What I learned from my mother
A daughter reflects on trust, religion, integrity, and moisturizing
I learned a lot from my mother, z”l. Not school learning or knowledge-of-the- world learning. Just practical learning — how to be the best person I could be kind of learning.
I learned some things from her direct instructions. “Always moisturize your face and neck before you go to bed.” “It is nicer to wear a skirt rather than pants when you make a shiva call.” “Always think about other people.” “Always give tzedakah.” “Don’t be shy; you can do it.” “Believe in yourself.”
She gave me clear instructions as she would fold and refold a just laundered fitted sheet many times until the cloth was folded, as she would say, “to perfection.” In all my 77 years, I have never seen a linen closet as meticulously displayed as my mom’s.
And when we went shopping at Marshall Field & Company before a Jewish holiday — Marshall Field’s was the only downtown Chicago department store my mother frequented in those early days, and definitely was my favorite store — I was clearly told that we could only afford to buy one, perhaps two dresses. I never argued. I never whined. And the lesson of moderation when shopping stayed with me always.
In hindsight, however, I learned more about what kind of person I wanted to be just by observing how she handled the different chapters of her life. She wasn’t perfect, because no one really is, but she played a pivotal role in forming my positive perspectives and my approach to my personal world.
When I was a little girl, my mother was a stay-at-home mom who devoted a good part of her heart and soul and time to nurturing the beginnings of Jewish day school education in Chicago, to the workings of Hadassah, and to the goals of AMIT Women. Watching my mother when I reached adulthood, I realized that she possessed an innate ability to use a little bit of chutzpah and a whole lot of charm to convince others to care right along with her.
One example? No one ever really understood how she arranged a meeting with one of the senior members of a well-to-do philanthropic Jewish family in Chicago, but she convinced this elderly gentleman that a scholarship fund established in his name at the one and only coeducational yeshiva high school in the city would be an invaluable gift and an honor to his name. He passed away many years ago, but his family continues to support that fund to this very day.
My father z”l owned and managed a small grocery store in a low-income neighborhood. When I was about 8 years old, he suffered his first heart attack, and so my mother’s volunteering was forced to play second fiddle, though she still played it like a treasured violin.
Mom became my father’s helpmate in the store, six days a week, morning to night, resting only on the Sabbath. I never heard her complain about her long days standing on her feet, about carrying the bags of groceries up three flights of stairs so my dad did not have to strain his heart (of course, I would run downstairs to help after I buzzed them in), about having to adjust her priorities, about regretting that she just could not get up to go to shul on the Sabbath as that was the only morning she could sleep, about how she was going to be able to accomplish at night what she used to do during the day.
She never asked her cleaning woman to work extra days to prepare for Pesach. When she stood on a ladder to bring out the Pesach boxes from the closet or cleaned or cooked for a holiday that we all admit is not an easy one to prepare for, I never once heard her voice any complaint. She took it all in stride and savored the outcome. I learned that lesson quite well, even during the 27 years I worked full time. And I admit I generally listened with a deaf ear to those who bemoaned the preparation process.
Another remarkable piece about my mother? While she came from a very religious chasidic home, she married my father, who was neither religious nor educated. He was a kind, gentle, hard-working man. Those are all good things, but still, he was not religious and not educated. It is likely he never went beyond eighth grade in school as he had to work to help his parents. I never really asked him. But within him was a beautiful soul. I never once heard him complain that after my mother’s father died, my mother’s mother and my mother’s bachelor brother lived with them most of the years of their marriage until my grandmother and then my uncle passed away.
And I never heard my father say a bad word about either of them, even though it was likely that my very religious grandmother was not delighted with her daughter’s choice for a husband. Yes, my father worked seven days a week, but I imagine that he and my mother had agreed from the very beginning that first and foremost, the house would be a Sabbath-observant, strictly kosher, religious home. And second, my father would never violate the Sabbath when he returned from work.
I never heard my parents argue about religion. I never heard my mother voice any regret that she married a man so different from herself. She was devoted to him and to his well-being and she was content, at least on the outside, with who my father was.
She was also comfortable in her own religious skin, always following the rules, rarely if ever veering from everything she was taught. To the best of my recollection, she never questioned her own religiosity vis-a-vis the more religious or less religious people in her life. Comfortable and confident with her own Jewishness, she changed nothing about herself to fit in with others.
I still laugh when thinking back to an event many years ago that reflected my mother’s mindset. The year was 1972. My husband and I lived in Riverdale. My mother’s niece was getting married in Brooklyn to a young man from a Satmar family, and of course my parents flew in for the wedding. I could not find a babysitter for our toddler daughter, so my husband graciously (and likely quite happily) offered to stay home with the baby while my parents and I went to Brooklyn.
Satmar, as many of you might know, is one of the largest chasidic dynasties in the Jewish world. Simply explained, Satmar Jews are extremely conservative, reject modern culture, and are fiercely anti-Zionist, all characteristics that my mother was not. Yiddish is their language of choice. I was not particularly enthusiastic about the evening, but the bride was the daughter of my mother’s half-brother, and she never debated for one moment whether or not we would attend.
The wedding took place in the middle of the summer. Now my father was a simple, quiet man who lived a very simple, quiet life. He didn’t really have any friends, he didn’t have any hobbies, and from what I could see, his focus was his family and his store.
You could probably guess that he devoted little or no attention to his clothing. Perhaps he chose the clothes he wore to work, but suits and ties and dress shirts, never. My mother, on the other hand, had an eye for fashion, and I know for certain that she always picked my father’s dress clothes. For this special occasion in the middle of the summer, she chose a beautiful beige suit for my father to wear to the wedding, along with a colorful tie. I don’t recall what she and I were wearing, but what I know absolutely is that neither of us covered our hair. My mother, always comfortable in her religious skin, would never have thought to do so.
Once we arrived at the wedding, my father walked through the door designated for men while my mother and I entered through the door marked for the women. We never saw my father again until it was time to leave. When that time arrived, we walked onto the other side of the mechitza to where the men were sitting at the dinner tables. There were many, many tables there, but we had absolutely no problem locating my father. He was this tiny beige dot in a sea of black suits and hats. I have no idea how my sweet, quiet father navigated that evening, but I have no memory of him complaining. Perhaps he had some conversations in Yiddish with the men at the table. It was, after all, a language he knew from his childhood. And I smile, remembering that with her clear eyes that perused the men’s side looking for my father, my mother never saw a problem with how he was dressed.
As a child, I admit I never gave much thought to my unusual family dynamics. As a grown woman, however, I have often wondered how it was that this marriage worked. Surely in today’s religious Jewish world, it would be difficult for a man and a woman to live as my parents did. I always felt my father respected the world in which my mother thrived and the world in which their three children were raised. And yet it was a world he never appeared to want to enter other than peripherally, and they seemed content to live both in shared and separate spheres. Simple and complicated. Black and white and a good deal of gray.
When my parents were dating, my father and mother went to Chicago’s Riverview Park, an amusement park that operated from 1904 to 1967. My father won a kewpie doll for her, a doll generally made out of china or bisque. When my mother brought it home, her father threw it onto the floor and broke it, calling it avodah zara (idol worship). I still marvel that my mother always shared the story quite matter-of-factly, even smiling a bit, in the context of explaining how religious her father was. But what she never shared was how upset she surely must have been with her father’s anger or with the breaking of a prized doll.
The story clearly reflects for me the fact that my grandfather was a deeply religious man who viewed the world through a single lens. While his daughter never spoke badly of him, I feel she somehow saw the world differently. Hers was a world where she could be who she was while still loving and marrying someone quite different from her. She liked to remind us that her parents had a rabbi’s son picked out for her. But I sense my mother had a rebellious streak, an independent spirit that wanted to live out of the tight box that clearly her home represented.
Perhaps that was the beginning of her little bit of chutzpah and a whole lot of charm. So she met my father when he was working in her uncle’s grocery store, fell in love with this 21-year-old, handsome, not observant, kind, sweet, uneducated man, and married him when she was not quite 18 years old. Crazy for sure. But there would be no me if there had not been them, and so I am forever grateful to Hashem for putting this odd couple together.
All these years later, I always put moisturizer on my face and neck, morning and night. I always wear a skirt to a shiva call. Tzedakah, of course, is a part of life. In our younger years, my husband and I were very much involved in our synagogue, our children’s school, and other Jewish organizations. I believe in myself. I shop in moderation. And my linen closet looks almost as neat as my mother’s. I accept the reality of the person I am, although unlike my mother, I try to make improvements. And when my mom came and lived with me and my family for 11 years, I remembered how my parents brought my grandmother and uncle into their home without a moment’s hesitation.
An anonymous quotation reminds us that “when someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure.” I get that. I embrace the treasure that is uniquely mine with love and appreciation. And I hope that one day many years from now, my beloved children, my beloved grandchildren, and even my amazing great-granddaughter will do the same.
Tzivia Bieler and her late husband, Bruno, moved to Teaneck in January 1974. She retired as the executive office director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Retirement brings her pleasure, and more time to spend with children and grandchildren in the United States and Israel.
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