The Jewish Daughter Diaries (3 page)

Abby Sher

“Don't go in the den,” my older sister, Liz, warned. “Mom looks horrible.”

“I heard that!” Mom shouted, followed by a pitiful, “Ooooch.”

I ran to the den—whenever Liz told me to do anything, I did the exact opposite. Mom was sitting in our sagging recliner, surrounded by potted plants that all looked like they were leaning in and trying to camouflage her. Her body was in one piece, I noted. Of course, the only part of her face that was visible was her small gray eyes. She had her glasses propped up on a mound of dish towel stuffed with ice. Little clouds of blood darkened the blue-and-white-checked pattern.

“I tripped over that last step—
again
,” Mom muttered as I stood in the doorway.

“Can I see?” I asked in a squeaky voice.

“Don't,” warned Liz.

“Ta-da,” said Mom. She pulled the dish towel away, unveiling a wild mess of purple, red, and all the other colors in the wound-rainbow spectrum. I could make out a nostril and the edge of her top teeth, but the rest was just a huge, puffy train wreck. I wanted to smile like,
Hey, that's not so bad
, but I felt sick and my eyes were watery. I held on to the doorjamb for support.

It was not unusual for my mother to be bruised and busted. She was a self-proclaimed klutz and wore her scars proudly—a lumpy knee where she'd lost first prize and a lot of blood in a potato sack race as a kid; a thin white line from her eyebrow to temple marking her crushed eyeglasses (hit by a laundry truck in high school). Her nose was already pretty crooked from past breaks—all self-induced.

Physical hurts never slowed Mom down for long, though. Not like the emotional wounds—growing up in the Depression, giving up her career to be a mom, then losing my dad to cancer while my siblings and I were still just cubs. These were the wounds we never talked about. There were no Band-Aids that size anyway.

So in the case of Broken Nose #3, even though Liz was begging her to stay still and apply pressure, Mom got her plastic surgeon friend to come take a look and then started cooking supper. Nothing else could be done anyway. Her friend prescribed a few days of ice and some scar cream for her lip. The swelling decreased; Mom's nose got a new knot; and the bruise melted into pale lavender under her still-sparkling eyes.

I know my dad contributed an allele or two, but really I grew up looking like a carbon copy of my mom. So much so that we got stopped at the grocery store or synagogue at least once a week.
You
know
you
two
are
twins, right?

That always made me stand up a little taller and bite my lip in a half smile. I loved being Joanie Sher's daughter. I could see myself growing into this strong, scrappy, generous woman who was always organizing a charity fund-raiser, feeding a sick neighbor, or organizing talent nights at the local nursing home.

Physically, I knew neither of us was movie star material, but that never seemed to bother Mom. Every day, I studied her drawing a line of stop-sign-red lipstick on her tiny lips (which I also inherited). It was the only time I saw her pause and look at herself for a simple, still moment. It was so fleeting—just a glance, really. Yet in it I heard a silent affirmation of
I
am
Joanie
Sher, and I am doing A-okay
.

I had a harder time in front of the mirror. That classic Sher schnoz kept blocking my view. As a little kid, I had nosebleeds at least once a week. The first day of kindergarten I had to say my name through a nest of crunchy brown paper towels in the middle of my face. At night I lost serious TV time to my routine of nasal sprays and Vaseline. My mom constantly told me how brave I was throughout.

By fifth grade, the bleeding was under control. But in its wake, I was plagued by a new, more permanent condition. I realized that as I got taller, my nose kept getting longer. And longer. I got bangs. And then a bob. But that damn snout kept hogging up my reflection.

My best friend in junior high was a girl named Rosie. She was petite and perky and plotting her Future in Dance. My most time-consuming activity between the ages of eleven and thirteen was self-imposed nose restructuring so I could be petite and perky, too. I spent hours (in twenty-minute intervals each night) pushing my nostrils back. Willing it to mold into the same ski-jump shape as Rosie's.

Of course, all that did was make a rosy-colored crease in my skin and convince me I'd never be as bouncy or successful in life. Again, my mom reassured me. She told me Rosie peaked early and I was destined for greater things. Plus, my nose added “character.”

When it came time for my first kiss (which was really way past time, since I was already a sophomore in college), I resented my beak even more. Eddie was two years older than me and very patient. He was Irish, with deep-set brown eyes, a thick mane, and an unassuming, softly freckled nose that barely took up space above those lips. Those lips. How could I get to those lips? I kept tilting my head side to side, trying to lodge my schnozzola into one of his dimples. Or maybe if I leaned over, I could hook it around his jaw and then open-mouth smooch him? It was exhausting, not to mention terrifying. I apologized profusely.

“I just don't know where to put my nose,” I whispered sadly.

To his credit, we dated for a solid year before he found someone with smaller facial features. I lost several months nursing that first heartache and filled a lot of soggy journals with woe-is-me-and-my-stupid-nose. Mom even flew out from New York to Chicago to help me stop sobbing and kept repeating, “C'mon, Abidab. You've got bigger fish to fry.”

“His new girl is tiny. Especially her nose,” I whined.

“Mazel tov for her. You can smell flowers and forest fires.”

When I finally climbed out of my self-pity shell, I was truly grateful that Eddie had (a) gotten me naked and (b) inspired me to keep performing with the improv comedy troupe where we met. After college I got hired to tour with Chicago's Second City, writing and performing comedy—a dream come true and a perfect placement for a large-nosed Jewess.

It was May 2000, and my cast was in South Carolina for a big theater and music festival. We'd arrived in the afternoon, thrown our bags down, and walked through the theater for a quick dress rehearsal. Then one of the guys suggested we go play a game of basketball in a park nearby. We still had two hours to soak up the sun with our Chicago-pale faces before curtain.

None of us were athletes. We were the misfits and class clowns who'd finally found a place to tell twisted jokes and make things up in front of an audience. There was probably one solid bicep among the eight of us. (The piano player's.) But that didn't stop any of us from scrambling all over the court.

I was “blocking” my friend Andy from making a basket. This involved draping my spaghetti arms over his body and trying to squeeze the air out of him. Most likely illegal in the NBA, but for my purposes, it felt just right until Andy decided to do some sort of swivel pivot, then picked his head up and cracked his skull into my face. Or rather, the most obtrusive part of my face.

I saw stars. Planets and comets, too. My friends led me off the court and sat me on a bench. Andy looked genuinely apologetic. The other guys did that awkward shuffle of
Do
we
have
to
wait
here
or
can
we
get
back
to
the
game?
The girls hovered around me and petted my shaking skin.

“Does it feel broken?”

“I think there'd be more blood.”

“Abby, you can hear us, right?”

“Get her some ice.”

“Yeah! Ice!”

As I lay on a cot a few minutes later with a small glacier atop my nose, I tried to steady the room with my eyes. I called my mom back in New York and reported the accident. I even let a few tears slip for the first time that day. I was woozy and scared. I needed my nose to be whole so I could go on stage that night. I wanted my body back in one piece so I could know who I was.

My mom's response: “Calm down, sweetie. Just think, now we can get that nose job we always wanted.”

“Um, I'm sorry, what did you say?”

“Kidding, kidding,” she demurred quickly. Then in the silence she added, “But, you know…”

It stung a little that all these years she'd actually agreed with me about the curse of my schnoz. I definitely could've used a
You're so brave and beautiful
speech right about then. But Joanie Sher didn't dole out empty compliments. She was made of and fed me hearty (chicken soup) stock. She expected—no,
demanded
—me to be as tall and confident as she was. And I felt relieved that she'd finally let me in on her true feelings. The buried thoughts that I rarely got to hear behind her painted grin. In some ways, her admitting that my nose could use work was the biggest compliment she'd ever paid me. In her dot, dot, dot of silence I heard her saying:

I
believe
in
you. I never thought you'd make it this far in show business, and I want to give you every girl's best chance—a new nose.

“Mom, do you want me to change my nose?” I asked her.

“It's up to you, Chicken. I just want you to stand up straight and be happy with who you are.”

Backstage an hour later, I paused and looked at myself in the mirror for a simple, still moment. My head was throbbing softly but there was no more blood, and concealer worked well over the bruise. Yes, there was a definite knot now, just below the bridge. I looked more like my mom than ever before. And that made me smile. I leaned in closer and covered my clip-on mic before whispering,
I
am
doing
A-okay
.

“Places!” yelled our stage manager.

I drew my lips in fuller with my stop-sign-red lipstick. Then I pulled my shoulders back so I was standing up straight. And when the lights went up, I knew the crowd was cheering for me.

Kerry Cohen

My grandmother told me more than once that she wanted me to write her and my grandfather's love story one day. She thought their relationship was interesting because he was a doctor and she was a nurse and because they met over surgical dressing. (I still hear this as something to put on your salad.) She didn't understand that the real reason their relationship was interesting was because it was good.

They had in-depth discussions about medicine and art and music. They were thoughtful about each other's feelings. They had a rhythm. My grandmother made the meals, and my grandfather reminded her regularly of her beauty, her intelligence, her worth. Before Grandpa got sick, they had a lively sex life. I know this because once, while at the dinner table, my grandfather leaned toward me. He had thick eyebrows and looked almost exactly like Sam Waterston.

He said, “Your grandmother is the most beautiful woman in the world.” My grandmother, hearing this, leaned toward me, too.

“Your grandfather is a wonderful lover,” she said, her eyes locked with his. I almost choked out my water, both wishing I didn't have to be the vehicle for their flirtation and pleased that I was.

Often they would take naps in the afternoon together, and I would see them, their arms wrapped around one another, snuggling and taking comfort in one another the way only people who are schtupping will.

When my grandfather died, way too soon from heart disease, my mother stayed with my grandmother, afraid to leave her alone. Her grief was huge. You could see it sitting on top of her as she moved through her days, just trying to get through. My grandmother was eighty-one when he died. Most of her life had been lived. But she was still sprightly, still busy with golf and bridge. She had salt-and-pepper hair that had never gone all the way to salt. She wore it short, and it was as soft as baby hair. She never left the house without lipstick, one of her credos.

Over time, she became herself again. Slowly, she began to get color back in her cheeks. The darkness started to lift. She began to laugh and gripe and find her way on her own, without the love of her life.

My grandparents lived in Florida at the Fountains, a Jewish retirement community. She was surrounded by tons of other widows, and very few men. As it tends to go with old age, women outlive their husbands, and the ratio was about 80/20. And that's how my grandmother suddenly found herself in fierce competition for Abe Rabinowitz.

Abe was only seventy-seven, which meant he still likely had a few years left in him, maybe even a decade. This made him prime real estate at the Fountains. I was twenty-six when my grandfather died, and I made a point of visiting my grandmother whenever I could. I hated the thought of her being alone. When I did visit, I'd often find her on the phone with one of her friends before she'd hang up, disgusted.

“They're like a bunch of teenagers the way they gossip,” she said about her friends.

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone's trying to take down everyone else. Sylvia's wearing high heels suddenly. Ruth is brushing up on her Hebrew. Uch. All this talk because they're jealous Abe might like one of them.”

I laughed. “Is Abe really all that?”

She waved her hand to dismiss the question. “He's an old man.” She sat on the couch, letting out a little groan. “You know what I like in a man these days?” she asked.

I couldn't wait to hear. My grandmother could teach me things when it came to men. It wasn't just because she'd been married for fifty-seven years to a man who adored her until the end. It's that her standards were so much higher than mine. While she wore Prada and vacationed in Europe, settling for no less, I was in graduate school, wearing hippie-style clothes and falling for (and sleeping with) every last man I could find, just hoping one of them would stay and be my boyfriend. When they didn't, because they never did, I went on to the next, hungry and desperate like a stray cat. I had no other models. My own parents had divorced after an ugly affair and custody battle. They only spoke if they had to.

“What?” I asked, eager to find out from her what mattered in a man, what the secret was to a good relationship.

“A pulse,” my grandmother said. “I just want him alive.”

Well. Maybe we weren't so different after all.

I went back to school, embroiling myself in yet another love affair I couldn't make work. And my grandmother went back to the bridge club. When I visited again, a few months later, my grandmother left me alone the first night. She had a date. With Abe.

“You got Abe!” I said, ecstatic for her.

“Ach,” she said. “He's just a man.”

“But there were, like, fifteen women who wanted him.”

“Oh, many more than that,” she said with a wink.

Abe moved in not long after. On the few times I saw them together, he looked at her with that same love in his eyes as my grandfather had. When he died only two years later from complications from pneumonia, my grandmother moved in her new man, Martin.

Around this time, I fell for Toby, a pot dealer who played in a band. He spent most of his time out and about, making deals and playing gigs, while I waited for him in our house in Portland, Oregon. When he was home, he worked on his plants in the basement, building inventory.

When my grandmother invited me to visit her in Florida, though, he agreed to come. We packed up swimsuits and sunscreen and headed down on a morning flight. He went straight to the swimming pool and then tracked water on my grandmother's tile floor. He opened the refrigerator and found himself snacks. My grandmother watched him uneasily.

One evening, he went to sleep early, and she came to sit beside me in front of the television. Martin was also already in bed. He seemed so much older than she did. All men did since Grandpa.

She patted my knee.

“How are you, Bubby?”

“I don't like him very much,” she said, referring to Toby.

I took her soft hand. “I know.”

“He's not good enough for you. You should find a good doctor like your grandfather. Someone who will treat you right, like you deserve.”

I said nothing.

“You know,” she said, “I talk to your grandfather every night.”

I squeezed her hand.

“I tell him what I did that day. I tell him about you, about how special you are. He already knows. We both always knew.”

Hot tears stung my eyes. “I miss him,” I said.

“I miss him so much sometimes I can't breathe,” she replied.

“What about Martin?”

“He's just a friend so I don't have to be alone. I've never loved anyone but your grandfather.”

Eventually Martin died, from stomach cancer. And my grandmother gave up on men and went back to traveling. Somewhere in there I met someone who reminded me of my grandfather. He was kind, and he was a person who would care deeply about our future children. So, I married him. I dedicated my flowers to my grandmother at the wedding, in honor of her marriage to Grandpa.

I said, “I can only hope to have the kind of love you and Grandpa did.”

But we didn't. Or, rather, things grew complicated, and we eventually divorced. And the truth is that I hadn't learned the lesson I needed to learn from Grandma while she was still alive.

She died at ninety-four. I had just given birth to my second baby. I was three years away from an impending divorce. A few years earlier, I told her that when she passed, because we all knew she would have to eventually, I wanted her wedding ring because I still believed more than anything in what she had with Grandpa. She had smiled and patted my hand.

“The ring is all yours,” she said. I went to touch it, but she yanked her hand away. The ring's circle of diamonds glittered. They were marquise-shaped and embedded around the entire ring of platinum. “But not until I'm a cold, dead corpse. Do you know how much this thing is worth?”

At that point, I still didn't know what she knew: that I was worth as much as I believed. That's all there is to love.

Recently, I fell in love again. We have those conversations about art and writing. We have that rhythm my grandparents did. But also, he believes in my worth because I'm finally starting to believe in it, too. It's been almost four years that we've been together, and things are different. I still have to remind myself that I'm lovable, that I can have this, that I deserve love. We have a wedding date, and when the time comes, I'll put my grandmother's ring on, finally having written her love story.