Ellen, the woman who raised me, had live-in quarters in our fifteen room red brick house in Baltimore. I do believe that my mother would have enjoyed tending to me, but she conducted herself in ways that Caucasian women in her society were taught to behave. Nonetheless I don’t think she liked it.

Within five minutes of Ellen serving dinner in the formal dining room, I’d become such a whiny irritant that my mother would let me leave the table and eat supper with Ellen in the kitchen.

We’d talk and laugh and put together cardboard puzzles while we ate. I bet Mom would have loved to be excused from the table and have had her meals with us instead.

I can still feel the love that is so apparent in the photograph. Ellen didn’t look at the camera. She looked only at me.

In the night, I’d run, frightened, to her room. I’d be afraid to go back to sleep after having a bad dream. She’d say, “Baby, God gave us dreams so he’d have a place to talk to us. When God talks to us, there’s nothing to be scared of.”

I would then fall asleep next to her in her bed. Whenever my mother discovered me there, she never made me go back to my bedroom. I think she not only loved Ellen, but was happy for me that I received maternal love from someone so wonderful. 

Ellen put up with my fidgeting when she’d dress me to go to girlfriends’ birthday parties. When done, she’d get me giggling while having me perform a pirouette. Then I’d do a goofy long drawn-out bow to which she’d respond by enveloping me in her arms.

I think Mom would have gotten a big kick out of dressing me for parties. I also bet she would have wanted to be the one who put Mercurochrome on my constantly scratched knees or who’d raid the refrigerator with me in the night and eat the tuna noodle casserole right from the baking pan.

My mother’s main undoing was that she was convinced her lot in life was laid out for her. And that there was not a damned thing that she thought she could do about it.

I married someone who was not like my relatives – not Jewish, not wealthy, not even employed. What did I have that my mother didn’t? Love. Happiness. And society’s support that it was OK to make my own path.

I know that Mom would have been just as nurturing as Ellen. I wish for her sake she had known that too.

Award-winning columnist, Saralee Perel, can be reached at sperel@saraleeperel or via her website: www.saraleperel.com/

Her novel, Raw Nerves, is now available on Amazon.com as a paperback and an e-book.