My friend, Susan, tells me she loves my writing but that I don’t go deep. I counter with the fact that I’m not deep. My brain moves from one topic to another, travels through time, jumps ahead then back. She has complained that she wants to get to know the people I reference but that sometimes I give a mention then whoosh on to something else.
Ok, Susan, this one is for you.
My mother was always angry with me. I never understood why. To be fair, I was not an easy child. I rebelled early on and found solace with my grandfather Louis because he encouraged me to take risks. That may have triggered her. She had a complicated relationship with her parents. She adored her mother. She was filled with guilt on behalf of my grandmother whose unsteady marriage was in constant state of volatility. Louis was a philanderer, a gambler, a hunter, and an egoist. My grandmother, Celia, was pictured by my mother as a martyr, an intellectual, a gentle soul who was nearly perfect. Confronted with that image, my mother couldn’t possibly satisfy her mother’s needs.
Prior to 1949, my mother lived a princess-like life. She was carefree, happy, perhaps even zany with her lifelong friends. She was a college graduate. She had joined a sorority, wrote for the college newspaper, was part of the cheering squad. She met my father when she was selling tickets to her sorority dance. He was working as a floorwalker at the old Neusteter’s Department Store. She was beautiful and game for anything. He was tall, incredibly handsome and loved everything about women: their smiles, their eyes, their legs, their clothes. They married in 1939, moved to Pueblo so my dad could open a women’s boutique, had my brother, and moved back to Denver when WWII broke out. My mother became a Gray Lady while my Dad was stationed in Utah as a draftsman. The War ended, they bought a home for little Stevie and I was born in 1947.
In 1949, my grandparents learned the impact the Holocaust had on their families. Both of their mothers had been murdered at Auschwitz. My grandmother had a stroke and developed Bell’s Palsy. My grandfather got to work locating surviving relatives and bringing them to America.
Now, there were two strange incidents that occurred simultaneously with the Holocaust grief. Years earlier, my grandparents lived in a one- bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill in Denver. One day, Louis came home with a Doberman puppy. She’s going to be a great champion. Celia was mortified. We have no room for a dog. We can’t have a dog in this apartment. Louis flashed the smile he reserved for the women, not my grandmother, he craved and said I bought the dog a house. And, they moved to a small cottage on the edge of Stapleton Airfield. There were no leash laws at the time and the dog, Tessie, ran freely. She did become a champion but in 1949 her breeding produced 8 stillborn puppies. My grandmother buried each one in the back of her garden. The death of Tessie a few years later left both my mother and grandmother terrified of loving dogs although their reluctance was always overcome by the arrival of whatever Louis and I would discover: a Weimaraner named Renee who wouldn’t hunt, a ragamuffin named The Little Arthur who I found behind an Arby’s Roast Beef, an ungrateful terrier named Rufus and ultimately my own personal collection of small Grifters. (My mother never caught onto the idea of Newfoundlands.)
The second incident occurred a few years later. My parents had bought a house in Park Hill and although, of course, I don’t remember this, I somehow unlatched a baby gate that protected me from the stairs to the basement. My mother came running and fell down the stairs trying to catch me. I was unhurt but my mother suffered a herniated disc. She spent six months in traction while my grandmother nursed her.
Once my mother was well, she must have felt the need to assuage her mother’s deep and unabating grief. In Jewish households, the 1950’s decade was devoted to remembrance, grief and regeneration. She was prepared to devote her life to making her mother whole again.
My mother did what she needed to do. She became active in Hadassah, a Zionist organization building a hospital in Israel. She involved herself in the Denver Jewish Community, sitting on boards within the Temple and Jewish Community Center. She taught religious school. But my mother wasn’t going to give up her lifestyle over to grief. She maintained a strong group of friendships and they spent their leisure hours golfing, playing cards or Mahjong. My mother hired a nanny for Steve and me so she could live her life without the undue encumbrance of children. She and my father spent vacations in Arizona and Las Vegas.
And during those early years, my mother didn’t seem angry. She seemed to me, at least, to be successful, beautiful, vibrant, funny, and incredibly competent. Her closet was filled with designer labels and an amazing array of silk, suede and brocaded shoes. I’m not sure she felt relegated to the second-class status women held during those decades before we baby-boomers said enough. We lived a typical upper-middle class Jewish life. My father worked, my mother volunteered and played. We took family vacations. My mother and grandmother introduced me to classical music and ballet. My grandfather bought me horses. My family moved from Park Hill to Crestmoor Park, an upscale neighborhood that had restricted home ownership to anyone other than Negroes and Jews.
I guess when I was around 13, my mother became angry at me. Was it that my grandfather was dismissive of her child-rearing methods? Louis would drop over to the Crestmoor home and sit himself comfortably in a gold leather, mid-century upholstered chair and claim The girl has to raise herself. He loved me but considered me unmanageable. So, I suppose, did my mother. She raged at me about my hair, my room, my grades, my attitude, my clothes. Nothing I did could possibly please her. I rebelled at an early age. My first anger at my parents exhibited itself when we moved from Park Hill to Crestmoor to get away from the Negroes. I could not understand my parents’ racism. I was 11 years old and if I knew it was wrong, why didn’t they? It made me additionally angry that Crestmoor had no alleys, no big trees. To make it worse, there was a swim club available to all residents of Crestmoor, except the three Jewish families who had broken the covenant. Jews. The hypocrisy was not lost on me. We mourned the Holocaust and relegated Black Americans to second class status.
It also became clear to me that if I had a problem, the last people I would bring it to would be my parents. My version would never be believed. You’re outrageous, she said. And then the litany of complaints would begin again: my room was a mess, why didn’t I study, where did I go, who was I with, do something with my hair. I made certain I would never conform to my mother’s idea of womanhood.
And, life changes, doesn’t it? Usually suddenly and without warning. The Platte River Flood of 1965 wiped out the family business. Despite massive efforts to clean it up and restore it, the business failed a few years later. My father got a new job. My mother went to work as a receptionist in a downtown furniture company. My grandfather died. My grandmother sold the house bought for Tessie and moved to an apartment and passed away.. My brother entered law school and I went off to college and then grad school in Boulder.
My mother and I spoke daily after that. Sometimes multiple times. We chatted, argued, laughed. She’d give me unsolicited advice. There were times when she remained angry. The distance was my salvation but once home, she’d greet me at the door and say Don’t make any trouble tonight. It was the era of Viet Nam, student protests, assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King, women’s liberation, drugs, sex and cigarettes. Of course, I’d be making trouble.
She continued working long after I left graduate school. She and my dad who had once lived the highlife of middle America counted their dollars. They had, through hard work, managed to hold on to the house in Crestmoor. The designer clothes and the gorgeous shoes were replaced by clothes purchased at discount stores and used cars for transportation; mid-day meals with friends replaced by sack lunches brought to work.
Neither of my parents showed any anger at the loss of their material means. In fact, I think they relished the challenge. Faced with poverty, they stood against it. They worked and saved and began traveling. It took them 10 years but they did it. First to Mexico, then to Israel, Europe and Asia. They took cruises to the Caribbean and through the Greek Islands. They’d bring back a souvenir from wherever they had been, always a teeny memento with the name of the place visited scrawled across it.
They were living a good life. My mother and I continued to fight. We’d refuse to speak for days until my father would intervene, Your mother is so upset. You need to call her. I would. Or she would. We’d begin the conversation wherever the last civil one left off. We never revisited the fight, until the next argument. Usually over Israel, sometimes over my marriage. You’ll never understand until you go there she claimed. Why don’t you have children? Why doesn’t GB control your behavior?
And, again, as life changed suddenly and without warning, my brother, Steve, died from a brain aneurysm in 1995. I thought my parents would never be able to come back. They’d never find their stride again. My mother’s anger would become all-consuming as she was denied the company of her son, her favorite child, the one who never caused angst. But we continued to talk every day. And, once again, my parents found their stride. They joined a grief support group. They talked about Steve. They cried openly. Neither of them tried to make me feel inadequate but I did. I couldn’t bring my brother back to life. I couldn’t erase the many years of fighting with my mother.
They traveled again. They went to concerts, lectures, plays. They learned to live their lives without Steve, never forgetting him, but moving onward.
In 2009 my father died. He had agreed it was time to sell the Crestmoor house and move to an apartment. My mother found a spacious unit comfortable enough for the two of them. He didn’t live long enough to move there. I thought my mother would not be able to survive his death.
And, as during so many times, I was wrong. I had misunderstood my mother’s strength, her force of will and her willingness to move onward. She and I walked out of the Crestmoor house. She closed the door and didn’t look back.
In the years after Dad died, she changed. Her anger subsided and she willingly partook in my own crazy activities. She was the revered Judge at our annual Southminster Dog Show. She and I went to concerts and lectures together. She came for dinner every Sunday night, watched tv, and held the Grifters in her lap.
My mother was 99 when she died. By then, she was living in an assisted living facility, one she hated and fought against. Her last months were quiet. I brought the Grifters to visit, I showed her pictures of our own trips to France, Greece, Italy, Turkey, South Africa. You have to go to Israel she said. I will. And, it was a promise I kept.
Hospice had set up a hospital bed in her room. It was late in the afternoon of January 5, 2019. I came in and my mother took my hand. She drew me towards her and whispered I’m sorry you had to raise yourself. But you did a damn good job. You know I always loved you. And those were her last words to me. Words of apology for the years of anger and a recognition that I was the daughter she had always wanted me to be. She was no longer angry. And I finally understood why she was always angry with me. It was simple, really. For her to please her own mother, she had to forge me in her image. When I failed to hop into that mold, my mother became angry. I was to be her retribution for what the Holocaust had stolen. But her words I’m sorry you had to raise yourself. Those words had set me free.
Air. 
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