Page 53 - WhyAsInY

WHo are tHese PeoPle? (Part 1)
camp experience would be at Anawana, which was owned by distant cousins of my mother; more about that later.) Apparently, the first words that were uttered between them were something like “Excuse me. Do you have a cigarette?” It is not clear which one of them used that as an opener. It is clear that Mom smoked until she suffered her heart attack.
If she didn’t smoke when she was a young woman, it is pretty clear that she would have been within her rights to take up smoking when I was a little boy. From all reports, I was a “handful.” (As Mom was fond of telling me, my aunt Celia could control me when I was left in her care in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, only by actually tying me to a tree.) I was constantly disobeying, resisting authority, getting in trouble at school, being “smart,” and employing what was “quite a mouth.” And Mom bore the brunt of it. She wasn’t entirely overmatched, but, as she wouldn’t tire of telling me when I reached something resembling maturity, I did drive her crazy. She was not, however, the disciplinarian; her primary mode for coping with me was to assure me that there would be trouble ahead: “Just wait until your father gets home.”
And there was no doubt that she loved me. I continue to glaze over as I recall the way in which she would say goodnight to me when I was a little boy. First, she would help me to wash up, lilting in Yiddish words that sounded like “Give me the shaynah, the klaynah, the hentalach” (the small and beautiful hands, I think). Then she would read to me and tuck me in. Finally, she would end the day by whispering, “Sleep well, be well, I love you,” the words that I used to conclude my graveside eulogy to her in December 2003.
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