I've seen my mother twice in the last month and a half. The first time we were meeting my nephews, her grandsons, at the Museum of Natural History. The boys are from California. We went to a sports bar to watch the San Diego Chargers against the Steelers. Looking back, that means it was January 11.
I'd just been to a pro-Palestinian rally, and what struck me most at the time was when I sat down next to my mom in the crowded lobby of the MoNH awaiting the boys, she asked me how my rally had gone and I nodded and said a monosyllable or two and my mom said with a tortured sound, "It's such a difficult situation."
I just shrugged. She and I completely disagree on this stuff.
Now when I look back on it, what I remember is my mom going with me and my nephews to an Irish sports bar. There aren't many 70-something Jewish grandmothers in Irish sports bars on a playoff Sunday. My mother has real generosity of spirit.
The second time I saw my mom was a week ago in Philadelphia. She and my dad took me out to a Chinese restaurant with yet another of her grandsons, then we went back to my parents' place and I sat up talking with my father about his malaria research till he mentioned Einstein and I blurted that Einstein had opposed a Jewish state in Palestine. (I wrote about this last week.) I think it stunned both my parents; but it felt good to express myself after holding this stuff in all the time.
My mother's not an intellectual but she's always been engaged by political issues. She was Phi Beta Kappa at Barnard. When I was growing up she talked about the Rosenbergs and antisemitism and the Vietnam War. She went to Norman Morrison's Quaker meeting in 1965 after he immolated himself on the Pentagon lawn. I was 10, I'll never forget that. She extended herself to that Quaker community.
She and I disagree on Israel/Palestine, but some of her response is generational, and I have to say that she's shown greater flexibility than I have. Like in the summers, she goes with me to the lectures sponsored by a Middle East discussion group at the Church of the Messiah in Woods Hole, Mass. There are a lot of Arabists there; the Zionists stay away. But my mother comes with me and listens. Now and then she sends me an email from one of her Zionist friends…
I had to leave Philadelphia last Friday morning, early. At 7:30 a.m., my mother and father were both up, making coffee. Then they went out into the driveway to say goodbye to me. I saw a white paper in my mother's jacket pocket and I wondered if it was a check. My mother's always been generous that way too–helped me and my wife buy our house. I felt a wave of guilt, a sense of my own meanness, seeing that check there. Well it wasn't a check, but it doesn't matter; I've had that feeling since. My mother's love has been unconditional. We disagree, yes, but who's been the bigger person?
