A MOTHER

I wear, on the ring finger of my right hand, a small solitaire diamond ring. The stone is modest, about half a carat, cut in an old-fashioned brilliant style, set in a fine filigree white gold or platinum band. The stone is small but it is of great clarity. I don’t know the official terms but it is clear as water and catches the light when I move my hand.

This was my mother’s engagement ring. I am pretty sure that I have worn it a lot more than she ever did, because she put on weight after she had her first child and the ring was too tight to wear any longer. She could have had it resized but she chose to put it away in a little velvet box, and that was the box that my father gave me after she passed away 27 years ago.

It’s the strangest thing, but the older I get and the longer my mother has been in Gan Eden, the more I think of her. We didn’t really have such a close huggy-kissy relationship, mainly because of my own innate standoffishness and secretiveness, but when we did relate, it was all honest.

So as her 27^th yohrzeit is approaching, 10^th Sivan, I will once more commemorate the life of my late mother, who passed away too soon, and who is not remembered by my children at all. They were only 4, 3 and 1 years old and the youngest three were born after she was gone. So really, they only know of her through my stories and some photos- very few photos as she was camera-shy- so the stories become more important somehow.

To recap, she was born in 1919 in Melbourne to parents who came from Tzefat, Palestine. (My grandparents were Palestinians. This was once a term reserved for the Jews of Palestine before 1947. Really.) She was raised in Perth, where her father and uncles ran a bakery. It seems to me that her father, my Zeida Moishe, whom I barely remember as he passed away when I was 2 (longevity was not a strong suit in my mother’s family), was a bit of a maverick; his brothers stayed and settled in Perth but he left for Melbourne, married, returned, and was heavily involved in Perth’s Yiddish Theatre. My mother was pretty feisty too, and left home to play in the Maccabean Games in Melbourne at the age of 17 (basketball! She was 5’ 1” tall!), and then refused to return as Melbourne had a more vibrant Jewish scene. Her parents eventually joined her. She worked as a secretary and supported herself, sharing a flat with some girls in St Kilda Rd. My mother had a lovely singing voice –dramatic soprano- and had won a scholarship to train at La Scala in Milan in 1938, but as Italy was fascist and the drums of war were beating, she stayed home. She enlisted when WW2 began and worked in the Navy Code Room, but was also involved in the Armed Forces Entertainment Troupe, and sang in variety shows for soldiers as well as in civilian entertainments; I have playbills and programs to prove all of this. So she had an interesting life. Not your usual normal Jewish girl’s sort of background. My Dad was a tailor from the Poilishe shtetl, and came to Australia early 1939, sponsored by his sister who had married an English guy and lived in Newcastle, NSW. His plan was to get together money and papers to bring out his wife and 2 little sons, but time ran out and he failed. His family was murdered by the Nazis.

Fast forward to 1946. My father had confirmed reports of the fate of his family, met my mother at a Jewish social evening where she had been chaperoned by her mother- at age 26!- and they married Dec 29^th 1946.

Well, after that, she didn’t really sing much more, as back in the day, that’s not what married ladies did. She had 3 children, I was the youngest, and she worked like a dog. My sweet-natured dad wasn’t much of a businessman, and long story short, they worked in the market, selling underwear, t-shirts etc. They made a living. Then, on the brink of retirement, she got sick and died of ovarian cancer, age 65. Her own mother had died of the same disease, age 55. (I know, I know, I’ve had genetic testing and I don’t carry the gene BH).

She was a witty woman, short, round, with a big temper and, of course, a voice that she could project from one end of the house to the other. She never needed to smack us to keep us in line, she just yelled, and that was more than enough. She was a bit embittered by her life’s trajectory, maybe a bit depressed, and she struggled with her weight forever, but my father adored her and she had close friends.

Like her engagement ring diamond, she was small but she sparkled. And she was, in a way, shut away in a box where few saw her brilliance.

So before this gets too maudlin, I just want to share 2 things she used to say to me (my kids have heard this before):

Every now and then, she would marvel at the naivete of her genius daughter, the medical student, and say ‘I don’t know about you, Shyrla: clever, clever, clever, clever, stupid.’ Boy, do I get that now. I see it in some of my own kids.

And from her showbiz years- ‘Always leave them wanting more.’ What great advice. I try to live by it.