Today is January 19, 2026, which corresponds to 1 Shevat on the Jewish calendar in the year 5786 (thank you, Steve Morse, for the handy-dandy Jewish calendar conversion tool). My mother died on 1 Shevat; it is Jewish tradition to commemorate a person on the date of that person's death on the Jewish calendar, called the yahrzeit. Part of how I remember my mother is by writing about her on my blog.
My mother is probably the biggest reason I became so interested in family history. She and her mother (my grandmother) were always talking about family members, relating family stories, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries. I grew up knowing so many relatives' names and birthdays because of this. But something I have been thinking about recently is things that my mother didn't tell me.
One of the most glaringly obvious things she never talked about is how she and my father met. I heard about this from my grandmother several years after my mother had died. I wrote about it ten years ago for a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge.
My mother and her best friend (who happened to be my cousin) were on their way to a party when the car broke down. My mother was fretting about how they would get to the party when her friend said, "Don't worry, my uncle is a mechanic. He can help us." And that uncle was my father-to-be, and that's how my parents met.
I have not yet filled in any of the holes in the story which I mentioned in that 2015 post. One thing I did determine, though, is that my parents were apparently anxiously waiting for my father's divorce from his first wife to be finalized, because it was only about four days afterward that they were married. I figured out when I was in 8th grade that my mother was three and a half months pregnant with me when they were married, and once I noticed how quickly the wedding came about, I figured they knew at the time that she was pregnant.
So did my mother never talk about how she met my father because it resulted in her getting married on short notice because she was pregnant? I'll never know the answer to that question, but it is not an unreasonable hypothesis.
Chronologically in my life, the next thing my mother didn't tell me was the name of a dog we used to have. She often told me about the dog, though. I wrote a little bit about him for another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post.
This was when I was just a little baby, possibly up to young toddler. The dog was a standard poodle, and he protected me as I were his own puppy. If my mother was upset with me about something and yelled at me, he would stand between me and her. And he died of an epileptic seizure.
And that's all my mother said about him.
It occurred to me after my mother had passed away that she had never mentioned his name. Lucky for me, my father was still alive, so I asked him. And he knew exactly who I was talking about and told me the dog's name was Pepe.
Why would my mother tell me about the dog multiple times but never say his name? I can't come up with a good reason for that. It's possible that she didn't remember, but she had an excellent memory, so I have trouble with that idea. Maybe she just didn't like him? Is that a good reason?
A very frustrating thing that my mother didn't tell me about is how I got a scar on my left arm. I blogged about it for National Scar Appreciation Day a couple of years ago.
I've had this scar as long as I can remember, going back to when I was really young. I have no recollection whatsoever of how I got it, what kind of injury caused it, nothing. That suggests to me that I must have been pretty young when it happened, because I have a good memory.
I asked my mother once how I got the scar. She said, "I don't remember." And I took her at her word.
Many years after that, well after she had died, a little light bulb went on over my head.
My mother became hysterical any time one of her children was bleeding. The size of the scar and its longevity indicate an injury that must have bled, probably quite a bit. So it would have been noticeable and my mother would have been hysterical. And yet she didn't remember how it happened?
blink blink
Um, that doesn't make sense.
Unless, somehow, she had something to do with it. Because then it wouldn't really be that she didn't remember, but that she wouldn't want to talk about it.
There was no abuse in my family, so it wasn't anything like that. Maybe she turned her head and I cut myself on something? Maybe she dropped something and it hit my arm?
Maybe it had something to do with Pepe, and that's why she never said his name?
Another question that shall remain unanswered. At least until either time travel or talking to the dead becomes more reliable.
What else didn't my mother tell me?
