2003-04-25 - 9:52 a.m.

Mother’s Birthday

I think it’s my mother’s birthday. That is, today is the day she usually considered her birthday, and she would have been ninety years old – we think.

Mom was born in Russia – before the revolution, before World War I. (Think “Fiddler on the Roof”; she said it was about her own mother.) Jewish people dealt with the government as little as possible, and they did not register births, so Mom had no birth certificate. When she was still a baby, the family moved to Glasgow, Scotland; when she was nine, they came to the United States. When you look at the ship’s manifesto, you can be fairly sure the year of birth is correct.

When Mom started school, she learned that the other kids had birthdays, and she asked when her birthday was. Very impatiently, my grandmother answered “the fourth day of Passover.” When that day came around again, it was April 25, and Mom accepted that as her probably birthday. Checking the Hebrew calendar, we find out that it must have been pretty close – if my grandmother’s recollection was accurate. I could forgive her if she was mistaken – there were a lot of kids.

Mom had a birth date, but she still didn’t have an official document. Eventually she had a marriage certificate and U.S. citizenship papers, and she used those as identification when she applied for a driver’s license (at age 63!). But when she applied for social security, her marriage certificate wasn’t good enough; “she might have falsified her age when she got married.” She was annoyed – “if I had, I would have made myself younger” – but she sent them back to her school records, and they decided she was old enough.

This was my mother’s favorite song, from “Carousel,” which she saw on Broadway during its initial run. I think we need it now.