB) who is fabulous and loves the family (who could have imagined?).  He made latkes for Hanukah.   I think he thinks that there is a special “conversion by cooking” clause in Judaism.  I keep telling him he has to dunk in the dirty water in the mikvah.  He is already practicing his aliyah for SOPOBAB’s (son of POB and blogger’s) Bar Mitzvah.  You would adore him.  He makes SOB laugh and smile in a way that makes me wish you could just come back — for just a moment — and see the smile on her face and the look in her eyes and know that SOB is happy and in love.

Also Cousin Gentle has joined our nuclear family pod.  It is so good to have the New York City contingent around our table on a Sunday night, eating, laughing, reminiscing and creating new memories.  You should have seen all the boys (and I am including Dad and POB’s father) around the train set that SOPOBAB got as a present.  Some moments are priceless and you want to freeze them in time.

Maybe there is a Heaven and you are there and see everything.  I know you never believed in it (“when you’re dead, you’re dead” you often said), but I cannot accept that there is a black hole in the world where your heart and soul once were.  You cannot have dissipated into the air.

Sometimes, your death gives me strength.  If I could get through that, I could get through almost anything that happens in a given day.  The economy has been hard these past years and I worry sometimes (ok, most of the time), but your life and death have given me a perspective that keeps me sane (mostly sane).

One last thing I wish you could help me navigate.  Matzah balls are supposed to sink; POB’s float (whoever heard of such a thing).  I know she cooks the Passover meal and it is her mother’s recipe and Passover is all about her mother (z”l) — as it should be, but when do you think I can start negotiating for the sinkers again?

I love you, Mom.

~  Blogger

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My sister-in-law, the keeper of the flame

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SILOB (sister-in-law of blogger) and I don’t have much in common.  I don’t know that much about her, mostly because BOB (brother of blogger) has banned potentially touchy topics, such as sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, religion, politics and the first-coming-versus-second-coming discussion that can be VERY tricky among Jews and Christians.  So, there isn’t much of interest to talk about, except our kids (my nephews are FABULOUS in case anyone wants to know).  I may have failed to mention that I curse like a sailor which may or may not be offensive to her.  BOB insulates her so well from us that we assume that she really doesn’t like the New York family.

Except for my mother.  When my mother died, SILOB said simply and beautifully that she was the daughter-in-law that my mother never expected (not Jewish, GOP, Texan) and my mother nevertheless threw her arms around her and made her welcome.  POB (partner of blogger) could relate; my mother — having had two girls and one boy — never expected to have TWO daughters-in-law.

Families are complicated.  Love isn’t as complicated.  What is complicated is what you do about the things you don’t like — or don’t know — about the people you love.   My mother seemed to have bridged the divides with her daughters-in-law well before her death.  So much so, that SILOB walked 60 miles in San Diego for the Susan G. Komen organization in my mother’s memory.

So, EIGHT years after my — OUR — mother’s death, SILOB keeps the dream of a cure for breast cancer alive.  She literally walked the walk.  She keeps my mother’s memory alive in a positive way (SOB (sister of blogger) and I try to, but sometimes, we just wallow in self-pity.)

It is a testament to SILOB and my mother and their relationship that eight years on, she fights breast cancer “for Elsie” [our mom].

I haven’t tried very hard to get to know SILOB these past 13 years.  I have allowed every inadvertent or intentional rebuff (mostly from BOB) be an excuse not to try harder.  But there is something very basic we share — the memories of Mom.   And that is one of the strongest ties I have to most people in my life.

To SILOB, the keeper of the flame and the fight for a breast cancer-free world.

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Carly Simon and music-to-fling-yourself-out-the-window-by

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Dear Mom:

These days have been rough with Dad.  Your mind was strong and your body was weak; his body is strong but his mind is fraying around the edges.  After a day insulating him from predators, I had to listen to Carly Simon, about life being eternal and love being immortal.  And then I had to self-torture more with her song about the death of her mother.  Not satisfied with this self-flagellation, I had to listen to Joni Mitchell sing the Circle Game.  Then, I had to go back to Carly and listen to Anticipation.  You get the gist of my emotional day.

Dad is in good hands, I promise.  We are protecting him.  He is relieved and grateful for us.  I said to him, “Remember when you said to me once, when the world was too much with me, ‘take my hand and you will be safe’ as we walked to the all night pharmacy so I could get some sedation and sleep?”  He said, “yes,” although I am not sure he did.  So I said, “Dad, you take my hand or you run to my office and we will protect you.  It is our turn now.”

The circle is complete.  Dad has to hang around until 120 because that is how old G-d let Moses live and he has to balance out your dying at 76.

I don’t care how crazy or forgetful he gets.  He needs to be in the world.  And you know how he pushes ALL my buttons and makes me crazy.  And I lose patience.  And he knows that I love him and SOB (sister of blogger) loves him and BOB (brother of blogger) and POB (partner of blogger) and WOBOB (wife of BOB) and his grandchildren and his nephews and nieces and friends all love him.  And he is not alone.  And never will be.

I miss you more than you can know, Mom.   It would be great if you could do something about the START treaty and the DREAM Act.  Also, whisper in Sarah Palin’s ear that she should stay a reality TV star.  Given the day, I know I will see you in my dreams.

~Blogger

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Tuesday, The Day My Pampered Child Called Me Lazy

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Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok.  I am not good in the morning.  Mostly, because I have very unrestful sleep.  All day, every day, I am tired to the bone.  That is just life for me.  I yawn even when I work out because even that much adrenaline doesn’t keep me awake.  I would drink coffee all day if that burning sensation in my stomach or esophagus would quit.  You get the point.

POB (partner of blogger) has been away on business and is coming home late tonight.  Our son remarked that “Mommy will be so tired tomorrow she’ll seem as lazy as you, E-Mom.”  Shock.  Disbelief.  Dismay.  My son is calling ME, lazy?  At first I think maybe he understands the concept through comparison with his own exemplary model of laziness.  But then I realize there is neither an introspective aspect nor an attempt to bond with a fellow lazy person.

This is what “we in the Tribe” would call a Jewish compliment — an insult made less stinging by including someone, i.e., POB, with otherwise excellent qualities in your category of degeneracy.  So, since he has never been around Yiddish speakers or members of the immigrant generation, there must be a genetic component to his uncanny ability to deliver a stinging, yet subtly amusing Jewish compliment.

I would have appreciated it more had I not been appalled and yelling.  Yelling is the one throw-back parenting technique that is still grudgingly allowed by the good parenting police.  But it can only be used when you have had another stressful day at the office, working ever harder to mute the effects of a bad economy on your sense of self-worth and your ability to provide for your family.  So, I properly invoked the technique.

But then I know that my son was just expressing things as they appear to him, unencumbered by a social filter.  I know that others his age have some form of social filter.  My son is different that way.  And most times we work through the issue without my resorting to yelling, “how dare you say something like that?”  My son was a little freaked out but not the least bit bowed by the event.  Only now I have to put me in a time-out and have a serious talk with me about my behavior and how to channel my emotions in more socially acceptable ways.

And my son?  He had dinner, shower, books and music before bed.  I told him I love him and nothing changes that even if I was angry at what he said.  And I do love him, and I always will.

But I am NOT lazy.  (Ok, not compared to him.)

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Back in School

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Tonight was curriculum night at our son’s school.

The teachers tell the parents about what the kids are learning and the year’s goals.  As if I know whether it makes any sense or is grade-appropriate.  Nevertheless, I go because, well, you know the adage, “be there or be talked about”.  In fact, POB (partner of blogger) and I did talk about those who weren’t there over dinner later.  Let’s face it, we are all just children with graying hair.  So, if you put us in a gossip-y environment, then you better run for cover.

We were at the school for two hours, during which I slipped into the slouching, smart-mouthed, bored student of my youth.  I was disruptive during the reading teacher’s presentation because I was joking back and forth across the table with another mother (who has made a cameo in prior blogs — the mother of our son’s future wife).  Later, I was whispering to the father of my son’s best guy friend (who also has made a cameo in prior blogs — he was the one in need of adult male bonding rituals after months at home with the kids).

During the math teacher’s presentation, I was getting antsy and was counting ceiling tiles.  During the art and music presentation, which was last, I stared at the clock until there were ten minutes remaining and then I started packing up.   Just the kind of child that makes teachers leave teaching.

POB took notes throughout and asked pertinent questions.  She elicited smiles and positive reinforcement from the teachers.  She was like that as a kid.  Remember we’ve known each other since we were ten years old and I know that she always did her Hebrew school homework.  Her Hebrew school homework, for G-d’s sake (in a manner of speaking).

If there is a test on the details at the next parent teacher conference, POB will ace it and won’t let me peek at her paper.  I just know it.

My poor son.  I sure hope nature (POB’s genes) beats nurture (my overbearing personality) because otherwise he is toast.

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