Love of a Mother

Twins, Mom and me, the baby, in 1960.

Dear Mom,

It's occurred to me lately that you just may not be immortal. Besides depressing the hell out of me, this has  made me realize that writing a love letter to you just may be the best topic for me to write about for the Momalom Love It Up challenge.

I sat beside you on your lumpy couch this week and became concerned. Very concerned. First of all, you, who never stop talking, weren't talking. Second of all, your TV, normally blasting out old Westerns from the 50s, was on mute. One sister told me that you tried to change the TV channel with the phone. And even though we handled this little medical crisis with a quick change in medication, it brought to mind your fragile mortality; after all, you'll be eighty in June. So here's the deal:  I may be turning fifty in four weeks, but I'm not ready to be an orphan.

Flash back thirty-five years ago, to March 1st, 1975, six days before my fifteen birthday. Dad dies suddenly,  leaving you a forty-four-year-old widow. From then on - all the way till now - I am waiting, with paranoid anticipation, for the other shoe to drop, and you're the other shoe. One parent disappears around the horizon with no warning, no goodbyes, his clothes still hanging in the closet, his shoes just standing there, his wallet and keys on the dresser, his car in the driveway. Gone. Who's to say it can't happen to the other parent?

And, of course, it can. So I've guarded you these past thirty-five years. I've been your amateur doctor, calling you daily, living nearby, writing your story, trying my best to live this Jewish life. But I can't stop you from aging, can't stop little pieces of you disappearing one by one, and I can't stop you from eventually disappearing altogether. No matter how meticulous my care and that of my sisters, it will happen and then, when I reach for the phone each day to talk to you, ready to share my successes and my failures, I'll have to pull my hand back from the phone, remembering that you're no longer there.

I've written about you a lot on this blog. I've poked a lot of fun - at your wreck of a cactus-strewn acre in Scottsdale, at the way you pack, the way you drive, the way you talk on the phone. But when you strip it all away, the humor, the writing, the blog, there's only one fact that's left standing: I wouldn't be able to write about being a mom without having known the love of one.

Happy Valentine's Day, Mom.
From your number six daughter, Linda

Do you ever feel your parents' mortality like an oncoming train? Did you ever have a loss that made you wary, like things were suddenly very precarious? How much are you still and always a daughter (or son) and how much a parent? Or do you instantly turn back into a kid when you talk to your parent?

My Seventeenth Anniversary Gift: The Super Bowl

There was this thing just nagging at my brain, something I just couldn't figure out. What was it that was bugging me? I knew it was something important.

There was Husband's hubub - his fury of preparation for the Super Bowl this weekend. How he's been working a lot of weekends in preparation for absolutely, positively having this Sunday off. There's been the usual countdown to the game, the other teams falling away, the kids and him enrapt in each game in our family room while I write in my office.

But something was bugging me. Then I realized what it was: our seventeenth wedding anniversary falls on SuperBowl Sunday.

Being married to whom I am married to, was there even a chance in the world that we were going to go out on Sunday? All of his machinations, all the scheduling and rescheduling, the elaborate dancing about on the calendar - had he even noticed? How big of a shrew would I be exactly to bring this up?

This is what I remember. It was 1992. Husband and I were Very Seriously dating. We were actually in love, which was pretty amazing because I had plunged off the cliff of leaving my first marriage in 1989 not knowing if anyone would ever love me again except for my ex-husband who assured me, as I was leaving, that no one ever would. And then, in 1991, I met Husband, and, by 1992, love indeed. We went shopping for rings. I even kind of designed my ring. Then he went down there and picked up the ring. And then? Nothing happened.

I don't know what he was waiting for. The ring was in the house, I was in the house, but the ring was not on my finger.

Finally, I just picked up the phone and scheduled a fancy dinner out for us at a nice restaurant in North Scottsdale. That seemed to jog his brain into some activity. He brought along the ring and proposed. If I had left it completely up to him, I'm sure seventeen years later I'd still be sitting on his ratty old couch in his ratty old house in Tempe, rolling my eyes and waiting to get that ring because Husband can't actually coordinate anything. Except, apparently, for the Super Bowl. That he can schedule.

So I'm going to have mercy on him. I'll plan our dinner out - on Saturday night, the day before our anniversary. And then on Sunday, my gift to him:  I will sit down like a proper wife and I will stay there, next to him, glued to my seat, watching the Super Bowl.

Any excruciating proposal or engagement stories? Any conflicting special days?

Destination - South America

My mom called me a few weeks ago and asked me if she could borrow one of my suitcases. Because I'm the daughter who lives closest to her, I'm the one she calls first for everything. If I can't help her, then and only then, will she move back onto her daughter list, calling everyone else.

But a suitcase? Sure. Husband and I are virtually leg-shackled to Phoenix since we own a store, so we can never get out of town, leaving our suitcases unused in our closet. 

I said, "Sure, when do you need it?"

She said, "Right away."

"Where are you going?" I knew she was leaving in a month for a cruise to South America, but where was she going right then?

"Linda! We're going on the cruise!"

"Wait a minute. Are you telling me you need the suitcase a month ahead of time for your cruise in February?"

Silence. Busted.

"We need to start packing."

"A month ahead of time?"

"I'm going to wash all my clothes and then fold them and see if they fit in the suitcase. Then I'll decide what I'm taking. If they don't fit, then I'll see what I can fit, wash it, fold it and fit it again. Then I'll try it all on right before the cruise to make sure it fits, wash it, fold it and pack it one final time. Then Bob will take the suitcases down to a place and have them weighed full so we'll know if we have to pay the airline."

What did I ask her again?

But now it's February. Her trip is days away. She sits in her house, strangely immobile. I call her to check on her, to see if she feels okay. She says she does but she's not leaving the house. I hesitate before asking why. Do I really want to know why? Do I really have to ask why? Why do I get hoodwinked into these conversations over and over again? But I can't help myself. We're attached like twins, this mother and me.

And of course, the answer is that she packed all of her clothes and now has nothing to wear. Also, she doesn't want to risk getting sick in the cold January Arizona air by going outside.

I say, "Ma, today it was 72 degrees."

She says, "To you that's nice. To me, it's cold."

I nod my head. What'd I expect? I tell her I'll come by this week to say goodbye. She says, "Hurry already. We're busy!"

And I do it again. I ask her, "Busy with what?"

And she says, "Final packing." 

Are you a last-minute packer or more the girl scout type? Am I the only one who gets sucked into conversational quagmires? Are you attached at the hip to your mother?

Children of Implacable Will

It normally starts a few days before the weekend. One of my nephews will text Bar Mitzvahzilla, the message always the same: can you sleep over on Saturday night?

And then that's the end of my life and all my peace and tranquility for the week.

Once the invitation's been issued, Bar Mitzvahzilla goes through a complete transformation. He is single-minded, of implacable will, a heat-seeking missile with one target only: he must go to his cousins' house this weekend. This is for several reasons. There's the video game reason, there's the awesome violent movie reason, and there's the fact that in a household with no sensitive ten-year-old sister around who would be traumatized by three gigantic boys stalking her with knives clutched in their teeth, the boys can do anything they want to each other.

Husband and I look at each other wonderingly - why can't he be this driven about school work? As a matter of fact, if he wants an answer on whether he can go, we want an answer about whether he's brought up his grades. He brings us over to the computer, pulls up the school website and points proudly to math, which is a 79.3%. This is made up of an A on classwork, where he is watched like a hawk, and a D on homework, where he is on his own. The two scores average out, teetering at the edge of a B, something he's pretty proud of. Husband and I sigh but we say yes, he can go.

Then we start getting a little optimistic. After all, we're one kid down and one to go. We are almost Kid Free here. Bar Mitzvahzilla sleeping out, all we have to do is dump Daughter on one of our unwitting friends and we could - gulp - almost have a honeymoon night.

But not so fast there, fella.

Daughter is not going anywhere. She, too, has an implacable will and she's not budging an inch until she has to leave for college - and that's eight years away. She prefers her playdates at our house. There are no sleepovers, not her at her friends' houses or of them at ours - they are all perfectly matched chickens. Her best friend comes over for the evening.

So Bar Mitzvahzilla ends up across town at my sister's house. Husband and I? We go on a date with two ten-year-olds.

Do your children have implacable will? Are you getting the hints already of a will stronger than your own? Are you torn between admiring their inner tyrant and laying down the law? 

Face It

It's the question whispered at my exercise class. The question women talk about in hushed voices. The question women talk about at lunch. The comparisons, the notes, the names of doctors.

The question? What work are we having done? Or, more specifically, what exactly am I going to do about this nearly fifty-year-old face of mine?

I know, I know. I'm not very organized. I'm supposed to have a plan - a highly detailed plan. For my upcoming birthday I should be giving myself the gift of an eye lift. I should be on a schedule of botox and fillers by now. This is serious business - the avoidance of aging - and a full-time job. I need to get with the program.

Ever since these conversations started, and with five older sisters they started a long time ago, it's been like I live on a different planet. I just don't get it. I have to understand an underlying philosophy to get a concept. I have to want to look like a younger version of myself to want to have work done, right? So, I'd have to have had a heydey when I was younger, when I looked so great, when my looks were peaking and men were chasing me in the street. 

The problem is I never had a heydey. I can't look at any point in my life earlier than my forties and say, That's how I want to look forever because first I had a congenital problem with my jaw that required major jaw surgery at twenty-nine, and then I struggled with my weight till I was forty. Funny chin plus 211 pounds does not equal heydey. It equals tent-like dresses and comparisons to Jay Leno.

I also have to understand a few other things before pursuing treatment. As mortal creatures don't we all want  to get old? Like we don't want to die young, right? Is there really any chance in the world of me being eighty one day and not looking it?

I have this horrible fear of walking around with hair that looks like a twenty-year-old's when I'm sixty, or ripped up jeans when I'm seventy. At fifty, of course, I have to goodbye to my youth, but I don't have to say goodbye to beauty or looking good (or hair dye). Maybe I'm just going to look really, really good - for a fifty-year-old.

So what am I going to do about this fifty-year-old face of mine? Nothing. I like it.

Did you have a "heydey" when you were younger or are you, like me, an extremely late bloomer? Have you encountered "plastic surgery conversations" and do they make you feel uncomfortable or empowered?

(Thanks to Big Little Wolf and her intriguing post on Heidi Montag's surgeries for sparking this.)

Seven Things

Because Chris over at A Deliberate Life awarded me the Beautiful Blogger Award, I get to tell you seven things you may not know about me. Here goes:

1) My mother, for some reason, named me Jane, not Linda. Then my uncle came to see me at the hospital and decided I was not a "plain Jane" (no insult intended to all the Janes out there) and decided my name should be Linda. Despite the fact that my name had already been entered on my official Cook County Birth Certificate, my immigrant mother undertook the name change all by herself: she took a pencil, picked up the unofficial hospital document with my footprints on it, and wrote in the name "Linda" above the name Jane with insert marks. This caused a lot of problems years later when I tried to get a passport.

2) Because of the Holocaust, my parents had a troublesome relationship with Judaism - like they were pretty much atheists. How I ended up being such a believing, faith-filled, goofball of a Jew is almost incomprehensible. I can only attribute it to the fact that sometimes, with Holocaust Survivor parents, you can get to a point of Holocaust Overload, when your parents have told you too many stories, and you shut down and become a blacksheep for the very thing they dislike: Judaism.

3) I had a miscarriage and infertility and Husband and I had just signed up for an adoption home study when, the next day, I found out I was pregnant with Bar Mitzvahzilla. Then came more miscarriages and infertility and then infertility surgery, and guess who was conceived on an operating table? Daughter. Luckily she looks like Husband and not like the doctor.

4) One time I sang sad Patsy Cline songs at the Moose Club in Las Vegas with my boss at the time who played in a Country Western band there. For just a moment I imagined a career as a Jewish Country Western star - I just wouldn't sing Jesus songs.


5) I was married once before, in 1986 at the Little White Wedding Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip with a scratchy record playing the Wedding March and holding a dusty plastic bouquet of flowers. I was divorced very uneventfully three years later at a City of Phoenix Courthouse.

6) After my dad died when I was a teenager and we lost our family business, my mom got the bright idea to get food stamps since we were flat broke. We were easily the only Jewish family in Scottsdale in the 1970s on foodstamps, and for sure the only Jewish family driving down to the food stamp office in an aging Lincoln Continental each week, me hiding in the back.

7) Bar Mitzvahzilla was born a pound and a half preemie, though he is now much, much bigger than that. He's big enough, and big-mouthed enough in fact, that after sassing off to me very badly yesterday, he wrote me this lovely apology: "Dear Mom, I am sorry for being so rude, spiteful and snide to you. It was wrong of me and I will try to never do it again. But I'm an adolescent so I may fail at that part. So anyway, sorry and I hope you can forgive me. From your only son who you will ever have that you shouldn't be mad at forever because he's your only son, Bar Mitzvahzilla" [that's not really his name, just fyi] 

So here I'd like to say thank you to Amber over at Making the Moments Count for giving me a Lemonade Stand Award, awarded to bloggers with attitude and gratitude, because getting a note like that from my former preemie fills me with both.

Any naming stories of your own? Faith against all odds? Fertility close calls? Snotty teen apologies? (I won't ask about Las Vegas Weddings, Moose Lodges, or Food Stamps...) 

Old Money Bags

Husband had a Big Birthday yesterday. While I blab about my upcoming 50th birthday all over the place,  he's a little more touchy about his which is - do the math - five years older than me.

We did all the obligatory family celebratory things: Bar Mitzvahzilla, Daughter and I all drew him handmade cards. We planned a romantic, candlelit dinner, but then realized the kids wanted to come along. They were unsympathetic to our desire to be alone. Weren't we alone every single night at bedtime?

Then, after our celebration was through, it was time for Husband's Lamentation, a yearly ritual he must go through, tormenting both himself and me about why he's not a millionaire yet.

I don't know if this is just a guy thing, but each birthday since Husband was about 45 he has moaned and groaned about how rich he should have been by each respective age. Millions and millions of imaginary dollars should have been in the bank, apparently. And, again apparently, as he casts a withering glance my way, it's all my fault.

I have to withstand the glare because I guess it's true. I've spent all the money. I don't think it would have been millions, but I'm responsible for some significant portion of frittering. Over seventeen years of marriage, who knows how much?

There's the ill-advised vintage Barbie collection in our den gathering dust, something that seemed like a good idea twelve years ago when I was in my second bout of infertility inbetween having the kids. There's the fact that we have enough furniture in the house to fill a house twice this size, that there are enough pictures standing along walls to fill walls twice as high, and the fact that I have enough clothes - all from sales racks - to change my shirt several times a day and never run out.

But here's how men and women are different. When I hit my birthday each year I think, "I should have had a book published by now," or some other miserable writing related mantra. I never think that I should have been a millionaire. Truly, growing up with as much deprivation as I did, I'm amazed every day that I have any money at all. Only a man would think that.

I try to look on Husband lovingly and benevolently during this time period because I know it's tough on him, this longing for Money That Never Was. And I can afford to be nice right now anyway. For this six-week time period, from January 22 to March 7th each year, I'm actually six years younger than him each year instead of five, a youthful babe to his doddering old man. Who can blame him for festering?

Do you have an achievement lurking in your mind that you expect to accomplish by a certain age?  Does your spouse or partner have a completely different goal? Is it monetary, fame, success, love, happiness, or what? 

Grandma Muttering Darkly

It was the evening of Daughter's preschool graduation. The children had all prepared and prepared for this big night, wearing costumes and little graduation caps and receiving scrolls that were their "diplomas." But there was something wrong. There was a weight upon my lap. Oh yes. Daughter, sitting on it, crying, and refusing to take place in the ceremony.

Why? Because she was a neurotic mess.

Me? Can't pull me away from a ceremony. Daughter? Sobbing on my lap.

Me? Participated in every piano recital I could get to, collecting miniature plastic Beethoven busts until they cast a shadow over my piano in Skokie. Daughter? Will only take lessons of any type if guaranteed ahead of time that there will be no performance.

This all would have been fine, just personally humiliating - nothing unusual for me as a parent - if I hadn't made the mistake of asking my mom to attend the graduation. I didn't always ask her to attend things, what with the leaving the house issue, and wearing enough coats and the sickness issue. But because I did, I had a double humiliation:  Daughter on my lap sobbing and my mother next to me muttering about spoiled children and how I should "make her go up there."

Flash back to Skokie, 1971. It was a big year for me. I had become a big time Skokie pianist, famous in my own mind. My amazing talent had catapulted me past all the other little Jewish girls marching reticently over to our piano teacher's apartment building each week and had managed to get me the hard version of every song the entire fifth grade was playing - from Sunrise Sunset to If I Were A Rich Man. This earned me two distinct accolades: a spot in the elementary school orchestra playing Kumbalalaika, and a spot playing Love Story in front of the entire auditorium for my fifth grade graduation.

My piano teacher was there. My friend's trampy mafia-hooker mother was there, a ring of empty seats around her. My teachers were there. Guess who wasn't there for either performance? My mom. In 1971 she was busy all year readying herself for my oldest sister's wedding. In 1978, the year I graduated high school, she was busy all year readying herself for the third sister's wedding. This year I'm turning 50. She'll be away on a cruise. Coincidence?

Yet she sat there fuming at my sweet, nutty Daughter, like she herself was an expert at graduation ceremonies. Little did she know, later that evening that little nut of mine reenacted the entire ceremony for us from start to finish. She sang all the songs, danced all the dances, and had me call out her name with her play microphone so she could come up to our pretend podium in our family room and get her diploma.

No sobbing, no sitting on my lap. No muttering grandma looking on.

Are you the kind of parent who goes to everything or just the necessary things? Did your parents attend every function when you were a kid? Do your kids relish time in the spotlight or shy away from it?

A big thank you to Kristen at Motherese, for reminding me about the topic of neurotic children!

In the Help Haiti Blog Challenge, from Jan. 15th to Jan. 20th this blog received 48 comments, for which I am donating $2 each to the Red Cross, or $96.00, and adding an additional contribution of $54.00 to equal $150. Thank you for helping me help Haiti.

Living in the Palace

It all started with a psychic I saw many years ago, when I was single before I met Husband.

Things weren't going well in Jewish Singles. I needed a sneak peak into my future. As a matter of fact, my girlfriends and I all needed sneak peaks into our futures.

From time to time, we’d do this. We’d pool our money and go see some celebrity radio psychic who came to town, or we’d go for individual readings, or we’d Rent-A-Psychic, installing one in the conference room at work, split the fee, and then traipse in and out of the room, pretending we had appointments.

This particular time, I found my own psychic in the Yellow Pages and went alone. He seated me in his living room carefully, and suspended a plastic pyramid in the air over my head. I looked up, concerned now that he might be too New Agey for me. I wanted specific, practical information. Nothing about my eternal soul. I was thirty-one, after all. I needed to know about marriage and children - like would I ever have either? To my chagrin, he wanted to talk about my many illustrious lifetimes and why I was wasting this one working for an insurance company.

When I got him back on topic, he quickly coursed through it. Yeah, yeah - depending on how I handled the end of the relationship I was in - and it was definitely going to end, news to me - my true love could be close by or years away. Yeah, yeah - I was going to have two children, a boy and a girl. Then he sat up and got quiet, like he was listening to something from far away.

“Oh,” he said. “Here’s something interesting: your son is going to be a great world leader.”

Here’s my advice for anyone who ever hears this from a psychic: don’t tell your son that the psychic said this. Because even if you tell your son this story like it’s an amusing anecdote about this funny thing you once did, that son might suddenly use that as an excuse to never work hard again. Knowing that he’s going to be a great world leader, he can kick back, lay around like a huge bum on weekends, and barely rise from bed on weekdays. What does it matter anyway? How hard can he be expected to work? After all, his fate is sealed. He’s already been anointed King.

Since Bar Mitzvahzilla believes he’s going to be a great world leader, there are whole problems that have been removed from his agenda. Worried about his future? No. Worried about where to go to college or whether he’ll get in? No. Worried about what he’ll major in? No. When pressed on this last point, fine. International Politics.

One day, appalled at him for again getting out of bed five minutes before we have to leave for school, I say, “How do you know the psychic meant you? Maybe he didn’t say it would be my son, maybe he just said one of my children was going to be a great world leader. Maybe it’s your sister!”

Daughter, startled, is not comforted by this idea the way Bar Mitzvahzilla is. Her ambitions are a little lower, like really low. For a while she wanted to be a cleaning lady. Then she wanted to be a cook. Not a chef. Just a cook, like at McDonald’s. When given the cornucopia of occupation choices in the world, anything from, yes, World Leader to Scullery Maid, she will choose the lowliest, most miserable occupation.

But it’s okay because they’re a team. Bar Mitzvahzilla looks at Daughter and reassures her.

“Don’t worry. No matter what you are, you can live in the palace.”

Do your kids know what they want to be when they grow up? Is one of your children more ambitious than the other? Are they different than you at the same age? Ever seen a psychic?
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Please click on this link to donate to the Save the Children Fund for Haiti, or you may donate to the Red Cross through this link. This blog is part of the Help Haiti blog challenge and will be donating $2 for each blog comment entered from 1-15-10 through 1-20-10, including my own responses.

Heads Up

I'm wandering through a party store yesterday alone, up and down the aisles. Somewhere in the store is Daughter and her best friend. They've ditched me in a mad rush to cover more ground. I'm a slow-moving adult.

I gave them two choices of where we could go to buy a few cheap trinkets for them to play with. There was the dollar store or the party store. They chose the party store because of all the dress up stuff, and the wonderful opportunity to make fun of me - there's a gigantic 50th birthday aisle filled with geriatric devices that they pull out to humiliate me in advance of my 50th birthday in March. I especially like the bra with pulleys and springs. Little do they know I've needed that one for years.

But I'm alone when I discover the treasure trove that we end up buying. I schlep back to the front of the store to get a cart it's so perfect, so wonderful, that I need many of them. What is it? Styrofoam wig heads. Fifty cents each.

What can I do with a styrofoam head? What can't I do? The girls can paint them. I can mosaic them. Bar Mitzvahzilla can bring them to his friend's house and shoot them with air soft guns (though I'm only willing to sacrifice one to this waste). As a woman with, at best, half a head in working order at any time, I know I need some support. I need these heads.

But first we have to get them to the cashier and then out of the store. We put fourteen in the shopping cart. It kind of looks a little weird, I'm aware of that - bodyless, chopped off heads, all pale and staring. It's a little gory, unusual for me since I have a low scare threshold. But for art, for the dream of art, for a three-dimensional canvas? For that I'll load up a pile of heads.

I carry four heads at a time into the house, one under each arm, one in each hand. A head drops and rolls in the garage. I think of the movie Rear Window and look surreptitiously at my neighbors' houses to see if anyone's watching me. I pick up the head and get inside.

Later I'm driving Daughter and her friend to the friend's house where they'll spend the evening. They're both going to paint their heads to resemble the boys they have crushes on. Suddenly they both get really quiet. I look in the backseat and catch them kissing the styrofoam lips.

Okay, then. I guess they can be used for that too.
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Thank you to Kristin over at Motherese for awarding me the Happy 101 blogger award, my first ever! This post encompasses many of the things that makes me happy: my daughter, her best friend, whom she's known since the baby room at her preschool, art, the dream of art, my son and how he'll always turn things on their head because of, well, testosterone.

I pass the award on to a blogger who, though I've just found her, never fails to bring a smile to my face: Charlotte of Memories for Later. Thanks, Charlotte for your humor-filled posts and for reminding me that just because our particulars are different, we are very much the same inside.

Please click on this link to donate to the Save the Children Fund for Haiti, or you may donate to the Red Cross through this link. This blog is part of the Help Haiti blog challenge and will be donating $2 for each blog comment entered from 1-15-10 through 1-20-10, including my own responses.