A Jewish friend sent me some "Jewish haiku." I'm the first to insist that you don't have to be Jewish to have had a "Jewish mother." Southern fundamentalist mothers can be every bit as guilt-inducing and infantalizing. So my stereotyping is multi-religious. The difference is that their children have not yet acquired the salving grace of wit to deal with it.
Here are some that made me chuckle with recognition [with annotation for some of my friends who may not know the associations].
Today I am a man
Tomorrow I will return
to the seventh grade.
[Bar Mitzvah]
On Passover we
opened the door for Elijah.
Now our dog is gone.
[leaving the door open for Elijah is part of the Seder]
Testing the warm milk
on her wrist, she sighs softly
But her son is forty.
[no explanation needed]
Sorry I'm not home
to take your call. At the tone
please state your bad news.
Is one Nobel Prize
so much to ask from a child
after all I've done?
A lovely nose ring,
excuse me while I put my
head in the oven.
Jewish Buddhism:
If there is no self,
whose arthritis is this?
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When, in my mid - thirties, I attempted to explain to my Jewish mother about moving West for a job / career, the immediate response was,
ReplyDelete"what, you are abandoning the family?*!*??"
As my Catholic friend later explained, (her mother had six sisters, five who became nuns),
"while the Jews may have invented guilt, the Catholics perfected it"
Oye!
Thanks, Alan, for supplying the haiku.
ReplyDeleteReading them over again, with their digs at intrusive, guilt-inducing mothers, perhaps it's appropriate to wish everyone a Happy Mother's Day this weekend.