Gifts from Mom
My mom gave me the gift of life, as all mothers do.
She also gave me so many of the best things in my life.
I remember at some family gathering (she was the 7th of 8 children, so we had large gatherings to celebrate holidays, weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc.), when someone was telling a story about their mother, my grandmother, my bubbe, I saw she and her brother Shimon catch each other’s eye and then almost instantaneously the tears began. I have no idea to what extent this trait is nature or nurture, but I definitely inherited it. I treasure this as a gift from her.
I realize that lots of her other wonderful gifts are connected to that one. My mom was a crier because she was passionate, empathetic, loving - she wore her heart on her sleeve. To the extent that I have any of these traits I have her to thank for them.
Her open-heartedness is also connected to what I feel like was my mom’s superpower, which was her gratitude. I don’t know anyone else as consistently or pervasively expressing gratitude. Pretty much every time in my adult life we spent any significant time together, she spent some of it saying how lucky she was - lucky to have such wonderful children, such wonderful grandchildren, and defying mother-in-law jokes that go back a long way, she also expressed lots of truly heartfelt gratitude for the spouses of her children. She even told me how lucky she was in more than one of my visits with her in the hospital in the last couple of months. She truly had a gift for finding the light even in the darkness, as well as for making everyone feel so deeply appreciated.
On the other hand, her emotional honesty sometimes led to conflict. She had a very strong sense of fairness and justice - not just for herself, but even more so on behalf of others she felt treated unfairly. So her empathy and compassion always tended to side with the less powerful, the less wealthy, the underdog. Those she loved didn’t always see it her way and she didn’t always prioritize avoiding conflict over expressing her feelings. Once again, whatever mix of nature and nurture leads to children acquiring a parental trait, this is one I definitely got from her. This has been for better and for worse in my experience, but I wouldn’t trade it away as it is so deep a part of me that it always made me feel a close bond with her, even as it caused us some friction when I was a child.
As I got older, that parent-child friction subsided, as she gradually let go of the authority figure role and I let go of the resisting parental authority role and we evolved into mutually respecting adults. It was another incredible gift that not only did she and my dad get along well with my wife, but that the four of us all enjoyed each other’s company, and ended up becoming as much like very close friends as like parents and their children - we took some wonderful trips together, in addition to lots of dinners, plays, movies, etc. This continued with the good fortune of having them to share in our child care when our daughter was born, and they then became her introduction to theater, ballet, opera, and museums as we got this further gift of having such involved and loving grandparents for our child.
One of the other great gifts my mom gave us was her loving 67 year marriage with my dad (67 years and 38 days, as my dad corrected me). It has always been obvious how much they loved each other, and their ability to share their lives together in mutual respect, admiration, and appreciation was a beautiful gift to their children as an ideal model for us.
I recently read a book of essays by the poet Ross Gay entitled Inciting Joy. In the book’s first essay he defines joy as not the opposite of sorrow, but rather as completely intertwined and inseparable from it. As he expressed it, only an immature child could think that joy could mean an absence of sorrow. The open-heartedness that allows the depth of love and connection which brings great joy must also be accompanied by sorrow in this ever-changing, birthing and dying, growing and decaying world. As with the Havdalah candle, the mixing of winter and spring, life and death, as the constant coming into being/going out of being of each moment and everything in it, it now occurs to me that this intertwining of joy and sorrow was what I was witnessing (and feeling) when I saw my mom and her brother Shimon bring each other into a spontaneous combustion of tears. Were they tears of joy or sorrow? Yes!
I’m experiencing this same mix now as I’m remembering my mom and all the beautiful gifts I’ve received from her. The sorrow I feel at losing her is completely inseparable from the joy I feel from the extraordinary gift of having had her as my mother.