On My Mother’s Birthday
There she is, on a winter’s day in Prospect Park, with the first three of her six children. (I am the girl in front of her, with bangs and a hooded parka.) I remember the coat she is wearing––it was pale green, sort of sage or olive or pea green, which doesn’t sound pretty, but it was–and I remember that style of hat, a felt beret, which she called a tam. (I wondered if anyone else ever called it that, and I just looked it up: yes, the name is derived from the tam o' shanter military cap…who knew?)
She still wore high-heeled shoes, nylons, and lipstick back then. Her desire to look glamorous eroded over time, but I can see that she was a good-looking woman. I also wonder how her feet in those shoes withstood the miles of walking she did in those days, all over the city, often with me at her side. She never learned to drive.
My mother’s story was a complicated one. She started out in poverty, born Jewish and raised as a Jew by the somewhat elderly couple who adopted her. She was their only child, and she disappointed them terribly by falling in love with a Gentile, my dashing Italian father, and becoming pregnant in her early twenties. She gave birth to their baby boy in a home for unwed mothers, and I still have a trove of letters sent to her there by my father, filled with passion and ambivalence, culminating in a proclamation of commitment, and resulting in a tumultuous 30-year marriage that ended with his sudden death in 1978. There was so much pain, so much strife, and yet some gnarled bond of devotion endured. My siblings and I still talk sometimes about the ways in which we were shaped by these things. I like to say I was born of love and good intentions. My brother thinks my lens is too rose-colored.
I learned more about my mother in the latter part of her life, when we transferred her to an assisted living residence in California, where I visited her as often as I could and tried clumsily to oversee her care. I saw then that she was brave and self-effacing, had a sweet tooth and a knack for wonder. She enthusiastically noticed things, fond of clouds and cats, blackbirds on green lawns, an odd-looking building, a shiny red car. She was chipper, and she carried her sadness in a stoic way. She still enjoyed walking, until the falling-down phase, and even then, she kept on going.
The truth is, I have come to understand her even more since her death, probably because I suddenly see so much of her in me.
In the saga of my family, we always viewed my father as the hero, and heroic he was, but lately I begin to recognize that it was all a tragedy of misaligned temperaments, of illness both mental and physical, of economic struggle, and of far too many dreams crushed and aspirations relinquished, large and small.
Because this is her birthday, and she would have been 101 years old, I am focusing my thoughts on her today, starting with the young woman in Prospect Park wearing high-heeled shoes and that pea green coat.
And I am remembering her delight on her 90th birthday, when we brought her a cake and had an impromptu celebration in the activity room, and she felt popular and important.
The memories of kindnesses I offered and smiles I may have prompted are presents to myself right now, and maybe there’s a lesson there.
I could never have predicted how much I would miss her.
Everything distills into gratitude, forgiveness, and love––and the savage faith of my secret heart, refusing to believe that all is lost.
I even tried to write a poem:
The people I loved wanted ordinary things: clean sheets and supper, a movie date, a bakery cake, a white pleated skirt and shoes that didn’t hurt.
They wanted respect and a day of rest, a dixie cup of ice cream and a ride in the car.
Nothing fancy.
They had too little of what was needed against the weight of the too-much.
They were overwrought and undervalued, overwhelmed and undermined.
The people I loved lost chances, lost children, lost the touch of one another. They fought and they wept.
But I was wrapped in woolen shawls against the cold and set to sail on a boat of stories.
I have traveled far. I want for nothing.