More Stories: Remembering my Mother

She made up songs for me. Does every mother do this? Most? Probably. She wrote down the first – I have it, but not with me now. And I wouldn’t type out the whole thing. But the opening: “Who does mommy love/ who’s her turtledove / who’s her pretty blue-eyed baby? / Jonathan’s the one / ….” I love that detail, the blue eyes. I lost them fast. And I love the only voice I hear when I think of the words, the only voice that holds that tune in mind… I tried to get her to sing it back in February… she had trouble reading her own writing, and she was confused by they blue eyes. In the end she started for a few words, and then switched to another song she made up for me, with a nonsense rhyme with Jonathan…

I think these glimpses are chronological…

One I don’t remember, but she told me. I should ask my aunt. I don’t know the details – but I was very little. I stopped breathing. I don’t know what else Mommy tried, but she brought be into the bathroom, ran all the hot water, steamed the room, and I started breathing again.

I remember ringing someone’s bell with mommy. She rang the bell, I was with her. It was down the block, and across the street. We were canvassing. I don’t remember which candidate (Humphrey?) but my parents were working for different candidates, and would soon separate and divorce.

We walked downtown, mommy, Rebecca, and me, to sit in court during the trial of the New Haven Three – not the big famous Black Panther trials of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, but a later trial of Black Liberation Army members (who’d gotten arrested for a bank robbery). I remember that walk, our route there, and back, and how much we liked walking downtown.

I remember once, I was at my aunt’s. I was in the living room. It was cold cold out. And mommy was coming into the mudroom, that opened into the living room. I knew she was struggling to get her shoes or boots off fast, because coming in from the cold she would be running to the bathroom to pee. My cousin Danny must have been 3 – and scooted into the mud room – and I guess it’s not really funny, but in the end he was laughing, she was laughing and we all were laughing. I’m laughing as I type this. We were all laughing right after she completely lost it (and peed right there), which would be right after she burst out laughing, which was immediately after she was totally shocked/surprised by this three-year-old running at her to give her a hug and instead biting her on the leg.

Mommy had been overweight for most of her life – pretty badly so in her 40s and 50s. Around the time she retired (age 65, on the nose) she became vegetarian (health, not Bambi), and began to methodically lose weight, about one pound a month. She started making kefir (and kept her starter going). Her relationship to food changed. And it took a while, but she got all the way down to the weight she was happiest at. That was really impressive.

I have emails from 2010… Mommy wanted me to know that the in the Freedom Flotilla to break the siege on Gaza, someone was organizing a Jewish boat, from Germany. She joined other people lobbying to assemble a similar team here, from the US. And they/she succeeded. It sailed in 2011. I am not sure why she did not end up joining that trip – I think she may have gotten sick – but she contributed to making it happen.

In October 2017, in the recovery room (lung surgery), Mommy suffered a major stroke. Just now I went back to check, what was she writing to me about in the month before:

• A hot pepper plant that I had given her, grown from seed, that she had pollinated and gotten to produce,
• A beatboxing vocalist (some kid she had met, pretty random)
• The text of a talk she had given about ILD – International Labor Defense
• “Drawing the Kafr Qassem Massacre” – which at that time was a new, award-winning book about Palestine (beat out something by Ilan Pappe)
• Photos from Maine (week after Labor Day)
• and a Call to Stand with Black Athletes (as they took a knee)

Sandra Ann Rosen Halabi, August 21, 1941 – July 15, 2026