Pamela Phillips Olson
The Ivory Button
This piece is about and dedicated to my mother, Fanne Rubens Phillips,
a loving, bright woman, who in spite of limited means gave me a wonderful childhood and nurtured my imagination.
My mother was called Fagele* in Yiddish. The youngest of six children born to Jewish immigrants in 1908, she always wore hand-me-downs. Being the youngest in the extended family, the clothes were well worn by the time they reached her.
When she turned twelve Fagele, her sisters and mother took the ferry from Staten Island to Manhattan, then a bus, to the Lower East Side to buy her first new dress.
It was a brown crushed velvet, and she treasured it. She loved it so much that for over 80 years she kept an ivory carved button from it. She handed the button down for me to keep in turn.
In her seventies, she became a writer, an artist, and a poet. In her poem “Mother” she remembers a time when her own mother (pictured upper right) remembered her mother.
Mother
When I was a very young girl,
My mother told to me,
Shedding a tear or two,
That on this Purim ** day
It was forty years since her mother
had died
Puzzled, I looked at her and thought,
How can she remember her after
all those years---so long ago?
Now it is forty years that my mother is gone and
When I told my daughter---it seemed
just yesterday.
I thought for a while, and felt the joy I gave to her
and the love she gave to me
So long ago.
My mother died in her mid 90’s. She left many drawings, sculptures and needle works as well as stories about her life. She is often quoted by my sons, who treasured her.
*Fagele means little bird in Yiddish
**Purim is an ancient Jewish holiday celebrating survival
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