The house has been sold. Or rather, the buyer has been chosen: we were overwhelmed with offers. It’s going to a local rabbi’s in-laws who, I suppose, want to be close to their flocks of grandchildren.
During the last 30 years, Orthodox Jews, in their obedient fruitfulness, have spilled over from Boro Park into Midwood, which was once a community of Italian, Jewish and WASP “professionals,” that oddly named post-War slice of 2nd generation sons who excelled, married good-looking women and lived lives their blue collar parents had never imagined.
While their instinct was to move away from their families of origin, the internal GPS of the Orthodox seems pointed in the opposite direction; they want to live close to one another, from generation to generation. So when the ramp appeared at my mother's front door, signaling her decline, neighbors came to gingerly inquire—for a nephew, a grandson, an aunt and uncle.
Lest this sound heartless, my atheist mother was warmly attached to her Orthodox neighbors. She enjoyed their kindnesses, their posses of children, the practical householder tips they exchanged about plumbers, tree trimmers and painters.
The neighbors, in turn, embraced her as a fellow Jew, though of the misguided Freud-Einstein-kugel stripe whose religious views were best described by Woody Allen: “Not only is there no God but try getting a plumber on weekends.” Even at the very end, when my youngest sister tried, “ Mom, you’re going to join Dad,” my mother nearly spat, “What are you talking about? Dad is dead. Dead is dead! Look, there are his ashes.” In her demented fog, this was a breakthrough moment of utter clarity.
Given all this, since my mother became ill, we've been moved and impressed that teenaged boys in yarmulkes and girls in long skirts have appeared at the door each Friday to visit her always bringing fresh roses that she loved. One was at her bedside when she died.