A ‘Shpil’ On My Mom
In memory of my mother, who died seven years ago on Aug. 27, my wife, Terrie, and I last week hosted an oneg after a Friday night service at our temple. An oneg is a nosh, essentially, a way for folks to kvetch, kvell and kibitz after the service.
I bring the topic and these Yiddish words up (kvetch equals complain, kvell means bursting with pride and kibitz is tease) because I’ve been thinking about Mom’s role in my life.
As a clinical mental health counselor, I often use my mom in a very specific reference with clients, referring to one of my earliest memories in life, when I recall her coming into my bedroom one weekday afternoon to take my picture.
I wrote about this “key life moment” in a blog last year, noting it was the only time I could ever recall Mom spending one-on-one time with me as a child. In other words, it was a negative outlook on an otherwise positive event.
In hindsight, I’m guilty of being too hard on Mom, whom I took somewhat for granted in the way she managed our household growing up. Mom was the rules person, the disciplinarian in our household. The realist to my father’s dreams.
Together, though, she and my father raised three kids to live by the golden rule and we turned out pretty decent. What she got for her efforts through her retirement years in Florida (she was alone for 35 years after my father died) was a lot of, well, kibitzing from all of us because she was so set in her ways. To this day, we poke fun at her “Mom-isms.”
So rather than being tough on Mom, whom I decidedly did not worship as I did my father, I thought it worthwhile to mention something she and she alone provided to her three kids. Which brings me back to Yiddish.
Mom was the person who had the Yiddish word for all occasions. She taught highlights of this somewhat dying language to her kids. Yiddish, a language originally from Germany, became common for Ashkenazi, or Eastern European Jews. And my family was Hungarian on Mom’s side and Polish on Dad’s.
To be sure, I don’t have broad knowledge of the Yiddish language. But I know enough to recognize a “shpil” as mentioned in the headline (English version is “spiel,” and the meaning for either is “a somewhat long-winded pitch”).
And I can use certain words, at certain times, in a certain style of delivery. Which was kind of the point of Yiddish—at least to mom. Yiddish terms were used to emphasize her points.
“Leslie, you look faschlafen (sleepy).”
“Hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik, Leslie (stop pestering me).”
“You’re making me all farmisht, Leslie (crazy).”
Mom had so many unique habits and quirks, which today we look on more fondly than we did at times when she was alive. And though I was closer to dad, I find it fascinating how Mom’s words or phrases, particularly the Yiddish ones, come to mind far more often in daily life.
As she might have said, call it bashert (fate).