Rant #3,199: Goodbye

"When I was very young, probably around two years old or so, my mother and I were in a department store or supermarket, where my mom was shopping, and I was creating whatever havoc I was doing while she was trying to shop.

I was a little terror as a young child, curious about everything, into everything, and under foot like a piece of used gum stuck to the sidewalk that you invariably step on with your shoes.

Anyway, my mother was waiting on line to check out, and I was doing my thing, causing havoc while all she wanted to do was to check out and come home.

My mother was visibly pregnant with my sister, Gail, and while I was doing what I was doing, an elderly woman on the line with my mother looked at me, turned to my mother and said as she pointed to me:

“After that”—now pointing to my mother’s stomach—“you actually want another one?”

My mother ran home crying.

That story became one of my mother’s favorite stories to tell everyone about me, as I went through my “Larry the Menace” phase, and as we remember my mother on this very solemn day, it only seemed fitting to bring it up.

And yes, I did actually calm down a bit when my sister was born, and I became her “big brother.”

There are so many other funny, and poignant stories about my mother that I could tell you today, but I want to dispel a false rumor, and urban legend that is simply not true:

My mother did not vacuum the house at 4 a.m. in the morning. I just don’t know how that untruth started, but it simply is not true—

She vacuumed at 4:30 a.m. in the morning, so let’s set the record straight once and for all!

My mother was the family’s rock of Gibraltar for as long as I can remember, the person my sister and I could go to with all of our triumphs, our problems, and everything in between.

We could tell her just about everything, and she would tell us that everything would work out, everything would be fine, and to take just one day at a time.

But she had her rules and regulations, and while they were not hard to follow, sometimes things kind of got in the way …

I must have been about four years old or so, and we lived by then in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, a very notorious neighborhood in the early to mid-1960s, home to the Kitty Genovese and Alice Crimmins incidents that made worldwide headlines.

Anyway, I was outside with my friends playing—probably digging up the backyard of the building that we lived in—and among my “friends” was an older kid, a 10-year old also named Larry.

Larry was an interesting guy. He was already known by the police as a troublemaker, and was a charter member of the Kew Gardens Hills Juvenile Delinquent Club. My mother made sure, personally, that he got his card to this club, as she knew that this kid was a problem.

For some unknown reason, he took a liking to me, and he even, during his quieter moments, built me a scooter from discarded fruit crates and roller skates.

Anyway, on this particular day, he called me over, and told me to tell my mother something. I had never heard these words before, but he told me to go right upstairs and tell my mother these words, and that she would be happy when I told her this.

I dutifully ran upstairs, told my mother what he told me to say to her, and she turned red as a beet!

What Larry told me to tell my mother was actually a slew of filthy four-letter words directed at her, and when my mother heard me say these words to her, whether they came from the older Larry or not, those words were never to be spoken again in our house.

She took me by my head into the sink, put on the water full force, and took the bar of soap we had there to wash our hands and washed out my mouth with it.

I learned my lesson right there and then.

Through the years, my mother and father were in the perfect 1950s marriage—my father made the money and my mother ran the house—and they never changed, even in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and beyond, and you can’t argue with it, as they were married for nearly 65 years.

My mother was an incredible influence on my sister and I. My father refused to let my mother work when we were growing up, and during the Rochdale Village days, she was probably the only mom I can remember who was a full-time homemaker.

Just about all my friends had their moms working at east part-time—some full-time—and my mother became something of a surrogate mother to all the friends my sister and I had. They knew as well as we did that if we did anything stupid, and she caught wind of it, we would get into trouble, because my mother would tell my friends’ parents if any of us got out of line.

Happily, she didn’t know about a lot of the stupid things we did, but believe me, she knew about plenty!

Once we moved to Long Island, the world was changing in the 1970s, and women’s rights became a big topic of conversation.

My sister had a friend whose mother was very much into the women’s right movement, organizing rallies and attending meetings related to Women’s Liberation.

This woman saw a likely recruit in my mother, who she simply regarded as a lowly housewife, and she tried to recruit my mom to the movement.

After several attempts, my mother flatly told her the following: “I am the most liberated woman I can be, because I am doing exactly what I want to do with my life,” and no truer words were ever said, and that was the end of the recruitment process.

My mother eventually did go to work, working numerous fitting rooms in a variety of department stores in the Sunrise Mall in Massapequa. My father didn’t like it, but he like the extra money she was bringing into the house.

She expanded her world there, met some very interesting people—one of her regular customers was Christine Jorgensen, one of the most famous people in the world in the 1950s as the first transgender person who settled back in Massapequa in her last decades of life—and really enjoyed the camaraderie with fellow workers.

And through it all—and through the succeeding decades—she was doing exactly what she wanted to do, and she was about the best mother my sister and I could have ever had.

Even towards the end, even with the dementia and the other ailments that eventually destroyed her, we could chat with her, we could laugh with her, we could cry with her, and she always had impactful things to say to us, even with her mind being eaten away.

Now that she is gone, we have some problems that need to be solved, but we are going to have to do it on our own, without the advice of our mother.

I don’t know how we are going to do this, but we will manage—

And I do think that my mother will be looking over our shoulders during the entire process, making sure that we are doing the right thing.

I love you mom.

One crack, two bam—MAH JONGG!

Amen."