Among so many other lessons,
she taught us there was always beauty to be seen.
There aren’t a lot of pictures of Mom that show her as she really was. She could be uncomfortable in front of the camera – perhaps overthinking how something was going to appear – but that said, there are a few images I particularly love.
The first two were taken before Peter and I hit the scene and appear to be from the same era. In one she is draped on the arm of Mike’s chair, who is sitting next to Fritzi. There is a casual ease in how the camera captures her, and I’m going to guess that’s because she is with two of the people she loved most in the world. In the second, she is sitting with Evie and Amy and Josh, and there is a loveliness, almost peacefulness to her expression. This tells me that despite her sometimes struggling to feel part of things, she really loved her extended family – and she did – she really loved all of you here today.
There’s a picture taken on Lake George from when Peter and I were young where she is lounging in what our family affectionately referred to as the “rubber duckie,” a large inflatable lifeboat-looking number that enabled Doris to hit the water without actually hitting the water. (She didn’t like cold water almost as much as she didn’t like waking up early). At her happiest when the four of us were out gallivanting – camping first in a tent and later in a pop-up trailer, Mom worked hard to make sure life felt like an adventure for us all. Not the athletic type by a mile, she was still out there, in it – on the trail, on a bike, making sure we were noticing how beautiful the world was. How delicious popovers could be. And how you could score a discounted Ralph Lauren polo shirt if you were willing to embrace a slightly imperfect jockey from the bins at Deckers of Norwalk.
There is a picture of Doris and Mike with all four grandkids that has held a spot of honor atop their dresser for the last 8 years. Mike was actually already sick when the picture was taken, but you’d never know from looking at it. There is so much joy in both of their faces – really in all 6 of their faces. There is the last full family picture taken at Rachael and Gideon’s wedding brunch. And a grainy iPhone photo of Doris, Peter, Doug, and me from when Peter was first able to travel east during the pandemic – something that because it seemed like might never actually happen feels particularly precious. These snapshots are just moments, but they speak to a larger life and illustrate one of the things that mattered most to our Mom: the people she loved.
She loved other things too.
Fresh Produce. Procured at a local farm stand or from the (then unheard of) fruit and vegetable co-op she established in our neighborhood, requiring her and a handful of other suburban enthusiasts to take turns getting up early and driving to the Bronx Terminal Market. As a kid, I remember her leaving the car at the end of the driveway, laying down the bottom half of the back of our station wagon door, and neighbors coming over to select what was fresh and in season.
Snow Days. Today there are apps for calculating the possibility of a snow day – and in the city, they are now often even announced the night before. But in the 1970s, when you woke to snow, you turned on the radio and listened to the ongoing and updated alphabetical list of school closures and delays, hoping to hear your school mentioned. Mom was a teacher back then, so she was one of the only parents we knew wishing for a day off as much as we were.
Peace Doves. I’m going to credit her good friend, Suzanne, for instilling a love of this graphic, which began as a recurring holiday card motif and grew to encompass sculpture, jewelry, and even salt and pepper shakers.
Planned Parenthood. I can not remember a time when a woman’s right to choose was not front and center for Mom. Never highly political, she did always vote with this issue in mind, volunteered at the local Planned Parenthood when we were kids, and worried that the Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe v Wade with the most recent nominations to the bench – something, I admit, that seemed impossible to me at the time.
Reading. I have heard it said that when you teach someone to read, you guarantee that they will be able to learn forever. Our Mom taught countless kids to read. She encouraged Peter and me, too, taking us to the library, where we’d curl up for hours. Her true love was children’s books – with Are You My Mother and The Man Who Didn’t Wash His Dishes topping the list. To this day, when I am tired and facing a sinkful of dishes, I think of that story and roll up my sleeves.
Beautiful Things. After Peter and I were out of the house, Doris and Mike took pleasure in the hunt for yellow bowls, cake stands, the perfect puppet. But even before the two began traipsing across New England collecting Americana Antiques, Peter and I were aware of how much pleasure Mom took in beautiful things. As kids, we ate off of Royal Copenhagen china every day (with a fancier set used for yontif), and learning to set the table included making sure the flower in the center of the plate was facing stem-down. When I had the good fortune to visit Denmark while studying abroad, Mom gave me a list of what had been lost or broken over her then 28 years of marriage, and as Deb can attest, I was somehow able to finagle getting on a People’s Express flight with 2 big bags of china.
Chocolate. When Peter and I were growing up, Mom told us repeatedly that a Hershey bar cost only a nickel when she was a kid. Undeterred by the rising cost of chocolate, Doris continued to embrace her love of sweets, at some point replacing the midday meal with either a chocolate donut or a piece of yellow cake with chocolate icing, accompanied by a tall glass of chocolate milk. An open bag of Dove Dark Chocolates was always an arm’s length away. And in the spirit of Fritzi, who claimed that chocolate ice cream “warmed her up,” Mom always saved room before bed to carry on that long-standing tradition.
But of everything she loved, she loved her family most. Her husband, Peter and me, our spouses, our children, all of you, her friends, her mother. She faced challenges throughout her life, as do we all, but even during these last still harder days and weeks when she wasn’t speaking much, she somehow managed to say “I love you,” when Peter and I were with her. Her face lit up when we showed her a picture of Fritzi, and she would ask Peter, “How are the boys,” and me, “How are the girls?”
Because I’m a bit of a glutton, I recently read Emma Staub’s This Time Tomorrow, which was written while her own father was dying.
“Should I call an ambulance?” Alice understood was hospice meant, but it just felt wrong not to do everything one could. But of course, they already had.
“No, no,” Leonard said. His mouth pulled into a grimace. “No. This is the deal. We all have a time, and this is mine. Whether it’s today or tomorrow or next month, this is it.”
“I just don’t…like that, Dad.” Alice was surprised to find herself crying.
“I don’t like it much, either,” Leonard said. he shut his eyes. “But there’s no other way. This is how it ends, for all of us, if we’re lucky.”
“I’m just really going to miss you, you know?” Alice’s voice caught in her throat. “I don’t know how many people I really, really love, who really, really, love me, you know what I mean? I know that sounds pathetic, but it’s true.”
“It is true, Leonard said. “But that love doesn’t vanish. It’s still there, inside everything you do. Only this part of me is going somewhere, Al. The rest? You couldn’t get rid of it if you tried. And you never know what’s going to happen next…Time to go forward into the breach. Until the future, at last.”
