My wife asked if I wanted to cover the mirrors. A Jewish tradition in a house a mourning. At first, I said no. Many pressing concerns had been raised by my mother suddenly dying that morning; her soul becoming trapped in a mirror wasn’t among them.
Then I immediately changed my mind and agreed. Rituals comfort. The tradition had been retrofitted for modern times. Now mirrors are covered to discourage vanity among the bereaved. I’m all for that. We could all use less vanity. Imagine where our once-proud nation might be today if fewer were consumed by self-regard.
“Suddenly” is the wrong word. My mother had been steadily dying for years — ailment upon indignity upon deterioration. Every time I’d visit, I’d make sure to kiss her goodbye and tell her I love her because I wasn’t sure if I’d see her again. The last time, a week earlier, I’d gone to show her a photo of her newborn great-granddaughter.
My mother immediately perked up, even phoning her sisters to share the happy news. We agreed that this was the most beautiful, perfect baby ever, and at Thanksgiving she would be personally presented for my mother’s approval. Though I doubted that happening, I stood in the doorway, gazing at my mother, until I realized she was staring back at me with a “what-are-you-looking-at-bub?” expression. I turned away.
The next time I saw her, she was dead in Bay 48 of the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital. Not a moment I’d prepared for. I don’t believe I actually turned to my wife and implored, “Do something!” But I certainly thought it. My mother sang as a teen — on the radio, in clubs — and to us all our lives. In those last few moments together, I sang a pair of brief lullabies: “Rock-a-Bye” and “My Bonnie,” an odd Scottish lament turned into a bedtime song, speaking of retrofitting tradition.
Most of a week was consumed with planning and holding the funeral, plus packing up her effects, donating her clothing.
In timing that would look trite in fiction but life doesn’t blush to offer, 48 hours after we buried my mother, my wife and I flew to New York to meet our new granddaughter and help her parents pack up their apartment and move. Because merely having a baby isn’t difficult enough.
Babies help. Babies are the definition of humility — helpless creatures that require your full concentration just to keep in bottles and fresh diapers. Young people agonize whether this is even an appropriate time to have children, with the world going crazy. I say it is, and offer up my mother’s life as an example of how deceptive the fog of the present can be. My mother was born in 1936 — not a propitious year for Jewish girls to enter the world, generally. But she had the good sense to be born in Cleveland, Ohio, instead of Stawiski, Poland, like her father was.
She would go whistling through the calamitous 20th century, spending 35 years in Boulder, Colorado, an upgrade over Cleveland if ever there were one. Today is not a reliable augury of tomorrow; here, no sure road map to there.
So sure, my granddaughter might go to kindergarten under the benevolent gaze of an enormous portrait of Our Dear Leader. Or in an invigorated nation, freshly reminded of the preciousness of law and human dignity. That is still being determined. I remain hopeful, because of this baby, and because I know my history.
Returning to actual babies. No jiggling is allowed, certainly no kissing. I was told that doing so could make her blind. A stretch, but I’m not calling the shots here — covering those mirrors seems to have had its effect.
Singing is permitted, though, as is continuous talking, a quality inherited from my late mother. I found myself singing “Rock-a-Bye” and “My Bonnie,” reflecting, with muted amazement, on the astounding rapidity of life — on Saturday singing to my mother, whose life had just ended, then six days later warbling these same songs to this little lozenge of squirming adorableness, whose whole life stretches before her in all its promise and possibility.
I sang Fats Waller’s “Ain’t Mishavin’.”
“That was a particular favorite of your Grandma June,” I explained. “When she was 16, only a little older than you are now, she crossed the Atlantic Ocean on an airplane — a Lockheed Super Constellation — to entertain the troops in Germany. She was frightened, but she was also very brave. Always remember: You come from bold people, who go places and do things. Who knows where you are going to go and what you are going to do someday?”
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