Mishpaha

After reading My Mother's Ring by Helen Schulman I couldn't help but think about my own family crises. Reading about Helen's father I couldn't help but think of my own father. My father was diagnosed with a brain tumor when I was six years old. It is very difficult for me to recall the events from around that time. What i do remember is being terrified and alone. My father was in the hospital, my mother was absent, and my grandmother came up to take care of us (5 kids).

My mother during this time was working in New York City and commuting each day from our home in Jersey into the city. She was an editor for Shma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility. I don't know what my mother did day in and day out, I just remember her not being around. If she was around she was asleep. Schulman phrases her concern this way "I knew they would be very upset to wake up and not find me home. They'd never woken up to not find me home before." and I am almost sure that my mother felt the same way. While my mother had been absent just the year before, when my grandfather was diagnosed with lung cancer, it did not make her absence any less apparent and difficult for us children.

While my grandmother did come up to help around the house, and while we did have a nanny to stay with us in the harshest of times, my mother was still the one to prepare shabbat dinners each week, she was still mentally present to ask us each week what the highlight of our week was (as was the friday night dinner tradition). But even with all the help the stress still got to my mother. I never saw her angry and she never yelled, but I think that was more because she was exhausted than anything else. "What happens to a person when she suddenly finds herself more powerful than the most powerful people in her life? My parents, who after all gave me life, shepherded me through childhood that surprisingly seemed to extend itself way into adulthood, gave me love and advice, lent me money, cared for me when I was sick, baby-sat my kids so my husband and I could go to the movies... my parents were suddenly both weak, vulnerable, small." I never saw her angry, but I did see her cry.

At age six I had never seen my mother cry. At her father's funeral I don't remember a tear falling from her gorgeous and delicate brown eyes. But one night in the middle of my father's hospitalization I saw my mother sitting on the end of her bed, head in her hands crying. What do you do when you suddenly find yourself more powerful than those most powerful in your life? I gave her a hug. Schulman distanced herself from her own husband, she did not want to wear her mother's ring, so where was the comfort in her life supposed to be coming from. To make it through hard times you need to feel loved. My family made it through together and only together.