A Mother's Love...and Fear

It all started in Brownies. We got our pins and were told to pin them upside down on our sash; after we did a good deed, we could turn the pin right-side-up and be a full-fledged Brownie. All week I pondered what good deed I would do. None of them seemed valiant enough to merit the honor of wearing my first uniform AND having a real pin turned around. I thought and thought but could not decide. 

A week after the pin ceremony, I went to our next meeting. All the other six and seven year olds had turned their pins around. I felt ashamed; maybe I hadn't thought hard enough. Maybe I wasn't kind enough. 

"I did my homework without Mom reminding me!" "I took out the trash!" "I read my sister a story!" My troop mates bragged as we went around the circle sharing our good deeds. When Mrs. Ince, my beloved neighbor and troop leader got up to me, I held my sash close to my chest and covered it with my clenched hands. "I ...um...I didn't do a good deed yet...."

I'll never forget her loving face. She had an expression of astonishment and love, mixed with concern and hope.  When Mom came to walk me home (all the way across the street), both she and Mrs. Ince made me turn my pin around. They told me that some people have to make a special effort of doing a good deed, but I am not one of those people. They told six-year-old me that it is my nature to always do good deeds so I don't notice when I am doing them. 

Maybe they were right; maybe they overestimated me. But not long after that, I began to learn about Jewish culture and I learned that a Mitzvah is a good deed (technically it's a commandment, but that's not how I learned it or how I process it to this day.) and I learned that a Bat Mitzvah is a daughter of good deeds. I decided that when I was old enough, I wanted to become a Bat Mitzvah.

This was a little complicated. Someplace between my Great Great Grandfather Israel (a rabbi) and my Papa, religion had skidded away from our family in favor of a secular life.  I had already shaken up my loving nuclear family by begging to go to Hebrew School (thinking I would learn the language...) and I didn't want to make too many waves. So I kept the goal in mind and waited until I was ten or eleven to discuss it with my parents.

By then, there was no resistance on the bat mitzvah front, but my protective mother who was afraid of flying and who knew about all the wars in Israel decided to take advantage of my burning desire.

"Emily," she said, "You can have a bat mitzvah but please don't plan to go to Israel. Not in my lifetime. I want you to be safe."

I eagerly agreed. And the years passed. Maybe I'll tell the story of my bat mitzvah ceremony another time, but this story is about my mother's concern. For, as much as I had grown a desire to be a "daughter of good deeds", my mother had grown her protective urges. Remember, she had four unique daughters, including one who was medically compromised. She needed to keep all of her chickadees safe.

The story doesn't end there, though.  I never grew the urge to go to Israel. Grandma showed me her travel photos and I admired them from afar. Friends spoke about Birthright trips and I was happy for them. Someday, maybe I will go, but just the word "Israel" to me conjures up the feeling of Mom's concern and love and that's enough for me.

About a decade ago, I began to learn Farsi and became involved with the Persian community in New Jersey. Some of my best friends are Irani-Americans who came over just before the Revolution and couldn't go back to live. I began to develop an interest in traveling to the countryside in Iran to visit Maman Maryam and Baba Ahmad, who had visited us one summer. Mom quickly put the kabosh on that plan.

"Emily," she said in a phone conversation. "You know what you promised at your bat mitzvah." 

"Yes, Mom. I promised I wouldn't go to Israel in your lifetime."

"Israel is a metaphor," Mom continued. "It's a metaphor for anyplace unsafe. Iran could be very unsafe for you. I beg you not to go." 

Well, my love for my mother is greater than my wanderlust, so I never did make it to Iran. And then, two years ago, I had a beautiful reunion with a childhood friend from Japan. Naoko and I hit it off magically. We were both more comfortable with ourselves than we had been as teenagers and our day in Manhattan is one which still makes me smile with the memory. After she left, I began to learn Japanese. I spent two or three hours a day memorizing hiragana, katakana and kanji characters. I developed a vocabulary of about 2000 words and began to make sense of the grammar. I began to research, even, the places I wanted to see when I visited Naoko over Spring Break. 

Mom saw my growing excitement, but she also saw her own growing fear as she read the newspaper reports about Fukushima and radiation. 

"Emily," she said. "You know I've had no problems with you visiting Dorothee in Germany or studying in France. But when you promised not to go to Israel, you promised---"

"I know, I know.... It's a metaphor for not going anywhere unsafe."  I put down my Japanese books and minimized the learning apps on my iPhone. I love my mother, and handled it by teasing her about this.

When I found out that I would be going to Auschwitz for the 70th anniversary of liberation, it was in the middle of the Ebola scare. I called my Dad and told him under no unclear set of terms that I wanted to go, I needed to go, and I needed him to keep my mother's anxiety at bay. To both of their credit, they have been nothing but supportive. 

Our facade of non-anxiety was tested last weekend, though. A request came through for more detailed information about my father's passport name because security is going to be high at the Auschwitz event.  There will be leaders of many countries there and they are doing a thorough search on anyone who is coming in.

Because I have been doing a lot of Holocaust research lately, my initial response was an eerie memory of identity cards in the 1930s and 1940s which citizens of German controlled nations needed to prove that they were not Jewish for several generations back. I cringed when I thought of that. Mom initially wanted to make sure it wasn't a scam or anything. And Dad used the rational argument that it's good they are doing security checks. 

On Monday evening, I went to visit my friend Mina before she returned to MxGill to finish her college experience. She and I sat with her mother, my beloved Irani-American friend who I spoke of before. 

Mina is truly a daughter of good deeds. Her culture doesn't have bat mitzot celebrations but her culture is like mine in terms of doing what you can to make the world better. She has helped with orphanages in Honduras. She has helped make music to cheer people up. And most recently, she was volunteering in Uganda. 

I told Mina and Farideh about the latest anxiety my mom and I are experiencing regarding my travel and I laughed while recounting the Israel metaphor story. 

Suddenly I remembered how anxious we all were this summer when Mina was in Uganda. There had been reports of guerrilla warfare in the cities and we didn't know that Baduda was far out in the countryside. There was the outbreak of Ebola in Western Africa and somehow we feared its spreading eastward. Mom worried about Mina. I worried about Mina. And of course, Farideh worried about Mina. (Mina, meanwhile, had a merry old time and learned sooooo much!)

Farideh laughed and said, "So you see, Emily, this is a mother's love.  I let my Mina explore but I worry a lot. Your mother is protective just because she loves you."

I love you, Mom. 

I'm glad we live in a day and age when you can protect me...and guide me to protect myself.

When I get back from Poland, we are going to discuss Japan... Or Iran... Or Israel....