It is just a coincidence that sunny California is not sunny this day. It is uncharacteristically cloudy and damp-ish as night falls. It is much like the day, 33 years ago, exactly, that my mother died at 48, five years younger than I am, today and 3,000 miles from here. I see her as the young woman aspiring to model--but only in photographs for this was before my time. She was pretty enough to be a successful model in the 1940's, and she had then a Scarlett O'Hara 18 inch waist. But, Bronx girls out of Irish Catholic families did not do that sort of thing. Her effort was perfunctory. She, unlike me, never left the Bronx. She married, too young, my father commented more than once, blaming himself, at 18. She was 28 before she had her only child. We know, my father and I, that husband and child were not what she wanted. She dreamt of a life that only became possible in my time, for me, and not for her. I see her as dutiful housewife and mother--percolating with some angst and anger that erupted occasionally, and ironically, in a silent, but intense coldness. She pushed me to education, to religion, and to profession, to excellence, and as far away from her as she could manage, and still live in the same apartment. She was an innocent raging against her world as it was. I see her, softened by illness and the proximity of death, red tam covering the top of her long flowing wig we picked out together, presenting me with a Krum's ice cream cone on Fordham Road.
I do not see her as the old lady she would be today. Well, I did, once, in a dream, and I am happy to say she was smiling at me.
May Eternal Light Shine Upon You.
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