"Good Night, Irene."

A few days before my mother died, my friend Anne Hamilton had a vision that my Dad was patiently waiting at the Gates of Heaven for her holding her purse. “Patiently or impatiently,” I asked. “Patiently,” she said. “It’s up to her.

Anne went on to say that she saw my mother ascending to heaven, meeting my father and that they were both young and radiant as they were when they met.

Irene was just 16 and Arnold was 19. On their first date they went dancing on the boat to Bob-lo. Their song was “Harbor Lights.”

It’s hard to talk about my mother without talking about my father too. They were one of those inseparable couples. If my father went to a Lions Club meeting, my mother went along. Yet, they had absolutely separate domains.

My mother’s, as everyone knows, was the kitchen. My mother never met a recipe she didn’t think could be improved by adding a lb. of butter and a carton of sour cream. Her sucker cookies are famous. When she visited us in New York, she’d always bring with her a box of cookies carefully layered in wax paper and tin foil and usually a very large brisket, and a package of marrow bones for her pea soup. If you ever tasted her pea soup you know why she was a better cook than most Top Chefs.

My mother had a career – wife, mother, Bobe.

She took these responsibilities very seriously. When Michael, my son, was a small boy and I was a Single Mother trying to balance making a living with making a home, Mike suddenly spiked a fever. I needed to work in the morning. I called my mother.

This woman who had never traveled anywhere without my father -- took a plane from Detroit to La Guardia, a bus from the airport to Grand Central, found the train to Larchmont, and then a taxi to my house. Within hours she was standing on my doorstep, ringing my bell – naturally she brought cookies.

When I needed a car for my new job, my mother volunteered to bring one. This was long before cell phones. The idea was my father would drive their car and my mother would follow him to New York in a little gray Escort for me. Except my father pulled out of the drive and zoomed off and my mother, so she says, didn’t see “that meshugenah” again, until she parked behind him in my driveway.
Once my husband Jed and I were driving down to North Carolina at the same time that there was a hurricane on the Coast. We got a message from my mother on my cell phone, “Oy vey, Turn Back! Turn Back!”’

Two years ago I published a book. I ordered a copy for my mother. In one of those strange unexplainable flukes in life, the copy for my mother and the copy for my cousin Allee were printed incorrectly. None of the sentences made sense. I didn’t believe my mother when she told me this over the phone. “Okay, I humored her, mark the pages and send it back to me, I said. She did. She stayed up until 3:30 in the morning and hand wrote 88 little white slips of paper meticulously detailing errors she had found. I wish I had saved them.

When I visited my mother in the hospital a few weeks before she died, I asked her what she was was proudest of in her life. She answered “My 3 children. The lives they lead.”

“I had a good life with Daddy,” she added. “We never had much money, but we did a lot. We traveled, we had good friends.”

On Sunday, February 13, Jed and I flew in to see my mother. The next day was Valentine’s Day, my father’s birthday. I was terrified. I thought if she could choose, she would want to pass that day so she could be with him. We arrived about 2:00. My mother was already on a morphine drip. I’ve been told even though someone isn’t responding they can still hear you. I held my mother and told her how much I loved her and what a good mother she had been. I got to sing “Good Night, Irene” to her. Her face was slack. She had been breathing erratically for about 25 minutes. At about 4:00 pm, there was a moment when her face suddenly got radiant, suffused with joy. I teased her, “Irene, do you see Arnold right now? She did not take another breath.

I spent the next few days emptying her apartment – my Dad’s tuxedo and black tie, the beaded purses, the clocks and Royal Doultons, the bags of cashews and pecans, the funny hats and magic tricks, the hundred-thousand pictures of the grand children and great-grandchildren, and an almost full jar of Saunders Hot Fudge.

As for last words, my sister-in-law tells me she turned over once the day before and clearly said, “kishka.”

I don’t know anyone else like my mother. She was a presence in my life. I don't know if there will ever be a time when I don't think of calling her at least once a day "Good Night, Irene."

My mother

My mother is dying. I cannot stop it. Have I asked her everything I want to know?

For example, why did she say I had to be home by an 11:30 pm curfew even though it meant I’d miss the last 1/2 hour of Gone With the Wind? (What happened? Did Scarlett and Rhett get back together again?)

And if you forget to put the chicken-in-the-pot in the refrigerator before you go to bed, is it still safe to eat in the morning?

First a little background: My mother was young when I was born. Only 21. Times were difficult then. She’d been very sick and I was a preemie and my Dad was away getting ready for the war.

(Does it matter if you put the cocoa powder or the warm milk in the cup first?)

(How many books of S & H green stamps did it take for our corn popper?)

Why didn’t we talk more?

What’s a bunion anyway? And why should I care if get one?

Did she do all the things she wanted to do? Is she afraid of death? Does she think my Dad is waiting for her in the beyond?


Soon both my mother and be father will be gone – along with all the knickknacks, the bags of cashews, and the Belefonte LP’s and the photos and magic tricks, and the dish drainer and candy dishes and the clocks, and the little kitchen table and the coat rack with hats and scarves -- all dispersed, like their ashes.


I stroke my mother’s hair. But, it is not my mother’s hair. My mother had black, black shiny black hair. But now this failing woman lying in the bed is strawberry blonde with large gray roots. She doesn’t even remember about Gone with the Wind.
“I never did that," she says, 'you’re making it up”. In truth, my mother, the one I remember from when I was a little girl, -- the look of her, the laugh, my mother with the mambo, cha cha hips -- started fading a long, long time ago -- and I have wondered where she’s gone for years.

Jed says, “It’s like trying to catch a piece of paper blowing away in the wind.”

That doesn’t make it hurt less.

My Body Talks Back

I want to tell you about my body. My body and I act like a long-time, unhappily married couple -- too tired, too entangled to get a divorce. What we have between us are mostly confrontations, complaints and painful incidents. There's rarely a moment of tranquility or appreciation. I have gripes: For example, there's a feeling in my chest like a garlic bagel is stuck.

Other times my body behaves like a petulant ex-lover who continues to send annoying e-mails long after the passion has passed -- tart remember-me's, like sinuses stuffed with Elmer's glue, or a food-trap in my molars that aggravates my gums.

The latest is my foot! My foot!

My left foot stepped down funny, collapsed on itself and fractured! "Notice me, notice me, notice me," the body says.

Okay, I get the picture.

Then, after a few days in a big black shoe boot and a noxious mood, I chanced upon a You Tube video that seemed to be talking to me.

It's a black and white undulating odalisque in graceful silhouette. The gist of the copy explains that as long as you're at war with your body you'll never have peace. I realized, "that's it!"

These aren't isolated ailments that plague me. I'm at war with my whole body! A war with

more animosity than Palestine and Israel.

For instance, I want to lose weight. It spots FatWich chocolate brownie samples at Whole Foods market and swallows three.

"Just talk to your body," the video coos. "Ask it what it needs."

So yesterday I invited my body for a sit-down and tried not to complain about the size of my ass.

"So what do you want, body," I asked.

"You're always picking on me," my body said. "Pick, pick, pick. You pick my eyebrows. You bite your lip. You pull at your cuticles. You scratch. Can't you ever just leave me alone?"

I have to say I was taken aback! But, I also have to admit my body is right about the picking.

"And you never, never ever give me compliments! Or green leafy vegetables. You hate exercise!" My body was right about that too.

Me and my body! Decades of disappointment and hurt. Drab hair. Weak eyes. Biceps the texture of brioche. Besides all that, it's painful to look at my body and not be angry that it is no longer 19, perky and taut.

But then again my body has never betrayed me either, with anaphylactic shock, persistent dandruff, or gout. And just look at the amazing job I did with pregnancy -- it was an absolutely perfect delivery with no meds and little gas.

Body! If I can just beg forgiveness and start again. I'll buy a WII. We'll go back to yoga.

Maybe, oh maybe I can make it up to my body, my dear old, lifelong friend.

Cockroach in my iced coffee.

Despite a rich travel history in second-rate motels and third-world countries, I cannot get used to four, six or eight-legged creatures of any genus in my drinks. This aversion also includes larvae or worms with indeterminate appendages that occasionally show up in bottles of tequilla. But, in this instance, the culprit was a city slicker known to many New Yorkers, the common cockroach.

Now that most of my travel is closer to home than in the reckless days of my youth, you'd think that I would not have to be as vigilant as in times past. And perhaps the thought that I can drink the water or eat the lettuce was a naive expectation in today's world. Still, I was shocked, yes shocked at what transpired the other morning.

I stopped in my favorite coffee shop in town. I often eat here. In fact, I am a regular, with all rights and priviliges, such as extra straws and napkins, welcome by first name, and so on. I purchased what I always order on sultry summer days -- "a large iced decaf with milk to go."

Now this is one of my great. great pleasures. Not just because I enjoy the icy coldness in my hand and th rich milky-coffee taste in my mouth. Not just because after two or three years, practically everyone behind the counter almost always remembers me and that I don't take sweetener. Or, even that here I can afford to truly be a sport and leave an extra large .35 cent tip -- sometimes more! It just is! For no reason! So when one of these peak moments in life, particularly one that is repeatable is torn away, it hurts! It does!

Here's what happened. I took my coffee and my "New York Times" and caught the 7:13 am train to Grand Central Terminal. I found a seat and curled up next to the window. The person next to me was absorbed in their "Wall Street Journal." While I slowly, contentedly read my paper and sipped my coffee, looking up just once, to flash my ticket at the conductor.

As the train pulled into the station, I tipped the glass up and slurped the last bit of liquid out of the ice. That is when I saw it -- a dark mass -- clearly not an ice cube -- not my imagination -- and not on the outside of the glass!

I had drank the entire iced coffee with the creature swimming in the liquid.

There are no words to console me. It happened. I cannot pretend it didn't. Has it permanently changed me? Yes, somehow it has. Something untoward has soiled my palate. All the gold-wrapped Godiva chocolate in the world can't erase that fact. Maybe sometime in the future I will be a regular somewhere else again. If I can only trust.

My Pelican Profile

I have begun to read about pelicans. I've suddenly grown very fond of the creatures that I believe that I most resemble. It's the under-the-chin pouch that would most probably alert you to our uncanny resemblance. Of course, I am aware this condition has already been covered and very well, by Nora Ephron in I Hate My Neck. But, at least she doesn't look like a pelican.

I ponder sending a swab of cheek saliva to ancestry.com to see if at some time in the long, long ago a male pelican passed on its DNA to one of my Russian-Jewish grandmothers. These things happen. It's not without precedent. Think "Leda and the Swan." Look, anyone who follows nature shows knows that unusual genetic modifications on otherwise stable chromosomes are no surprise to anthropologists. Nor are unsuitable couplings. Ask most children about their parents!

Another persuasive detail. Pelicans, I believe, are fond of herring. A nice piece of silvery herring is also a delicacy among the Russian-Jewish Babushkas from whose wombs I have descended and whose taste buds influence my table.

Anyway, back to my chin/neck. Perhaps I would not mind it so much if (unlike an appendix which is purely vestigal), science discovered an over-large, under-the-chin served a functional purpose. For example, if it stored extra brains.

Or, if over a series of severe Siberia winters this protuberance of protoplasm has evolved into and provided a survival advantage, as a kind of permanent neck wrap, or organically derived insulation.

As an aside, I am aware that pelicans are not usually found in polar regions. However, birds do fall out of formation, flocks go astray, there are exceptions.

To tell the truth, as an anatomic feature, my neck/chin uses a lot of body mass that might have more rightly gone into biceps. But, that's the quagmire of evolution. It's frustratingly slow. Ask me again in a hundred million years.

But, like me chin, I digress.

In a fit of passion, I once asked my husband if my chin turned him on, sort of like a third breast. Knowing he will say most anything to get me supine, I don't quite know how to interpret his choked answer. By the way, this was not an entirely ridiculous question, because as you may remember, pelicans are part of the order pelecaniformes, which also includes cormorants and boobies.

All these thoughts help explain this piece of flesh that has come unbidden to roost beneath my jaw, refuses to migrate or molt, or turn into a swan, or take wing, no matter how much I squawk.

Short Fuse

What do I mean by Short Fuse?
I'm not sure I want to say. Yesterday I couldn't
think of the phrase. Today it tickled me awake.
For a long time, most of my adult life,
it's been there simmering in the back of my heart --
a threat to peace and quietude.
When I was a child, it waited behind
each door I opened in our house. Great Balls of Fire --
hovering over daily life like
Jerry Lee Lewis about to leap on stage.
Sometimes it seeps into my life here --
in the amount of time it takes me
to become angry at my husband when he says
something in a tone I don't like.
And how quickly I forget I can get the
same haughty tone in my voice, yet dismiss
it as just me being me.
What about the distance that it creates between us?
Or how quickly I can travel from good mood to
to hateful.
Yet, as I travel deeper into our marriage I glimpse something surprisingly
hopeful. It's that these days when I pass from good will to glower
how fast I can return to stasis.
He can too. Is the reason the more
good times we share together, the less willing we are to spoil
what lies ahead?
Coming from a family that can nurture grudges like
African violets, this is a revelation about relationships.

It's nice to know that this sweet state is attainable
despite not knowing it existed.

I always believed the deepest connection one could
have with another was during sex. Was I wrong?
Maybe aging hormones are a precursor
to true contentment.

I am one of the lucky ones. I love my husband.
And our apartment (if I forget about the elevator)
is a a fifth floor walk-up. Lately, we've started taking
the stairs.

Walking five flights is not on a short list of what
I like to do. Yet, as I pant my way up, I wonder
what other loving miracles there are to discover --
if we manage to stretch the next 20 or so more years
together to 30?

For my Birthday, I had Prune Juice.

Prune juice in a champagne flute, actually. A lovely glass -- it's stem like a twisted-vine --
I poured and then swirled it slowly to aerate.
The dark amber liquid suggested a fine port or aged sherry.
After all, prunes are a fruit! Are they inherently less aristocratic than grapes or pears or cherries -- some of the other similar essences so prized by connoisseurs?

Who cares if Sunsweet's Best hasn't spent years luxuriating
in a wooden cask?

What the dif if it doesn't bubble with effervesence? Does true effervesence arise from fermentation or from the person who drinks it?

Can't a person who sips liquer of dried plums be as charming as one who drinks dry champagne?

Advanced Age may not have many social perks. But, one of them surely has to be an ability to stare down embarrassment until it's transformed into what looks indubitably like wisdom, refinement, and yes, style.

At least that's what I tell myself.