Two days later, my mother stood in the doorway of the side entrance to our home with a fierce determination to set up a meatball operation in my quaint farmhouse.
“Aileen! Mamaleh? I’m here!” she hollered.
Chris was grateful for the support and I counted my blessings that he and my mother had a good relationship. He had been carrying the whole load, taking care of the house, catering to my needs, and trying to learn the ropes at the new business. Just that morning he’d received a shipment of the wrong tractors, and the vendor refused to take them back. When my mother arrived, Chris picked her up from the bus stop, marveling that she was a dynamo who knew how to get things done, and he was more than happy to let her take over.
My mother has a lot of energy—as in, maybe, just possibly, more than she knows what to do with—like a wind farm. She is a petite, thin woman with slightly graying hair, who walks with an affected limp when she remembers. It’s as if she’s practicing for the time when she knows her bones will start aching. The doctors insist that she is in relatively good health and also that her hearing is perfect, and yet she says, “Whaaat?” at least fifteen times during a five-minute conversation. Again, she’s practicing. It takes hard work and severe dedication to perfect the old Jewish lady persona.
She comes from a long line of eastern Europeans who cook when there are problems they cannot solve. No matter that there is no scientific evidence to prove meatballs can cure an ailing cervix; there is always hope. Growing up, our freezer was perpetually filled with frozen meat and matzoh balls from various family catastrophes. When I was in fifth grade and my pet parakeet Murphy died, we had so many leftover meatballs that my mother insisted I bring them to school for international food week, only she made me mash them up and add packets of seasoning so they could pass as taco filling. They didn’t.
My mother was convinced beyond a doubt that just the right ratio of sauce, meat, and matzoh meal would make the Monster Fibroids shrink away from my cervix. But because I was a vegetarian, she would have to telepathically summon all the wrinkled little old balaboostas from beyond the grave to direct the sauce’s healing properties into my uterus. It was as good a plan as any.
She stood over my bed with a package of raw meat in her hands that she had schlepped from Brooklyn.
“Where are your meat dishes?” she demanded.
“Good to see you. Hello!”
“Hello. I need to get the meatballs going right away.”
“Chris and I aren’t kosher, remember? Just choose some dishes.”
She scrunched up her face, repelled by the thought.
After Chris and I had gotten engaged, I had broached the subject of keeping kosher; he’d responded, “So your dishes are kosher, but you’re not?” That was the first time I had really thought about it. The intent of keeping kosher isn’t that your house is kosher; it’s that you’re kosher. So why then was there an entire sect of Brooklyn Jews who kept a kosher home but ate bacon (never ham, sausage, or pepperoni) once they left the front stoop? To outsiders, I could see how it looks like a big heap of hypocrisy, but Conservative Jews draw these arbitrary lines based on centuries of tradition, with the occasional modification. My mother sums it up best, saying, “Listen, we do what we can. If God judges, it’s between me and him.” So basically I had been educated in some of the rules of Orthodoxy and followed them in a way that blended tradition and faith but still allowed me to decide what worked best for my family. Now, my mother, being more conservative than I, was standing over my bed holding two pounds of raw meat, trying to figure out how she was going to cook kosher meatballs in an unkosher house without going straight to hell.
“I’ll figure something out. Maybe I’ll boil your pots with salt first,” she said, going back to the kitchen. That’s not a legitimate way to make pots kosher, but hey, we do what we can.
My mother excelled at cleaning, organizing, doing laundry, and scolding me every time I moved. I was to stay stock-still so as not to inadvertently shift the contents of my uterus in the wrong direction. But the cooking, ah, now that was a show worthy of an arena. Pots and pans were struck together with passionate gusto in one shrill crescendo after another—my mother’s Meatball Concerto. As a child, I would awake from a sound slumber to the banging, clanging dissonance of eggs for breakfast. I used to think a lack of cabinet space made her pull and push and make a ruckus to get a pot out of the pantry. Only when she began doing this in my relatively spacious kitchen did I realize this noisemaking was her way of summoning the cooking gods and informing them that the food-making ritual was about to commence. Chris grabbed his bag, waved goodbye, and left for work.
When we began our renovations on the master suite, which was really just our bedroom, the nursery, and the laundry room, we had to temporarily relocate our bed. We moved it into the oldest and darkest part of the house, the formal living room. I could just see the kitchen from this vantage point, and I watched as my mother prepped the meat, whirling around like a dervish, throwing wet paper towels against walls, the sink, and even the refrigerator handle in an effort to both cook and clean at the same time, splattering food on the backsplash, and chopping up carrots so fast and furiously that I’m pretty sure I saw specks of blood flying through the air.
Once the cooking was complete, the next part of the ritual began, and I watched as my mother packed everything in Ziploc bags . . . even the wet paper towels. I pulled myself deeper under the covers and rolled my eyes. They were, after all, the only thing I was allowed to move.
“How are you doing, heh? I’m cooking.” She was holding up a ladle in her left hand.
“Yes, I heard.”
“You heard? You didn’t smell? Doesn’t it smell delicious?”
“Yes, it smells delicious. Ma, I’m bored and worried.”
“You’re bored? I’m running around like a chicken without a head and you’re bored?” She turned back toward the kitchen. “So, be bored, it’s okay,” she called out. “I’ll tell you what, we’ll worry about your feelings later. Just don’t die and it will all work out.” She gestured with the ladle as she headed for the stove.
Not bad advice, really. Of course, until then I hadn’t really thought about dying. But my family does not mince words. We are card-carrying members dedicated to the tenets of tough love.
“You wanna complain? Call your brother,” she shouted as she stirred.
I watched my mother dancing about the kitchen, wishing she could just sit still for five whole minutes.
By 10:00 that evening, Chris still wasn’t home and I was getting worried. I knew he had work to catch up on and that he probably needed a break from being my caregiver. But he hadn’t been in touch all day, and I wondered if he was staying away because of me—because this was all too much. After all, he might lose his baby, too. As my mother headed toward the guest room holding a potato peeler, I stopped her. “Mom, you think Chris is okay?”
She stood at the edge of my bed. “He’s probably nervous. He’ll do the best he can.” She pointed the peeler in my direction. “Look at your father. He was scared of everything, starting with the day we got married.”
“What? He was one of the bravest people I ever knew,” I said.
“Yeah, right.”
“Give me one example of when Dad wasn’t brave.”
“Our wedding night, and pretty much every day after that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He left me in the hotel room on our honeymoon.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. He went to the casino all night. Didn’t see him until the next morning.”
“What are you talking about? And where are you going with that potato peeler?”
“He couldn’t believe what he had just gotten himself into. This is my peeler. I’m putting it in my bag.”
“You brought your own peeler? I don’t believe you about Dad.”
“Listen, when I first met your father, I thought he was complicated and mysterious. But he wasn’t. He masked his fears with indifference, so nobody knew. Maybe that sounds like someone else you know?”
“Who?”
“Who do you think?”
“Chris? You don’t know Chris very well, and it sounds like you didn’t really get Dad either.”
“Could be. But I doubt it. What, you think your dad was perfect? I know, I know, I’m the bad one. That’s okay. Respect the dead, punish the living.”
“How am I punishing you? If that’s true, what was Dad so afraid of?”
“Do you want a list? He was afraid one of us would die. That he’d have to be in charge or make decisions. He was afraid to change your diaper. Schvitzed buckets until we switched from pins to Velcro tabs.”
“No way?” I questioned. My mother was poking some serious holes in the tapestry I had woven of my father’s life.
“Chris will come around, or not. I waited a long time for your father to.” She began walking away. “Your peeler’s no good,” she called out.
“So many questions, Ma!” I called after her. She peeked her head around the corner.
“What, you want to know all my secrets?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Not right now, I have to eat; it’s so late already.” The truth was, sure, I wanted to know her secrets, but really I wanted to know my father’s.
Chris finally came home around midnight and fell straight into bed, with little explanation. My mother kept so busy that we didn’t have another opportunity to talk about my father or Chris again before she had to head back to Brooklyn. I knew how lucky I was to have her on my team, despite the chaos she brought with her, so I told her that I’d look forward to her coming back in about two weeks if she could manage it. We would be okay. At least until we ran out of clean clothes and food. She agreed, promising to call eighteen times a day to make sure I was getting all the rest I needed.