¿Qué Onda Quitman?

 

 

While I was thinking about what to write on my annual Mother's Day Card, I realized that there was far too much to say in just 500 characters.  I know that my mom doesn't realize how much I value her company, just being in the same room with her or talking on the phone, and sometimes she even says that she wishes she could have been a better mother, which is just crazy talk.  When I think about growing up, which I often do because even though I have known Papi for a few years, we still sit at the dinner table and tell "I remember ..." stories after we eat, I realize what a great example my mom was for me.  She truly taught me what mattered most in the world.

Family:  My mom's family all lived pretty close to each other and celebrated birthdays and holidays together.  We also saw more distant cousins and relatives which I really appreciate now because even though I don't really see those people, I have a larger sense of history concerning my family.  I loved listening to stories about way-back-when.

I remember one Rosh Hashanah at the Weidenthal's house when two older ladies told me how they wait out on their porch when they were teenagers to watch my grandfather-the-teenager walk by with his dog.  They thought he was a hottie.  It was hard for me to imagine my gruff grandfather as a heartthrob, but there it was.

When my grandfather found a distant relative, also named Charles Bruml,  who had survived Auschwitz concentration camp, and I saw the tatoos he and Hannah his wife had, I understood the implications of being a 20thc Jew.  But my favorite memory of that visit is when Hannah encouraged me to slather butter on my bread so think that I would be able to see the impressions my teeth made when I took a bite.  I could hear the air escaping and my mom sucked in the words she wanted to say, but she let me follow Hannah's directive.  When I visited the Holocaust Museum years latter and sat in a dark room listening to a recording of Hannah describing the separation of her family when they arrived at the camp, I thought about the glee and delight I remembered coming from her as she watched me bite into that bread.

I think my all time favorite story came from my mom herself.  I love it so much because it seemed so out of character for her and played out just like a Brady Bunch script.  My mom and her friend draw spots on their forheads (forgive me if I have some of the details wrong) and told my aunt Jan who hated peas (and carrots?) that they were infected and would die if she didn't eat the left over aformentioned veggies in the fridge.  At this point in the story the adult Jan always breaks in and starts moaning as if someone is asking her eat those things right now.  Oh the trauma it caused her!  I loved it, but there was never anything like that I could do to Dan because he was fearless and was known to have eatten a fallen pickle off the floor at Burger King.

Animals:  Our house was always full of animals although I don't remeber it being full of pet hair in the least.  Animals were part of the family.  Kindness to animals was unquestioned, but they didn't run the house even when there were four dogs and four cats.  My mom got every four footed creature to sit and wait before they could get their dinner.  Cats would rub on dogs and dogs would fall over waiting, but finally the menagerie would get all its tails on the floor.  There was never any question that pets, like small children, were expected to be well behaved.  And she kept all of them undeer control with only her voice.  I never really got this even when she was trying to teach me, but when I got my little corgis the voice came out.  Respect for the creatures of the world and taking care of your little corner of it I picked up through her example.  Sitting on my mom's bed in the winter and looking out the front window at the squirrels eating all those peanut butter-filled iced cream cones got the message into my brain.

People:  I'm not sure that people neccesarily come after animals, but they were a further ring out in the map of life I developed in childhood.  No one told me the Golden Rule, but I learned it by watching my mom.  I don't remember her ever snapping at any people or being rude to anybody we came into contact with in our lives.  The annual shopping trip to buy gifts for every employee at the store my parents owner made a huge impression on me.  My mom picked out something personal for each person.  I thought the Polish flag for one of the stockboys to hang in his van (hey, it was the 70's) was just about the coolest gift you could get.  Later when those guys went on and got jobs at other places, they still were in contact with my parents whether it was to borrow books from my mom or to call for bail money.  There was never any them or us.  People were people.

I don't think that my mom knows when I have to make a decision or am having a difficult time,  I think about what she would do or say.  She is always the first person that I want to tell whenever anything good or bad happens.  I love you, Mom.  Happy Mother's Day!