Prolet

A lot of my mother’s story is in her name, Prolet.  My grandfather, David, named her for the proletariat. He was a passionate man, not unlike the man she would grow up to marry, and his passion for a just world was built right into her name.  Mom was born in 1922 in The Bronx, the only child of Jewish immigrants from Poland. Her first language was Yiddish, and living in a Jewish enclave, she didn’t learn English until she started school. Although her father was no feminist, he did believe that girls should be educated, and he saw to it that she attended a class on dialectical materialism, where she first met my Dad. I imagine her father also had a large influence on her decision to go to college.

My mother’s name was far from the only unusual thing about her.  She had a great gift for mathematics but she was also a word lover and a serious naturalist.  She was interested in all living things, but most especially in her four daughters.  She adored us and she was also fascinated by our development and our ability to learn.  She was a naturally gifted teacher and we were her first, and most fortunate, students. So many of us, my siblings, our children, our friends when we were kids, and their children attribute to Mom our love of nature and much of what we know about it. And generations of students who passed through her classrooms in Olinville Jr. High 113 owe to her their ability to see mathematics as fascinating and delightful – and the proper province for girls.

There was a brief period after we moved out of The Bronx to the more status conscious world of Westchester County when I was embarrassed by my unique mother.  She was definitely not the suburban ideal.  She wore lipstick for work and for special occasions (although Dad often had to remind her) but I don’t remember her owning any other makeup.  She dressed appropriately though not stylishly, and she was most at home in t-shirts, jeans and sneakers. She wore her long hair in a braid wound around her head – more peasant than middle class. She didn’t look like the coifed and carefully made up moms of my new friends’ mothers – and, thank goodness, she wasn’t like them.

Mom lived, in many ways, in her own world. If she was watching a butterfly or working on the crossword puzzle, the house could pretty much burn down around her before she would notice.  Neither time nor money had much meaning for her.  I don’t think she ever paid a bill, (fortunately, Dad did) and she often forgot to carry money.  She and I once set out driving into Manhattan for a visit to the Museum of Natural History, but we had to turn back when Mom realized we didn’t have money for the Thruway toll, let alone museum admission, parking, or lunch. 

My period of embarrassment about having such a non conforming mother was a very brief interlude in a childhood otherwise mostly devoted to love and admiration for my wonderful mother. She had such amazing faith in us and was the antithesis of a helicopter parent or a tiger mom.  Her only ambition for us was that we grow into ourselves.  She trusted us to take chances and make mistakes.  I was a pretty active kid, and I know there were times when she bit her tongue to keep from telling me to not stand too close to the edge of something or to not jump too far, but she knew that within reason, we needed to find our own limits.

Mom and I were companionable working together.  I remember carrying laundry with her down to the shared laundry room in our apartment in Mamaroneck, and sitting gabbing together on the plastic chairs, waiting for the washers and the dryers to finish.  And I remember cleaning the kitchen together in that apartment, memorizing poetry while we washed and dried the dishes. Mom had a prodigious memory and knew hundreds of poems by heart (a lot of them limericks, slightly bawdy, which she loved).  One day, when Mom was in her eighties, she and I were sitting together on the deck in Amenia and a goldfinch lit on the blooming lilac bush.  I commented on how pretty the purple and gold looked together, and Mom instantly quoted, “The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold.” It’s from a poem by Byron, much of which she remembered, and she knew about the historical event it described – who the Assyrians were attacking and why.

Mom had shared her father’s passion for Zionism, the dream of building a Jewish state in what was then Palestine.  I don’t know if my Zayda (grandfather) had been a Zionist before the second World War.  He may have shared the early dream of many Eastern European Jews of creating a socialist state.  But after the Holocaust he was definitely a committed Zionist, emigrating to Israel with my grandmother in 1950, just a couple of years after the State of Israel was born. Zayda was to establish himself in Israel and pave the way for our family to follow.  Mom was deeply committed to this project, and even after her beloved father died she fully expected to spend her life as a pioneer, building the new state.

When Zayda died, Mom, Shayne and I sailed to Israel and began to settle in.  Dad followed after he wrapped up his business in the US.  In 1952, when we arrived in Israel, the future of the state was still very uncertain, surrounded, as it was, by hostile neighbors. Israel was full of refugees from Europe, many of whom arrived with nothing but terrible scars and the clothes on their backs.  The young state struggled to support these new citizens, but it was tough on the economy.  Most consumer products were rationed. My Mom remembered that toilet paper and butter were nearly impossible to find. Happily, our family had been vegetarians for years (another of my Zayda’s passions, for ethical reasons) so we weren’t affected by the shortage of meat.

Dad looked at this struggling economy and the threatening neighbors and decided that, having lived through the depression and the war, he wanted a safe and comfortable life for himself and his family, and he decided to return to the US.  I don’t know much about the discussion my parents had about this (I was only four, and they didn’t talk about it later), but I do know that it was a terrible blow for Mom.  She was personally committed to building the state, but also, mourning the loss of her father, she wanted to fulfill his dream for our family. And Mom was a natural pioneer.  She was brave, and material privations didn’t matter to her.  She believed in the zionist dream of a state in which everyone was equal. But she couldn’t imagine life without Dad, so we all returned to the US.

It is not surprising that Mom fell into a depression when we returned. I didn’t really understand anything about that until I was much older, and it came as a shock for me to learn about it.  I grew up thinking that my parents were perfect and that their lives were perfect, but of course, that is never true. This pioneer, this daughter of the proletariat, found herself living a life of increasing wealth and luxury as Dad’s business prospered.  It wasn’t the life she had imagined for herself, and it wasn’t a life that completely suited her.  What did suit her was being a mother, becoming a teacher, and her amazing summer home in Amenia.  I don’t know if Dad agreed to let Mom have a fourth child, Aviva, or if he bought our property in Amenia as consolation for Mom, to anchor her in the US and to compensate her for all she gave up, but it seems like it, looking back. It was certainly in Amenia that Mom was most at home, so I’ll tell the rest of her story with the story of Amenia.

Mom would have been 99 today.  I miss her every time I can name a bird or a flower and every time I wish she was here to name one for me.