"Everything begins with fried onions" my Mother would tell me as she dumped a handful of chopped onions into bubbling oil. The sizzle and sweet smell of fried onions always filled the room and you would catch her softly humming as she stirred the mixture. It is impossible for me to fry an onion without thinking about my Mom.
She was born in the spring of 1921 as the fourth daughter of the arranged marriage of Meyer Heindisch, a hard working mystery man from New York who was a laborer for the Fels Naphtha Company, and Tilly Krasney, a woman with a large extended family and a kind heart.
With a total of six children, my Mom's family lived in a two-bedroom row house in South Philadelphia. The children would wake up before dawn to share a breakfast of hot cereal together before their father took a series of streetcars to work. At a charity summer camp, she learned the corny and cheerful songs that she would sing to us and her grandchildren throughout her life.
"We didn't realize that we were poor," my mother often said.
Her family may have had little money but my mother grew up rich, with the fortune that comes with close siblings, a warm disposition and an undying optimism that would serve as her trademark for nine decades. I'm awed at the good nature my mother brought to many difficulties that would have hardened others...
As a nine-year old suffering from childhood tuberculosis in a sanitarium.
Living with hearing loss in the many years before she could afford a hearing aid.
As a 30 year-old woman who was pregnant with her third child overcoming serious illness and traveling in steerage as she and my family returned from their brief life in Israel.
Much later, living with cancer.
Later still, as she lost her vision.
Somehow, she always knew that everything would be alright.
The Cow in the Kitchen, a folk tale.
I am five-years old and my mother is washing dishes in our Levittown house as Ann Naylor and Shassy Russakoff drink coffee at her kitchen table. My mother always made friends. In walks Mrs. Maguire, our next-door neighbor, fretting about life with eight children in a one-bathroom house.
My mother stops washing dishes. "Let me tell you about the Cow in the Kitchen," she says.
Once upon a time there was a farmer and his wife who lived with their children in a little house. One day, the farmer went to the rabbi. 'My house is very crowded. The children cry, the dog barks and my wife scolds me because the house is too crowded. What shall I do?'
The rabbi said, "Just bring the cow into the kitchen."
The next day, the farmer came back and said that it was even more crowded and even more noisy."
"Now bring the goat into the kitchen," said the Rabbi. This went on with the lamb, ducks and chickens until the farmer could stand it no more. Once again, he appealed to the rabbi.
"Now, shoo all the animals out of the kitchen," the rabbi said.
The farmer took the rabbi's advice and shooed the animals out. He then turned to his wife. "Isn't it quiet?" he asked. "Look at all the room we have."
Look at all the room we have. Look at how lucky we are. Everything will be alright.
This was my Mother's Mantra.
She helped others who were not as lucky. My Mother was thoughtful and kind to all.
She worked with children who suffered with cerebral palsy, she translated books into braille, she shopped for the home-bound. She helped Russian immigrants and hosted older women for Sunday dinner in a ritual that, as a snarly teen, I referred to as "widow of the week." She made dinner for Mr. Wagner, the blind man on Almond Lane, and had me deliver bones from our dinner for the Sweeneys' dog.
When our pet parakeet flew into a door, breaking its beak, she ground up birdseed for it. If your friends slept over, she would wash, dry and fold their clothes while they were sleeping.
She brought knishes everywhere.
I remember Ari and Shula Rutkoff showing up unexpectedly one afternoon when my parents weren't around. They had moved to Alabama and were visiting relatives in the area and stopped by to say Hi to my folks. Ari's exact words were: "Well if your Mom and Dad aren't home, are there at least some knishes in your freezer?"
"He mostly came here for the knishes," Shula said.
She took care of everybody, especially my father.
They met as teens. He was too shy to ask her out on their first date. He brought her books of short stories to read together and when he came to visit, she would make him tea, boiling the water on a low flame to keep him around longer.
He stayed for 75 years.
So it was with delicious irony that the song we chose to sing at their seventieth anniversary was "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?"
"Tonight, the light of love is in your eyes.
But will you love me, tomorrow?"
Then we placed a crown on her head, the radiant queen of our family, and danced around my Mom and Dad, encircling them with love.
A joke my mother loved to tell.
An old man tells his wife he's going out for a walk.
"Would you pick me up an ice cream cone," she asks? "With chocolate sprinkles?"
"Okay" he says.
"Write it down - you'll forget," she says.
"An ice cream cone with chocolate sprinkles. I'll remember."
"Write it down"
"I'll remember."
Half an hour later, the man returns, holding a tiny bag with a single bagel.
"Oy," says the wife, "you forgot the lox!"
My mother never lost her sense of humor, her appreciation for life and her willingness to live it without bounds.
Whose mother volunteers for the Israeli Army in her 60's?
Whose mother goes white-water rafting for the first time m her 70's or snorkeling in her 80's?
When she was 84 she traveled the length of Israel with my Dad, Marcy, Gary and me.
She was 92 when I watched her swim 20 strokes on a single breath.
My Mother was fearless and gentle and an enduring inspiration.
More than anything else, I will miss her laugh.
"How are you doing?" I would ask, long-distance.
The reply was always the same: "Tm in good shape for the shape I'm in."
Then she would laugh, like she attempted to do in one of her very last breaths.
I am 41 years old. It is a rainy night in early January, the night before my first major eye surgery. I am worried and scared about the prospects of a possible life without sight.
Then, I hear a sizzle. My mom is frying onions. And she is humming softly.
The sounds and sweet smell of frying onions drift out from the kitchen and into the family room, filling my heart. I breathe in the air, scented with onions and delivering love.
Suddenly, I know that everything will be alright..
