Remembering My Mom

My young mother in Frankfurt when her name was Elsa Stern. When she married, she became Elsa Levi, and, in America, Ella Lennett.

I’ve written so much about my mother, spent so many years reviewing her photographs and her life, I often quipped to my husband that I won’t have much time left to live my own. While I’ve chronicled the years before I was born in some detail, I rarely talk about my personal memories - the simple times we shared as mother and daughter.

My mother knew how to make an entrance. She was pretty as a 1940s movie star, with red curls, a generous smile, and a mischievous twinkle in her eye. She rarely wore a stitch of makeup, declaring herself a “natural beauty.” Even when she wasn’t trying, she was coquettish, and I could hardly blame my father for being jealous on occasion. In her late eighties, her sense of timing was still impeccable. At a New Year’s Eve party at our home in Omaha, she waited until all had assembled, then descended only when all eyes were on her. She really did light up a room in a way I could never, ever duplicate.

I was comfortable with her, and I suppose I took her love for granted. She always seemed to be there for me, even when others demanded her attention.

My first strong recollection of my mom was not until I was about 4 or 5 years old. My family was recuperating from walking pneumonia, soaking up the warmth of Florida on doctor’s orders. One morning, Mom and I went to a park and sat on a bench outside of a tennis court. Randomly, a player threw a rusty tennis ball can over the fence. It landed on my head and created quite a gouge. My poor mother successfully hailed a car and a total stranger took us to a nearby Catholic hospital. As I sat on her lap, I cried “I’m sorry, Mommy” – horrified that I was bleeding all over her new sundress.

With my parents in Florida, around 1954 in Florida.

Around that time, singer Eddie Fisher released a 45 called “Oh, My Papa.” Mom played the vinyl record over and over again, often with tears in her eyes, remembering the man I would never meet. Another favorite was a spirited version of La Marseillaise belted out by soprano Lili Pons. My brother Stu and I would march around the living room victoriously with pretend tri-colors in hand. Sometimes our dachshund, Lido, would follow.

Mom was not a great cook, but she always sent me to school with a belly full of porridge decorated with a smiley face of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. I was fully a teenager when I learned that this “Grießrei” was actually called farina or cream of wheat by my peers. It never occurred to me that my Mom’s English vocabulary was still spotty. After school, we’d often walk together to Main Street to pick up my dad’s dry cleaning at Style’s, sour pickles at the kosher deli, or a loaf of fresh rye bread from Cake Box that was obliterated/devoured before we got home.

In the sixth grade, I entered a B’nai B’rith “brotherhood” poster contest. Inspired by President Kennedy’s enthusiasm for space exploration, I depicted an astronaut shaking hands with a Martian atop the slogan “Let’s make friends on Mars, but let’s clean up Earth first.” The project was taking longer than expected, but Mom stayed at my side. Around midnight, with no end in sight, she made me my first cup of coffee to help me stay awake! I can’t remember if the poster won a prize, but I’ll never forget her steadfast support.

By the time I was an early teen, Mom was already nearing sixty. Between her hormones and mine, we often had bouts of hysterical laughter, followed inevitably by leaky, overtaxed bladders – which made us laugh even harder.

Once, when my father was traveling for business in Europe and my brother was away, we stayed up to watch Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart on The Late Show, a classic movie program on WCBS New York. We cried in tandem every time that schmaltzy music played at our heartstrings.

This frame is from a series of photo booth pictures we took at Omaha’s Skateland during our daughter’s birthday party, around 1992.

When my Dad died, it was difficult to rip her from the house she had shared with my father for forty years. But, eventually, Mom spent many years with us in Omaha. She watched our girls roller skate on the shag carpet in our new house as Pat and I started the long process of renovation. Always a good sport, she let them dye her hair green. During our workday, she walked up and down the stairs several times to let our dogs into the backyard. When I returned home from work, before I could shed my business togs for comfortable clothes, she insisted I check the latest letter from Publisher’s Clearinghouse because she was sure, this time, she was a winner.

Mom entertaining our daughters, Morgan and Shayna, as Pat and I were renovating our new-to-us old house in Omaha. Note the unstripped wood and the shag carpet!

Thankfully, before dementia set in, we made time to talk about her childhood, her adolescence, my father, and their memorable escape from Nazi-occupied Europe. I documented those stories, returning to them decades later with a lot more time and a tad more wisdom. As her dementia grew, so did the challenges: Repeating that my father had died more than a dozen years earlier was painful at each telling. In most other matters, it was counterproductive to correct, and I learned to enjoy the moment and go with the flow, wherever it might lead.

She died at the age of 95 in the bed that she had slept in for fifteen years. Hours before she passed, she seemed suddenly clear after days in a trancelike state. She looked at me – really looked at me – and said, “I’m dying.” And then, “I love you.”

The last years of my mother’s life were the most taxing of mine, but they heightened my appreciation for the everyday and my understanding of death. They helped me fully realize the depth of my husband’s kindness as he carried her down the steps, singing a silly song. For all that, and so much more, I will remain forever grateful.

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My book, In the Wake of Madness: My Family’s Escape from the Nazis, is available on Amazon or can be ordered at any bookstore.