My mother was a
wonderful woman whom I appreciated more and more as we both aged. She was warm,
funny, and wise; and I miss her greatly. By some stroke of luck, though, I also
had two delightful mothers-in-law. They were nothing like my mother or each
other, but each was wonderful in her own way.
Jessie was my
first husband’s mother. Beautiful, charming, and gracious, she always looked
serene and cool, even in Chicago’s hot, sticky summer weather. When I remember
her, I always picture her wearing a hat and gloves. Jessie was active in a
suburban Presbyterian church and spent most of her life as a well-to-do
homemaker who raised the twin sons she bore in 1935. Her home was elegant
without being overwhelming—she would have abhorred today’s McMansions—and was
always spotless.
Seeing our
young-marrieds financial struggles, Jessie helped without making us dependent.
She bought me some lovely clothes from Peck & Peck and Marshall Field’s,
exactly what I needed for my early editorial jobs. Both my husband and I
received many gifts from her for our home.
When our marriage
ended, Jessie was broken-hearted. She wrote to my mother about it, saying how
she hoped “the children” would work out our problems and get together again. It
was much too late for that. Hurting her caused me nearly as much pain as the
divorce itself did.
Many years after
our divorce, Jessie called her husband out to the garden to show him some
flowers that had just bloomed. He admired them, and turned aside for a moment.
When he turned back, she was lying in the flower bed, dead. What a catastrophe
for him, but what a fitting death for that lovely, kind woman.
* * *
Edith was my
second mother-in-law. She had come to America as a baby, in that wave of Jewish
immigration around 1900. Her family settled on the South Side of Chicago. Life
wasn’t easy for them, and she grew up feeling poor. Having enough money, and
looking prosperous, was always important to her afterward. She loved nice
clothing and wore it well.
Edith was neither
the Yiddishe momma nor the Hadassah member type. She was herself, an
attractive, strong woman with a raunchy sense of humor that slightly shocked me
at first. (I should have expected it, though—my husband could be witty and
charming at times, rather crude at other times, but he was unfailingly funny.)
As she was a chain smoker, many years of smoking had given her a throaty, sexy
voice.
Though she had
worked for only a few years after her marriage, she was very supportive of my
own career. One evening when she and her sister had taught me how to make
chopped liver and some other Jewish dishes that my husband liked, she took me
aside and whispered, “Don’t waste your time on a lot of cooking. Find a good
deli and buy things there!” Wonderful advice, and I was happy to take it.
An excellent
poker player, Edith raked in some of the money she craved by gambling. My
diamond engagement ring--an enormous rock--was one she had originally won in a
high-stakes poker game. When Harold and I became engaged, she was so delighted about her over-thirty son
finally getting married that she insisted he give me the ring.
Edith and I got
along very well, and I looked forward to many years of having such a great
mother-in-law. Unhappily, that wasn’t possible. In a freak accident, she
swallowed part of a toothpick in a deli sandwich, and developed septic
poisoning from a punctured intestine. She died on our first wedding
anniversary.
I have never had
children, and so I missed the opportunity of being a mother-in-law. If I had,
either Jessie or Edith would have been a superb model.
