MY SAY: REFLECTING ON MOTHERS’ DAY
My mother died in 1998 after a brief illness. She was beautiful, elegant, and game. She trudged through the jungles of South America, Africa, Borneo, and India with her high heels and matching purses. And she always traveled with a huge box of cosmetics. She had a quality that was above intelligence and wit. She anticipated people’s needs.
In Israel in 1950 she invited six of her friends for lunch. They had survived the Holocaust- some hiding in unspeakable circumstances of fear, starvation and cold, and others survived Auschwitz and were prone to weeping and recounting. Out came the box of cosmetics and my mother and I…at her direction….gave them manicures in addition to lunch. While we buffed, and pushed cuticles and filed and moisturized their hardened hands and brittle nails, my mother sang songs in Polish and Yiddish and reminded them of youth in high-school, gossip, boy friends, flirtations and dress-ups and parties and dancing….the life they had before the darkness. Suddenly they were singing, chatting and laughing and when we applied the colors they waved their hands in the air admiring their hands and shiny pink and red nails. When they left they all took polish in what one called “happy colors.”
She had a knack. Sofia Salomon my mother was unique.
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