Mom gave me all the time in the world. I never, ever felt rushed by her (except when she\u2019d snap up the shades in the morning so we wouldn\u2019t be late for school, making us wake up from the sun, and the sheer force of her personality!)<\/p>\n
But when it came to talking, listening, and wanting to learn all about my life, or to hear from me, any time of day or night, she had all the time in the world.<\/p>\n
I find this amazing because she was always busy, always filled her life helping her family and friends, and doing, cooking, visiting, calling, everything you can do to be a wonderful mother, wife and friend. She loved getting together with our large family, and her numerous close friends. She loved her church and was devoted to it for 47 years. She had her interests in art, museums, music, readings and travel.<\/p>\n
Yet, she had all the time in the world.<\/p>\n
My greatest fortune is that my mother lived for so long, and for 53 years of my life gave me not only so much love, and so much time, but she gave me all of her love of the senses:\u00a0 touch, taste, smell, seeing, hearing.<\/p>\n
Mom was so finely tuned to the senses.\u00a0 She taught me to love the way moss feels on a rock, to smell the lilacs blooming in the spring outside our kitchen window; she taught me to listen closely, and to feel with my heart. She gave me the joy of good food, of family around the table, no matter how crowded it was, the more the better.<\/p>\n
She gave me the indelible memory of her delicious tomato sauce on her well-worn wooden spoon; I have that spoon, and whenever I see it, I can taste the way her sauce tasted all of those Sunday dinners and holidays.\u00a0 I can see the way her hands flew around the kitchen, and there in the bowl mixing dough, mixing meatballs, her silver wedding rings flashing, letting us try samples of the food as she cooked\u2026<\/p>\n
Mom had an uncommon appreciation of life, and all of the beauty in life, and the thrill we could have experiencing the joys of the senses. She wanted to get the most out of every single day.\u00a0 When NYC restaurants had prix-fix week, she was the one who would call me to make a date and go to the best restaurants. She’d meet me for lunch when I was a young working girl. I will never forget those meals, and how excited she was to be there. “Oh, and at such a bargain, too!”<\/i><\/p>\n
Most of all, mom gave me her love of books and music, and her knowledge and love of culture was astounding, all the more so considering her great challenges she overcame in her early life.<\/p>\n
When my good friend Joe read my Mom\u2019s obituary, he wrote to \u00a0me, \u201cher story is not only jaw-dropping amazing because of the incredible obstacles in your mother’s life, but also because of her tenacity of culture and decency<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he went on, \u201cYour mom is so familiar to me because she is like my mom.\u00a0 That\u2019s how God made ladies then:\u00a0 tough as nails, smart and generous.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
My friend\u2019s perspective on my mom really made me think.\u00a0 \u201cHer tenacity of culture and decency.\u201d\u00a0 <\/i>What a beautiful and incisive way to describe what it so hard to put into words.<\/p>\n
And it is so true, so very touching and profound:\u00a0 despite overcoming the worst obstacles \u2013 being orphaned at 15 years old \u2013 and having no family at all in the world \u2013 my mother not only survived, but she survived with achievement, success, culture, kindness and grace.<\/p>\n
We shake our heads in amazement, my family and I.\u00a0 How did she do it?\u00a0 How did she manage to be so loving, so giving, so nurturing, so feeding<\/i> \u2013 in ever sense of the word, how she fed us knowledge, love, protection, stimulation, curiosity, sensitivity, and yes \u2013 grace and decency \u2014not to mention, delicious food, day after day \u2014when she had so much loss in early life.\u00a0 And then yet to become as cultured and learned as if she had been given everything <\/i>early in life.<\/p>\n
Her mother \u2013 who raised her alone \u2013 must have been a wonderful person and mother.\u00a0 That, and my mother had the resolve and strength of character to know who she was, know who she wanted to be, and to become and stay that person.<\/p>\n
My mom was a passionate reader and lover of great literature. From early on, she shared with me A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Little Women, Daddy LongLegs, A Little Princess, Little House in the Big Woods<\/i>, and then later, everything and anything about old New York, especially books by Edith Wharton and Henry James, and everything British, from the Bront\u00eb sisters to Jane Austen. We really bonded over the English writers.<\/p>\n
And we loved watching BBC television together and Masterpiece Theatre, especially All Creatures Great & Small<\/i> and Upstairs, Downstairs.<\/i>\u00a0 I can still hear her calling me, if I was up in my room in the old house on 17 School Lane in Scarsdale: \u201dNancy, come down!\u00a0 Upstairs Downstairs is starting!<\/i>\u201d\u00a0 Then, she\u2019d bring Dad and me, and whoever was watching with us, some fresh fruit on a small, white china plate: \u201dHere, have a nice<\/span> sliced orange.\u00a0 It tastes so good, and it\u2019s so<\/span> good for you!<\/i>\u201d\u00a0 And it did taste good, because she thought about it, she sliced it up, she brought it to me, and I can still taste the way that orange tasted.<\/p>\n I think that\u2019s around the time \u2013 when I was in high school and college, when we loved these British books and miniseries\u2014when we started talking with our special repartee on the phone. She would pick up the phone when I\u2019d call, and I\u2019d say, in a British accent:\u00a0 \u201cHulloooo Mothah<\/i>!\u201d\u00a0 And she\u2019d say \u201cWell, hellooooo, Dauuuggghtah<\/i>!\u201d\u00a0 She made her voice deeper like that, like a proper British aristocratic matriarch.<\/p>\n We did that for years, really until the end of her life, and I miss her voice \u2013 British accent or not \u2013 terribly. I think everyone misses her warm, incredibly musical, loving voice. The two granddaughters got a special voice and greeting just for them:\u00a0 \u201cWell, helloooo sweetheart!<\/i>\u201d\u00a0 and I know they will never forget their Grandmother\u2019s special voice, used especially for her precious little granddaughters.<\/p>\n Her musical voice carried on in so many ways. Mom also passed on her love of classical music to me, and to her granddaughters as well. One of my happiest childhood memories is sitting in the kitchen as Mom ironed, with the radio set to WQXR, the classical music station.<\/p>\n There she\u2019d stand, ironing our shirts, pants, and pillowcases, with the steam of the iron mingling with the smell of clean clothes and starch, mingling with the sound of her humming along to the music. Again \u2013 no matter how busy she was, she\u2019d take time to talk to me, about my life, and about the music playing that she loved.<\/p>\n Most of all, after I began taking piano lessons, she sat with me, for years and years, when I would practice. When I wanted to begin lessons (because my best friend at the time, our next door neighbor, Suzu Kawamoto, had lessons!) Mom not only supported me and together with Dad, bought me a beautiful piano, but she encouraged me for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n I will never forget the way it felt to be the object of her complete and utter absorption and interest. She had an uncanny and generous gift of active listening. I love how she sat there, never judging; I could only feel the love and awe. Awe, because she would say to me, \u201cIt\u2019s so amazing the way you can play. I\u2019m so proud of you.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n She gave me everything her mother could not, as far as luxuries like this, and she gave me everything \u2013 like piano lessons, and so much more \u2013 that she, a child of the Great Depression and an orphan\u2014could never have.\u00a0 But none of that mattered to her.\u00a0 She was completely and utterly giving in her quest to give us everything.<\/p>\n While I played, she folded huge baskets of laundry.\u00a0 She could have so easily thought to herself that I don\u2019t have time, I want to watch tv, or take a bath or have some \u201cme time<\/i>.\u201d\u00a0 My mom didn\u2019t do that.\u00a0 If she had \u201cfree time,\u201d she gave me more <\/i>of her time by simply sitting there, folding laundry, and giving me the gift of her presence. The gift of her listening.<\/p>\n She could have chosen anything else\u2026but she was happy being in that <\/i>room because I <\/i>was in that room.<\/p>\n Being together like that, just the two of us, was so precious to me, and I\u2019m so lucky.\u00a0 There is one time that is forever seared into my memory. After many challenging years in my own life, I brought myself back to life by taking piano lessons again and seriously studying, once again with my beloved teacher Danyal at the Greenwich House\u00a0 Music School in NYC.<\/p>\n My mom and dad were so pleased. \u00a0For almost a year I studied, while taking care of my daughter, immersed and focused in a complex and difficult Intermezzo<\/i> by Brahms. \u00a0I had never been able to play that piece before. It was my goal that year, and amazingly, I achieved that goal, and was then able to perform it in the school recital.<\/p>\n At that time, my parents had just moved from their house where I grew up, and where they lived for 43 years, to the apartment, and my mom had recently recovered\u2014taking her many, many months\u2014from a terrible fall.\u00a0 My mom longed to be there for my performance!\u00a0 At her age\u201487 years old\u2014she wanted so much to drive down to the West Village and hear me play in a recital!<\/p>\n But between her recovery, the trip, the late hour of the concert, and my own trepidation about playing in public after so many years, I encouraged her to miss it, something I will never stop regretting.\u00a0 I could never imagine that this would be the last time she could have ever attended one of my recitals.\u00a0 We never, ever think there will be a last time with our beloved parents, until it is too late.<\/p>\n The performance, though, had been recorded.\u00a0 Mom wanted so much to hear it.\u00a0 So, after the recital, I visited them in their new apartment with a disc of me playing the Brahms. Mom and Dad didn\u2019t yet have their stereo set up.\u00a0 Since Mom wanted to hear it so much, we went to my car that was parked in front of their apartment house, to listen to it on my car stereo.<\/p>\n I will never forget this moment.\u00a0 I popped the disc into the player.\u00a0 There we were, parked on Garth Road, with me sitting behind the wheel and Mom next to me in the passenger seat. \u00a0When the music began, Mom became utterly silent, staring ahead at the dashboard.\u00a0 She never once spoke for the long duration of this recording.\u00a0 At the end of the piece, after the applause that was taped and when the disc went silent, my mother began to cry. I was so moved and surprised, as she had never cried in front of me when I played before, and mom rarely cried at all.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never know why. I can only imagine.\u00a0 She lowered her head a bit, then wiped her eyes with her fingers. I whispered “Mom” and handed her a tissue. But I never asked her what brought her to tears.<\/p>\n The only thing I know is that for that moment\u2014even though my mother had so much to do with a new apartment to settle into, and all of her own emotions about leaving our beloved School Lane house in which she and my dad and our family had decades together of\u00a0 joy, and all of the emotions of getting older, starting over, healing after her terrible fall, learning to write again and all the bravery and strength she had to summon to heal\u2014that none of that mattered to her as much as giving me her presence for those minutes in the car with me and my music, giving me her self, her love\u2026giving me all the time in the world.\u00a0 Thank you, Mom. I will never stop missing you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n .<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mom gave me all the time in the world. I never, ever felt rushed by her (except when she\u2019d snap up the shades in the morning so we wouldn\u2019t be late for school, making us wake up from the sun, and the sheer force of her personality!) But when it came to talking, listening, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyangiello.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyangiello.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyangiello.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyangiello.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyangiello.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyangiello.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":560,"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyangiello.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions\/560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyangiello.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyangiello.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyangiello.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}