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Other Writings
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            My Mother: A Frustrated Woman
           Growing up in a family where I was the youngest (and unwanted child) with four older siblings meant that I learned early the art of single-minded manipulation, at which my mother was a master. My sister Fay, nine years older than I, told me that Ma didn't want any of her children except Sara, the eldest in our family, but that information did nothing to change my feelings of rejection as I was growing up.

           I could see for myself that Ma was a passionate woman, and it must have been hard for her to say "no" to my father. My sister Sara was nineteen when I was born, Jeanne was fifteen, Al was twelve, and Fay was nine. My mother was forty and my father was fifty. She was surprised and appalled when she found herself pregnant again.

           Ruth Esther Hoffman, my mother, was born in Braila, a small enclosed Jewish settlement on the outskirts of Bucharest in 1879. Ruth Esther was the fourth daughter of an impoverished widow, and her village was hardscrabble poor. After her marriage to my father in 1898, they moved to Marseilles in August 1899, with their first daughter, Sara. Five months later, in January 1900, they made it onto a freighter bound for Montreal. They traveled in steerage, and Mayer was seasick most of the time, but Ruth managed to find a place for them to sleep near the steps leading to the deck, so that every time the hatch was opened, there was a breath of fresh air for them. Sara was ten months old, and quickly captivated one of the stewards, who slipped them leftovers from the crew's mess.

           In America, Mayer and Ruth settled in Chicago, where I was born. My mother always said she wanted some kind of independence, a small shop of her own, a dressmaking or alteration shop, but there was never enough money to put a down payment on a location. I often saw her pick up a small engraved ceramic pitcher she and my father had bought on their honeymoon in Vienna in 1898, look at it for a moment, heave a deep sigh, and then put it down. Perhaps she was wondering how she had ended up with five children, struggling to make ends meet, resentful that the charming man she married was not as good a provider as she had thought.

           When I was in grammar school, in 1926, I enrolled in a Home Economics class, and I was supposed to make an article of clothing as a final project. My mother had sewn all my sisters' clothes and many of mine, when I outgrew the hand-me-downs. Here was my chance to make something by myself. I chose the simplest thing I could think of, a slip. One day, as I labored on the foot-pedaled Singer sewing machine in our flat, my mother looked over my shoulder, and suddenly put her hand on the wheel, stopping the machine.

           "Here," she said, "give me that." She pushed me off the chair. "You're making a mess of it. You're hopeless. I'll finish it." She ripped out my stitches and started over.

           "But Ma," I remember wailing. "It's my project! I'm supposed to do it by myself!"

           "Never mind. This way you'll get a good grade." She continued sewing for a few minutes, whipped the now beautifully stitched garment off the sewing machine, and handed it to me triumphantly.

           I didn't realize how long I carried that sense of humiliation until I stood in my own workroom in San Francisco in 1950 and decided I could, and would, make a suit for myself. I called a friend, and we went downtown to buy a pattern and fabric. My friend Eileen wanted to know if I really wanted to make a suit as my first sewing project, and suggested that I start out with something easier. I needed a suit, and I insisted that it was a suit or nothing.

           We bought tightly woven tweed and a simple Vogue pattern and came back to the shop to work. Poor Eileen! I fought her every step of the way. "Why do I have to baste it? Why can't I just pin the two pieces together and pull out the pins as I go? Why does it have to have five-eighth inch seams? It seems like such a waste of material!" I didn't realize I was fighting the ghost of my mother during the entire endeavor. However, I managed to finish the skirt, complete with zipper and button closing, as well as the jacket. As I struggled with the shoulders and the set-in sleeves, I decided that if I ever made anything again, I would stay away from set-in sleeves! Eileen did the hand-bound buttonholes, and I found some bone buttons that I liked. It was a triumph, and my mother's ghost retreated. (I went on to become Rhoda Pack Leathers, and achieved fame for original designs in leather clothing, from 1950 to 1963, when I went broke because of under-capitalization).

           (My mother’s voice is in my head):

           Sara, we're going downtown.
           You have the pencil? The paper? Good.
           Growing girls need clothes,
           no money. I must sew, new shapes,
           new hems, new collars.

           We look at shop windows,
           you like that one? So draw.
           No? How about the other one?

           O.K. we go inside. Look, how about that one?
           No, thanks, we're just looking.
           This one? Quick, into the room.

           Draw, Sara, draw quick. The waist,
           the buttons, the neck, the length.
           The sleeves, draw, draw.

           Now for fabric. No, not Marshall Field,
           the basement, the cheap discount store.
           Here, this plaid? Yes, how much?

           What I could do with my own shop!

           I never really understood the demons that drove my mother. I came closer to those demons in 1942, the year my first child died, ten days after being born. I stopped over in Chicago to see her on my way to Washington, D.C., where my husband, a first lieutenant in the Navy, was stationed. I had been living with friends in Los Angeles, and I left for Washington shortly after being discharged from the hospital.

           When I arrived at my parents' apartment, my mother did not greet me with enthusiasm. Sitting at the kitchen table, we tried to talk. "So how is Pa?" I asked. I knew he had had a stroke, and I wondered how she was coping.

           "All right." She paused. Then, without preamble, she looked at me over her tea and said, "Be glad the baby died."

           I froze, my own cup halfway to my mouth.

           "Children are a nuisance," she continued, in a flat, even tone. "No matter what you do, they always disappoint you."

           What is she saying? "Didn't you want me?" I could hardly get the words out.

           "I never wanted you. Tried to get rid of you." Her voice didn't change. "But nothing worked. I threw myself down the stairs. Nothing happened. Not even a broken bone. I drank vinegar. Nothing. You came anyway."

           I'm cold. I'm not really here. I am above this table. Who is that down there? That's my mother, in her print housedress, sitting at the oilcloth-covered table; that's me, my cup halfway to my mouth; there's my father, snoring in his rocking chair in the small living room, the newspaper dangling from his limp hand.

           I put down my cup. No way to answer her. I have to get out of here. Standing up, I said, "I'd better go now, Ma," leaned over and pecked her soft, wrinkled cheek. Her lips were a thin tight line, her small black eyes fixed on my face, challenging me. I don't know what is in your head, Ma. I wish I did. "Bye."

           Staggering down the steps to the street, I stood for a minute, taking deep breaths. What was her message? Was it her kind of "tough love"? Remember the acts of love, Rhoda. Remember the way she made apple strudel, stretching the dough over the cloth-covered table, spreading apples and cinnamon only, no nuts, because she knew I was allergic to nuts. Remember the holiday strudel, made with candied fruit, and a special bit for me with no nuts. Was that not love?

           I took a taxi back to the station, and stumbled onto the train. Still feeling numb, I crept into a corner of the compartment and fell asleep. I was twenty-five years old, and it wasn't until my fiftieth year that I was finally able to accept my mother's silent acts of love.




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