My mom was a tough lady. Born to genocide survivors from Turkey in pre-war Palestine and raised in the post-war West Bank she grew up with loss always on the brink, and a sense garnered out of necessity that one can make lemonade out of even the tartest, dirtiest lemons. She was also very, very ill from a young age, one of the first in her generation to be formally diagnosed with SLE (as opposed to “rheumatism”), but regardless of her life’s seemingly endless challenges, she went to school in the states, graduated Magna cum Laude, and was a highly respected linguist and speech pathologist. Along the way she married my dad- a schlubby, sweet Mormon guy (I know), and had me. So it goes.

She was also a bitch of the first order. A woman who inspired fear and respect. She ruled the household with an iron fist clad in a velvet Chanel glove, and made it a point of pride to stand any man down who got in the way of her or her husband’s success. Continue reading →