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30 Farewell to Mama (1981) J ust a phone call and the world lost a tone of luster. Fredka was sobbing, “Estusiuchna , Mama just died.” We knew that moment was coming. And we knew that death at this point would be liberating. Still, people you love never grow old in your mind, and you cannot imagine the world without them. When she was lowered into her grave, my family stood in a tight circle, and friends were near, reverently honoring the passing of a life. How different this first natural loss felt from the countless deaths I had witnessed before. I felt agony and gratitude. “I love you, I love you,” I whispered. You will live, you will live, my heart screamed. You will live in every cloud configuration you taught me to see, in every spring flower and sparrow’s song. You will live in each grass blade and newborn dawn, in the love and generosity you have in your progeny sown. Mama, how I lament your torments. When I was a child, I knew little about my mother, the person. She was my mother and that encompassed all. I knew that mothers could see into every corner of their child’s soul, guess every whim, soothe every fear, and protect from every wrong, even the child’s own folly. I liked Mama best when she was indiscriminately sympathetic to my point of view, A New Dawn 214 and I judged her harshly when she was less than omniscient. I confess that I scrutinized Mama with the selfish heart of a child, even when I was no longer a child. There is so little I know about her inner self. All I have now of Mama is abstraction. Mama was born in a remote shtetl called Ciasnik, in the province of Vitebsk, in western Byelorussia. Based on family accounts, my ancestors were always on the march. A country that welcomed them one year chased them out the next. One day a person was rich, the next day homeless. I loved to listen to Mama’s stories about Ciasnik. They sounded like tales from a storybook, a real storybook—my storybook about the world before my world. I still remember asking, “Mama, why did you leave your shtetl?” “We were chased out by hooligans,” she replied with few words. “Where were the policemen? Did you go to them for help?” “The Russian authorities did not care about Jews being beaten, robbed, or chased. They helped.” Aghast, I asked, “Where did you go?” “We packed up what we could carry on our backs and left the shtetl with the wild Cossacks chasing after us.” I pictured her running from the hooligans. My mind froze on her words. “That was terrible. What did you do?” “We were very hungry,” she said softly as she busied herself with small chores. Her words mingled with cinnamon smells of just-baked cookies. “How hungry?” “Well, so hungry that we ate potato peels.” “Oh, my gosh!” My heart sank to hear that my loving mother had suffered such unheard-of starvation. The world suddenly felt less safe. Mama’s anecdotes of Ciasnik were not only of sadness. She spoke with love of the people who worked hard to care for family and community, and to serve their God. She brought to life weddings, babies being born, and holidays celebrated between disasters. She recalled golden fields at harvest time and hauntingly dazzling peasant songs filling the autumn sky like winds. Mama lulled us to sleep with traditional Yiddish and Russian lullabies with themes of love, longing, and meadows blue with forget-me-nots. Mama rose from a history of persecution with the heart of a hero. Ciasnik remained for Mama what Warsaw represents to me—a place where dreams and love thrived, despite human cruelty. ...

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