I don't often write about my mother. That's because she was a "a flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown!" It seems impossible to capture her essence or any of the wildness she embodied - it changes with my own maturity and with the simple/complex details my iffy memory dredges up. 

She was her very own person who never really grew up - the next to youngest of five (the baby was the only son - how to lose your status instantly in a Jewish family of that generation). 

She hated liver but felt it was necessary to serve it for health's sake (didn't know about cholesterol in those days), so she served herself a thin cut overcooked steak and nobody knew for years what a coup she pulled over on her family.

Her stories were endlessly fascinating - how she and her friend Gilda used to greet each other in the high school halls and engender gales of laughter - "Hi Hilda," "Hi Gilda." Almost as funny as "Mike and Ike, they look alike," another oft-repeated refrain.

How she met her husband to be (he was the oldest brother of her best friend Mary) - and fell in love at first sight and instantly captivated and beguiled him into an early pregnancy (me) and marriage.

How she "borrowed" her older sisters' clothing and got caught and the sisters were still arguing over the stained red skirt 70 years later. 

How she never did learn to drive and always had to depend on her husband - it's probably one of the reasons they DID stay together over 50 years.

I remember riotous driving lessons her best friend Dorothy tried to give her the summer I was 11.  I didn't realize until years later their efforts were undoubtedly fueled by alcohol and it was a GOOD thing she never learned to drive.

When she had Alzheimer’s and we insisted that she had to go to a nursing home facility so that her diet would consist of more than bagels and cream cheese (and before she burned the house down because she never remembered to turn off the stove), she still was mindful enough that she used her ability to make risqué jokes to shock the nuns who were her loving caretakers. They, however, thought she was “just adorable” (and thank God and the Catholic church for finding a place that ignored her mean streak and concentrated on her appealing personality).

And she was just adorable.  She had a deep dimple on her cheek and even in her 80s she was still cute and charming when she wanted to be.  Until the very end. Even then, when she was completely out of it and comatose, she retained enough of her own personality that her breathing was recognizable as being completely her own.

God, I miss my mom.