Mothers Days

I thought it was crazy and told her so after I laughed. She had just come back from Israel where she had gone for her mother's yahrzeit (anniversary of death). And per her brother's comment about the state of the tombstone, Chani took along the Israeli equivalent of Mr. Clean. With rags and Psalms in hand, she arrived at mountaintop cemetery and had herself a session with her mother and her remains.

Chani is my dear friend since the seventies and we've traveled life's journeys together although never in the same city. Through kids, quirks, in-laws, job changes, moves, grandchildren, health issues, and deaths, we have weathered the crises together via long distance.

She was a clean freak who usually didn't talk about it. She just did it. Perhaps it was the Hungarian via Belgium standards she inherited from her mother. After all, Chani taught me the difference between clean and sparkling clean years ago when discussing living in other people's houses during the years when we both boarded.

Besides cracking me up, this report of her trip to Israel l took me back down memory lane. I think Chani was the one who showed me how to air out down quilts in the Cleveland winter by opening the windows wide for a few minutes of frigidity. I pictured her with gloves and Sano, giving the stone monument a thorough scrubbing and leaving it shining before washing her hands with wipes and opening the Book of Psalms.

"Shalom, my mother, my teacher" is the opening of one of the prayers in the yahrzeit manuals. And that's how my friend Chani greeted her mother on the day of the annual judgment of a deceased according to Jewish tradition: with the cleanliness she learned from her. She honored her in a way that she knew was respectful and meaningful to her mother.

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We all take different things from our mothers and honor them posthumously with the lessons we learned from them. My friend Miriam, also an out of towner, cannot match her mother's homemaking skills at all. She is a clutter bug and that's the way it's always going to be.

But one of the most telling lessons for her life came while going through her mother's things after her death. She found a series of letters her mother wrote to her father during the middle years of their marriage. While his career was on the high speed train to international success, she wrote to him strongly about the priorities of a family life and the influences of the professional world.

Apparently, there was a time when the dear helpmeet focused on opposing certain behaviors, values, and language in her husband.

My own sister was horrified when I once told her what I took away from the reaction to our mother's passing. People cherished our mother's candid personality, her maverick style, and her signature sharp, smart comments that were incisive and warm at the same time. They absolutely loved that Mommy was herself, I observed, and no one cared that she was unorthodox. They called her refreshingly honest and real.

"That's what you learned from Mommy? What about all the good deeds that she did? People keep talking about her impact on their lives, how she was so insightful and helped them during large and small crises. Those mitzvas are forever."

I couldn't argue about that. But it wasn't a new lesson for me, I told her, and she knew it.

We all honor our mothers, during their lifetimes as well after their passing, in ways that resonate with our characters, our strengths and our weaknesses. It is probably impossible for one woman to encompass all the qualities cited by Solomon in his Woman of Valor chapter in Proverbs. Who can find all those virtues in the alphabet in one person?

We need to ponder the strengths of that proverbial woman of valor and to see which particular attributes resonate with us. Then it is up to us to emulate those virtues on our own level. Whether it is the woman of valor in Scriptures or the woman of valor with whom we grew up, we can grow when we have a clear vision of what feminine qualities we aspire to.

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A former nonprofit management professional and now freelance writer, digital marketing strategist and political advocate, Faigie Horowitz has cofounded a shelter for homeless girls, a synagogue on Long Island, and mostly recently JWOW!, Jewish Women of Wisdom, a community for midlifers. She holds a Masters in Management and nests on Long Island with way too many closets.

Previously:
• Same family, different experience
• Making grandparents great again
• I'm an addict, but NOT in treatment
• My Book of Life will not be an artifact