Bonjour, Madame
Mom and I are at Panevino, our favorite local Italian restaurant in Livingston, N.J., with 8 Chinese students who are studying English as a Second Language. We’re seated in the main room, at a group of four square wooden tables pulled together. The two of us sit in the middle against the wall, so we can assist the students on either side of us with deciphering the menu, and help them choose their entrees for dinner.
I look at the dinner offerings with the women near me at the table, reading each item to them and describing the food in simple details. Mom does the same with the rest of the group near her. It’s time to order when the waiter comes to the table. This is our go-to Italian place, and we’ve come so often, we know the menu by heart, and the waitstaff greet us like family. The food never disappoints. I’ll have the “fish of the day,” I tell the waiter, and also order the house special “Panevino Salad,” a delightful mix of greens, shaved fennel, artichoke, tomatoes and shaved parmesan with a vinaigrette dressing. Mom says she’ll also have the fish. One by one, the students order their dinner. Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish. All eight of them!
Mom took on teaching the ESL adult education class through the Livingston Public Library, which had set up the program to cater to the growing population of Chinese language speakers in our suburban community. The students would come to our house one evening each week, and sit around our dining room table for their lessons, focused on improving their conversation and vocabulary skills. The last classes towards the end of the semester focused on utilizing their newly acquired English conversation techniques in a restaurant. The group of them had already hosted a dinner for Mom and me at their favorite Chinese place (where they ordered the meal for the table) and this was our turn to reciprocate.
Mom’s passion was teaching. She did her undergraduate degree coursework at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., transferred to Barnard in New York City to finish up, and then got her Masters Degree in teaching French from Columbia. She taught French and English to high school students in the West Orange and Livingston public school systems, leaving her full time teaching position only because she was pregnant and it was the 1960s when it was taboo for a pregnant woman to be in front of a classroom. Once I was born, she continued teaching as a substitute, as an afterschool tutor to high school students, and as a home-bound instructor for special needs kids. She really loved teaching language – whether it was to teenagers or adults.
In our basement – when we were clearing it out before we sold the house – we came upon all of Mom’s French teaching materials. There were stacks of colored paper with pictures cut out from magazines. On one side was the word in French, and on the reverse, the word in English. Shortly after finishing her studies, she had gone to Paris to immerse herself in French conversation. She returned home with an improved fluency, a clear Parisian accent, and embroidered white leather elbow length gloves, all the rage in 1950’s Paris. Mom told stories of meeting a famous photojournalist, celebrity watching at Paris cafés, and dining on buttery croissants for le petit déjeuner. She shared her love of France and all things French with her young students. She would invite the students to her home for conversation practice and French pastries, and made every effort to make learning a new language fun. She was not much older than her teenage students, and a number of them stayed in touch with her well after high school. We’d be at some random place, and someone would come up to Mom and say, “bonjour, Madame,” introducing themselves as one her former students. When she was teaching, as a young woman in her late 20s, Mom had a certain je ne sais quoi, and could easily have been mistaken for a movie star herself, unconsciously emulating Audrey Hepburn.
I was not an exceptional student of French in high school, despite having a live-in fluent teacher; but I appreciated her life-long passion for language and teaching it. My forte was English – naturally – Mom had taught me to read before I started pre-school. My earliest memory is from when I was just two years old or so – before my brother was born. Ever the language teacher, she had placed white flash cards on objects all over the house, with the words in bold black letters. I couldn’t help but learn to read and use language at such an early age. It was not much of a surprise that I would develop a love of words and written communication.
The ESL class was a return to teaching for Mom after a classroom absence of many years, while she was busy was running synagogues in our area.
About the time my brother and I were in junior high in the mid-1970s, Mom became the first female president of Oheb Shalom, our Conservative Jewish congregation in South Orange, N.J. She was a role model, ahead of her time. She commanded attention among the previously all-male leadership. Now she dressed in power suits, and wore smart-looking hats that became her signature style, putting her on a par with the men in the congregation. After her term as president ended, she created the position of Executive Director, which didn’t exist yet. She went on to run the synagogue, oversee the office staff, and put on events for families like weddings or bar mitzvahs. Everyone knew my mother, and everyone knew she was in charge. When the religious leadership changed, and a new Rabbi arrived, she left South Orange, and went on to lead another congregation in Fort Lee, N.J. I think she got burned out running synagogues – with their inherent leadership by committee; each person wanting his or her ideas heard and acted upon.
Eventually, she went back to an academic setting – her comfort zone – and took on a role leading a non-profit organization embedded in a local college, back in her stomping ground of South Orange Village. Mom had met the founder, Sister Rose Thering, at our synagogue years earlier. Sister Rose had created a scholarship program at Seton Hall University, for graduate students working on their Masters Degrees in interreligious studies and Holocaust education. Mom led fund-raising activities on campus, set up events for donors, and interacted with the university leadership. She was in her element. One event she loved putting together was an essay contest for high school students throughout Essex County. Students were invited to write about ways to reduce prejudice, anti-Semitism, bullying, and how a leader like Sister Rose might have an impact on their lives. Mom would kvell over the student’s work as they read their winning essays aloud at a ceremony, like they were her own students.
While I never had aspirations to teach like Mom did, I recognized that many of her influences as an educator, leader, and strong female role model rubbed off on me. I worked for a marketing and public relations firm in New York for many years, writing communications materials for corporations, staging large scale events, and managing teams of co-workers. Mom and I would often share ideas on creating events, drawing on our respective knowledge of the industries we were in.
Although Mom is gone now, her influence is ingrained in my being. I often wonder if she knows I’m managing a non-profit animal rescue’s retail storefront and adoption lounge, and training and supervising high school-age volunteers.
I think she’d approve.
