My Mom

Contrary to popular opinion I don’t spend all my life emailing, nor do I try to make people feel good. If I believe in them, I believe in them all the way, and am usually right.

My cable service has been restored. Apparently they put in new cable last week. Forgot to put it in whatever waterproofs it. Flooded. The thing about Time Warner Cable is that you can’t get a straight answer from them.

To use my biggest New Yawk expression, they make my blood boil, so I have now resorted to having a friend call for me. I sometimes make calls for my friends when they can’t handle the company. Find that it’s an easier way to stay sane. Did make the first four or five calls myself. No I’m not a cable company stalker. They kept telling me that techs were there and would resolve the problem.

I believe that “high speed” Internet service is essential to functioning properly in today’s world. Know that at one time electricity wasn’t considered an essential service. Of course I live in New York, where nobody noticed that 200,000 people in Queens were without electricity for four days.

Know that I truly am over my 9/11/dead mother thing. Which leaves the question, should I leave or should I stay? Was strolling on Broadway yesterday. Can’t really walk on it, too crowded, and for the tenth millionth time thought that this city is just too damn crowded, and expensive. I think that I’m ready to make this decision in a more rational way. So I’m going to put it to a vote. No, it’s something that I have to figure out for myself.

This was the invisible disappearing post. Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of my Mom’s death. Last night was the first night of Succoth. In the Jewish religion celebrating holidays take precedence over mourning. Think that’s wrong, though I understand the intent. My dad died in the middle of his favorite holiday, Passover, and it wasn’t fun.

I think she really went for a physical on her birthday to say out loud, I’m alive and I plan on staying alive.
That’s one of the things that made her death so hard. She truly enjoyed life.

My Dad was outwardly magnetic and charismatic, but it was my Mom who kept him in shape and in line so that he could appear. She loved being the woman behind the man, as long as it was my Dad.

She always expected my Dad to go first, and told me that she had grand plans for her widowhood that her macular degeneration. She said that she had wanted to move walking distance to the 92nd Street Y so that she could take as many classes as possible.
“But mommy, you wouldn’t move back into the city when daddy was alive.”

The truth is that they both loved being big fish in their little Long Island pond. They just stayed too long.

She moved to the Towers, three large buildings on the Queens Nassau border, with every amenity, including a great movie theatre that specializes in foreign and independent films.

Despite being blind, she managed to meet hundreds of people in the Towers. People couldn’t help but be attracted to her because she was so cheerful. Perky something, believe it or not, I have often been called at jobs. I now realize that it was a compiment.

My Mom never picked up a paintbrush in her life until her late 40’s. She thought that since my aunt was an artist and my younger sister was one,she might have some small gift. She had a great gift.

She learned to drive in her late 40s, and was an excellent driver despite failing the test four or so times. She was too anxious.

Once we were in Miami Beach out of season for a wedding and were sitting in the Doral’s coffee shop. We were the only skinny people there. My Mom looked at all the people eating sundaes and couldn’t take it anymore. She walked up to a table of strangers and said:
“They call me have spoon will travel, may I have some?”

That’s always been my favorite mommy story.

There was the summer my sister was fourteen and I turned seventeen. The doctor’s were convinced that she had stomach cancer. Our family had never eaten food with trans fat as we didn’t eat processed food, nor did we eat much meat or foods known to cause stomach cancer. My parents knew all about the dangers of fats and cigarettes and would go on about both. Of course that only made me want to eat forbidden food and smoke.

She wouldn’t go into the hospital until my sister was in an art camp and I was in Mexico for the second summer. It turned out that she had an almost burst appendix, and did almost die. I never forgave her for putting my sister and I first. My Dad did realize how much he loved, needed and depended upon her.

When I was 22, in the spring of 73, I was a passenger in a car accident. The Old Westbury Village police treated my friend and I as if we were criminals. Though they couldn’t find drugs in the car, they were convinced that we were big dealers or something. When they finally let me make a call, I called my Mom.

My parents didn’t live in Old Westbury but did live close by. It was nine in the morning and my friend and I were on our way to the dentist. I was married, my friend was engaged to a lawyer.

My Mom must have sped. The police didn’t know what to make of this petite well dressed energy machine who immediately realized what was happening and screamed at the police. Wow, did she give them hell. My Dad was president of a large inter-village, hamlet, civic association. I believe that after my Mom finished not screaming but in her well bred manner telling them how sick they were, and how dare they not take us to the hospital, or even give me a dime for a phone call, they realized that my family “counted” as much or more as the Judge’s wife, our car collided wiith.

Somehow the accident report and other vital information was lost. She took us to the hospital, and called my friends parents who of course loved her when they met. I was too young to understand why she called Helene’s parents and not her fiancee. Husbands come and go, but parents, they’re yours for life.

My Mom became my hero that day. For the first time I viewed her as an individual and not as my mommy and the wife of Max. We had always been friends. She introduced me to great modern literature, art and so much more. But I had never seen her as a real person before that day. She did become my truest best friend. I was very lucky and blessed.

I am my parents daughter. I believe that not to take classes and not to learn new skills is a waste of brain power, but the day my parents took me home from the foster home, they began showing me by example, how to be a true adult and to not care about being eccentric or out of the mainstream. Though every twelve year old should fit in.

I know that my Mom beliieved that even though she bought our clothes from Alexander’s, the cheap but good department store, not Best & Company, like everybody else in our town. She did have a bit of problem realizing that the depression had been over for decades. My Dad claimed that she still had the first dollar she made.

I love and miss my Mom very much, but the mourning has ended. It really has.

She believed that I was a talented worker and wanted to see me working as a writer. Of course she died about eight months before I was published for the first time.

For some reason I had no trouble visualizing my Dad up there somewhere cheerleading for me, but I had a lot of trouble visualizing my Mom as she had absolutely no belief in anything, but life. She used to tell me that she was afraid to go to sleep as she was scared that she wouldn’t wake up

Thank you, all of you, who have been so wonderful to me though I do believe that my parents are manuevaring the great Technorati scoreboard in the sky.

Sudden death is so hard for anybody, and when you can blame a terrorist attack for your feelings, hey why not? I don’t want to, nor do I want to hate a cable company.

Two weeks after the attacks she asked me if I thought it was retribution for all that we have done to other countries. My Mom was so ahead of the curve, I can’t handle it. Do believe that she lost her incredible will to live on 9/11.

One hour, just one hour with her. That’s all I want. To be able to say good bye. I would settle for five minutes

I haven’t been doing my best writing in Courting lately. I think that everybody reaches a point where you just feel stale, and I do.

On Wednesday I will have the Masitication IM, and I invite you to say anything to Cooper and the Wombat