How she was able to do it I don’t know… wonderful mental dexterity I guess. Here it was, the memories of the murder of millions as fresh as your breakfast this morning, when your heritage and ancestry was put on the chopping block… to somehow be able to see beyond the fear was something to marvel at…
And Mommie Soph knew this was America… that she was as close to the promised land as you could get. That she had pride in her traditions was unquestioned; but also she was not troubled by her children’s blending old values with new ones.
We had a small “breakfast room” in our house. It was a distinct room rather than a “nook”; and it was nestled in between our kitchen and dinning room.
It is where we took the majority of our meals. And on early Friday evenings it was reserved for something special. Mommie Soph and my mother would go in there to light the Sabbath candles. To this day I am not entirely sure of the math… how many candles do you light? I believe the tradition is one for yourself, and one for your husband. But for Mommie Soph and my Mother, this number only represented the beginning… a candle also had to be lit for this relative (because no one is lighting one for her, or that one, because her daughter doesn’t know what she is doing) or that person… or the gardner…whoever. I think the numbers of candles lit were fairly constant; but of that I can’t be sure.
But each Friday they would gather near sun down. They would cover their heads, typically with cloth napkins, light the candles, and then slowly circling their hands around the flames, they would bring the spirit to their hearts and cover their eyes with cupped hands. Prayers would be said silently, or occasionally you could detect a soft murmur. From start to finish it probably took no more than 3 – 5 minutes; but when completed there was a cleansing in the air… a look of sadness to their faces, which I always attributed to the sense of loss they felt for those that had departed. And then that melancholy would dissipate, and a feeling of renewal would spread thru the house…”our home is safe”.
This is a tradition that goes back thru 500 generations, still fresh…
And sitting along side the old tradition, the”new” tradition: Santa Claus… or as Mommie Soph’s accent would have it…Sendy Close.
How bizarre. Yet for some (it not many) of my parents’ generation Christmas presents and Santa Claus embodied Americana. That my parents should buy into this was perhaps understandable; but that Mommie Soph should be able to accept the newer tradition was more surprising. She was able to detach the religious core of Christmas and have the joy of the season the swept the country.
No, we did not have a tree… nor was there a sense of religious importance for our family (although we all were to become familiar with this side as we got older… both Paul and Lynn went to Mass with their college & high school friends… and I went to Church with my friends the Rowes)… but Christmas morning we did open presents… and while the wrapping paper had no religious symbols… they were festooned to the nines. And as we opened those presents, Mommie Soph’s eyes beamed. She was so happy for us. I detected not one hint of regret that some how we were violating our sacred traditions.
Food was critical to her… it was an obsession. And quantity was vital. There had to be enough. Of everything. Then some more for later. And while Mommie Soph remained kosher… she had no problem with the fact that we didn’t. She had a duplicate kitchen in our basement, and did her personal food preparation down there. Food prepared for the family would be done upstairs. And while she wouldn’t cook bacon for breakfasts… she would go to the market and buy it for either my mother or Bessie to cook it. Eating was important… and if you didn’t eat seconds you would face a series of probing questions… and you could tell if the answers were satisfying; because if Mommie Soph didn’t like what she heard there would be a sadness that would descend in her expression… and it was unmistakable that you just hurt her feelings.
Not only would she cook non-stop for the house; but she even prepared food for our Bedlington Terriers (Baa Baa and Rocky). There would always be this “stock pot” that would be brewing on the stove. She would throw bones, giblets (horrible looking stuff actually) into the pot, and then add cut carrots, potatoes, celery… some parsley… little bit of this or that… and this ghastly stew would be for the hundts (the dogs)… to us it looked and smelled vile. But it never ceased to amaze me how guests during the day would wander into the kitchen, as Mommie Soph was stirring up the pot, and peer into the pot, “Hmmmmmm, Soph that looks simply mouth watering!” I would run from the room gagging.
While not an exclusive American pastime, she enjoyed daytime television, Friday Night Fights… and also playing an occasional card game of Bridge. Some of her unique subtlety in the game was lost on me until I started playing Bridge in college. But I do recall a night when she was playing with my Mother (who had a regular Bridge game), Paul and I forget the fourth (maybe Lynn?). Mommie Soph begins the bidding… “I bid a small spade…”
This was immediately followed by some discussion… of the inappropriateness of the bid… its sneaky quality… Years later I was able to piece together her craft. Convention has it that once you add the points in your hand (13 for an opening bid) you could open with a 5 card major suit (spades or hearts) or a 4 card minor suit (clubs or diamonds)… by bidding a small spade, Mommie Soph was telling her partner that she either had less than 13 points in her hand, or that she only had 4 spades.
A no-no in the game… but pure Mommie Soph, who only suffered a light chastisement.
And if food were the mortar of her existence, then her love of the family was its soul.