MY MOM
Here’s to the imperfect moms.
I have conflicted feelings about Mother's Day. On one hand, it's a Hallmark holiday that randomly chooses one day to celebrate moms when what really matters is the totality of the relationship. On the other hand, there are some really cool cards out there and who am I to say who should or shouldn't honor a mother of the heart.
I know some of my mixed emotions come from my own relationship with my mother. It's no secret we have had a complicated relationship. I've often said I want her on my side in a rock fight, but as mother-daughter it's often a delicate balance. I've chosen a policy of "forgiveness and do no harm," but I am only human. I've held on to enough resentments to withhold some valued memories, even from myself.
Since I've left NYC I've been more lax and let my siblings take the reins, but she's 87, her 98 year old husband is sick and she's frightened. So this quarantine has caused me to call her daily. We talk about books, and I order them for her online. She calls me constantly to track said orders and our tacit agreement is "no bad news."
Then, when I posted influential album #3 (Tchaikovsky) I remembered how my mom used to teach us classical music by making up lyrics to the compositions. "This is the symphony that Schubert wrote but never finished." "William Tell shot an arrow and had an overture, and this onnnnne had a Friar Tuck." ""Don't spit on the flora use the Cuspadora" (I never understood that one.). And so on.
Mom was incredibly creative in other ways as well. Growing up, she sewed family outfits in the same fabrics, but created different patterns for each of us. She knit complex sweaters in silk, twine, ribbons and a combination thereof. If she saw a designer sweater, she could knit it. Sometimes there would be 6 needles involved at once. I had many one-of-a-kind sweaters in the 80s and 90s that people would stop me on the street or in restaurants to comment on.
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In grade school and middle school we used to drive to New Hope, a mecca for new trends in the arts, and crafting, and mom would buy books and supplies and teach us and our friends how to do all the latest crafts. Plastic flowers, beaded flowers, refinished furniture, even tissue flower gift wrap. She was feared and well known in the neighborhood for her calls to dinner, but my friends still begged to come over for her art lessons.
And my love of art itself? Dad traveled a lot. Mom took us out of school and brought us along. Washington DC, Philadelphia, Valley Forge, Boston. They were all our backyards, and their museums and monuments were second homes. Mom tested us on them harder than any school system. The result was that we were all at home in a museum or gallery and knew art and artists as well as math, science or geography. And you can bet your ass Mom made sure we knew those. There wasn't a single national monument or institution in those cities we didn't visit at least two, three or four times. I knew them as well as New York City. To mom, education was everything. And bad manners horrifying. But it wasn't just memorization she was after, she tried to convey the tecniques and differences between them. She was educating herself at the same time, soaking it up like a sponge. To this day, she still attends lectures and discussions on art and art history.
She had 3 wild kids by the time she was 26, with an always traveling husband & parents who did not set a good example; she wasn't particularly equipped to teach us manners with a sense of humor. Her favorite expression was, "I work my kishkes off for you & this is the thanks I get?" WHACK! But teach them she did. By time time dad was asked to join JFK's council for the arts we were ready for a private tour of the White House. We met Jackie & Lady Bird and managed not to mortify Elaine, or endanger her kishkes.
My mom also gave me her love of books. When I devoured the children's section in the local library by the end of 2nd grade and started reading Mark Twain, the librarian didn't want me venturing into the main section. My mother came at her like a Valkyrie. "You are a librarian. Your job is to encourage reading. You are not her mother. That is MY job. I'll worry about what she reads." Luckily she never did. I was reading adult biographies by 3rd grade, gothic romance by 4th grade, Valley of the Dolls by 5th grade, Fahrenheit 451 by 6th grade and Stranger in a Strange Land by 7th (you grok me?). The point is, she believed books were meant to be read. To this day, I read any and everything, from smut to physics, to historical biographies. I love it all.
She never told me I was pretty or creative; if I asked, she wouldn't answer, or she'd tell me no. But she did always tell me I was smart, and smart mattered. She told me I was going to college at a time that wasn't always an assumption for young ladies. She even told me I was going to law school. (If she had to fill out the applications.) She told all of us girls. She told us we needed education and careers before marriage, which was very forward thinking back then.
Speaking of Valkyries... after I left school early to go to college at 16, she was really pissed my high school never gave me my diploma. She fought relentlessly for two years, eventually threatening a law suit, until they finally caved and issued a GED. There was no battle too small to fight for her kids. But that GED? I might have been in college, but I never really finished high school. It was all a scam. It took me a few years after I got sober to work up the nerve to tell my mom the truth. Sure enough, out came Valkyrie Elaine. Boy she was beyond pissed. Even 18 yeats later, she was embarrassed. And then she called me a Grade A asshole and laughed. Of course, in those days, I *was* a Grade A asshole, so there's that.
And no matter what else I ever thought, she and my dad loved each other passionately, and she was a driving force behind his success. After he died she was in her late 60s and decided to write a new chapter in her life and continue dad's work. She had a lot to learn, but one thing she always had was an astonishing sense of what will work on Broadway. She's been a producer or investor in Avenue Q, War Horse, Beautiful, Spongebob, The Band's Visit, Ain't Too Proud, Hadestown and more.
So there's my Mother's Day tribute. Celebrating the best of a complicated woman.
