A STAG ON THE HILL 

IT WAS THE BEGINNING of August, and only a month remained before Laura’s wedding.  Nina and some of my friends threw her a gorgeous English tea bridal shower.  To add a little panache to the affair, the invitation requested that everyone wear a hat. Mom looked great in the oversized headdress Nina lent her, and we all had a wonderful time.  Laura was radiant, and I was proud that the whole event went off without a hitch.  I was only sad that Shirley was not there.  I decided not to invite her, but I felt her absence, just the same.

I watched Laura’s face as she opened her many gifts.  My little girl was getting married, and that blender and crystal bowl that now sat in a pile beside her would soon be resting on a cabinet in a home she would be sharing with her husband.  I had such mixed emotions.  I was happy for her, yet an ache had begun inside my heart.  I knew from my own experience that, once married, she would no longer just be my daughter, but someone else’s wife.  I remembered my own adjustment, the divided loyalties, and the transition from child to head of household.  I hoped with all my heart that it would all go more smoothly for her than it had for me.

A few days later, Shlomo, who had maintained a pleasant relationship with Shirley, contacted me. 

“Shirley told me that she wasn’t angry about being not being asked to attend the bridal shower, but says that if you don’t invite her to the wedding, she will never forgive you.”

Mom was next.  “Amber wants desperately to go to Laura’s wedding, and she also wants to be a flower girl,” she cried, pleading with me to change my mind and include them.  “There will be so many people there, you won’t even know they’re there.”  But Mom was wrong; I’d know they were there.  I decided to leave the decision up to Laura.  This was, after all, her wedding.  She agreed to invite them, conceding that she would be busy and that it would not make any real difference.

“I would be happy to have Amber as a flower girl,” she told me.

Since we had never done well with phone calls, I drove the short distance to Shirley’s house to hash this out in person.

With the assistance of her mother-in-law, Shirley and Eric had purchased a beautiful hillside home.  I was uncomfortable as I knocked on the front door.

Amber was happy to see me, giving me a warm embrace.  Then Shirley and I locked eyes, but I had not come to fight; I had come to make some sort of tentative peace. 

“Shirley, I have come to talk with you and Garth.” 

“Well, why don’t you speak with Garth first?” she suggested and called to him. 

He came in, but refused to make eye contact with me, moving around nervously like an anxious cat. 

“Garth, I am very sorry about what happened,” I told him.

“You forced me to clean toilets!  And, you gave all the good jobs to strangers,” he said.  “You never ever stood up for me.”  It was the same old story, and all my apologies meant nothing to him. 

I turned to Shirley.  “We want to invite you and your entire family to Laura’s wedding.  And Laura would like you to be one of her flower girls,” I told Amber.  She squealed with delight and ran to her Mom.  Shirley seemed to be grateful, but as our short meeting ended, I knew nothing had changed.  There was still so much simmering beneath the surface.  There was nothing else to say, except, “See you there.” 

I told Mom about our meeting.  She was both relieved and happy.  She would be at Laura’s wedding with all her “five fingers,” as she sometimes called us.

Hanging in a small bridal boutique was a magnificent strapless gown Laura chose to be “the dress.”  It took six months to arrive, and then we had it additionally tailored to fit her tiny frame.  She wove her long, red-brown hair into an Italian crystal crown, with a floor-length veil that trailed behind her.  Her neck bore a three-strand pearl choker with a square diamond clasp, which she had borrowed from her soon-to-be mother-in-law.

It was September 1^st, 2001, Laura’s wedding day, and every room in my house was filled to overflowing with Gol’s entire family, who had flown in from Israel for the occasion. 

The wedding was to take place just as the sun set, but a half hour before the formal ceremony, it was time for the Katuba, or Jewish marriage contract, to be signed.  The immediate family and closest friends were invited into a meeting room where the rabbi recited a prayer.  Then Noah gently lifted the lacy veil that covered Laura’s face, a custom that allowed the groom to be sure that he was getting the correct bride.  He gave her a tender kiss.  Mom and Dad stood proudly beside their granddaughter as they watched Nina, Laura’s maid of honor, sign the document as an official witness to this union.  Mom could not have been happier –her first grandchild was getting married, and she had lived long enough to see it.

After all the religious legalities had been completed, it was time to wait in the stairwell until we were given the go-ahead from the wedding coordinator.  I remembered the photograph I had taken of Laura and Noah, so long ago.  Tears rolled down my face.  I was so happy for her.  Then, all at once, the music began.

The ceremony took place outside at the beach as the sun was slipping into the ocean.  Mom and Dad walked down the flower petal-laden aisle, followed by Gol’s parents, the bridesmaids, groomsmen, flower girls, and ring boy.  The sky was turning lilac, and I was told that a lone stag stood on a hillside watching from afar—I wonder what he thought of what he was seeing.  Noah’s parents escorted their son, who appeared to be bursting with joy.  The music changed and the wedding march began to play; it was time for Laura to take center stage.  She walked proud and tall, ready to enter the next part of her life.

We escorted her halfway up the aisle and then stopped.  We both kissed her, and then let her go.  It was time for her to go to Noah.  She circled him seven times, as is a Jewish custom, and the ceremony of joining them began.  At one point, a prayer shawl was wrapped around them both, binding them as the Rabbi chanted the wedding blessings.  Next, they both drank from a silver cup filled with sweet wine.  A wrapped glass was then set before Noah and he brought his foot down on it with a crash.

“Mazel Tov!” everyone shouted, and Laura and Noah were married.

Noah did not walk into the reception—he floated in, shaking hands and accepting congratulatory hugs and kisses from well-wishers.  Everyone took a seat and the music began.  For months, Laura and Noah had practiced a choreographed dance production they had prepared for this very moment.  As the music played, Noah and Laura performed their elegant dance steps across the floor.  The grand finale featured a romantic dip, with Noah tenderly planting a sweet kiss on Laura’s lips.

Great joy filled the air, and the guests jumped to their feet, forming countless circles within circles to do the Hora, a joyful group dance where everyone joined hands and moved to a happy rhythm in opposing directions.  Once that was over, it was time for Laura and Noah to partake in the Mitzvah dance.  Two chairs awaited them on the dance floor.  The stronger men in the wedding party volunteered to lift the chairs, carrying the newlyweds, high into the air.  Supposedly, this old Jewish tradition simulates a king and queen sitting on their flying thrones.  The two bridged their momentary separation by holding a napkin between them.  Laura smiled and waved as the music played, confident she would not fall, while Noah held on tight, nervous about hitting the ground.

In an effort to merge the many cultures in attendance, Laura included the Persian Flower Dance, which the bride alone performs.  Laura’s hands wafted, her hips shook and she glowed as she went through the motions.  Some of the bridesmaids gathered some prepared flower petals and showered them down on Laura as she danced. Laura looked beautiful. 

The night had been marvelous and more than I ever could have hoped for.  But then, the evening was over, and my beloved Laura was no longer my little girl, but someone’s wife. 

As I watched her drive off in a white limousine, I wondered about how our mother-daughter relationship would change.  I hoped I would cut her more slack than had been done for me.  I had never really severed the apron strings between Mom and myself.  Mom never wanted us to leave her, always advising us against fully investing ourselves emotionally in our marriage.  It had taken me years to rid myself of these supposed pearls of wisdom.  I promised myself that I would not be an intrusive mother-in-law.  I would try hard not to voice my opinion about everything, and I would not take sides, if possible.  These were difficult concepts for me to grasp, as I had never learned them at home.  Nevertheless, I was determined to try.

In the days that followed, after focusing so much on my role as a mother at Laura’s wedding, I thought a great deal about my role as a daughter and of how my own mother and I were getting along at the time.  Mom could be so disapproving.  She was quick to judge and objected to my parenting decisions.  So much so, that I decided the only way to protect my children and myself was to avoid discussing subjects that pertained to my family with her.

“Are we going to talk about nonsense again?” she would ask when we spoke on the telephone.

“Yes, Mom,” I answered, feeling sorry that it had to be this way.  We chatted superficially about the weather and Hollywood gossip.  “Did you hear about Joan Rivers having yet another facelift?”

In my heart I know she didn’t mean to be so disapproving, it was just that she was so frightened that she might loose me.  I couldn’t make her understand that all her fears and negativity were only making things more difficult between us.  I wanted to share my accomplishments with her, but she seemed threatened by them.

“I’m not happy that you are so successful,” she admitted.  “I need you to need me.”

I could not believe my ears.  “But Mom, I will always need you.”

“But I can’t help you. Your problems are too big for me,” she confessed.

It was such a blow—my own mother was not happy for me.  After all these years and all that hard work, Gol and I had made it, but Mom didn’t want that for me—there was too great a risk that I might abandon her.  I tried very hard to accept the fact that Mom and Dad were broken birds, with horrific pasts that would always continue to haunt them.  Mom’s torturous past made her suspicious of the future.  The present was simply a state of anticipation Mom endured as she waited for everything to go to pieces around her, just as it had in Baranavichy. 

Mom’s lack of trust—although understandable—had done permanent damage to many of her relationships.  Dad was not her blood and, therefore, was still a stranger.  She adored him, but also feared and mistrusted him, simultaneously and in equal amounts.

Mom’s fears and paranoia had leaked down into me, turning me into a fearful person as well.  I rode horses, but was laden with anxieties of what injuries I could sustain at any moment.  Once, on a ski vacation, I took a ski lesson and the instructor mentioned that I was leaning too far back. 

“If you are going to ski, you have to commit and lean into it,” she told me.  However, that was how I lived my life, never truly leaning into it, but leaning back, never putting my full heart into it.

Mom’s handiwork could be found on all her “five fingers.”  While Nina had been a success professionally, she continued to feel like a failure because she had not gotten married.  Shlomo, too, searched for the unobtainable “perfect match,” never wanting his marriage to be anything like Mom and Dad’s.

Shirley replicated our parent’s life more than any of us.  Nora, the woman who owned the barn where I rode, always told me that if you stare at something, you will ride toward it.  Well Shirley stared at Mom.  She and Eric closed out the world and only truly trusted each other.  There was no room for friends in their world, unless they could be used for some purpose.  She loved Eric and hated him, just as Mom had simultaneously loved and hated Dad.  After she had suffered financial ruination, I posed a question to her.

“If you could do it all over again, would you marry Eric?”

“Yes, I would,” she told me without a moment’s hesitation. 

Mom had ensured Shirley’s dependence on her by helping her out financially.  Shirley never apologized for needing monetary help, as she felt that this was some kind of reparation for Mom’s poor parenting. 

Mom paid the money willingly, never wavering from her adoration for Eric.  If and when the Nazis ever returned, it was Mom’s opinion that only Shirley and Eric would survive. 

“Gol is too proud.  He will probably be one of the first to be killed,” Mom explained.  “But Eric will pay off anyone, using anything he has to save his Shirley.” 

Mom honored this trait and saw in Eric a quality that her own children lacked.

Steven also retained an unhealthy emotional attachment to Mom, and his selection of a wife illustrated that profoundly.  Brenda invoked total control over Steven and was ever watchful of him, but while Mom had equal parts of love and hate for Dad, Brenda had more hate than love for Steven.  His continued attachment to Mom proved to be a monumental thorn in Brenda’s side, which caused their marriage endless strain.

It was as if Mom had successfully created one giant body—hers—with many heads—ours.  Although we spoke separately, we were intimately connected.  Injuring one would injure all.  It was very difficult to do or think anything without the family voicing opinions, and those opinions were very powerful, affecting all our thoughts and actions.  Even as we grew older, we could not separate ourselves.