Ina Fae Jaffee,
My Mother, Leads the Angels in Love
Ima is a word in Hebrew that means mother. Replace the mem, or the M sound in Hebrew, with an N, and you have Ina, which is the name of my mother.
My mother is an angel, one of my greatest champions and my first teacher in this lifetime.
She used to sing to me when I was in the womb and in the cradle and when I was a little boy.
It may be no surprise that when I started talking at a young age, I was actually singing. I was in fact singing “Rock-a-bye, baby,” the very lullaby that my mother would sing to me.
My mother has told me many stories over the years about my childhood, but that is one of the more famous of the stories, and it reminds me of what Bono, the front man of U2, said, “A child can sing before he can speak.”
This was perhaps literally the case with me, when I was singing “Rock-a-bye, baby,” and, according to my mother, I was singing it word for word and in tune at the age of five months.
My mother called the Gesell Institute, a think tank that studies young children, and told a woman over the phone that her infant was singing, which I was doing in the background from my crib.
That singing came from love; it came from the love that my mother gave me every day.
And God, as we know, is love.
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I am not suggesting that my mother is God. I am suggesting that she was channeling the love of God, when she sang to me when I was just a babe, a little child.
And my mother, a former public school teacher, is the one, who taught me to read when I was a little boy as well. This happened a few years later, around the time I turned three.
We are living at a time when we have a literacy crisis in our country. Too many young people get their information from social media, not from legitimate newspapers or books.
My mother has always believed in reading newspapers and books. She has always stressed the importance of reading, as well as singing, and of doing so with love.
The Kabbalah teaches us how critical it is to develop a love for reading, and to rejoice in life and in the Lord.
I have in recent months flown and driven across the country to visit my mother on several occasions.
My mother remains one of the greatest readers I know; she may be the greatest reader I know.
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And while I have not sung “Rock-a-bye, baby” in her presence in decades, I still on occasion, when requested, will sing a bit of Sinatra for my mother.
She and my dad used to ask me to sing various songs by Old Blue Eyes.
Singing, like reading, can bring us much joy.
And there is nothing that God loves more than a love song, a song of love and joy and praise and thanksgiving, sung to Him and/or Her.
When I think of my mother, who used to bring pitchers of Kool-Aid as well as toll house cookies outside to all the kids in our neighborhood, I think that my mom was an Ima to all the boys and girls on our block.
Besides these charming acts of love, my mother also used to create a magic box for my brother and me on Valentine’s Day, and we would put our notes in it.
Valentine’s Day, a day of the heart, a day of love, was a very special day to my mother and dad and my brother and me.
Again, God is love, as we know and as Barbara, my late wife, always said.
Yes, God is love.
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And we all may have an element of God in us.
My mother, a mother to all the kids on Ridgewood Avenue in Hamden, Conn., when I was growing up, certainly has more than an element of godliness in her.
And that godliness in my mother manifests itself in her love, in her teaching me to read, in her singing to me, in her Valentine’s Day enterprises, as well as in her musing my first novel, Beloved State Street, which will be published.
Like Ridgewood Avenue, State Street was a very special street in my life when I was a child in Hamden and New Haven, Conn. It remains so.
My father dubbed it “Beloved State Street” because I loved it so much. And my mother inspired me to write the novel by that name.
I have had many wonderful teachers and Muses over the years, and my mother is my first one.
My mother, Ina, who is Ima to my brother and me, as well as to all the kids in the neighborhood, will always be one of my greatest angels and Muses.
She is my champion.
Happy Valentine’s Day to you, Mom, to you, Ima, today and everyday from me, your son, and from all the other kids, too!
I love you, Mom.
