- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
the greatest thing my mom taught me was empathy...it is something that children have a capacity for, but i think that empathy vessel is never filled without being modeled, without the example of seeing it in the family. and even one as atypical and disfunctional as ours was in so many ways.
she had a naïve ability to only see the good in people till they proved otherwise, not polyannish, but a choice.
so the ability to place yourself in someone else's shoes, and transubstantiate their pain and discomfort, is a gift. and though i'll never be as good at it as she was, it has, to my ontological relief, provided a basis for my lifelong progressive and democratic pursuits.
my mom was not brilliant in intellect, she was a bestower of gifts, though, to the five children plus one lost that she raised alone, all alone, as an immigrant and compoundingly alone.
may she rest in peace. i love you mom.
