Thank You

To my grandmothers of blessed memory, for their bounteous affection, their great good humor, their amused patience—and their baking

To my mother, for her deep love and wisdom, the comfort of her embrace, her wicked wit—and for making motherhood and womanhood look so easy

To my sisters, for their friendship incomparable, every shared secret (and tear), the delights of their splendid progeny—and all the laughing

To my mother-in-law of blessed memory, for her no-nonsense love, her enormous generosity—and the gift of her golden son

To my sisters-in-law, for their loving-kindness, the joys of their marvelous children and grandchildren—and the pleasure of their companionship

To my daughters-in-law-to-be, for making this mother’s sons so happy

To my daughter, for the pure, unadulterated LOVE that bursts the heart at the birth of a grandchild—and for the greatest blessing possible a Jew can be given, the next generation

And Happy Mother’s Day.

And to every mother living in the world’s vast wastelands of unfreedom and inhumanity—trammeled, imprisoned, enslaved, humiliated, mutilated, and murdered in the name of some rotting ideology or the monstrous blood-letting religion into which you’ve been born—a prayer: May next year’s Mother’s Day be the one on which you can be grateful, unshackled, for your life.