My mother-in-law was truly the greatest character I have ever known. She called the cable company once to fix her illegal cable box, then was infuriated when they confiscated it, and she then compared her treatment (unfavorably), in a phone message to me at the office,, to that received by her fellow-victim of the government, Manuel Noriega. She fought weekly with her husband ("Jose!") as to who read the same sections of the Sunday papers, so that within two hours it could all be thrown out into the paper bag and soon to be headed to the trash. She substitute taught calculus, when it cannot be determined with specificity if she knew much beyond basic arithmetic. She burned her house down (courtesy of an electric blanket manufactured at about the same time as the invention of the wheel), and didn't stop talking even as being rushed to the hospital. She gave people directions that included "Make a left turn where Bohacks used to be." She predicted the great economic meltdown (based on the stores where A&S and McCrory's used to be, as well as the news she would listen to on the radio with the lights blinking out the wrong time, proving that even a broken clock can be wrong all of the time)- message from 2008: You were --finally- right Erna. She typed (in Judy's immortal words) like she had no fingers. She claimed to hate organized religion, yet she was the archetype of a Jewish mother. And everything revolved around food and feeding her family, every day up until the time after dinner when she would mop the kitchen floor after finishing the final load of "God bless my dishwasher," and was officially "finished done and through" for the night, leaving only 110 minutes of TV. She set records for visiting Waldbaum's because after all it was a "straight run." She traumatized an entire baby boomer generation about the wondrous qualities of Karo syrup, and brought new meaning to "frozen food" when it came to various desserts (i.e., the main course), following the meat dish (the appetizer). She used the phone as weapon, and even with the long tangled yellow cord in the kitchen, it could be a lethal one. And can we ever forget that resounding vote of support: "You didn't marry so well either!"?- if that was the only thing she ever said, then that would be enough BY ITSELF for her to be always remembered by. She never stopped talking, though every sentence would veer off into multiple directions like a geometric puzzle she probably taught in the high school. Did she graduate from college? Did she graduate from high school? What exactly did she do to RKO (on the days it was open) during those years, and will the American film industry ever be the same? Even the Zeligs probably never knew. She could never be quiet, she could never be happy, she could never be still, she can never be forgotten. Her made-up language was an integral part of her larger-than-life persona. She seemed indestructible, and for many years was. Behind it all, she never thought much of herself, and battled her own demons,- with words, chocolate, more words, and more chocolate. She once shared with me her diary of her trip through Europe with her husband- it was all about food, and the restaurants, but it was her expressing herself, for once with nobody to listen- that, and the "immunization book" of her children- Erna focused on her kids, her food and of course her words, showing me that it- she- was no act, and that through her unique style of expression and not quite real vocabulary, or through eating, or speaking about eating, often while eating ... the rest of us may have been recipients of her hospitality, involuntary listeners, occasional victims, or otherwise part of her day, but ultimately we were only bystanders. Erna was inevitably completely, and genuinely, always herself.
