by Harriett Simon Salinger
All I ever wanted was to have my mother be a mother I could love. Faced with issues of maternal incest I searched for healing. Avatar brought me that gift.
In June 1991, I took the Avatar Course. On Sunday, Dec. 29, 1991, I went to see my mother at the Hebrew Home in Riverdale.
I had not seen her since May 1990, and that Sunday was her 87th birthday. My friend Karin went with me. She holds no judgment and speaks no platitudes regarding my relationship with my mother.
We brought a small, white square box filled with chocolate treats, from the local shopping center’s aging bakery: a slice of seven layer, a chocolate cookie, and a black and white.
When we arrived on the seventh floor, I saw an aide feeding a woman in her wheelchair. We went over and started to talk. She was without speech, wearing short, wiry gray-white hair, and looking through piercing eyes. We wished her a happy birthday, fussed a bit—and called her Alyce. The aide, who hovered nearby said, “We call her Fanny.” The woman’s eyes were blue—not the mother’s eyes I remembered. My mother did not remember me.
Alyce Salinger observed us fussing with the cake. This was my mother, one long braid down her back, vaguely blond on the ends from her last “touch up” five years ago. She looked well, much fitter than I had last seen her. She was thrilled with the chocolate and being remembered on her birthday. She began telling Karin about her daughter named Harriett with two t’s. When it felt appropriate, I said, “My name is Harriett with two t’s”. There was no recognition.
Suddenly I was able to feel and see her as she was—no needs, no personality, just life essence. Karin moved away politely and allowed me to share a private moment with my mother. In response to some deep message needing to be conveyed, Alyce, put her hand on her chest, “I feel love in my heart,” she sighed, “and when I do I cry.”
Looking at her, I responded, “I’m like that too.” In that moment I finally experienced loving my mother!
The visit was wonderful. Perhaps, triggered by my healing, she also had healed something beyond the veil of failing thought. Alyce Salinger left her physical body on March 3, l993. Honoring her last request for an ancient ritual, I buried her next to her own mother, Hanna Simon.
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