Today would have been my mother’s birthday. Her name was Nettie. She was smart and well read and thought that happiness was overrated. We didn’t exactly get along, but that doesn’t stop me from missing her, particularly on days when I’m having some problem or worry with my own kids or when something terribly bad happens, like the day the towers fell. You’re never to old to want a mom and some days the longing is desperate, even though I know I’m mourning for a relationship that never existed, a conversation and level of comfort that never could have been achieved.
Listen and I’ll tell you a story. It’s my mother’s story, but it isn’t necessarily true, although like all good fictions, many truths are contained; it’s very seldom that a story is made out of whole cloth of one kind or another. This is an alternate history of my mother’s life and of her death, of who she was and who she could have been.
My mother was the youngest of 13 children; her oldest sibling, Pauline, was born in 1899, something that fascinated me when I was a child. My mother’s parents were immigrants; her father was from Austria and her mother was from Hungry. They lived in the Jewish ghettos of Brooklyn and they were very poor. While all of the children attended and finished high school, there wasn’t enough money for everyone to attend college. There wouldn’t have been much hope for my mother, the youngest and a girl, if her high school French teacher hadn’t been so impressed; my mother was a true polyglot. She earned a scholarship and financial aid that allowed her to attend Hunter College and then continue on to get a Master’s in French literature, although as far as I knew, she could speak any language she ever encountered. She met my father when she was 26, having gone on holiday with a friend to celebrate her recent graduation, and continued to work as an adjunct professor at City College even after they were married. After a few years, she was offered a more full time and permanent position, but she was eager to start a family and declined.
My sister was born, and then my brother, and then my parents were able to buy into the Great American Dream. The moved to Levittown, which offered an absence of long staircases to carry strollers, groceries or wash up and down, a yard for the kids to play in, and best of all, terrific public schools. My mother thought that after she had another baby, she’d go back to teaching French, this time in the kids’ school system to be near them. Tragically, her third pregnancy resulted in a late-term miscarriage, leaving her frail and depressed. Six years later, I was born, a disappointment and a miracle rolled into one. My parents divorced when I was ten, and my mother went back to work, teaching at Nassau Community College; she remained loyal to the idea of “education for the masses,” something that had enabled her own education. Not only did she have a gift for languages, but she could also motivate kids and her classes always filled up quickly. She enjoyed bridge and frequently told me that it was the key to making friends, something she did both at the college and in her suburban community. She enjoyed teaching, loved the French language, and curiously, had no interest in French food.
We never got along, she and I. My own facility with other languages is limited at best, and my gift is with communication and the manipulation of wrds, the opposite of my mother’s talents, and that made me something of an alien to her. And her to me, I suppose. My sister had the double virtue of being both nicer and more responsible, and my brother, the only son, had a punning humor she enjoyed. I was always too quick and sharp and self-contained and willful. She once told me that she wanted another baby, just didn’t want me, and on some days I can’t say that I hold it against her.
When my mother finally retired, her friends convinced her to sell the house and move into an assisted living facility; her arthritis was becoming debilitating, and she sometimes needed help. At the end of her life, both depression and dementia set in and she was confined to a wheelchair. During the last couple of years of her life, she stopped speaking almost entirely. It’s not that there was anything wrong with her voice or brain, but it seemed as if she had run out of words in any language. I stopped visiting with frequency; she didn’t look at me, and the stress of maintaining a monologue was great. Finally, her kidneys started to fail, and then she had a stroke. The facility was unable to contact my siblings or myself, all of us away having separate family weekends, but they were able to contact one of her friends, a woman who visited frequently and had been a secretary in the financial aid office at the college; she came right away and she was holding my mom’s hand when she died. The memorial was well attended.
The best kind of story is the sort that lets you believe in something more than facts and shows you something that has been obscured by reality. I told you lies about my mother, but parts of it were true; I wish all of it was.
My mother attended Hunter College, but never finished; money was just too tight. She never worked after she married, was highly anti-social, and only made a few friends in her adult life. She never learned to play bridge. She never found an outlet for her intellect, talents, or much of anything she enjoyed doing. She descended into depression by the time I was a little girl, shades of madness by the time I was a teenager. I went to university in the area so I could take care of her, and when she did sell her house, she moved to New Jersey, near my sister. She refused to take an apartment in an assisted living facility, and was moved into a nursing home when she could no longer care for herself.
None of us could be contacted in time and she died alone.
She was not a particularly pleasant person or good parent, although not exactly a bad one, at least not intentionally. She had a terrible temper, never forgave a slight, demanded that people anticipate her needs and she was a lousy cook besides. She was profoundly unhappy.
No life is without some merit and something to offer others and there were good things, too. She would sing me special songs, take me to Jones Beach during the off-season to walk by the windblown ocean, and she baked “unbirthday” cakes for me. She was a voracious reader and allowed me to read anything that interested me, even from a young age. I always knew she was happy to see me.
Please forgive my lies, but it pleased me to tell them, to imagine my mother living a life she enjoyed. To know that it’s not to late for me, for any of us to enjoy each day, get something great out of each moment.
Happy Birthday, mom. I wish you’d had a better life. Under the circumstances, I hate to say that you were wrong, I was right, but happiness is not overrated.
