A True Pearl
Joy Alter
Word Count 1163
My husband and I had been dating for more than a year before I was finally introduced to his mother, Pearl. He’d been delaying our meeting the way he’d delay a tooth extraction, and for good reason. When Phil finally asked Pearl if I could come for Thanksgiving dinner, she said yes — as long as I brought along a date.
I shouldn't have been surprised by Pearl’s hostile sarcasm. I had already been warned, not only by my future husband Phil, but also by friends he had grown up with. I was told that Pearl had a scowl permanently pressed into her face from disapproving of everything in her orbit. Even when she smiled, she scowled. They called her the Don Rickles of Westchester, owing to her particular brand of insult humor -- except that her humor didn’t always land, particularly when her son was its target. His friends suggested we break up to avoid the encounter.
Soon after our Thanksgiving meeting, I asked Phil to give me an honest assessment of Pearl’s opinion of me. He admitted that Pearl was viciously direct in her response: “When you first announced you were dating a Jewish girl, I took my head out of the oven,” she told him. “But after meeting her, my head went right back in.” To say that I was hurt by his frankness was an understatement. Couldn’t he soften the blow just a bit? But Phil, a physician, was not one to sugarcoat reality when a precise diagnosis was required. He believed I needed to prepare for the harsh regimen to come. His prescription for me was to do what he had done: develop a thick enough skin so that nothing Pearl ever said, particularly her opinions, would penetrate.
And so we married. Pearl didn’t boycott our wedding, but did arrive one hour late -- and silently seethed through the event. She disapproved of the food, the venue, and, of course, the female rabbi who officiated. The punishment was her signature 6-month silent treatment. I suppose our unforgivable sin was that we had the wedding we wanted, not the wedding she wanted. And we paid for it, financially and emotionally. But I couldn’t entirely shake the feeling that I had earned Pearl’s disapproval by not giving her the solicitude and control she thought was her due as Phil’s mother. In fact, she made me question my moral integrity by consistently counterpointing her righteousness. She told me what an upstanding person she had always been with regard to her own familial and ethical obligations. She believed in charity, responsibility and filial duty. (By inference, I did not). She housed and cared for her aging mother, volunteered time and money to her favorite charities, and typed books in braille for the blind. She spoke of how, during the Depression, she and her grandmother would box up food for the needy, leave the boxes outside their doors, ring their bells, and sprint away. I myself, however, was never the recipient of Pearl’s charitable impulses. Yet I kept trying to worm my way into her good graces. I wanted that certified seal of approval, as if I was some slab of brisket waiting for Rabbi Pearl to stamp me kosher. Perhaps if Pearl would finally come to accept me, I could accept myself, which is all I ever wanted in my 20 years of therapy!
After our daughter Mara was born, however, things did seem to improve. Our baby girl had actually squeezed sweetness out of Pearl, to the point where mom-in-law hosted a lovely luncheon for Mara’s baby naming ceremony. But it didn’t take long for us to fall out of favor again, coinciding with the day we brought our newborn son Aaron home from the hospital. That afternoon Pearl sat sulking alone in our dark living room, refusing to come out into the lighted kitchen to meet her grandson. She was angry with us because we didn’t name Aaron after her deceased brother Arthur. I couldn't understand why the issue was so important to her, since she never spoke of Arthur with much fondness. In my post-birth hormonal desperation, I tried to get Pearl to understand that we couldn’t give her brother’s name to our son. The name “Arthur” just seemed too old-timey for a baby born in 1989. “Aaron,” we thought, was of close enough proximity to fulfill her wishes: In Judaic tradition, naming for a dead relative is often just done with a first initial. In response to our trying to reason with her, Pearl stormed out of the house. Another silent session ensued.
Over the years, I kept hitting my head against Pearl’s barnacle-encrusted shell. I seized with guilt every time Pearl turned on the silent treatment. To avoid her emotional torrents, I even convinced my husband that we keep to a bi-weekly visiting schedule so that she could spend time with her grandkids. But it was ultimately her treatment of those grandkids that was the last straw. It permanently broke during our daughter’s piano recital, which we invited Pearl to. (Pearl claimed to have been a former concert pianist!) The recital took place in a Long Island storefront, not in Carnegie Hall. Parents sat on metal folding chairs, instead of upholstered theater seats. The kids were not playing Stravinsky on Steinway baby grands, but Steely Dan on Casio keyboards. It was a concert in which 14-year-olds wore sunglasses and grooved to pop tunes. After the recital, Mara bounded over to Pearl, to ask, “So grandma, what’d ya think?”
“I’m not saying anything,” said Pearl. Maybe she didn't say anything because she hadn’t heard anything. She came late, sat in the back of the room, and did crossword puzzles. Mara looked stricken.
It was then that I realized Pearl’s behavior had nothing to do with me, but her own insanity. If she couldn’t feel joy and pride (or at least pretend to) over her 14 year-old-granddaughter’s music recital, how then could any human encourage her love and approval, least of all her daughter-in-law?
I finally gave up caring what Pearl thought. So much so, that when she entered hospice about one year later, dying from colon cancer, I didn’t visit. I felt guilty about my indifference, but a friend assured me that mine was not the last face she wanted to see before she faded into oblivion.
And now that I am finally a grandmother myself, watching my own children grapple with the struggles of early parenting and careers, I recognize the senselessness of my relationship to Pearl. If my husband and I had unleashed the same tactics on our kids that Pearl subjected us to -- the silent treatments, bitter sarcasm, and absurd demands -- we would become personae non grata in our own children’s lives faster than you can say Family Estrangement. And it would be deserved! Now the only thing I have to forgive myself for is not that I wasn’t good enough to Pearl, but good enough to myself.
Joy is a freelance writer, having published in NY Times, Newsday, Jewish Week, and other publications. She has a master's degree in Library Science and is a retired school librarian, currently working part time as a children's programmer in Ossining Public library in Westchester, NY. She is also a certified yoga instructor who enjoys running a family yoga program.