MOTHER’S DAY

Mom in a pensive pose, in a vintage 1966 photo.

I snapped this photo of Mom some time in 1966 with my (then) new 35mm camera. It was nothing too fancy - a Miranda (a now defunct Japanese brand) model G -  but it represented my first foray into the SLR world, and I used it constantly.

From the wood paneling, the photograph appears to have been taken in our family room. What was she doing? Reading the newspaper, or one of her numerous mystery or SF novels? Doing the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle?  I cannot remember... for it has been forty-nine years since the photograph was taken. I’m now a quarter-century older than my mother was then.

Today is her Yahrzeit - the anniversary (as reckoned according to the Hebrew calendar) of her departure for Olam ha-Ba, the Undiscovered Country. It’s an easy date to remember: 12 Nisan, three days before the festival of Pesach begins. I suppose my brother (the Other Elisson) and I could call it Mother’s Day.

She has been gone for twenty-seven years now.

I sometimes wonder what she would make of today’s world. Computers, smartphones, social media, all of our nonsense. I suspect that she’d prefer to be swatting balls over at the tennis court and enjoying an occasional Rob Roy... at least, when she was not working her way through a stack of library books. She would take time out to teach Dee the fine points of shopping, assuming there were any left she had not imparted already. And she would love her granddaughters, rejoicing in their sparkling personalities and their artistic triumphs.

I sure do miss her.