Category: Mother

I’m mailing you copies of letters Rob got from SFSU recommending and appointing him for tenure. What nachos!

David shaved off his beard Friday, May 14 and neither Dad nor I noticed! And David never said anything. It wasn’t until he and Dad were having dinner at Friendly’s Sunday night (I hadn’t gotten back from Newark yet) that Dad noticed and said something. David just laughed. When I got home Dad asked, “Did you notice anything different about David Friday night?” It then dawned on me that he’d shaved the beard. I felt terrible. A mother is supposed to notice these things!

[letter to a friend]
I know what [the] problem is: fragmentation. It has been my constant companion for about 30 years.  I remember well three kids vying for my attention and me wanting to do a hundred other things, for myself, my husband, my parents, my friends. These days, no one really makes any demands on me, but I still feel fragmented because my family is so scattered, and because I want to do so many things, for myself, my husband, my parents, my friends. I see the same dynamic operating on Lisa, whose life is even more complicated than mine was (is) with two jobs. She says, “how is my life any different from any other working mother any where else in the world?”

[two weeks after a major earthquake in San Francisco]
I said to Beth, on the phone, that from now on, when people asked if I live in fear having a child in Israel, I would say “not any more than I fear for my children in California.” … Though I think they were shaken and sobered by what they experienced, I hesitate to believe they’ll move. People get attached to San Francisco, almost as mystically as they get attached to Israel. I don’t expect them to be pushed away by an earthquake, anymore than I expect you [Lisa] to return because of hardship or danger.

August 14, 1986
Robert had a wonderful time on his visit with Beth’s family in upstate New York. The relationship is in good shape. However, he returned to Palo Alto knowing that he was going to sever his connection to Dr. M., which may spell trouble, because he now is without an advisor. Also without a stipend. Robert seems to go from high to low, from crisis to crisis. I’m glad he shares his triumphs and tribulations with us. Every two weeks or so we spend half an hour giving him all the reasons he should stick with the program. Right now it is not as bad as it was last spring, when he had flunked the comprehensive and flunked Beth. At least Beth seems to be bringing him some happiness.

September 4, 1986
We told him … we will lend him what he needs to finish. Besides I think Rob still has the bundle he made from working in Washington. I don’t believe he has had to tap that yet at all. You know Rob, he still has the $500 he made as a paper boy!

January 31, 1987
His [new] advisor, Dr. Hillyer is very positive and encouraging and Rob likes him. His dissertation subject, at the moment, is something to do with integer programming. (What’s an integer? Ans: think of a grid. Where the lines intersect, that’s an integer. Integers are usuable, the space in between is not.)

[… the job opportunity] is so typical of the way things happen to David. He’s not aggressive and doesn’t search very hard, but when certain opportunities cruise past him, he has stuck out his hand and latched on. Remember how he started delivering the Courant? He was riding his bike on Kirkwood Road when the delivery supervisor was scouting the neighborhood and stopped him and asked if he would like to be a Courant paper boy. David said, “okay,” and it became his job for the next year or so…”.

I’m so glad you mentioned and encouraged us to visit the boys before we think of making another trip to Israel. It’s been a long time since I asked either of them if they felt we focused more on you than on them. It is very difficult to show either affection or undue interest in David; he makes you feel like you “are bugging him” or giving him the third degree. Robert is a hugger and articulator. While he shows much more enthusiasm for Israel and your life there, he has said, even recently, “this house is so Israel-oriented.” When I told David on the phone that he was going to be an uncle, he chuckled and said, “Hmmm, that’s very interesting.” The same night I said the same thing to Robert and he replied, “Oh, wow! that’s great!” and spent about 15 seconds cheering and laughing delightedly. They’re just different emotional beings, I guess. But I have not the slightest doubt about their love and loyalty for us and for you.

This date we will remember as the beginning of Robert’s Odyssey to the West. I am thinking about him a lot – the way I did you [Lisa] 11 years ago.

Rob told us on the phone that he wasn’t going to take the Penn. Turnpike because the tolls amounted to $12. Dad said that wasn’t so bad. Rob said, “it’s a tank of gas!” Robert may be the first person in history to come out of graduate school without owing any loans. The only valuable possessions he is taking the car are his saxophones. (… he bought a little soprano sax a few months ago.) Everything else is packed up in 35 boxes which Rich Cohen will ship to him via UPS as soon as Rob knows his Palo Alto address.

May 4, 1954. 6 p.m. Backus Memorial Hospital, Norwich Conn.

Twenty-four hours ago I was preparing dinner for Sey and me – warmed over lamb roast, fried noodles, toss salad. We had grapefruit that wasn’t very juicy and some pears. We ate, I washed dishes and then we worked on a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. Later in the evening we spoke to my mother and dad on the phone and also to Ma and Pa Saltzman, and watched a play on TV about Cardinal Mindzenty. At 11 p.m. we piled and listed the laundry and set it outside for the morning pickup. Then we went to bed. During the day, which had been alternately teeming and misty with spring rain, I had read a mystery, ironed some laundry and written Mothers Day cards. All the time I had felt no different than I had the previous two weeks – just cumbersome with a low back ache.

Sometime around 1:45 a.m. I woke up, as had been usual, and prepared to settle into another position, but I was soon aware of an uncomfortable pressure low in my pelvis which grew more intense. At 2 a.m. I woke up Sey and for about 15 minutes we tried to time what we thought were labor pains. But there was no timing anything because the pressure was constant. I conjured up my lessons on natural childbirth and tried to relax by breathing abdominally, but found it impossible. Sey and I kept agreeing that I couldn’t be in labor because there was no regularity to the pains and the membranes hadn’t ruptured. But Sey got his stethoscope and listened for the baby’s heartbeat. Then he decided he had better examine me. When he immediately felt the baby, he quickly dressed and tried to get me up and dressed – said we had to get going to Hartford.

But at just at that moment I didn’t want to get up or dressed. I wanted to push and push I did, involuntarily, pulling on Sey’s arm and then on the bed post. I had several of these “bearing down” contractions and then, somehow, between one of them, I grabbed on my bathrobe, overcoat and loafers, snatched up a pillow and two towels and waddled outside to the car. I laid out on the back seat on my side clutching the pillow and steeling myself for the hour’s ride to Hartford.