“Magical Mom”

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

My mom’s birthday is today, on a date she selected. I never asked why she self-selected the date, and much later, after she was gone, wished to know. By then, I wanted to know more about her early life and realized that many other questions never got asked. I’m always a little sad about my knowledge gaps.

Especially these days when the war in Ukraine raises questions about my maternal family’s life in that part of the world. Back in the very late 1800s, fearing Russia’s recurring violence toward Ukrainian Jews, they sailed to America, winding up in O’Fallon, IL, where my mom and her siblings grew up.

They lived in the most dire poverty. To survive, my grandmother made ice cream and my grandfather traveled into neighborhoods to sell scoops from an ice cart. My mom described her sheer unhappiness while a little girl, for having to go regularly to the local welfare office and request family existence money. When she was very young, her father passed away from TB.

Afterward, her mother found a job as a kosher cook in Oklahoma City and had to move there. She put her small children into an orphanage. Before long, her eldest child, Ruby, got married and became qualified to remove the children from that orphanage. Later in their lives, every single one spoke of Ruby as “a saint.” While still very young, Ruby, too, succumbed to TB.

That family history captured my attention many years ago when a Ph.D. candidate from New York phoned to ask me about the family during its O’Fallon time. While researching its Jewish immigrant community, she discovered in O’Fallon’s newspaper a contemporary article quoting my grandfather’s description of Ukraine’s dire anti-Jewish situation. The researcher sent me a copy of the article. It recreated the reality of my mom’s family in those times touching and blowing me away.

By then, my mom and her siblings were gone, and sadly, no one to question remained. Fortunately, I’m close to my cousin, Mary (her dad was my mom’s brother), and we often speculate on our family’s history, trying to fill in gaps with our combined knowledge.

So, Happy Birthday, Mom. If you could return, you’d find that your known world has evolved into a nearly unrecognizable social and political environment. Plus, these days, you’d not button up and avoid recalling an unhappy past; instead. like most of us, you’d be spilling the beans.

Dear Friends: Our moms–mostly intelligent and capable beyond what their times allowed. Diana