M’s mother Ro doesn’t bring much Yiddish into my life. But a long time ago she said that when a Canadian drives an unairconditioned car from the north into a heat wave in the US South and meets the girl of his dreams, the only non-southerner at a Richmond, Virginia, writers’ conference, it’s Beshert: Meant to be.
Ro never wavers in that belief, in that support of me. And I can only hope that I have, perhaps even in ways that she never at first imagined, carried that as a promise, never a burden. I know that now I think of her, finally a little feeble in her 98 years, that she has bestowed many gifts on me in my life, but perhaps none as generous and meaningful as that one. As that folk-pure belief in me.
