Kak
61 Kak Her heroines were Pola Negri, Gloria Swanson, and Mae West— one for glamour, one for style, one for nerve. First on her scale of praise came courage of the heart, then brains, then something called in Arabic “lightbloodedness.” All birds but owls she loved, all that was green and growable, including weeds, all operas in Italian, the schmaltzier the better. . . . Lightning she feared, then age since people thought the old “unnecessary,” then living on without us, then absolutely nothing. Each time I’d say some girl had perfect legs, she’d tell me with a smile, “Marry her legs.” Of if I’d find a project difficult, she’d say, “Your mother, Lottie, mastered Greek in seven months.” Or once when Maris bested Ruth’s home runs by one, she said, “Compared to Ruth, who’s Harris?” Crying while she stitched my shirt, she said, “You don’t know what to suffer is until someone you love is suffering to death, and what can you do?” 62 On principle she told one bishop what she thought of him. On personality she called one global thinker temporarily insane. She dealt a serious hand of poker, voted her last vote for Kennedy, and wished us a son two years before he came. She hoped that she would never die in bed. And never she did. “When you and your brother were young,” she said, “and I was working, then was I happy.” And she was. The folderol of funerals disgusted her enough to say, “I’m telling no one when I die.” And she didn’t. One night she jotted down in longhand on a filing card, “I pray to God that I’ll be with you always.” And she is. ...
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