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A MOTHER'S DAY STORY When my sister Hanusia lived in Manhattan, she frequently invited our mother for a Mother's Day weekend in the Big Apple. It became an annual ritual, enjoyed and relished by both. My father would drive my mother to the train station in Trenton, Hanusia would meet her at New York's Penn Station, and the weekend would begin with a cab ride to an interesting restaurant, some mother-daughter bonding and a discussion of plans for the next two days. Saturday mornings would begin with a leisurely breakfast out. The contents of my sister's Manhattan refrigerator, typically limited to an old egg or two and half a carton of orange juice, precluded breakfast in, but this was part of the ritual and acceptable to both mother and daughter. A stroll to and through the farmer's market was also a favorite part of the ritual — fresh fruits and vegetables to be inspected, cut flowers to be admired, bizarre New Yorkers to be gawked at and the sights and smells and sounds of the area to be ingested and enjoyed. Shopping in the Village and window shopping on the upper East Side, luncheon at a posh restaurant and cab rides or long walks to see special exhibits in assorted museums would consume most of Saturday and part of Sunday, and then there was the train ride back to Trenton and the car ride back to Philadelphia's suburbs and a host of pleasant memories of pleasant adventures. The highlight of each visit, of course, was the Saturday night trek to Broadway (or occasionally off Broadway) for a night at the theater. Sometimes it was Shakespeare, sometimes a musical, and last year it was the spectacular Diana Rigg in a spectacular production of Medea. It was a late night out and mother and daughter went to their respective beds happy but tired, looking forward to Sunday morning brunch and to whatever they had planned for the remainder of the weekend. My mother had her customary living room couch that turns into a bed, Hanusia her own bed in her bedroom, the bedroom door closed, as usual, to keep Rubio from jumping on the bed. Rubio is the large orange cat my sister adopted from a mobile SPCA unit a few years back. He is affectionate and loves cuddling with my sister; my sister dotes on him and is also allergic to him —hence the closed bedroom door. And so they slept. Early the next morning, Rubio, as usual, positioned himself outside the closed bedroom door and began meowing. Hanusia, as usual, was sleeping like a long-time New Yorker, totally immune to fire engines, car alarms, taxi horns, meowing cats and other noises that would probably rouse lesser mortals in no time at all. She slept on, unperturbed and undisturbed. My mother, on the other hand, was easily and early wakened by the plaintiff meowing. Not a cat person, she was impervious to Rubio's cries for food or affection. Her only concern was her sleeping daughter - ’’Бідна дитина хоче спати, а дурний кіт кричить”. And Rubio was out of luck. With the ferocious protective instinct of any mother protecting its young from danger or discomfort, my mother shooed the meowing cat away from the bedroom door. Once. Twice. Three times. And each time, undeterred, Rubio returned to his post and resumed his meowing. Enough was enough. My mother decided on sterner measures to the problem, picked Rubio up and plopped him in the kitchen, closing the folding louvered door on him. Satisfied that the problem had been solved, she returned to the living room and sat reading the theater program, enjoying it for its own sake as well as for the images it evoked of play she and Hanusia had seen the night before. Hanusia slept. The calm lasted but a few minutes; the storm began with howling from the kitchen where Rubio had also decided that enough was enough. Being barred from Hanusia's bedroom at night was one thing; being cooped up in the one and half foot by four foot kitchen was another thing altogether. And where the fire engines and car alarms and taxi horns had failed, the howling cat succeeded in waking Hanusia from her slumbers. "Мато. Why is Rubio crying like that?" "I didn't want him to wake you so I put him in the kitchen." There followed explanations on both sides, swept away on a tide of fresh howling that sent my sister running to the kitchen door to rescue her baby. But no amount of pushing and shoving and banging at the folding door could accomplish the rescue. The door remained shut and the cat continued howling, now as if from the depths of a cave. Hanusia, thoroughly distraught, tried soothing the cat with НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ТРАВЕНЬ 1998 23
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