Secrets of a Jewish Mother: Real Advice, Real Family, Real Love (6 page)
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Authors: Jill Zarin,Lisa Wexler,Gloria Kamen
BOOK: Secrets of a Jewish Mother: Real Advice, Real Family, Real Love
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An unfortunate habit of the Jewish mother is the reflexive tendency to focus on the negative. We know that we do this, and still we do it. Is it genetic? Nature or nurture? Whatever ... it’s there. The best thing to do about it is to laugh about it when you recognize it. Trust us; you are not going to stop yourself or the Jewish mother in your life, no matter how hard you try.
Lisa’s Story
I tend to have very intense and close female friendships. I had one very dear friend named Annette. Annette had a caustic wit and a temper, but our families were close. Jon was eleven at the time, and he also had a sharp tongue. I wonder where that comes from. One day Annette did me a favor and drove Jon and his two friends to my house. Driving three rowdy boys can be tough. I wasn’t there, but I know that Annette and Jon got into an argument about something. Later, Jon’s friends told me that Annette had, in their words, “gone crazy,” raising her voice and hurling false accusations at Jon. Annette had her side too, of course. I was put squarely in the middle between my good friend and my son. But regardless of who was at fault, I felt that Jon needed to respect my friend as an adult. So I instructed Jon to apologize, in writing, for the comments he had made. He did so. I read the apology and deemed it acceptable. Would you believe Annette rejected Jon’s apology? She told me it wasn’t good enough and she wouldn’t accept it. Right then and there, she forced me to choose between my son and her and caused enormous friction in my home. My son comes first. ■
ask yourself
1.
Have you ever criticized a friend’s child? What did you hope to accomplish?
Have you ever criticized a friend’s child? What did you hope to accomplish?
2.
Has a friend ever criticized your kid? How did you react?
Has a friend ever criticized your kid? How did you react?
Lending money can irrevocably change a friendship. You no longer have a friend. Instead the relationship becomes one of debtor and creditor.
Our Jewish mother motto is simple: Do not lend anything you cannot afford to give. If a friend asks to borrow money from you, the answer is yes, if you can afford to never see that money again. The answer is no if you need the money for yourself. What do you tell your friend? You say, “Here is the money you need. It is a gift. The minute I give it to you, I will forget I ever gave it to you. Now let’s eat.”
If the friend wants to pay it back, then you can decide whether or not to accept it when the friend has the money in hand. In the meantime, the money is a non-issue because you have made a gift, not a loan.
Here is an experience Jill should have learned from at a young age:
Jill’s Story
Years ago, right after college, a friend of mine asked me to loan her $500 to help her start a T-shirt company. After I gave her the money, she never returned a phone call. She couldn’t face me. Of course, she had spent the money on something other than her business, but she didn’t want to tell me that. I lost a friendship because of this incident. It taught me to be prepared to lose the money the next time I was asked to lend any and not to lend any money I can’t afford to lose. Unfortunately, this lesson didn’t stick. Bobby and I were burned recently when we lent money to a friend—we never got the money back and we lost the friendship anyway. ■
ask yourself
1.
Aren’t we totally right on this one? Have you ever had a
good
experience when you lent money to a friend?
Aren’t we totally right on this one? Have you ever had a
good
experience when you lent money to a friend?
2.
Did you ever borrow money from a friend and not pay it back? Shame on you. It’s not too late.
Did you ever borrow money from a friend and not pay it back? Shame on you. It’s not too late.
You would not expect a friend to be mean, but occasionally someone reveals a side that is just plain cruel. If you see that side, run, and don’t look back.
All of us have experienced varying degrees of cruelty when it comes to peer relationships, particularly as kids. Jill and Gloria were scarred by certain experiences, and Lisa, observing some of this, developed a spine of steel, preventing her from some, but not all, of the hurt of being rejected by friends.
Daddy bought us a book on self-esteem when we were young, and he insisted we read passages of it out loud. One phrase stayed, a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” That is a mantra in our homes. We tell it to ourselves when other people try to put us down. You’d be surprised at how often that does happen in life. Hasn’t it happened to you?
Jill and Mommy have a lot in common in that both suffered early rejection from their peers. But their reactions differed dramatically. While Mommy chose to confront people’s hypocrisies and criticize their faults, even testing them with her hostility, Jill chose to avoid discussion of negative traits altogether, in an effort to please everyone and be liked by all. Jill’s favorite saying is “It’s all good.” She sums it up in these words:
Jill’s Take
I’ve said on the show that I am the girl who always wanted to be popular in high school and never was. At least I thought I wasn’t. Since then, I have reconnected with high school friends who saw me differently than I saw myself. Sometimes I think the most popular girl in high school wouldn’t even remember herself as being popular.
A lot of my insecurity comes from feeling rejected by my peers when I was younger. Lisa can tell this particular story better than I can because she was there and I blocked out a lot of it. ■
Lisa on Cruelty to Jill as a Kid
I remember one day very clearly. I was in sixth grade and Jill was in second grade. Jill and I were walking across a great expanse of empty field where our school intersected the highway. We had just gotten lunch at the local luncheonette and had to cross the field to get back inside school. We were more than halfway there when some of the kids in Jill’s class started to throw rocks at us, saying mean things to Jill. I grabbed Jill’s hand, tight, and told her to hold her head up and pretend nothing was happening and not to run. We just walked right through it as if in a trance. We didn’t get hurt on the outside, but I’ll never forget that day. I’m glad Jill doesn’t remember it. ■
ask yourself
1.
Have you ever been knowingly cruel to someone? Why?
Have you ever been knowingly cruel to someone? Why?
2.
Have you been cruelly rejected by peers? How did you react?
Have you been cruelly rejected by peers? How did you react?
3.
How has your personality been shaped by your relationship with your peers?
How has your personality been shaped by your relationship with your peers?
Friends are supposed to keep confidences, right? After all, that’s why you have good friends—to keep your secrets. But sometimes, a friend can take advantage of your loyalty. Years ago, Gloria was unwittingly made the minor player in a neighbor’s extramarital affair, and it didn’t make her feel very good at all. She recalls it this way:
Gloria’s Mess
Talk about secrets! I was very sick when I was thirty-four years old. I had a large benign tumor that necessitated the removal of a large part of my colon. I almost died, and I lay in the hospital for approximately six weeks. It was Yom Kippur, Sol had left for a few hours, and I was all alone. My friend Caroline came to visit me with a man who was not her husband. I had suspected that my friend was cheating a few weeks prior to this, but this was the first time I really knew. Would you believe at that exact same time she was there with her lover, Caroline’s husband came to visit me too? I didn’t know what to do; I panicked. I thought I would faint and broke out in a sweat. I could see that Caroline wanted me to make up a story about who her paramour was, so I introduced him to Caroline’s husband as my cousin. Now I was made part of her affair.
After I got out of the hospital, I got a hysterical phone call from a woman who was apparently this paramour’s wife, accusing me of having an affair with her husband! She said she was going to sue me for alienation of affection, which of course she never did, because I had nothing to do with anything! But the worst was when Caroline’s husband, who had been my friend too, came into our home and accused me of covering up for Caroline. He was so enraged, I thought he was going to kill me. His fist was clenched, and I was afraid he was ready to hit me when he saw my mother in the den. He had just learned of the affair and he blamed me for not telling him. I said that I was put in an untenable position and couldn’t help myself. I was very scared. To this day, I think there might have been violence, but after he saw my mother, this poor man left our home, utterly lost.
In retrospect, I guess I should not have covered up for Caroline. I suppose I could just have let the room go silent, which might have forced Caroline to figure out a way to introduce her lover to her husband. But at the time, I responded in the only way I could.
I was used that day. My friend Caroline was disloyal to me, encouraging me to perpetrate a lie on her behalf. And I was in turn disloyal to Caroline’s husband, who has not spoken to me since his divorce. Years later, Sol and I befriended a couple who knew Caroline and her paramour, now her new husband. She told me I was the only one who hadn’t known about the affair. Everyone else in town had known exactly what was going on. Caroline had sworn me to secrecy, so I kept the secret. Obviously, no one else did! So much for keeping secrets.... ■
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