My mom and I had a daily practice for many years: We would exchange gratitude emails. Every day, I’d email her one thing I was grateful for, and she’d email me one thing she was grateful for.
My mom sent me such emails as…
“I’m grateful for our cat Hoho who always makes me laugh.”
“I’m grateful for my gorgeous hydrangeas.”
And
“I’m grateful that I’m allergic to chocolate, so I’m not tempted to eat it.”
Which is a great positive spin on being dealt a tough genetic hand.
Over the years, I emailed her hundreds of reasons I’m grateful. One thing I wish I’d emailed more often: How grateful I am that Ellen Jacobs was my mom.
Because she was a wonderful mother.
First of all, she was supportive. So supportive. Consider this:
When my first book “The Know-It-All” came out, my mom bought so many copies on Amazon.com that the Amazon.com corporate office sent her a notice that she was forbidden to buy any more. They thought she was trying to set up her own bookstore to compete with them.
Another example: When I was researching a book on Elvis Presley, my mom volunteered to help with research. She ended up watching and taking notes on 12 Elvis movies. That’s dedication.
But it wasn’t just that she was a supportive mom. She was an inspirational mom.
She was a role model for me in so many ways — in being intellectually curious. In showing kindness whenever possible. In dealing with life’s hardships with humor. She once emailed me, “A sense of humor will get you through the toughest times--never lose it.”
I also got her gene for worrying and nervousness, but you have to take the rough with the smooth.
Being my mom was just one of her roles. She was so many things to so many people. To borrow a phrase from Walt Whitman — whom she studied as an English major at Cornell — my mother contained multitudes.
Since my mom died a few days ago, I wanted to briefly talk about a handful of those roles:
My mom spent 20 years teaching science to middle-schoolers. She was a beloved teacher, partly because she made science fun. Consider that she taught fundamental scientific principles via snacks and treats. How can you not love that?
To demonstrate the Big Bang Theory, she cooked muffins with her students. The lemon batter represented space, and the raisins were galaxies. That is still how I visualize the universe, by the way.
A few years ago, one of her students wrote me a letter about this culinary side of her teaching.
“Your mom started ’the kitchen corner’, and outfitted the area with real cooking tools and equipment. I’ll never forget my first day assigned to prepare Ants on a Log. Spreading the peanut butter on the celery stalk without it smearing over everything; getting the raisins lined up—it was too much for me. Your mom crouched next to me, guiding me through the steps. She was so encouraging
The feeling that came over me that afternoon--accomplishment and deep satisfaction--is what I’ve been chasing every night for the last 20 years.”
The writer of that letter is Dan Barber, owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, one of the most influential chefs in the world. So thank you, Mom, for inspiring Dan and hundreds of other students.
My mom was a deeply talented artist. She painted, she drew, she did calligraphy. Perhaps she shined brightest as a designer and maker of jewelry.
She made gorgeous, intricate necklaces, earrings, and bracelets with gemstones — including, of course, beryl stones (Beryl is my sister).
I remember visiting her at her jewelry studio, where she was wearing a pair of industrial-grade goggles and holding a flaming welding torch. She looked like she was on the assembly line at the Detroit Chrysler plant.
She was a specialist at something called cloisonné, which is hard to spell and even harder to master. She would use melted enamel and wire to make these detailed, beautiful images of swans or flowers.
Her friend and teacher Melissa said my mom’s cloisonné work made her a “legend” at the jewelry studio. That was the word she used: Legend. She gifted her jewelry to friends and family, and I love seeing them wear it proudly to this day.
My mom loved being a grandmother and she excelled at that role. In fact, she had a T-shirt that said…
“What happens at Grandma’s, stays at Grandma’s”
My mom was just the right amount of indulgent to her five grandkids, Jasper, Zane, Lucas, Isabella and Micaela.
When my sons were little, she picked them up from school at least once a week and took them to our local grocery store to buy lollipops. I wasn’t supposed to know, but the grocery store owner spilled the beans. I have come to accept it.
There was only one thing that got as much love and indulgence as her grandkids, and that was Hoho the cat.
I’d often visit her and she’d be lying on her bed reading a magazine. But she’d be curled up in the Northwest corner of the mattress, and Hoho would be spreading himself out over the vast mainland. I’m not sure how a little cat could take up that much room, but he did. And of course, he’d be getting his whiskers petted, and he’d be loving it.
My mom’s 80th birthday happened during the quarantine, so we couldn’t throw a party, of course. Instead, Beryl and I asked several of her friends and family members to write short notes about how our mom had impacted their lives. The notes were remarkable, so moving and full of love.
And one of the recurring themes was just how much our mom helped friends and family through tough times — divorces, deaths in the family, business failures.
You were a “lifeline,” one friend wrote, citing my mom’s kindness, gentleness, and wisdom.
Both of my parents hit the jackpot, spouse-wise.
They loved and adored each other from the time they met as students at Cornell, and their marriage has been a model for me in my own marriage.
My dad had a particularly difficult job these last couple of years, as he had to be caretaker for my mom as she battled dementia. But he never wavered, frequently reminding us during the crisis, “Your mom is an amazing woman.”
And she, in turn, was a wonderful wife to my dad.
Early in their marriage, she moved from New York to Korea where my dad was stationed in the Army. And she and Beryl lived in Korea for 15 months. Moving across the world would be adventurous now — but fifty years ago, before WiFi and chain stores — it was truly a bold leap of faith.
My mom was the greatest audience for my dad’s jokes. Even though she had heard them once or twice or a thousand times before, she still loved his repertoire of classics.
She still chuckled every time he went to a friend’s house and ordered a “Yellow Lightning” - a fictional drink consisting of tequila and lemon Kool-Aid. My dad made it up on the theory that no one had both ingredients in their house. My mom would be the merciful half of the pair, explaining to the flustered hosts that it was an elaborate joke.
But she wasn’t just an audience. She had a delightfully mischievous sense of humor of her own. And she was good at poking gentle fun at my dad. For instance, my dad spent hours in the summer writing his law books on the beach. She always said he was so focused that he never looked up at the scenery. He wouldn’t even notice if a tidal wave came and swallowed him up. As a birthday present, she painted him a T-shirt with an image of my dad’s beach hat floating on the ocean. He wore it proudly for years.
My mom loved books (one of the reasons I was interested in becoming a writer). One expression of that love was her decades of work with the New York Public Library. There, she served two terms as head of the 500 library volunteers.
And she gave hundreds of tours as a docent to the library’s exhibitions. These exhibitions changed several times a year, and my mom would have to learn an entire new topic — Biblical literature, Chinese art, you name it.
She had a way of making the tours particularly engaging, finding the most interesting details. I remember there was an exhibit on restaurants, which had a section on diners. My mom learned some of the diner lingo used by the waitresses and cooks, and taught some phrases to her tour groups. Thanks to my mom, I know that milk is called “moo juice.” And a decaf coffee with nonfat milk? That’s called a “why bother.”
I use the word “determined,” because optimism didn’t come naturally to her. My mom, like me, was born with a gene for worrying. She and I are both very good at picturing worst case scenarios.
But together, we worked to fight this. We sent the above-mentioned gratitude emails. We reminded ourselves how lucky we were to have a family like ours.
For the last three years of her life, several times a week, my mom and I would watch a classic Hollywood musical together.
And during that time, we watched not one, not two, but three songs about seeing the good side of all the rain that falls in your life. There was “Singin’ in the Rain,” of course. And one called “It’s Lovely Weather for Ducks,” sung by Rosemary Clooney. And another called “Isn’t this a Lovely Day,” sung by a drenched Fred Astaire.
And that is what we tried to do together, as the rain fell pretty hard toward the end of her life. We cherished those hours watching musicals together, and singing along, usually slightly off-key.
As you can see, my mom really did contain multitudes. But the common thread running through all of her identities was this: She left the world a better place.
She left it more beautiful place, thanks to her jewelry and art.
She left it kinder place, thanks to her role modeling.
She left it smarter place, thanks to teaching and tour-giving and book-reading.
All of which makes me send this belated email to her: I’m grateful to you, mom, for being such a bright light in this world, and for teaching me so much.