my mom's silverware

When my mom married her second husband, she decided it was wrong to use the silver flatware she had gotten as wedding gifts when she married my dad. When I got married,  years into her second marriage and my sister about thirteen years old, mom first said I could have all her silver. Little sister had a tantrum and she could have wicked tantrums. Mom said she had already given it to me.

My sister was always a skillful manipulator. And I was a chump. I had a pair of perfect, never-played-with Raggedy Ann and Andy's that our maternal grandmother had made for me. Grandma died before she could make my sister a pair. I loved those dolls but I was keeping them pristine to give to my little girl someday.

Once, while visiting at our dad's in Chicago, when I was in college and baby sis was, maybe, 8, she cried each day of her visit about how sad she felt when she was in Ohio and remembered that Ann and Andy were all alone with me off at college.  She later performed in lots of plays. Acting talent, I guess.

She cried so much that I thought her sadness about the dolls being alone was genuine. She was like one of my own babies to me, born when I was 14. She and I spent far more time together during the first four years of her life than she spent with our mother or father. I was hopelessly devoted to my baby.  When Mom moved out of state, after promising her divorce judge that she would never remove the two kids she was taking (ages 4 and 7, both of them as much my babies as hers, and me sending more time with them than mom who was going to college full time, working part time to pay her tuition and me passing up normal high school activities to take care of the babies, fix dinner on weekdays (dad cooked on weekends) and the laundry.  Laundry for 8. Dinner for 8. I usually did the grocery shopping daily because I did not have a car, and I had to haul the two kids. I had to go daily because I could only carry groceries for one dinner for 8 people.  Mom  lied to the judge and ripped my babies out of my heart. I didn't know where they were for a long time and I cried about it most days my first year of college.

Here is how my sweet mother told me where she was. She sent a card. It said "The children and I now live in X Town, State. This is our address if you want to write to them. Love Mother P.S. I have remarried."  The P.S. part hurt the most, not because she had found another chump, a rich one this time. Her marriage meant my babies were not coming back. True, true, being in college, I was not likely to spend a lot of time with them, other than long Christmas college vacations and long summers. I probably would have gone to law school if my babies were in Chicago.

I didn't know my sister had faked the crying about my rag dolls until fairly recently, like in 2007. She laughed a lot while telling me how she tricked me out of my dolls, how she felt entitled to them since grandma made them and I didn't play with them. If she had told me that, I would not have given them to her. They were for my future daughter, mine to do with as I chose. It wasn't my fault grandma got too old to make rag dolls.

Her disclosure of her fake rag doll performance opened my eyes to my sister.   Our brothers and our dad had been telling me for years she was a G-D bitch. And my dad considered referring to any female as a bitch to be so far beyond the realm of polite that I think it was the only time I ever heard him say bitch. He told me to wake up, that she didn't care about me.

Perhaps if I had known what a skillful actor my sister was, or known she had faked me out of my prized, made-by-grandma rag dolls, I don't think I would have done what I did with the silver. Remember, mom had said I could have it. that she had given it to me and my sister would get other things. One thing my sister got that I never got was lots of clothes, very fancy vacations with mom and Hubby #2 and lots of spending money.

Mom's silver was not in great shape. It's pattern was Damask Rose. I loved it.

My ex-husband was quite angry when I said my sister could split the silver in half, choose whichever pieces she wanted. The little conniver picked all the large, expensive serving pieces, counting each big piece as equal to a teaspoon, so she also got several placesettings. He almost pulled his hair out yelling at me for letting a kid, about thirteen, make a decision when mom had already given it to us.

I did let her have it. Additionally, my sister gave me the most damaged pieces, almost worthless pieces.  I was disappointed, just as I had been sorry to lose the dolls my grandma made me

And there is this: when I lent her the dolls, emphasizing it was a loan, I said she could only have them if she didn't play with them, if she just kept them company on a shelf as I always had. She agreed but then she played with the dolls constantly, which makes a case for her having them. My mom had those dolls repaired at least a couple times because Margaret wore them out. Mom would assure me that the doll repair person had used the same stuffing so the inner doll was the same one I had loved.

Another thing that really got to me:  Andy's legs were replaced with non Raggedy Ann and Andy fabric for legs. Those dolls have a very specific look and it is still possible to find the right striped fabric for the dolls' legs. How I hated those mismatched legs. The two dolls no longer perfectly matched.

When Margaret ultimately did give the dolls to my daughter, badly torn and the patchwork falling apart, she kept Annie's good dresses. My grandma had given Annie a wardrobe of choices and she put a way-too-big, way-too-worn-out, totally un Raggedy Ann like dress on Ann.

My sister, btw, had many Raggedy Ann's and Andy's, perhaps a dozen. She had way more dolls than I ever had.  So I had told her she had to call them Ed and Elizabeth so they kept their own identities, didn't get lost in her crowd of rag dolls. She actually did that. She loved calling the best ones Ed and Elizabeth.

She had lots of fun with my dolls. So did my baby brother, who was often drafted into the doll play so he could hold Ed and talk for Ed and walk Ed down the aisle the day they got married by my sister. Brother and sister dolls marrying?! Oh well.

Much later, when my daughter was in college and no longer living with me or near me, and my sister newly divorced, I realized I had never used the junky silver that sis had chosen for my share.  My ex and I had bought our own. I think we bought it in a duty fere shop on our honeymoon in Jamaica.  My ex hated the damask rose pattern. I still love it. I would love to have some damask rose, altho silver flatware has no meaning to me now.

Get this. When Mom's husband died, and she moved in with one brother, she gave me her flatware, which was not silver but was very high quality. I still have it. I thought of my rag dolls and my sister's manipulation with the silver at the time of my wedding when most would think I deserved a special wedding present. Yet when my sister found out, when visiting me one day and I served her some food, that I had mom's flatware, she blew a gasket. "Why should you get it? I am the one who grew up with Ron and Mom. You were nothing to Ron. I grew up using that flatware. It should come to me."  Sister overlooked the fact that she had gotten all the good silver, she was still in college, I was a married woman with a house to stock and I actually needed some flatware since Frank and I had no usable silverware.  Note:  I spent very little time with my stepfather. I was in college, I lived abroad a lot and then law school in MN, even further from Mom and Ron.  I didn't mind her saying I was nothing to Ron. I don't think she knew how much Ron spent on my custody battle fees or sister would have had a tantrum about that.

I don't remember why but after her divorce after a very brief marriage that lasted about three months to a very rich man that she had openly married solely because he was rich, she sold 'her' silver, which included mine. She never offered me a share from that sale of my silver.  I think as soon as hubby #1 realized she really had married him only because he was rich, the marriage was over. They got married in Las Vegas at a chapel that specialized in dressing all the people in the wedding in midieval costumes, like a pretend kiddie wedding.  My niece wore a princess gown with one of those long pointy caps with veils tailing off it. A childish wedding, surreal. As soon as she got named on her hubby's bank account, she invited her high school friends to take a Caribbean cruise with her, leaving her child behind with her new husband who was at U. of Michigan law school, which likely required a lot of work. When she got back from the cruise, she announced that she was going to Israel and taking mom. Mom had just been diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. Her doctor urged mom to postpone any travel and have the surgery asap.

How my baby brother sputtered in anger as he told me, about a thousand times, how angry he was that he took our seriously sick with colon cancer mom to Israel. It was not like mom had ever wanted to go to Israel, not our devoutly  Catholic mom. Sis was showing off her hubby's wealth but she had also been advised by the rabbi mentoring her conversation to Judaism had suggested she not finalize her conversion until she visited Israel. Ironically, the Pope visited Israel while mom and sis were tehre and mom got to actually see the Pope of the Catholic Church. From a distance, within acrowd.

Her first husband was a social Jew, had never gone to synagogue or even had a bar mitvah. He kept telling sis he didn't care what religion she espoused because he was a confirmed atheist. She believed, however, that her Jewish mother-in-law might be more accepting if she converted. She wanted to insinuate herself with all those rich people and she thought converting would do it.

That rabbi must have been a good teacher. When sis returned from Israel, she said she could never convert to Judaism. She had not liked Israel and not liked Israelis. She said to me, although I doubt she said this to her then-husband, that she had experienced Jews as greedy, loud, overbearing and, overall, ugly of spirit. No, she declared, she dropped the whole conversation thing. Gee, maybe sis is a bigot?  She has railed at me for being so liberal. And she got fired from a public high school because she seemed to treat the black kids with overt bigotry. Privately, she complained constantly about how unfair it was that she had to teach gangster black kids. I never said this to her but she deserved to get fired. African American children have a right, and society has a duty to fulfill this right, to be taught by non-racist teachers.  After she married her second husband, a French artist who seemed to spend hours daily reading racist shit about Arabs, she also began to despise Arabs. She lived in Egypt for two years, in Kuwait for one. When I said I thought she and her husband were racists, she said I was naive and misinformed. It was creepy to hear her go on about all the proof that Arabs are racists and want to destroy all non-Arabic non-Muslims. She said 'they' allowed Asian Muslims, such as in Thailand, thrive for now. It was helping them take over the world but if you read the right books, you learned that in the long run, only Arab Muslims were deemed worthy to live. Islam is not a hateful religion. Look at how some in this country butcher Christianity. Sure there are bigoted Muslims who use religion to justify hateful action. There are lots of Christians in this country who use their religion to justify their unjust behavior.


'The whole conversion thing' had been a completely sis-generated tension. No one had cared that she convert to Judaism and then she ended up insulting them, Jews, Israel and more. Peter's maternal grandparents had grown up in Israel, emigrated to the USA in the late forties for opportunity. The grandfather never amounted to anything but the grandmother was a pistol, a harddriving woman determined to build serious wealth. And she did. When she did, the NYTimes gave her a full page obituary -- a full page is very rare in the NYTimes. In the obituary, it described how she began buying one small apartment bilding in Brooklyn, so she could bring relatives over and they had a place to live right away. Soon she realized Manhattan was the real estate to get rich on. She owned, altho the family has now sold it to Donald Trump, a boutique hotel on the corner of 59th & Madison Ave, right across the street from the flagship Bloomingdale's store. Plus she acquired many apartment towers. And the land under the Lever Building. The Lever Building was a special, big-deal building. I wonder why the developers only leased the land.  The obituary outlined much of her real estate career and then said "The only woman in real estate with comparable holdings is Leona Helmsley but Leona married her real estate empire. This woman built her empire all by herself, a tiny Jewish woman immigrant."  Even that grandmother, who was still alive when my sis married her grandson, liked my sister and said she didn't care if she converted. No one in the family was religious. Sis was just revealing how obsequious she could be.

I always struggled to believe the guy went ahead and married her when she was so open about only marrying him for his money. My sis is very beautiful and her first husband is almost homely. He might be homely but I have a hard time seeing any human as ugly.

So sis got mom's silver, I got mom's flatware which was actually expensive and still exactly the same as the day mom gave it to me about 25 years ago.

My share of mom's silver? When sis was divorcing her first husband, even though he gave her $250K and a small townhouse and paid for all its furnishings, she tried to sell everything she could of value. I don't remember why, now, but when she moved to sell mom's silver, I gave her my share to sell and let her keep the money. Or maybe she just kept it, although to be fair, my sister was generous with me when she was rich. And I did live with her and my niece for about six months and that's when I gave her my silver.

I hated that silver from the moment I saw that my thirteen year old sister had given me all the damaged pieces. I came to hate it after listening to my ex-husband endlessly and angrily gripe about how stupid my mom was, how stupiid I was, to let a child divide that silver when it was already ours. To that, once in awhile, I would remind Frank that his parents had not given us anything, not even something of no value. No token gift for their son on his wedding day.  And although I would never choose the pattern of mom's flatware, I like its qality. The pattern is fairly simple but it is not quite my taste. I like it because it has heft in my hand, I have all the serving pieces and it looks brand new when it is 35 or more years old.