I’ve just realized that my last ten Reflections have carried us up to the 1980s, which means that those of you who have been reading my blog from the very beginning (December ‘22) already know what happens next: I take that job in 1979 that changes the entire direction of my life and pulls me — fully compliant and even joyously — into my “Russian Adventure.” And if you haven’t yet read my first 28 Chapters on that subject, I invite you to do so; they represent the most exciting time of my life.

But I have not yet run out of words, and I pray that that never happens; for what are we, really, if we can’t communicate? So today I’ve chosen to reflect upon another subject with which I am intimately familiar: Jewish mothers. And you can’t talk about Jewish mothers without also running into the whole guilt thing. And if you’re old enough, orphanhood will inevitably follow if it hasn’t already — possibly, but not necessarily, relieving you of all that pent-up guilt at long last. So, moving on . . .

As I see it, there are three basic kinds of Jewish mothers. First, there are the old-fashioned ones like my mother’s mother — my Bubbe — the loving, caring, fussing, apron-wearing, cooking, never-sitting-down, can’t-do-enough-to-make-her-family-and-the-whole-world-happy kind of mother, whose own happiness depended on only one thing: seeing everybody else safe, healthy, and above all, well-fed. I’ve already described her at length in Reflections 1 and 2. Thinking about her always makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Then there’s the second kind: the guilt maven. The kind who could just look at you and make you confess to crimes you would never even dream of committing. The mothers like mine. (Anyone have Dr. Freud’s number handy?)

According to my favorite aunt, my mother had been practicing the Art of Guilt for her entire life, until she finally became the Queen of Guilt. When she was just a teenager, and her whole group of friends wanted to do one thing and she wanted to do another, she would use the “Never mind — just go ahead without me” routine, until they felt sorry for her and went along with whatever she wanted to do. And she honed that act until she had it down pat, so that by the time she was married and had two daughters, it worked like a charm. Every. Single. Time. And not only on us.

Example: One Mother’s Day, when I was already grown and had two children of my own, we were all going to lunch with a group of close friends to a favorite family-style restaurant on a beautiful farm far out in the Maryland countryside, more than an hour’s drive from home. We had made the necessary reservations weeks before, and everyone was looking forward to it. It was a warm, sunny spring Sunday, the drive (in two cars) had been pleasant, and we arrived in plenty of time. When we got there, we found that orders had to be placed on arrival and we were given menus to make our selections before being seated — which should have been no problem. And it wasn’t a problem . . . except for one person: my mother, of course.

A little background: she had very high cholesterol, and had suffered one heart attack several years before, at which time she decided that she had to spend the rest of her life depriving herself of everything she loved . . . and sharing her misery with everyone within earshot. To her, that meant eating nothing with butter, eggs, chocolate, animal fat of any kind — all the good stuff. Not a taste, not ever, because even a bite was going to kill her on the spot. (She used to say that when she was dying, she wanted her last meal to be a bologna sandwich — an odd choice, but apparently what she was missing the most.)

So this lovely Mother’s Day, she took one look at the menu and announced, as usual, that there was nothing there that she could eat. Nothing. Nada. Zip. There was beef (too fatty), there was pork (ditto), and there was chicken (usually o.k., but this was fried). How about the fish? Not in the mood. A nice veggie platter? Yuk. And out came the sad face and the sulk, and the declaration that she would just sit and watch the rest of us eat. But the restaurant had a rule (admittedly, an unfair one) that you couldn’t be seated, even with a large group, unless you ordered an entree; even an appetizer wouldn’t satisfy their requirements. And she was adamant that there was nothing that she could order.

We all stood around looking at one another, totally stumped. I don’t recall the exact conversation, so I’ll just skip to the end. We wound up telling the manager what we thought of their rule, which had just cost him a large number of customers, and finding another restaurant a couple of miles away that could accommodate all eight of us. It was very nice, but not as good as the one we had been looking forward to, and the entire mood of the day was spoiled. But the Queen of Guilt was happy, which apparently was all that mattered. I firmly believe that the only thing that saved her from being strangled to death that day was the fact that it was Mother’s Day, and the irony would have been just too great.

*. *. *

There was also the kind of guilt she dropped on my sister and me when we were growing up. If she thought we’d been up to something — goodness knows what, since we really were pretty good kids — she’d grill us until we became convinced we actually had done something wrong, and then she’d inflict the ultimate punishment: the Silent Treatment. Sometimes for days.

And when we were a bit older and wanted to go somewhere for a sisters’ day together, just the two of us, she’d pull out the old “Don’t-worry-about-me-I’ll-be-fine-by-myself” routine again. Fortunately, we eventually outgrew that one; but there was always that little remnant of guilt that we felt for leaving her behind. And if she ever thought we needed reminding, she’d pull out the one she kept in reserve: “You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”

OH, YEAH? DON’T COUNT ON IT, OLD WOMAN!

She also took advantage of Christmases and her birthdays to remind us every year that she was getting older and that “this might be my last [Christmas] [birthday]” . . . you fill in the occasion. But we noticed throughout the years that she was a different person when she had had a couple of drinks, so for every celebration we made sure to start her out with her favorite whiskey sour (or two). Too bad we couldn’t keep her loaded all the time, because on those social occasions when she let loose, she was really a lot of fun. She could have been such a happy drunk.

*. *. *

Then there is the third type of Jewish mother — the Jewish mother of sons, a.k.a. “the Smotherer” — like the mother of the first young man I was engaged to. Let’s call her Sadie. She was a widow, and her son — we’ll name him Lennie — was her entire reason for living. To say she doted on him would be the grossest of understatements. He was, in her eyes, solely responsible for the rotation of the earth around the sun.

Lennie and I met through a co-worker of mine when I was just 18 and he was 25. He was an attorney with the U.S. Government, intelligent, nice-looking, and fun to be with. He always thought of great places to go on our dates; and before I knew it, he had proposed. Being very young, and very flattered, I said yes; but I was smart enough to know that I was too young to get married just yet, which he understood, and thankfully a long engagement was planned.

Then he told Sadie the big news.

Now let me backtrack a bit. Before Lennie and I started dating, he had a regular Saturday night “date” with Sadie. He would take her to dinner, perhaps a show, mainly to get her out of the house for a while. He was a nice, thoughtful guy. But when he met me, he wanted his weekend date nights to be with his girlfriend, not his mother. The nerve! — right? So he told her he’d like to switch his regular evening out with her to another night in the middle of the week. Not like she had anything else on her schedule, and not like he’d dumped her. But she was less than thrilled because she had been relegated to second place.

So now he was telling her he was engaged, and she was envisioning her precious boy flying off with some little trollop and forgetting all about her — the woman who had gone through countless hours of labor to give birth to him, seen him through all his childhood illnesses, and been both mother and father to him for all these years. I was competition! Even my mother, who was surprisingly cool with the whole thing, couldn’t get through to her. This was potentially the mother-in-law from Hell.

The person I am today would simply have made verbal mincemeat out of the old bat. But I was a more timid 18-year-old, and had been taught respect for my elders. So I told myself I wasn’t marrying the mother . . . until it became clear that I would be. Suffice it to say, that engagement didn’t last very long — I preferred to marry a man, not a momma’s boy. But I did benefit from it in one way: it made me eternally grateful that my mother had never had a son!

*. *. *

Maybe there is a fourth kind of Jewish mother out there, and if so, I’d love to hear about her. Or maybe I’m the fourth kind: not nice enough to be like my Bubbe, but too nice to be like Sadie or my own mother. I shudder to think of what my kids will blog about me when I’m gone.

And speaking of being gone . . .

Eventually, and inevitably, my mother’s predictions of her own demise came true. She passed away peacefully, of congestive heart failure, on the morning of September 18, 1991, at the age of 84. Sadly, she never got her bologna sandwich because if we’d given it to her, she would have accused us of trying to kill her.

That day was my sister’s 58th birthday — one final “gotcha!” from the woman who would not be denied center stage. And as we planned her funeral and all of the other things that follow a death, we began reminiscing, mostly about the funny stuff, and came to realize that the years of guilt had indeed finally evaporated. She had been, after all, an honest, hard-working, attractive, clean-living woman, able to squeeze 110 cents out of every dollar, and dedicated to the welfare — as she defined it — of her daughters. And we threw her one helluva farewell party.

Do I miss her, as she said I would? Sometimes, when I remember how we would sit at the piano together, playing duets; or when I would take her to Maryland to play the slot machines (she loved to gamble); or, most of all, when she’d had a couple of whiskey sours and danced with every man in the room. And occasionally, even today, I’ll get a whiff of her perfume — Oscar de la Renta — and I know she’s hanging around, making sure I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t be . . . although at my age, I can’t even imagine what that would be. Maybe eating too much chocolate?

*. *. *

Becoming an orphan is a weird thing. You wake up one day and realize that “Oh my God! I’m the older generation!” And I’ve found that when that happens, the best thing to do . . . is just reach for the whiskey sours.

Just sayin’.

Have a happy and safe 4th of July,
Brendochka
7/3/23