Where to begin, especially with a relationship that was often difficult and tense?
She was born just before the 20th century, Sept. 1, 1899, in Berlin. Her mother was Marie, an out-of-wedlock child of Auguste Thieme, the matriarch of the family tree. Marie was always described to me as good and kind-hearted, coming from a difficult childhood of some privation and work, looking to smooth over any family difficulties. Her father, Franz Stampa, a skilled cabinet-maker by trade, was apparently a good man but unable to express much in the way of affection or emotion. Unfortunately, that's probably what her brother Hans needed most - somewhat frail and emotionally fragile, he grew into drunkenness and rebellion.
My mother and father knew each other as they were growing up, and spent some time together. My father married someone else, and had a child, Irmgard, my half-sister. I don't know how he and my mother reconnected, but she spoke often of waiting many years (nine?) for him, which probably meant that he had difficulties cutting loose from his first marriage. Until that happened, she lived at home. She spoke of the great relief she felt when she and my father finally came together.
Just about all of this history is what I heard from her over the years, and is of course her own interpretation. They married in the late thirties, and in 1938 I was born. My mother delighted in telling how painful and difficult my birth had been, with the seeming implication that I was somehow at fault, and had to make up for it. A more optimistic person might have said that it had been more than worth it, but I never heard that.
Basically, she was the most pessimistic person I've ever known. She would judge the world on a binary scale: a glass missing a few drops was not full, and a very light gray color was black. Her memory was selective with the same binary bias: real or imagined slights were remembered forever, but favors and good times faded quickly.
Measured on this scale, Mothers' Day had to be perfect. and so it quickly became my least favorite holiday. It didn't much matter what kindnesses and good deeds one had performed during the rest of the year when it was St. Mothers' Day. On the other hand, this worship of holy motherhood did not extend much past herself; it was perfectly appropriate to her that I should neglect the mother of my own children on this supposedly special day. What a relief it always was when the day was done.
Real or imagined slights were magnified to legendary proportions. Having learned to be sensitive to what she would construe to be a slight, I could notice or avoid them, although it often meant walking on proverbial eggshells. Others were totally mystified as to what they might have done wrong, when it could be as simple as sitting at the same table and slightly angling one's body away rather than toward her.
One such occasion has entered our family lore as the plumcake ("Pflaumenkuchen") incident. Being an excellent baker, she prided herself justifiably on a delicious plumcake made with Italian purple plums on a yeast dough. What had been a friendly discussion turned very frosty when Naomi said that she really preferred a baking-powder type of dough. It took a day of sulking on her part and flowers on ours to set things straight again.
And that was another unfortunate characteristic of hers – unyielding and unforgiving. One might think that a mature adult would say, after a disagreement and and a period of coolness: "It doesn't matter who was right or wrong, let's make up and start fresh". In all my years, that happened exactly once, which is why I remember it that well. I recall that another time, when I was in my late teens, there was some strong disagreement. I was hurt and annoyed enough to try to do the same: I left the house, walked around Brooklyn for hours, and then sulked purposely in silence for the rest of the day and into the next as well. Sure enough, I ran out of patience and made the overtures for peace. She had outlasted me once again!
The same attitude meant that she lost a number of friendships along the way. After a disagreement and the inevitable coolness, she would wait for the other person to apologize. Some, not seeing the need or the value of doing so, did not, and so another friendship faded away.
One of the more unfortunate examples took place with a cousin back in Germany, Charlotte Richter, with whom she had been corresponding since emigrating here to the U.S.. They were both getting on in age and had some infirmities to deal with. My mother of course considered hers to be worse and also often complained in the letters about my not having enough time for her. When Charlotte wrote once about taking a more positive view, my mother stopped writing. Years later, when I actually met my relatives in Germany, including Charlotte's daughter, I had to try to explain my mother's quirks in this regard.
My father had died of ALS in 1973. By that time, because of various slights and disagreements, she had pretty much isolated herself from any friends and acquaintances in the New York area. In 1976 she had hip replacement surgery here in the Boston area, with recovery at our home. The thought of coming up to this area to a residential home closer to us than Brooklyn took another four years to grow into actuality. Living with us was out of the question because the atmosphere would quickly become unbearably tense.
If nothing else, our Christmas/New Year's experiences were a strong guide. I would drive down to Brooklyn and then bring her to our Newton home for the holidays. They would start wonderfully, with festive decorations, great food and drink, gift-giving, and the traditional peace and good will among all. Over the next few days, life would return somewhat closer to usual, with us reading newspapers or books or doing other commonplace things rather than constantly paying attention to her. By New Year's, the atmosphere had usually become tense and often culminated in a disagreement about watching some program on TV to see the actual passage into the New Year.
Then, in about 1980, she moved from Brooklyn to a residence for the elderly in Woburn, Country Club Heights. As usual, she did not actively cultivate friends, so I was expected to give her a good deal of my time. A challenging job in high-tech and my own family were not much taken into consideration. And as she became older and more dependent, this need grew ever greater.
Typically, if one reads newspaper and magazine articles, it's the women in the family that care for the elderly. There's not much said about men who take up this role out of necessity. Men are supposed to be assertive in the business world and workplace, but need to be a different person caring for an elderly parent. Visiting my mother after a day at work was always an challenging experience – during that half-hour drive I always had to gear myself down from the frantic high-tech world to the much slower one of an elderly mother who could not function at other than her own pace. I learned that I absolutely had to adapt to the same slow speed to get anything done.
There were the many Saturdays of driving her around for some sight-seeing and lunch out. There were also the grocery-shopping trips. There were the increasing doctor visits, making appointments and taking her to the office, as well as some hospital stays. There were various other small crises, real and imagined. As a consequence, Naomi and I stopped considering distant or longer vacation, and after an aborted vacation because of a hospitalization, stopped taking them altogether for several years, when a nursing home became necessary. But that came later.
About eleven years after the hip replacement surgery, just about the predicted duration for this procedure back then, the joint failed. The surgeon, who had an excellent reputation, offered to operate again. My mother, knowing with certainty that she would die just about any day, declined, and so dragged herself around with this loose joint for another eight years. My attempts at persuasion about quality of life fell on obstinately deaf ears, because she knew. It would not be the last time.
As happens with many elderly women, she also began to develop some osteoperosis, which caused painful spinal compression fractures. This led to prescriptions of Percoset and Anacin 3, which certainly helped to moderate the pain. Unfortunately, she began to depend not only on the pain relief, but on the general good feeling that these drugs induced. It became my task to call her regular physician to refill the prescriptions regularly, a task which I dreaded because I feared that I might be turned down sometime; after all, I knew that the pills weren't being used for pain control any more. Thankfully and always to my great relief the doctor, although not impressive as a great talent in the field, would write another prescription which I would immediately get filled. Until the next time.
Eventually, as she started to become more infirm, she needed someone to come by to help her a few days a week, and then to help every day of the week (I would cover Saturday). After one home helper who was kindly but a bit dim didn't work out, I found one that was extremely caring and conscientious, Nancy, a true saint of a person. But twice even she got so annoyed by my mother's attitude that she quit, and I had to talk her into going back again. I was able to convince her to stay away for a few days while being paid to make the point of being needed. It Had not occurred to my mother how much she had to have someone to help her, and that Nancy was a real find. I suppose she thought that I should take care of her full-time!
There is the treacly song and lyrics of what MOTHER stands for. Mine is somewhat different:
M is for the Me, Myself – the she who mattered;
O is for the Others pushed aside, ignored;
T is for the Thanks so rarely given;
H is for the Help so oft demanded;
E is for the Empathy she lacked for others;
R is for the Reaping of what’s sowed.
Updated Nov. 30, 2023