Mother's Season

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Not Just Mother's Day

The Peonies are in bloom again. Nearly a year later.

One of the only blog-posts I ever read aloud to my mom (z"l), who didn't have her own computer, was one with pictures of peonies from May 18, 2014. It was about loss.

Just over a year later, I'm bursting from loss, or wish I were. Nearly a year ago, while trying to comfort me over my mother's (z"l) death, a rabbinical student asked me, "What do you want to ask God?" I posted this here already:

"When do I get to fall apart?"

"And how would God respond?"

"Never," I said because what would my falling apart serve?

Serving others is the antidote to self-pity, yet I want to wallow a little.

Pat's on her annual golf trip in Tennessee with her friends from her days at NIU and I must do all of the daily chores she'd be doing if she were here, since she's retired: filling and re-filling the pitcher from the rain-barrel, watering the plants, feeding the birds and local wildlife along with the kitties (I do feed the kitties daily already -- that's my job), making dinner, taking out the garbage and the recycling, dealing with the guy who needed to waterproof the front steps and walkway....These chores, it turns out, are a pretty nice way to connect with the world right around me.

And I've been doing more connecting than usual this past week, in part to distract myself from imminent, first yahrzeit of my mom's (z"l) death along with our impending trip to Green Bay to unveil my mother-in-law Bev's (z"l) headstone; she died unexpectedly of complications from a fall last month, exactly 10 months after my mom. I loved Bev (z"l), too, and also miss her. When we come back, we'll have my mom's (z"l) unveiling on the 31st of May.

My mom (z"l) is so present in her absence:

On Wednesday last week, she (z"l) was there among the caravan of Stamford [Connecticut -- my hometown, where my mom (z"l) lived for 50 years --] Tents trucks at Duggal Greenhouse in Brooklyn last Wednesday as I was departing from World of Watson, but she was not there to call when I wanted to debrief on the coolness of the experience of seeing a positive future for the world, augmented and aided by artificial intelligence.

My mom (z"l) was there at the Art of the 1990s show at the Montclair Art Museum on Thursday evening as I was telling a new friend how she and my dad (z"l) practically chose to move from the Village to Montclair because it had an art museum, but then chose Stamford, which had one, too, but was not there when I wanted to talk about the couple of interesting installations I saw as part of the exhibit.

My ever-present and shatteringly-absent mom (z"l) was there at the Agudath Shalom Cemetery when we visited her not-yet engraved joint-plot prior to the mezuzah posting ceremony in her memory, held at the Stamford Jewish Community Center Library, and was there at the Senior Lunch afterwards as Mr. Soifer, our Bi-Cultural Day School music teacher, smiled at me as he saw me moving my lips accurately while he sang the extended Kiddush over the Shabbat wine and gone when I wanted to tell her that one of her friends there had said, "Your mother was so valuable to me."

Rabbi Cohen, reciting blessings

Rabbi Cohen, my sisters Kayla and Deb, and me outside of the Stamford JCC Library, where our mom (z"l) volunteered.

L

The mezuzah was created by Chaya Magal and the roses remind us of our mom (z"l); her middle name was Rose.

She (z"l) was there at the Brookdale Park Conservancy-sponsored *Heaven is a Garden* book talk and signing at Watchung Booksellers on Friday evening, even though I should have been at Shabbat services instead, but gone after our dinner out with two new friends at a restaurant in Montclair that she liked, too.

Author Jan Johnsen, discussing her marvelous book,*Heaven is a Garden*

My mom (z"l) was there when Noga and Hilla, a gorgeous couple of Israeli friends with four kids, two of whom were with them, visited us in our newly renovated home, and there when I brought my giant case of Lego over to their four-year-old Shaked, and there when Uri, the baby, smiled winningly and there when we talked about *Fun Home* as a masterpiece. But she was gone when I wanted to call her the next day to wish her a Happy Mother's Day.

My still-here mother (z"l) was ultra-present when I picked up the tray she gave us some years ago that read, "Smart women crave good company" and which featured only a '50s-era, stylized illustration of women drinking coffee on it and tried to determine how to display it visibly in our newly renovated kitchen/dining room and living room.

My mom (z"l) said she thought of Pat & me when she saw this platter and got it for us; she had a good sense of humor.

And she was proud of the rest of how we re-assembled our home and of its major freshening. But she (z"l) was gone when it came time to eat dinner and then take a rest in the living room.

Our new kitchen/dining room/library

Our refreshed living room

Father's Day

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

...According to Moonconnections.com

The moon is waning at 98 percent full, states Moonconnections.com, which means that probably, it was full last night. My father of blessed memory died on a full moon, and so I always feel his presence most around these times of the month.

It's chilly, windy and sunny this morning, I notice while retrieving our NYT from the driveway, like we're living once again in Chicago. Now, back indoors, a cat's warm body hangs over the crook of my left arm, which makes typing challenging. This is the first Mother's Day, where I've felt somewhat qualified to be celebrated -- for parenting our two cats, Phoebe and Toonces, who we found at the local P.A.W.S. shelter last July.

It's the old Joy and Pain combo, I'm feeling this morning, looking at the sunlit leaves that are being whipped around by the cold wind....

Joy: Pat and I, finally, are some sort of parents; Pain: my father's not alive; Joy: my mother, at 83 and a half, thank God, is still alive and relatively healthy; Pain: she is much less mobile and less able-bodied than even a couple of years ago; Joy: my mom's brain is totally intact; Pain: I didn't sleep well; Joy: I have the most loving, compassionate partner I could ever wish for; Pain: she's still asleep while I'm unable to; Joy and Pain: we'll see my mother, sisters and their families later, but instead, I just feel like lazing around locally.

"I Got It from My Mama"

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Escaping into Pop Music

There was a popular American song I wrote about while in India. The artist, will.i.am, is asking a series of girls about the origin of their beautiful bodies. All of them sing-chant: "I got it from my mama."

This morning, before, and after, reading Thomas Friedman's and Caitlin Flanagan's and Julie Buxbaum's "New York Times" articles, I'm unable to stop singing a piece of a pop song in my head. "...jeans, boots with the fur; the whole club was looking at her...." I went to check the lyrics and found a crazy mashup of the song with a Teletubbies video on Youtube.

Music vs. Reality

It is a gorgeous day and in 30 minutes, I'll be on my way to the pool for a swim and then we'll be on our way to my mother's to celebrate her. That sounds better than innocuous, right? It sounds lovely. And it can be, but likely not purely so.

This morning, I'm fixated on pop-song choruses because they're easier than reality. The reality is that we need to haul my mom around in a wheel-chair because her broken leg is still healing. And she'll probably never be as mobile as she was prior to the accident.

And with my mother, being 82, we are lucky to have made it this far before there was any sort of major decline. I'm grateful for that. There's no diminished mental capacity on my mom's part; her memory's sharper than mine even, but the physical challenges are undeniable.

Calling My Mom

After reading Thomas Friedman's and Caitlin Flanagan's columns in particular, I wanted to dial my mother's phone number. And yet, a few minutes later, when the phone rang and it was my mother, asking for some chores to be done in her behalf, I couldn't wait to finish the conversation.

I guess I hate chores. Ahd I like blogging.

Why can't it be like it was when both of us were in our skipping prime, when I was seven and she was 47? Why can't my mother be purely a mother to me, rather than partly a mother and partly a daughter?

Both columnists lamented that they couldn't call their mothers even if they wanted to, since they were dead, and that was what I always thought was worst about my father, being gone. I could not call him to brag or complain.

Dreams and Legacies

Probably the most poignant part of Thomas Friedman's column was this statement: "It's so easy to overlook -- your mom had dreams, too."

Yes, my mother had dreams, none of which included a major car accident, or breast cancer (that she's cured of), or an aortic aneurysm, or having a daughter with breast cancer (that she's cured of), or losing her husband to cancer at 56....

She has so far accomplished some of her dreams, though -- of studying in Israel in 1950, of being a journalist before she married, of marrying my father, of collecting and selling primitive Jewish-American and Israeli art....

Those women, responding to will.i.am, said they got their bodies from their mamas. What did I get from my mama? My smile, my enthusiasm, my belief that anything's possible, my love of my culture and religion, and of museums, and my capacity for kindness to others....