AT SEVENTEEN I entered college at UCLA, having determined that it was the best university I could commute to from home. I approached my studies with determination, knowing that strong grades would help me get into a good law school. As a lawyer, I would be able to seek the justice that was lacking in the world. I could also acquire the financial security that had thus far eluded my parents and had caused Mom such anxiety.
“Mom bought a fur coat today!” my sister announced in the middle of dinner one evening.
“What?” Dad said. He looked like he was going to pass out.
“We went to Bullock’s, and Mom bought a gorgeous mink coat,” my fourteen-year-old sister said, sounding ecstatic.
“You’re kidding,” Dad said to Mom.
“I would never wear a fur coat,” I said with disdain, hoping to quickly put an end to Mom’s infatuation with a luxury item we could not afford.
“Actually, we’re not kidding,” Mom said to Dad. “Winnie told me that I looked so beautiful in it that I had to buy it.”
“You have to see it on her,” my sister said.
“But don’t worry, I can return it tomorrow,” Mom said quickly.
“Mom,” I said. “Think about the amazing things we have that money can’t buy. We’re healthy, and we love each other. Most people would trade their entire fortunes for that.”
“And I thank God every day for these blessings. But someday, Leslie, you will realize why money matters so much.”
I already understood its importance. I knew that Mom worried about making ends meet, and I couldn’t bear for her to feel deprived, or for Dad to think he was disappointing her. That year, at least, we all had hopes that the new bed and bath shop they had recently opened would improve their prospects. Dad was still employed by the pillow manufacturer, but he also worked with Mom at the shop on the weekends, selling high-end comforters and decorative pillows. In the meantime, I vowed that I would always be able to support myself and my family.
Toward that end, at UCLA, I took on two majors and often studied all night long for finals. The frenzy of cramming for tests distracted me from my worries. Afterward, however, feelings of emptiness returned. The challenge for me was not in being educated, or in being anything; it was in the immersion of earning more badges, this time in the guise of As—conquering one challenge after the next.
IN JULY 1978, the summer following my freshman year, Mom would face another great challenge as well. Uncle Sam had called from Chicago early one morning to say that Grandpa Isaac had died. The funeral took place on a predictably warm Chicago summer day. Mom and Auntie Sandra were there, and so were Uncle Benny and Aunt Dora, even though Grandpa Isaac had never reconciled with them after the falling-out over the grocery business. Grandpa Isaac’s other brothers, Max, Henry, and Norman, flew in from New York. Per Jewish custom, they had ripped their lapels, to indicate that their hearts were torn. After the funeral, they went straight back to the airport, to sit shivah, the seven-day period of mourning, in New York.
I was trapped in a summer-school English class on the morning of Grandpa Isaac’s funeral, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Tears burned the inside corners of my eyes. These tears were not for my loss of a grandfather. Grandpa Isaac had been only marginally a part of my life; I suspected he would not have recognized me if he had passed me on the street. Mostly, I felt regret. Regret that my grandfather, once a bright star in his family and village, had not continued to shine in America. Regret that he had died, at the age of seventy-six, far from his two daughters and a virtual stranger to their children. I felt bad for Mom. A satisfying relationship with the man whom she had so revered as a young child had eluded her. And I also regretted that now I would never get to know my grandfather. I thought about the distinct foreign voice I heard on the phone every once in a great while.
“Ah, hello, Leslie?”
“Hi, Grandpa,” I would say, summoning the warmth and enthusiasm I imagined came naturally to other granddaughters when their grandparents called.
“How are you? How is the family?”
“We’re all good. How is everything there?”
“Fine, thank God. Fine.”
I had no idea what else to say to him. “Hold on for one second. I’ll get my mom.” Did I say, “I love you?” I hope so, but I don’t recall.
Mom and her father would then talk briefly, almost entirely in Yiddish. I listened intently, hoping that this time things would be different; that Mom would sound relaxed and happy, chatting with her father. Instead, she inevitably sounded tense, and from what I could make out, stuck to surface conversation about her children. Their calls always ended sooner and more abruptly than I expected, or hoped.
LATER THAT SUMMER, maybe because Mom needed a distraction, our family went on a weeklong Hawaiian vacation. We toured the island, went out to dinner, lay on the beach, and swam. Well, most of us swam.
At home I had been a swim instructor for the past two summers. Along the way I had come across only one water-resistant student. That week in Hawaii, I practiced with her in the hotel pool.
“You’re doing great, just kick your feet,” I said to the tense forty-one-year-old woman who was gripping my hands with all her might.
“I’m doing it, I’m doing it,” she said proudly, kicking her legs.
“But you have to let go of my hands,” I said.
Mom continued to cling to me, like two socks fresh out of the dryer. She never could relax enough to allow herself to float.
At the end of the trip, en route to the airport, I uttered two words that would later haunt me. We had pulled off the road to take in a view of a waterfall. Mom had climbed up onto a three-foot stone ledge to get a good look. Then she was ready to get down.
“How do I get off of here?” she asked, looking around.
How easy it would have been for me to walk over and take her hand. I suppose anyone in our family could have. But I wanted for her to be self-sufficient.
“Just jump,” I said. It looked so simple.
“I can’t jump off here in these shoes,” Mom said.
I glanced at the thin wedges beneath Mom’s sandals before saying, “Mom, your shoes are fine. It’s not that high. Just jump.”
She jumped. Then she landed, twisting her ankle in the process. Her face turned white, and she collapsed in pain. Why did she listen to me? I wondered. When she looked up, she calmly said, “I told you I shouldn’t jump.”
When our plane touched down in Los Angeles a few hours later, Mom was taken off in a wheelchair. She had a bad sprain and would wear a soft cast for six weeks. I realized how much power my words had over her. Power, I felt, that I had not yet earned. I promised myself that in the future, I would be more careful of what I tried to convince Mom to do.
Back at UCLA, I immersed myself in extracurricular activities. Rather than socializing between classes, I operated much like the executives I would soon be exposed to, scheduling meetings or meals, often with an agenda. Apparently Grandpa Isaac’s message to Mom had trickled down to me: having fun was frivolous.
I was soaring through my sophomore year, still balancing Mom and Grandma Leah on my wings. I knew I had to try flying solo, but the day my family helped march my few essential possessions from our ranch-style haven of nineteen years into my new apartment felt like a funeral. My new roommate, Diane, a friend from UCLA student government, was there to greet me. She had a tough exterior, but once you broke through it, she was warm and funny. She treated me like a younger sister.
“Don’t worry, she won’t starve,” Diane told Mom, as we all stood in the living room.
“We’re not worried,” Mom said.
“In fact,” Diane continued, “I’m making my specialty, moussaka, for dinner tonight. My boyfriend will be here, too.” As she spoke, Diane gestured to the small adjoining kitchen just behind us.
I took a deep breath. “Actually, I’m going back home tonight,” I said. “I still have a few things there to take care of before school tomorrow.”
Diane stared at me. She probably was wondering what I needed to take care of that I couldn’t have completed over the previous two decades. Then she said, “Leslie, you have to leave home sometime.”
“I am. I’ll be here tomorrow,” I promised.
I rented the apartment for two years but slept there only a few nights a week. Home was still with my family. Both Gwyn and David were busy with their own high school lives by then. As was Mom. On one rainy morning, Mom rushed Gwyn to high school so she would not be late turning in an important health class report. Racing out of Mom’s car, Gwyn tripped, and her report splashed into a puddle. She and Mom both broke into tears. As they gathered up the soggy papers in the driving rain that morning, it seemed to Gwyn as if the two of them had merged into one.
Mom was always at her best, ironically, when we were most upset. No matter how widely I would come to spread my wings in the coming years, or how many loved ones I might be surrounded by, when I didn’t feel well, I wanted Mom.
“I’ll make you feel better,” she would say, gently stroking my hair and scalp. At times like these, there was no longing, and no wariness, just overflowing love from her enormous heart. I would lie in bed and hold Mom’s hand, not to make her feel good but because she made me feel so much better. No one else would ever take care of me so devotedly when I was sick. In those moments, I felt so at peace with her, curled up in the safety of her unguarded compassion.
MIDWAY THROUGH MY junior year at UCLA, one of my achievements catapulted me out of my cocoon. I was appointed student regent on the University of California Board of Regents. Upon receiving the news by telephone that I had been selected after an arduous interview process, I was perhaps more ecstatic than I had ever been. But even before the receiver was back in the cradle, a shadow crept in. I could not entirely trust anything this thrilling. Something ominous was bound to follow. What if I died before my term even began? Then I calmed down. Even if I did, I reasoned, it would not be so terrible. I had already lived a life filled with opportunity and rich experiences.
Having survived long enough to take office, at first I was out of my comfort zone as the student regent. Not only was I traveling to meetings in northern California, but I was working with leaders in the state, including the governor, who were more concerned with their own agendas than with helping me accomplish mine. Over lunch, a politically liberal regent named Stanley Sheinbaum, who would become a mentor and lifelong friend, offered me advice. “Don’t worry so much about being liked,” he said in his characteristically gruff yet warm manner.
“Okay,” I responded, hoping he liked me.
“Just speak up for what you believe in, and you’ll be fine,” he said.
Now I wasn’t just on good terms with those in charge. I was one of them. I was using my own position and voice to protect others. When it came time for the regents to decide whether the University of California would continue to operate nuclear weapons labs for the Department of Energy, I found myself in the midst of a highly charged political debate, and ultimately was one of only a few no votes. At one point in the discussion, as I was advocating my position, I thought about Mom, arguing with the manager in Fedco and the other gatekeepers along the way. I had a greater admiration for her unwillingness to back down from what she believed, and realized that I had incorporated some of that stubborn determination into my own playbook.
For Mom, there was no denying that I was on a slippery slope toward independence. I didn’t realize it then, but this must have been a very difficult time for her. Perhaps in an attempt to assuage her apprehensions about my impending graduation from college, she took me to a spa in nearby Ojai the summer before my senior year. Out by the pool the first day I was reading The Brethren, Bob Woodward’s book about the Supreme Court, when Mom walked over.
“I’m going to the aerobics session. You should come,” she said.
“No, thanks. I think I’ll just keep reading.”
“Are you sure? It’s supposed to be very strenuous, the way you like it.”
Why doesn’t she ever take no for an answer? “That’s okay.”
Mom studied my face. “You need to put some sunblock under your eyes.”
“I will.” I won’t. I turned back to my book.
“Really. It’s not good for that sensitive skin beneath your eyes to get burned over and over again.”
As I watched Mom walk off toward her class, I wondered what accounted for the new, nagging tension between us. After our Spartan dinner we returned to our quarters, furnished with two twin beds, a small dresser, and a lamp. I felt crowded and annoyed, although I still could not pinpoint why. I was particularly aggravated with myself for my inexplicable bad mood.
“Do you have any interest in that cooking class tomorrow?” Mom ventured. She was sitting on her bed, with her back propped up against the wall behind her.
“I can’t even eat this food. Why would I want to learn how to prepare it?” Why did I have to say that? I wondered, as soon as the words escaped my lips. Just say you’ll go. I sat on my bed, staring at her across the canyon that separated us, mute.
“It was just a suggestion.” She sounded hurt.
“Let’s call Dad,” I said, hoping a distraction would improve things.
I knew that we should be bonding, that we both had looked forward to this trip, and that I needed to be a nicer travel companion. But I fiercely needed to protect the distance I had struggled so hard to attain. It still felt as tenuous as the loss of a few pounds after a juice fast. I was sure it would evaporate if my thoughts escaped into Mom’s consciousness, or perhaps if her thoughts leaked into mine. At least for me, a more successful trip was on the horizon.
As student regent, I was invited by UCLA’s chancellor, Charles Young, to join a delegation that was heading to Japan to attend the Mirage Bowl, a football game that would be played between UCLA and Oregon State. Although Japan had been the one country that Dad always wanted to visit, I found myself scouring Tokyo jewelry shops for a pearl necklace for Mom. It weighed on me like a fettuccine Alfredo dinner that Mom was missing out on this experience.
Once I selected the necklace, however, I felt sure that Mom and I could both now be happy about my weeklong trip. I toured, met new lifelong friends, and felt strangely elated. I realized that the tremendous pressure I carried around had lightened when I left town and my family. This time the space that opened up between us was leaving room for me to breathe. The fear I had experienced before I left home, the same anticipatory separation anxiety I had always felt, had not been the portent of a bad adventure. Rather than worrying so much about Mom’s independence, I needed to remind myself, more often, to “Just Jump.”