Taken at The Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY

As you know, I have been blogging about my mother for a number of years. In over ninety posts I have spoken about our relationship, the aging-journey, the observations and most of all my fears, perhaps selfish, as I internalize what I see and feel about my mother and her slow departure: she is now ninety-nine. I don’t want to become my mother.

But, I had another “mother” and I miss her: she was my colleague, Sylvia.

Sylvia was the school psychologist on our three-person team who was the queen of evaluations. She put everything she had into her testing of needy students for aid. We worked together for years in a school that was situated in a city housing project, a project that used to house the working-middle-class; as they left because they exceeded the allotted income or were able to move on, the poor, really poor, filled their apartments. Some struggling to stay afloat, others bringing the unimaginable drugs and all that went with it.

Sylvia and I soldiered on, together, into her retirement at age sixty-seven, a year less than I am now. When she left, it was never the same. Others came to take her place but they were not Sylvia.

Sylvia was my “other” mother.

She was always more than generous, caring, concerned and involved with my family; after she retired, she, like many aging mothers, began to show the “soft-signs” of change. We did our mother-daughter-thing one sunny day and went to Lord & Taylor for lunch and shopping. This was something that I thought I would do with my own mother once she was moved back from Florida, something we did once when I was twelve years old. And never did again.

With Sylvia, it was our mother-daughter outing.

On that day, after lunch, as Sylvia was standing at a cash register waiting to pay for two long-sleeved sweaters, one bright yellow and one Kelly green, clearly two items she would never wear; she had the first of many brain-blips that I would observe: with a sick feeling in my gut I had to explain what a coupon was.

And so it goes, and so it went, and so it ended. My friend was leaving me and as parts of her declined, as our mutual memories vanished, while in my pain, I learned how to prepare for my own mother’s subtle disappearance years later.

Every year, on Sylvia’s birthday, April 27th, my apple tree would be in bloom and make my heart sing in pink and white. The petals would eventually create a fragile snow on my lawn. I would stand at my bedroom window and just breathe and watch. When that tree was invaded at some later point, by an ant infestation, taken down and away, I made sure the subsequent tree would bloom in pink.

And, every year after, the replacement tree, a Krauter Vesuvius Plum, would be resplendent in its pink gown on Sylvia’s birthday just like its predecessor; but, this tree left behind glorious red leaves.

Except.

Except for this year, when the tree was confused by wind and rain and bloomed too early in the month, hurting me, making an unwelcome change. And, it further punished me by barely producing its usual gown; instead it wore a shabby veil that fell to the ground too early. I thought of Sylvia on those days and wondered if this were to be the new birthday norm. The diminished show was painful.

The weather is changing and so is the world, a world to which Sylvia would never be privy.

I have no choice but to adjust. I will remember my friend, my “other mother” with love and warmth, all throughout April.

But there is more, a lesson, the lesson that teaches us that whatever we need, however we need to be mothered, we can find that in a special friend; it is their gift of selflessness.

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

 The previous post is here

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