I wrote this for her on Sunday and read it to her Monday evening. I didn't think it was right for all the good stuff to be saved for a eulogy.
“My mother.” That was a line I repeated often in Rosenstrasse, as Katerina with her domineering, difficult German mother. “My mother,” I’d complain, rolling my eyes and always getting a laugh.
That’s acting. Here is truth. My mother? She gives.
She stocks everyone’s favorite foods, ready to fix them at a moment’s notice when the occasion calls. She makes me raspberry Jello when I am sick, grilled cheese or crescent rolls when I need comfort, chocolate just because. If it’s not in the house, she’ll buy it or send someone to get it. No one goes away feeling empty, no matter what time of the day or night. She uses no recipes, the only way to duplicate her food is to sit in the kitchen with a notebook and write down what she does. She has a house full of the oddest stuff. If you need anything, she’s got it or knows where to get it. She taught us to lend to others generously, a gift for all practical purposes. I call it a “semi-permanent loan from the Denniger collection,” like the museums. Last week, my sister’s new husband mentioned he always wanted to learn to play the trumpet. She sent Dad down to the basement. He emerged with one, rather old but still functional. I guess it had been my brother’s. If you dig deep enough in the closet, you can find our clothes from the seventies and early eighties. Vintage galore.
No matter how late you come in, she is always there, ready to talk. She has strong opinions and won’t hesitate to express them, yet no topic is taboo: philosophy, religion, human nature, gossip. But if you just want to vent, be warned. She finds the best in people. When they fall short, she defends them, hypothesizing about their motives and emotions in the most positive light, always ready to understand and forgive. When you want to complain, she will force you think about the person who has hurt or offended you, stretching to find an explanation for their behavior, sometimes in the most maddening way. She never gives up on anyone. She never turns people away. Human or animal, stray souls find a home in her house for as long as they require. When they leave, she keeps in touch. A human day-runner, she never loses track of what’s going on in other’s lives even if she hasn’t seen them in years. She reminds you of birthdays, of people you forgot you knew. She’ll raise your pets, your friends, your kids. She’ll care for your things long after you’ve forgotten them, and produce them years later when a sudden memory sparks a need.
She constantly worries about us. The family joke: if you’re an hour late she not only knows you must have been in a horrible accident, she’s got the color and license plate of the car that hit you. In truth, she shoulders the worry and “what ifs” on our behalf. Becoming a kind of safety harness that leaves us free to take risks, because we know she’ll never let us fall too far. She truly believed that the popular kids were just jealous of me because I was so smart and beautiful. I never bought it, but it helped to know someone else did. She thinks I can do anything, and somehow taught me to believe it.
As the oldest, I had the luxury of her full attention for the first two years of my life. I never did formally learn to read, or study the rules of grammar. She read to me so often that I just picked it up, the same way other kids learned to talk. I don’t have any memory of a time I couldn’t read and write. She introduced me to Conan-Doyle, Agatha Christie, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allen Poe. Thousands of others were read because I was bored and we always had a ton of books lying around the house.
Once all four of us were born, I don’t have the vaguest idea how she coped. Dad constantly traveled on business, and she was more than outnumbered. But she always managed. She’d let us erect entire cities, covering the floor with our Fisher Price buildings and Match Box cars. One year we used rope and nails to hang blankets around my room and create a haunted house, with her and my father as our sole customers. We’d put on Christmas plays: I was Rudolph, my brother was Santa, my sister the little girl sleeping under the tree. We ruined most of her LP’s by using them as Frisbees or skates to slide across the carpeting. When we got older and moved to Iowa from the Chicago suburbs, it was a bit of culture shock. She was used to stores open until all hours of the night, so she could shop after we were in bed. We were used to trips to the zoo, the Field Museum, and the planetarium, to riding the train and being ten minutes away from our grandparents. But she made the best of it; she’d load us in the car and take us to Oakland Cemetery to see the Black Angel, to City Park to ride the rides. No seat-belt laws at the time, I recall begging her to squeal around the corners so we could slide around on our backs in the rear of the station wagon. We rolled up the carpet in the basement and created our own roller-rink. We brought home baby rabbits or birds, and she raised them in cardboard boxes until they were old enough to be let loose. She even helped me feed an injured butterfly one year. I found it in our bushes, unable to fly. It lived through half the winter. She fed our hamsters, our parakeets, our dog and our cat, and searched under beds when my brothers’ chameleons escaped.
It wasn’t always good. As we grew up and things got hard, there were many things she regretted saying and doing. But in that, she taught us how to apologize. Fully and completely, without reservation, so that relationships mend and grow instead of remaining fractured with a break inside where hard feelings can fester. As the years went by and we left the house, she stayed home more often. She became a fixture for us, always there when we needed to drift in for a time. Life’s problems got even bigger than any of us could imagine, and she became the shelter we fled to when things got too rough. She was always there, but I missed seeing her out, having fun. We wondered whether she should be doing more things for herself, following her own dreams.
In July, before we knew she was sick, I got the chance to take Mom and Dad out for his birthday, just the three of us. It was a simple night, dinner at a pub and playing a bit of pool afterwards. It was the first time I’d been out with them alone in ages, possibly since my brothers and sister were born, I don’t know. As we were sitting there, an vague sense of deja-vu kicked in. I remembered what it was like in those early days, before things got so hard., when we would just go out and have fun. I made one of those mental notes that I had to do this more often. I wish I’d done it sooner. I wish we had more time. But then, that’s the way with things. My mom taught me that people are the most important thing. But she’s also taught me not to neglect my dreams, to put them on hold for some mythical space when there’s more money, more time, more stability. Life is balance, isn’t it?
I know on some intellectual level that life will go on with or without her, and we are all going to be fine, though things really don’t feel okay just now. I won’t be able to hug her and smell Cover Girl makeup and Charlie perfume. To hear her tell me she loves me. To have her frustrate me by defending someone who really hurt my feelings. To be able to call her when I am sick with a cold and have company tomorrow and I can’t get my house clean, and Mom could you please, please, please help me? But here are things she gave me:
Because of her, I sit on the sink to do my makeup.
I can raise my left eyebrow like Scarlett O’Hara, and I will probably be able to do the splits until the day I die.
I call ice cream in root beer a “black cow” instead of a root beer float.
I read about nine hundred words a minute.
I know how to use Liquid Gold to make old wood look new, and how to get out rust stains.
I prefer to clean my house at about 1:00 am., sometimes to old 70’s music.
Because of her, I tell my stories with way too much background and bore people to death before we get to the issue.
I hold onto weird items in case someone needs them someday.
I’ve learned never, under any circumstances, shave my eyebrows.
I know that vodka is less fattening than beer.
Food sometimes really does make you feel better.
I can recite most of the collected works of Dr. Seuss.
I read gravestones in cemeteries.
I always sit with some leg under me, more perching on furniture than relaxed into it.
I can pick things up with my toes.
I stand on my kitchen counter to reach objects on top of the cabinets.
But I will never stand on the sink in case I lose my balance and get a toe stuck in the faucet.
If I want my dog to go into the other room, I tell her to “go settle down” – even if she’s fast asleep and snoring at the time.
I’ve never had problems projecting on stage. Mom can call a kid home from half a mile away.
I’ll think of another hundred things later, and every time I do I’ll remember.
But the most important lesson is still to give. I now know that people will be who they are until they’re ready to change, perhaps never. Advise them as best as you can, but in the meantime, love them anyway, apologize when you’ve hurt them, bail them out when they need help, worry about them whether they appreciate it or not. Even if they never get a clue, they’ll thank you for it.
We're having a visitation Friday evening here in Iowa before heading back to the Chicago area for the funeral. Things are more than hectic as we're planning the services, so I'll probably be AWOL for a while. For those who need the times and official information, the obit is here.
For mom, in heaven, where I'm sure the internet has penetrated by now:
Bye mommy. We love you.
