nobodysgod

May 1

Yesterday was the anniversary of my father’s death, by the “regular” calendar. I do observe the yahrzeit by the Hebrew calendar, but the American date is the one my heart observes. Some years, only a few memories waft by. But this year, I missed him. It’s odd, really: what happened was that I felt his presence more and that made me miss him a lot.

I think I somehow commingled memories I have of my father and ones I have of my mother. Because he died when I was nine and she lived till I was eighteen, he is mostly a made-up figure to me, while I knew her intimately and as “really” as one can know a mother whom one loves and loses too young.

In the last ten days or so, working on my “moth” presentation for Barnard reunion, has brought her repeatedly to mind. My presentation is “about” Miss Colie, but there’s no remembering her without remembering my mother, too. How self-conscious I was about her coming to school on parents’ day–because she was older than the other mothers. I never did get used to that, from the earliest school days, that she was always the oldest mother. I have a number of friends who have given birth in their forties–it’s become commonplace–but when my mother had me at forty-three, it was not in the least commonplace. (More than likely, I was a “mistake.” But I am certain that, if I was a mistake, my mother never regretted having me. In the years after my father died, I was the very reason she lived another day.) Last week, as I remembered with appropriate shame my reservations about her visit to my Barnard classes, I also remembered vividly how Miss Colie, my freshman English teacher, was taken with her, how they ended up talking so long that other mothers stopped waiting their turn and left.

What I remember myself most vividly, besides my mother’s excellent carriage, was her willingness to answer my questions, my endless questions. To this day, when I hear a friend say to a child or grandchild “Because” as the sole answer to any question, I cringe. “Because” wasn’t in my mother’s lexicon.

Of course that means she’s to blame for my unquenchable questioning even now. It’s not a lust for the “right answer”–I’m pretty sure it’s never that–but, rather, a hunger to know what someone else thinks, especially someone who knows more than I do about the subject at hand. So I can take that answer and look at it. Think about it. See how it fits in with other pieces of the puzzle I’m continually working on in my head.

Every answer is a potential blessing.