When I retired (yeah, right!) in 2009 I told Suzy I’d spend Wednesdays with her mom. Suzy worked part-time so she spent Mondays with her. It’s not that she needed our help – God forbid! – but there were things we could do to, let’s say, assist, or make her life easier, or…you get the point. Suzy would drive home, call me from the road, and let go with a barrage of “Do you have any idea of what she did to me today???!!!” and then enumerate how contrary she had been. I, on the other hand, would drive back on Wednesdays whistling. I would meet her in the lobby, tell her, “I’ve got homework to do” (our code), with which she’d give me her apartment key. I’d go up, collect her laundry and put it in the machine in the hall, come back and work on her bills. She would tell everyone, “Isn’t it wonderful that my son-in-law would do my laundry!” whereas she’d never let her daughter do that for her.
After the “homework,” we’d go to a nice lunch (which took forever as she always was the slowest eater anyone ever saw). After driving her back to her independent living facility, I’d say goodbye and head home. It had been fun. She was a completely different person with me. Maybe it was Wednesday versus Monday? Naaah, girls and their mothers, you know.
And as her favorite, her daughter and son and her daughter-in-law bestowed upon me the honor of going to the Division of Motor Vehicles when she wanted to fight their decision to take away her driver’s license. As the Good Book says, “I girded my loins” and prayed hard that there’d be no traffic, so I didn’t have to hear her fury for longer than necessary. You see, she put in her mind that she only needed a new eye exam, so when I turned right to get on the south ramp towards the main DMV building instead of the left to get on the north ramp to merely a branch of the DMV, she started on me. Thank God, there was no traffic from Owings Mills to Glen Burnie!
Now I had done my homework. I knew precisely where to go in that big building. She stormed out of the car and when we got to the lobby, she ran to the information desk to find out where the eye exams were administered. I said, “Lee, I know where we have to go. Follow me.” We ascended to the second floor, a long hallway with cubicles behind closed doors. It looked like a high school corridor.
After a blessed short time, an administrator came out. Lee was standing between us, looking at her. Well, the woman was looking at ME while she was speaking to my mother-in-law. I whispered, “NO, NO, NO,” you don’t do that with her. She could see my fear and trembling (for her sake) as I pointed towards Lee. Fortunately, the administrator’s eyes refocused as she continued. She then took her into her cubicle, and I asked to join them.
“Mrs. Wilner, in Maryland driving is a privilege, not a right. You gave up that privilege when you lost your license A YEAR AGO.” Holy Moley!!! We didn’t know that. She didn’t give Lee a chance to reply, but said, “If you’d like to fight this, you must write a letter in your own handwriting, neither an email nor a typewritten note, have it notarized and mail it to such-and-such.”
To make a long story short, she got through to Lee and was respectful in the process. When we left the office, I asked her for her card and the name and email of her supervisor. I told her, “You should work for the United Nations. I’ve never seen such diplomacy and I’m going to let your supervisor know!”
When it came to Lee the stories about her could never have been made up. She was truly a most remarkable woman! Zichrona l’vracha…may her memory be a blessing as was her life. It is! It was!
(Speaking of mothers-in-law again, one day I’m going to discuss “curses” in our tradition…one day…but for now, here’s one: “May your wife’s father marry three times, so you’ll have three mothers-in-law!”)