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My Mom

October 15, 2006 By pia

Uh, thanks for the roast. Have to be in better condition to think of any comebacks, and then will probably make somebody else write them.

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.

Last night I went out and without thinking blew out the Yazhrehit or mourning or remembrance candle. I freaked but my friends laughed because they had known my Mom. She always screamed at me as I love candles and was convinced that I was going to burn my house down.

It did make me laugh because I even remembered her voice and laugh, and how she looked not that last year when she was frail but how she looked for the 20 years prior to then. My Mom never seemed to age. She was youthful forever and I hope I can live up to that.

Today would have been my Mom’s birthday. Can’t say what age as she never told it to people until she was over 80.

When I think of my Mom now, I don’t usually think, of that horrible month before and two years after. She went for a physical on her birthday. We never got the results as she suddenly died four days later.

My Mom would go for a physical on her birthday. While far from religious as she believed even less than do, she believed, but wouldn’t really say that she did, in the Kinehora or evil eye. She wouldn’t say this to anybody but because it wasn’t logical, but somehow curing cancer through laughter was. Not that she ever had any cancer but small melanoma’s because she didn’t listen to my father, and “took” the sun. Not that she really spoke that way.

There was nothing stereotypically Jewish about my Mom. Well, the guilt thing, but I believe that was hard wired in all our brains.

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

And I can’t believe that I missed most of my own blog party. Thank you Doug. Will have more appropriate thank you’s for everybody else later this week or next. Yes. My rules are always subject to being changed.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

« Roasting Pia
Cooper and the Wombat on mastication »

Comments

  1. g says

    October 15, 2006 at 9:48 pm

    Rules are made to be broken.

    Now I only know your mother and father through your writings here, but I can envision your mother and father up there somewhere “Max, did you see Pia’s Technorati?” “Of course I did, I’m trending it on this chart right here and I’m going to talk to her about how she can improve it!” And then they both smile down upon you.

    I was wondering where this post went to. Good luck on the cable. Very happy that you’re able to look back on your Mom with smiles.

  2. Bone says

    October 16, 2006 at 12:39 am

    Beautiful memories, Pia. You bring her to life with your words.

  3. Buffy says

    October 16, 2006 at 2:29 am

    I loved this.

    So much.

  4. JollyRoger says

    October 16, 2006 at 3:03 am

    June 30th marked 10 years since I lost my dad.

    He raised me-my mom split fairly early on. And my dad was a retired Army 1st Sergeant, and ill-suited for even trying to understand a little kid.

    I used to envy the lives other kids had. Hell, I envied the communication other kids had with their fathers. And yet, my dad was somebody you could get out of bed and go talk to if something was bothering you ay 3 in the morning, and you’d get an unvarnished, objective analysis. My dad is also the reason I reason things out for myself-the saying he used most often on me was “Think and then do-NOT do and then think!!!” It stuck.

    He was ill-suited to parenthood-you don’t drive somebody to be independent and then bemoan their willingness to disagree with you 🙂 But he was all I had, and for years after I didn’t have him anymore I would pick up a phone to call him about something-and then remember.

    When an old man dies, a library burns down -African proverb

    There is so much truth to this. My dad had been through so many things, survived so much. I am deeply saddened that he will not be able to impart any of that to my daughters.

  5. dan says

    October 16, 2006 at 10:40 am

    I think more often than not, we all get a later start in life than we should.

    I wonder if hindsight is corrected with Lasik?

  6. jacob says

    October 16, 2006 at 10:56 am

    I enjoyed reading that, thank you for posting it.

    No matter how much any of us wish to call back the hours we can’t, but living the best we can right now will make up for it.

  7. o_ceallaigh says

    October 16, 2006 at 1:18 pm

    In the Jewish religion celebrating holidays take precedence over mourning.

    Y’know, the older I get, the more I sense that David Rex had the right idea about this after all. Especially after a trip to Germany where I found gravestones being better tended than were the persons under the slabs when they were alive.

    Two weeks after the attacks she asked me if I thought it was retribution for all that we have done to other countries.

    I can relate. I wondered this aloud in a church meeting shortly after the fact, and nearly got crucified for it.

    So Cooper and Wombat are going to get their conjugal time out here? Can hardly wait …

  8. Madley says

    October 16, 2006 at 5:13 pm

    Thank you for your beautiful memories… I try not to anticipate my parents’ dying, but sometimes it can hang pretty low… Your post just grounded me and made it all real. Thank you 🙂

  9. Chandira says

    October 16, 2006 at 6:36 pm

    🙂

    Your mum sounds wonderful.. I think I’d have adored her.

    Why do people die on holidays and important dates and anniversaries though? My Nan’s funeral was the day before my 18th birthday, which is a big deal in England, as we’re ‘legal’ then, not at 21 like here. I didn’t celebrate much.

    So there’s hope for me yet, if she did all that at 40+. That’s good then. Do you have any of her paintings you could show us photos of? That would be sweet.

  10. cooper says

    October 16, 2006 at 10:35 pm

    “Know that I truly am over my 9/11/dead mother thing.”

    I feel good for you if this is the case..
    maybe we shoUld roast you more often.

    Damn it i want to vote.

  11. kyahgirl says

    October 17, 2006 at 12:29 pm

    I hope you feel warm and cozy after your roast. The fire wasn’t too hot was it?
    Maybe you feel a bit ‘exfoliated’ 🙂

    I loved this post the first time I read it….I wondered where it went…amd glad to see it again. You honour her with every word. Your feelings for her/about her are a beautiful thing Pia. I am glad to read about it.

  12. Jonathan says

    October 17, 2006 at 6:00 pm

    I love the story about the ice cream… reminded me of my step grandfather (the most fondly remembered character in our family)

  13. J. Mark English says

    October 17, 2006 at 9:31 pm

    Hey,

    Great site, hope to stop by often!

    Take care,
    Mark

    http://www.americanlegends.blogspot.com

  14. Doug says

    October 17, 2006 at 10:46 pm

    I hope you enjoyed the roast. I did even if Cooper thinks I was wimpy.

    As far as your writing, I’ve really enjoyed the new fiction. It’s a good thing to give your blog a twist now and then.

  15. sage says

    October 18, 2006 at 7:26 pm

    thank’s for sharing your mom with us, she sounds interesting and thoughful… but as for the guilt thing, that’s not only true of jewish mothers, but also southern mothers

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About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

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