Mother’s Stories

In the winter, my mother would raise geese. For this, she had a special gift. As soon as she held a goose in her hands, she could tell you exactly how much it weighed, and if it was worthy of being "adopted". Year in and year out, with the winter’s first snow-fall, she would pound on the doors of the "rich" neighbors, to find a partner willing to put up the money, so she should be able to go back to her home town of Luskela, to buy geese from the peasants. She would bring the geese back to town and deliver them to her rich partner.

And her contribution to the partnership would be her hard work and expertise in the feeding and watering of the geese....and if all went well and God willing the geese allowed themselves to be fattened, she would get a share from the earnings, and also a share from the feathers, which was for her the main purpose of the whole affair. On the eve of Hannukah, when it came the lucky time to kill the good, fat geese, it was for us small fry even a greater holiday...in that time we, the faithful "bearers of water" for the geese, would get our "share" from the business: this one a wing, this one the head, one a leg and the other a neck-bone to suck on; not to mention if someone got a few rare pieces of fried skin, which tasted like the Garden of Eden...well, there was nothing to compare with our great joy.

But more than anything else, we loved the time of plucking the feathers. It would be late at night, when the "Sambatyon" had calmed down, when my father’s pupils had set off on their way home with their tin and paper lanterns....when my father, who was the whole day from early morning until late at night shackled to his classroom table, would go off to the House of Study to sit in peace and read a page from the Talmud. Afterwards he liked to have a little chat with his good friends over worldly affairs, or perhaps exchange stories about the doings of the famous "great men of the generation", the local "students of wisdom" and other such learned sages. That was the time when mother, from under her bed, would pull out her great sack stuffed with feathers, and sit down with a basket in her lap, in her favorite place, the "sofa" where she could keep her feet nice and warm. Then, with the greatest of pleasure, she would begin to pluck the white feathers. Later, those same feathers would be transformed into little pillows and big ones; and into warm quilts and blankets, so that when we children got older, and the time came for us to go off on our own, to study in the Rabbinical college, or later get married, she should have something to give us to take with.

In those times our little house took on an altogether different appearance. The every-day, black, scuff-marked floor was now blanketed with snow from the tiny white pieces of down and feathers, with which we children made up all kinds of games: stringing them into little little crowns or Stars of David. We also liked to watch them burn in the fire of the small gas-lamp. They would burn quickly, flickering brightly and giving off a wonderful smell, that reminded us of something roasting in the oven.

We loved to help our mother pluck feathers. Not so much on account of the few pennies she payed us as "wages" (which we seldom received in cash in any event, once she had counted up our "deductions")...in fact, the main reason was that while plucking the feathers, she used to tell us such beautiful stories, which made us feel drunk as though wine.

Our mother had, indeed, an extra-ordinary talent for telling stories. Each little story would come to life before our very eyes. Many times she would take us on the wings of our fantasies to some far-away, happy world, from which we could hardly bear to return.

She especially liked to tell us about her happy childhood in the town where she was born and raised; how she loved to play and dance with her friends, the Gentile girls, in the green hills not far from her father’s tavern...how she got married with our father, how she leased from Lord Radzevitch an estate, and so herself became a virtual lady of station, living in a house with proper rooms. In the courtyard stood the barn, the stables, and tall storage bins, which were filled with "everything a mouth could speak of". They had a horse, sheep and cattle, farm-hands and helpers. And then, without warning, an evil theme intruded on this happy tale: the Tsar’s police came to drive them away, and in the space of twenty-four hours they had to leave the village, because my father would be considered an outsider, and didn’t dare let himself be discovered. She ran to the "high windows", to the landlord, to the Orthodox priest, to plead for mercy, they should exempt her from the cruel decree...but nothing helped. From that time on, she would say with a cough, her life had been laden with troubles...

On another evening, mother told a story of a "thirty-sixer", who came to the village one evening disguised as a Gentile beggar, dressed in an old peasant’s coat, held together by a red belt, and carrying an old mandolin under his arm. He played and sang such sweet, sincere melodies, which touched every part of your body, so that everyone in the tavern danced and sang along. My grandfather, Reb Jeremiah, who was himself also a great holy man, soon realized that this was no ordinary beggar, but rather one of those six-and thirty holy men, the legendary "thirty-sixers", for whose sake the rest of the sinful world is permitted to go on living! As soon as the ragged beggar saw that my grandfather knew who he was, he suddenly disappeared without a trace into the night.

The next morning, when the Gentiles from the village went to the forest to cut wood, it seemed to them that the whole forest was alive with song. They looked, and right beside a tree stood the beggar, praying with such a sweet melody that they had never before in their lives heard anything like it. A feeling of awe fell over them; they left their horses where they stood, and ran breathlessly to my grandfather’s forge, to tell him what they had seen and heard in the forest.

And there was a sequel to this story...

It happened one winter night. A child had suddenly fallen ill. My father was away in town for a farmer’s market. Outside, there was a frightenning blizzard which was tearing shingles from roofs, and pulling the shutters from off the windows. The child was seized with a burning fever, and cried out with a pitiful voice. Mother wrapped herself in a warm sheepskin, took for herself stick in hand, and set out from her "estate" on her way on the way to her mother in the town, which was a few kilometers away, to get a remedy for her sick child.

Outside it was pitch dark, so that you couldn’t see the road at all. The wind moaned like a wounded animal. She walked and walked surrounded by darkness and blowing snow. After awhile she realized that she had wandered off the road and couldn’t find her way back, not forwards and not backwards. And then she felt her strength slipping away. She broke out in a cold sweat. She was terrified that if she fell down, the snow would cover her and she would never get up...no one would even know where her bones had ended up! She prayed silently in her heart to God, he should have pity on a young mother of "litte chicks", that they shouldn’t God forbid be left as orphans to be raised by a wicked step-mother...

And as soon as she finished this prayer, she suddenly felt that someone was guiding her...with such a gentle hand, that a sweet warmth flowed through her whole body. The hand led her over the high mountains of snow, so easily and so quickly that she felt she was being wafted through the air. Finally "the hand" brought her right back to her house...she rushed inside to the sick child, and saw that he lay in bed, smiling with cheerful eyes and playing with his fingers...

And there was another story, this one about our own father. A wicked man, an informer, had accused my father of not reporting for military service. It was feared that soon the police would come to apprehend him, and that he would be sent far, far away, all the way to frigid Siberia, where it’s always winter. The grandfather (of blessed memory), took my father to see the holy Rabbi in Kotsk. My father was blessed and given a copper amulet ("leader"), and the holy man prayed that God should "lead" him in the path of righteousness.

When my father presented himself before the authorities, the Russian officials simply laughed and said that their Tsar didn’t need any soldiers with hunchbacks! At first the tateh thought that these Gentiles, the "high officials", were just making fun of a Jew...but when they told him to leave, to go home to his wife and children, he understood, that the Holy Rabbi’s blessings had really "worked"...from then on, my father himself also began to believe.

And just as mother’s great sack never seemed to be empty of feathers, so also did she always seem to have one more of her sweet, heart-warming stories. And it was indeed thanks to those stories, that more than once we were able to forget about our hunger. We even stopped hearing the monotonous scraping of the grill under the oven, which never ceased to grate on your ears like a blunt saw....because in those moments we were in another world, in a soft, white world...in the world of mother’s stories, in the world of white, fluffy dreams...

Aside from the homely stories drawn from her own experiences, mother used to tell other stories from the holy books: from "Kav Ha-Yashar", from "Taytsh-Khumash", from her "Tze’eynah U-re’eynah", "N’halot Tzvi", and other such holy books, in which she was highly learned. She drank from these books as though from a well...for her and for us, it was a life-giver. Often we felt that our little mother was also a child, a big sister to us...

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In the women’s shul, she was the leading "reader"...every Sabbath and Holy Day, all the wives would gather around her table...the "mute souls" who weren’t blessed with the learning to be able to read on their own the holy letters, and they would therefore hang on mother’s every word. Every Ninth of Ab in the evening, our little shtibeleh would be filled with those women, who had come to hear a greeting from far-away Jerusalem, and to weep together over the destruction of the Holy Temple, and also over their own "destruction", their own sacrifices, which continued unabated through their daily lives. The women sat on the ground, or on the long, over-turned classroom-benches, as though they were sitting in mourning for a dear, departed family member, while mother, with a crying, broken voice began to read for them the "Book of Lamentations", the story of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the story of the "The Ten Martyrs". The tiny house would soon be filled with tears, wailing, coughing, and weeping, as though they were mourning someone who had just died. And we "small fry", sitting together in our corner, held tightly to one another, and cried along...

Whoever has not heard the mameh’s beautiful, wonderful stories, or seen the way she told the stories, cannot possibly understand the feeling and the power of spinning dreams from reality. These are the stories that gave us our spiritual and moral framework; and more importantly, they gave us the feeling, that we had a dear, sweet mother whose equal was not to be found in the whole world...

Our mother, the ever-harried and beleaguered Jewess, forever tired and worn out from "breaking her head", day-in and day-out, just to put together a pot of borsht, a bowl of soup, so that her family shouldn’t have to go out and "blacken their faces" in town...as soon as she would sit down with us small fry, look into our eyes and start to tell her wonderful stories, she would be instantly transformed into altogether a different person. Her eyes, tired and sleepy from endless worry, from stitching with her needle by the small gas-lamp, now shone with somehow a youthfulness. Her thin, sunken cheeks filled with a red glow. A look of peace and contentment spread itself over her haggard face.

Her hands worked quickcly with needle and thread, or plucked feathers, while from her mouth came words like pearls, which captured our imaginations and took us to far-away happy worlds, where there was always sunshine, always bright rewards.

It was this bright "feeling of reward" that she ultimately gave us, like a spiritual "food for the road", to take with on our future, difficult journeys through life. And together with that she gave us her basic outlook on life, "all of life is nothing more than a story", as she often liked to tell us.

And takkeh she was right after all: because life is indeed no more than a story, not often a happy one, but more often...a sad one. Yet we come back to hear it over and over again, because for this story there should be no ending...