The Accidental Role Model: My Mom

Today, July 18, 2022, is a momentous occasion in my family. Had her heart not failed her in 2000, my mother, Rachel Kirshstein Steinert, would have turned 100 years old today.

Several of my friends are lucky enough to have or to have had their mothers live close to or past the century mark. My brothers and I were not that lucky, but we certainly had one great mom for 78 years.

My mom was an enigma. I daresay she would never call herself a role model. For most of her married life, either her domineering mother-in-law or her own intrusive mother lived with the family. That fact alone is enough, I believe, to prevent any woman from fully developing into her own.

But there were other factors that also “inhibited” my mother, if you will. My mother and her four siblings were poor; there is no nicer way to say it. My grandmother was widowed at a very early age, left with 5 children under the age of 15. She spoke little or no English, yet she and her two oldest children managed to maintain a semblance of her husband’s business, peddling goods around the city, keeping the books in Yiddish. In the years to come, each son turned those lessons learned into successful businesses, one in Charleston and one in Savannah. My mother was the middle sibling and the first child born in America.

The family grew up in downtown Charleston, in the shadows of the Orthodox synagogue. The three sisters and their mother shared a bed. The whole family shared one bathroom and the same bath water. Sometimes a bath was delayed if there happened to be a carp in the tub, awaiting its fateful end as gefilte fish. I tell you this story only because it sets the stage for the fact that my mother, who was smart as a whip, never had a chance to go to college.

Instead, she enrolled in a secretarial program at Charleston’s Murray Vocational School (now a beautiful condo building), so that she would be employable immediately upon graduation. And she was.

Some of my earliest memories are of going to work with her, long before “bring your child to work day” ever existed. She took me to work when she worked for the S.C. Tax Commission, which at that time was located in the Old Citadel on Marion Square. The thrill of the day for me was going to the canteen to get a Heath bar for a nickel.

Over the years, my mother held various secretarial jobs, until she eventually went to work for my father as his assistant.

Truth be told, I know my mother enjoyed working. Not only did it use her skills, but it got her out of the house and away from the nosy eyes and ears of her mother or mother-in-law. She had no thoughts what a positive role model she was providing for me. I may not have grown up baking cookies with my mom, but I got to go to work with her.

As the years went by, Mom provided valuable advice to me, even career advice when I was as young as 13. During the bat mitzvah preparatory years, I thought I wanted to become a rabbi. I was good at chanting the prayers; I liked leading services; I recognized the rabbinate as a helping profession; and knew even then it was a non-traditional role for women.

Thinking my mother would be thrilled, she immediately advised against this career path. Rabbis, she wisely told me, are hired and fired by volunteer boards of directors, and often face contract negotiations every three years. It may not provide the secure career path I thought it would be. How many times in my adult life, through memberships in various synagogues, have I thanked her for those words of wisdom.

My interests turned toward the written word in high school and college, which is no real surprise. My brothers and I were raised on Scrabble and are avid crossword puzzlers, habits learned from our parents. When I discovered in college that I may not have the skills to develop character and plot and turned towards journalism, my mother always had me aim high.

Though my inclination always leaned towards the print media — this was the era of Woodward and Bernstein — she thought I could and should be the next Barbara Walters.

There were no cell phones and Internet during our college years; I’m sure many of my friends also made the weekly phone call home on Sunday nights. But my mother wrote me every day. Many days it was only a post card, but she never wanted me to be disappointed when I opened my post office box in the dorm mail room.

She repeated a similar pattern with my children. In their very early years, she sent virtually every Berenstain Bears book to them through the mail. I have them all, waiting to read to my own grandchild. As they got a little older, she sent them baseball cards, igniting their love of the sport and sharing her love of the Atlanta Braves.

Her wisdom and encouragement never stopped. Over the years, she whispered many wise words regarding men, their behavior, and how to handle them. I think those are secrets she and I will keep, until a niece or granddaughter might need the advice. Trust me. She was always spot-on.

And all this may come as a surprise to many, because Mom always played the straight man to Dad. He was the front man, the narrator, the man on stage. She was the one behind the scenes, the “quiet one” (unless she had her one drink), perhaps the meek one.

It surprises me how much I have become my Mom; I imagine many of my girlfriends feel the same way. Sometimes, I catch myself saying things to my sons in the exact same words she used: “I only want to make things easier for you,” she would say, when she and Dad visited my family in Texas. He would defrost the freezer and she would fill it up again with brisket, spaghetti sauce, soups. I don’t cook for my kids when I visit them, but I do fill their refrigerators and freezers from Costco, which I think they like even better!

My mother’s strength was never more evident than it was after my father died. While my brothers and I expected her to crater, she did just the opposite. She took control of the house and the bills and managed all very well, embarking (as a recent blog noted) on transforming the house from masculine to feminine.

For the next 10 years, she and her youngest sister, always the best of friends, became travel buddies. They particularly liked elder hostels, which were topic-based educational trips for seniors. Often, they traveled as a pack of five, the SMART girls (the acronym represented the first initial of each name), proud of their team t-shirts. She had 10 great years after Dad died, showing us once again an inner strength we didn’t know she had.

It was that strength I drew upon when facing my own loss in 2013. Mom showed me that happiness can follow sadness, and that it is okay to be happy again.

As a mother and a new grandmother, I wonder if my mother ever knew how much she meant to me. How I appreciated the fact that she always made our house the house where everyone was welcomed. How I listened and remembered the things she said. How much I miss her nightly calls, still 22 years after her death.

She will never know what a role model she turned out to be. I only hope that I do half the job that she did.

Happy Birthday, Mom. Rest In Peace. Your memory is indeed a blessing.