Mom

dealing with the death of my mom. as best i can.

Mom

She wanted you to be your best self. She wanted you to get moving, get off the couch, get outside and make something happen. Read a book, take a class, be in a play, volunteer, call your sisters. Just do something! Take the credit card and buy yourself a nice suit. And please stop feeling sorry for yourself. You have it pretty good you know.

Mom had impact. She loved to laugh and kibbitz, but not for too long because there was stuff to do. She was chatty and interested in you. Sarcastic when it was called for. She oozed warmth. Everyone wanted to be around her.

Mom was sparkly. She shone. She was present. Her love was steadfast and strong. She listened and talked in just the right combination. She had opinions but let you make your own mistakes. She was tenacious and fiercely loyal.

Mom tried to teach me to be confident in my decisions, not to over-analyze or let my emotions guide me … still working on that. She unconditionally supported my path as she pretended to understand my unusual career, and I know she was proud of me for cultivating a life in a place so different than where she and I grew up.

Growing up she was constantly reading. She took us to the ballet and signed us up for classes and took us on trips and to camps and nurtured all of our talents. I credit her with giving me the confidence and the curiosity to live a creative life.

I always knew she was an exceptional mother, but only now that I have my own kids do I realize just how confident and instinctual she was as a parent. When I have successes now with my kids – when I think of a good craft project, when I effectively follow through and discipline one of them, or when I see humor, creativity or empathy in them, my mom is pulsing through me in those moments. And in my failures and my frustrations with my children or with myself, I always hear her practical voice telling me not to be so hard on myself.

Mom loved her grandkids fervently and had a beautiful relationship with my daughter Zoe, who worshipped her and reminds me of her. She loved my husband Evan, which I know for sure because she would argue constantly with him about politics even when I knew she agreed with him completely.

Moving forward towards a life without my mom is deeply daunting. She inspired me, she loved me and she was everything to me. I can only hope to channel a fraction of the grace and strength in my own life that she showed all the way up to the end of hers.

stay gold

Today I went to 47th Street to sell some gold for cash. Which sounds so pawn shop, so drug addict, so hawking the sax to pay for a fix. Really, I just went to sell some of mom’s jewelry, which she gave me last week and urged me to get rid of. It felt unsettling to sell it but she was so emphatic “with the high price of gold and all.” Plus she’s notoriously unsentimental, claimed she never wore any of it, and we could use the money to pay the deposit for next years preschool.

So I rolled up to 47th between 5th and 6th,, one of those world within a world New York City blocks. Lit by neon signs and florescent window displays during the day, the overall vibe is nonetheless SHADY. I swerved to avoid packs of roaming Orthodox Jews, homeboys handing out cards, and swarthy men smoking cigarettes and muttering, gold silver platinum we buy everything, under their breath.

I had the name of a “guy” from a jeweler friend, but as I walked in the front door of the huge room divided into kiosks, I was instantly schmoozed by a cute young man in a kippah with the counter right by the door. Real estate is everything.

I’m here to sell gold for cash I said. We can do that he said.

Their father and son outfit was straight out of Central Casting: the father spoke in brusque Hebrew inflected English as he looked through his jeweler’s loupe suspiciously at another customer’s treasures. A little sleazy, definitely the bad cop, dad looked like he knew his way around a karat, while the son, quite obviously the greener, good-er cop, looked me in the eye and smiled with his big white teeth while he tested my gold to make sure it was real with this little scrapey chalk board thing and various liquids. The two of them ducked heads, whispered under their breaths, and gathered around the calculator, doing their dance for me and the hopeful customers from Westchester, with their silverware and gold plated charms.

Boychick told me how he studied journalism and couldn’t quite believe he ended up in the family business. I could see the whole situation in a flashback – graduation day from Columbia, the fights, dad yelling that writers are losers and drunks and cajoling him to come to 47th street, it’s what WE DO! And now, son smiles at me confidently, salesman like, he really loves it.

Here’s what we can do for you said the son, and showed me the number on the calculator. Sorry there’s nothing we can do for you, said the father to Westchester. But we thought you were the experts, Westchester said as they slunk out the door.

I felt like I had won – my stuff was good. And as I readied myself to take the money and walk away from this Neil Diamond song come to life, I glanced at mom’s pieces of jewelry, sitting there innocently on the velvet tray after being analyzed and violated, not knowing what was in store for it. And I had another twinge: should I be doing this and will I regret this?

Because no matter how little this stuff means to my mom now, at one point it was on another velvet tray, housed in some other incarnation of a jewelry business, probably chosen for her as a gift from my dad. And it likely meant something. There was desire behind it or hope that she would like it. Plans for when she’d wear it.

Now it’s headed for the basement gold melting factory where some old bearded guy (probably the Grandpa!) cracks the stones with a hammer and melts everything into a giant cauldron of liquid gold soup, which is then somehow turned into a form (bars? sheets?) that some banker can buy and sell on a trading floor, and then after more travels and formations and incarnations I can’t even imagine eventually maybe finding its way back some day into a jeweler’s hand or factory and onto another velvet tray somewhere. For someone else to desire and dream about wearing or give as a gift.

Um, Happy Valentines Day?