In 1994, my parents moved to Florida, after 47 years in Brooklyn. The day they left, their car wouldn't start. My mother saw that as an omen, one that mirrored all her anxieties and doubts. My father waited outside for AAA; my mother called me.
"Maybe we shouldn't go," she said, her voice thick with fear. "Tell me, sweetheart. What do you think?"
I wasn't the best person for my mother to ask, for I looked forward to the literal distance the move would provide us. And so I urged her on; I assured her she would be OK.
The car started, they took off like a couple of teenagers for a 36-hour drive South. On the way down my mother suffered from what she thought was terrible indigestion. She discovered at a doctor's appointment, she'd had four small heart attacks.
My mother lived for another nine years as her heart continued to pierce her; to say it was the move that killed her would be hyperbole. But, perhaps, more aptly, it was what the move represented: a forward leap into the future. My mother was not a pessimist; but to embrace a gleaming new life was a trust far too otherworldly for a girl whose life began on an impoverished shtetl. For a girl whose life was speckled with goodbyes.
My feelings about moving are heightened and intense. Years after her death, my mother and I intertwine.
Followers
