July 1974
She calls me on the telephone three times the day before I am due to arrive in Los Angeles. The first time she says, “Tell me, you still like cottage cheese?” “Sure,” I say, “I love it. Cottage cheese, yogurt, ricotta . . .” “Good,” she says, “we’ll have plenty.”
The second conversation is much like the first. “What about chicken? You remember how I used to bake it?”
The third time she calls, the issue is schav — Russian sorrel soup served cold with sour cream, chopped egg, and onion with large chunks of dry, black bread. “Mama,” I say. “Don’t worry. It’s you I’m coming to visit. It doesn’t matter what we eat.”
She worries. She is afraid she has not been a good mother. An ac¬tivist when I was growing up, Communist Party organizer, she would put up our dinner in a huge iron pot before she left for work each morning, in this way making sure she neglected no essential duty of a mother and wife. For this, however, she had to get up early. I would watch her chopping onions and tomatoes, cutting a chicken up small, and dicing meat while I ate breakfast, sitting on a small step ladder at our chopping board.
Now, thirty years later, she’s afraid she won’t be able to give what¬ever it is I come looking for when I come for a visit. I’m laughing and telling my daughter about her three calls, and I am weeping.