Remember Who You Are (Two Doors and a Window, Part 5)

I’d been in Oakland more than 10 years when this was taken., Still didn’t like to talk shit about Florida.

“Two Doors and a Window” is a series of essays that I wrote in 2020.

What was Meryl looking for with Sid? And did she find it? In my memory she always took his side, defending him. Defending her choice, I suppose. I do know that feeling: When I moved from Tampa to Oakland in 2001, I refused to speak ill of Florida for many years. I had moved from New York to Tampa for college but ended up living there for 12 years — my late teens and all of my 20s — so what would speaking ill of the state say about me? So it was one more thing I put on personal lockdown.  

But it turns out that putting things on personal lockdown is not the most adult thing to do. My dad was a weekend dad, the fun parent. Harv saw me as an adult, not only because he lived longer but also because we had a childlike quality in common. His retaining that allowed me to do remain childlike as well. Meryl was my primary caregiver; in terms of my relationship with her I am still a child. My emotional intelligence and empathy are two qualities I am proudest of. I never got to use those to bridge the gap of misunderstanding and hormones and differences and betrayal and disappointments between Meryl and me.

She died, and I lived on. I learned. (To paraphrase a pendant of hers and many an AirBnB wall hanging: I lived, loved, and laughed.) She died knowing a music journalist daughter who liked to party (although she never knew how much) and was nowhere near marrying a Jewish boy, or anyone for that matter. I had strange tastes — my favorite 60s Bollywood soundtrack drew particular ire from her on one of my last trips to see her — and she said I always made faces in photos. But I have to think that she would have approved of my life, whichever one I ended up with: if she had lived, and my life were different; or if she had died and my life was as it is. I have to have faith in myself and who I am, who I was always going to be.

When Kamala Harris recently accepted the Democratic nomination for Vice President, she talked about how proud her late mother would have been. That is a bigger accomplishment than any of mine, world-changing in who she is and how far she’s risen. It gave me pause and some perspective, because my path to assuming pride from a late parent is far more circuitous. My life now is built on my own accomplishments and instincts as well as the support and love and respect of the rest of my family, my husband, my friends over the years. Meryl is a part of that life because she helped make it happen. She imagined me in California. I don’t know what that looked like in her mind. But I can’t look away from it, and I guess I shouldn’t.

“Remember who you are” is something she said a lot. It’s written on her tombstone. She got it from her own mother. And I think she meant it in a Jewish way: Remember where you come from. But I have to choose to hear it as an edifying thing, a thing that builds on itself, changing meaning but never changing worth.