The Storyteller

My Mom's favorite treat. Best enjoyed frozen.

On May 11, 2006, my Mom died of Cancer. Today marks 6 years since she left us.

I've decided that today’s post is going to be a different one. There will be no lessons I’ve learned, or things that have caused me to shake my wee fist.

Instead, today I’m going to share my Mom with you.

If you’re a friend of mine, there’s a strong possibility (we’re talking 98.6% chance here) that you’ve heard some stories about my Mom more than once. I love being able to share her silliness and sweetness with the friends who never got to meet her.  It’s my way of staying connected to her memory, and explaining how I came to be, well, ME.

I once dated someone who became visibly irritated when I repeated stories about my mother.  If I was telling a tale about something funny she’d said, he’d say: “You already told me that one.” And then he’d sigh as though I was boring him, annoyed that I’d clearly forgotten I’d already told that story. I was hurt every time he did this.

If you’ve lost someone, telling stories is how you keep your memories alive. And if someone loves you, letting you share those stories when you need to is how they help you keep your soul intact.

My Mom was the best storyteller I’d ever known. She knew how to keep our interest, weaving in and out of her childhood experiences as though she was still just a kid. She smiled, she laughed, and sometimes she cried at her memories. My brother and I ate up every word like candy, as each story taught us something new about her. We held her eyes in our own, rapt with curiosity, watching her face as she regaled us with stories of her upbringing, her best friends, her travels, my father, and us. And even if we’d heard the story before, we’d beg her to tell us again. She never said no. For those brief moments, we were in Judi’s world. And we loved it.

She’d tell us about how her father used to bring home May West’s fresh from the factory so that she and her older brother could enjoy them. They were the rejected sweets, broken, crushed and couldn’t be sold, so my Grandpa would give them to his kids as a treat.  I can’t even count how many times she told that story. Even now that she’s gone, we still talk about it. And when I eat a May West cake (which is almost never because they’re kind of gross), I’m reminded of the story. And I smash it with my hand in the package so it looks cracked and broken.

Then there was the story about the hideous Hungarian porcelain doll with the creepy sunken eyes. It was one of those dolls that you have repeat nightmares about: Its sightless eyes would open and close, it had blood red lips, and my brother and I hated it. We would hide it so that it wouldn’t stare at us, yet somehow it would resurface. It got worse with age: The eyes fell out of the sockets, and I thought for sure it would kill me in my sleep. My Mom would put it in my bedroom just to mess with me. She told us the story of how it had actually been her mother’s doll.

When their marriage crumbled under the strain of surviving the Holocaust physically but not emotionally, my Mom’s parents separated. The belongings and children were split up and my Mom went to live with her father, as her mother had decided she didn’t want her. The old doll was left behind in the dust. My Mom assumed ownership, and gave it a home where her mother had abandoned it. We learned about her childhood through this doll’s path. It stayed in our home and remains there to this day.

What’s great about this sad story is that my Mom found the humor embedded deeply within, and shared it with her kids. Her horrible experience cemented her love and devotion to us. A couple of weeks before she died, she asked my brother and I if we wanted anything special of hers so she could let my Dad know.

Adam quipped: “Amy wants the creepy doll.”

I quickly responded: “No way, Adam said HE wants it.”

My mother, in pain and so very tired, jokingly piped up with: “Forget it. I’m taking her with me.”

She was a funny parent. As non-traditional as they come, she found interesting ways of getting to know her kids. She’d tell us stories about us as babies. Her favorite stories stemmed from us being upset or outraged. For example: My brother cried a lot as a baby/toddler/kid. He always seemed to be in some sort of state of upset or frustration. Mom took Polaroid pictures of him so that later in life she could show them to him and ask him what the problem was. Not a word of a lie, she actually did it. She also sent me out to play in the snow with a metal ladle. I don’t even know how many times I came in from playing outside with the damn thing stuck to my tongue.

Although I try to disguise my sappiness, I'm definitely a romantic at heart. My favorite stories about Mom were of boys she had dated and how she met and fell in love with my father. I asked her to tell me the story about her first date with my Dad over and over again. I was in love with her stories, relishing my moments with her. She was in another place, remembering, animated and shining with happiness as she told me about my Dad, and how she knew he was the one. 

She had been fixed up on a date with “Norman” by her friend Peggy and my dad’s friend Allan.  My father was going to pick her up from her art class, so she told him “I will be the little artsy girl standing outside”. He drove up in a shiny silver Firebird 400. They drove around for 2 hours, stopping on Mount Royal which is notorious for its look-out. Sadly, they never got out of the car: It rained non-stop. But it didn’t deter them from talking and laughing, and it turned out that they got along VERY well. And that’s where the silliness begins: Because when it came time for her to go home, Norman didn’t want to get out of the car because it was raining. He didn’t want his hair to frizz. When Mom got home, she called Peggy and said “How tall is he?”  The rest is history. 

When I was a 13 year old metal-mouth brace-face, I noticed my Mom wearing a beautiful glass pendant. It had an antique chain, and there was a woman carved into the glass. A classic nude. I begged her repeatedly to let me wear it. She always said no, because my father had gotten it for her in Paris, and she didn't want me to lose it. When I was 14 years old and had gotten my braces removed in time for class pictures, she offered the necklace to me as a gift. I was floored. I asked her if she was sure, because I knew it had come from Paris (a fantasy land in my head). She waved me off and said "Oh, he got it for me in Plattsburgh." It is one of my most prized possessions EVER, and I still wear it often. While writing this post, I reminded my Dad about this story. He told me the pendant was indeed a gift from his travels abroad. I laughed for an hour. The fact that she joked about its origins just to get a rise out of me is hilarious, but that she still had me fooled 23 years later? Priceless.

My all-time favorite story is actually about when my Mom was pregnant with me. It reminds me of how much she really did love me. When she became pregnant for the first time, I was “unexpected”. She told me she wasn’t sure how she felt about having a baby at the time, and was both scared and excited. One afternoon she was leafing through a magazine, and came upon a picture of a little girl. She said to herself: “My little girl will look just like that.” She tore the picture out and put it in a frame.

The picture was of a little redheaded girl with freckles.

When she showed me the photo for the first time, she said: “See? We were destined to be together!”  That photo is still in a frame, in my childhood home, next to a picture of me. Her real life redheaded freckle-face.

There are so many more stories to tell. I could live my whole life, and never run out of tales and anecdotes. And frankly, I never ever want to stop telling stories about my Mom. That’s how she stays alive inside me. So if I tell a story about her over and again, know that although it might seem repetitive to you, it is my way of remembering someone that I love with every last bit of my heart. And always will.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. And as we always used to sign off our letters and emails: Miss you muchly.

This post is for my brother Adam, and for all of the times we sat at the kitchen table listening to Mom goof off.

Love you, Addy Paddy.