The Mother in Our Lives
Edited by Sarah Shapiro

Shana Gump

Popcorn on Rosh HaShanah

Even in the faintest of my early memories, food at our house had a life of its own. To my parents, who were survivors of programs of mass starvation, food was endowed with divine qualities. Every meal was a matter of life and death. My father would eat each meal as though it were his last, no doubt seeing before him the thousands of skeletons that he used to share his food with. My mother, on the other hand, used food to express herself. Emerging from Auschwitz emotionally bankrupt, having lost her five children to the gas chambers, my mother used food to convey love and caring. She had a basic need to feed me all the time. From a very early age I was bombarded, and remember actually being told, “If you don’t finish this I won’t love you.” Love from my mother was associated inextricably with eating everything on my plate and drinking my milk. If I didn’t, it was as if I were killing her.

I very early on developed an abhorrence for many foods, and many battles were fought as my mother tried unsuccessfully to get me to eat them. Once when I was about four, and sick with a high fever, my mother convinced me that she was bringing me some juice to drink. I will remember always the utter and absolute revulsion that went through me as I tasted that warm milk. Since that day, I never drank milk again; just looking at the whiteness of it is enough to repel me. When I refused to eat my chicken, I was reproached with the potato peel story: how my mother once found some potato peels in a hidden recess, which she then used as food for several days. My childish ears rejected the suffering and desperation in such stories, and my attitude became that of rebellion. Food became a monster I had to face three times a day, as my mother alternately cajoled, promised rewards, and threatened dire punishment. I quickly learned what a potent weapon I held, as only I could decide whether or not I would eat.

Food was the backdrop against which love and hate battled daily, and this was perpetuated by my lifelong inability to eat in what could be considered a normal manner. For years I alternated between periods of eating very little with periods of binging, and my weight fluctuated like a gyroscope.

In fairness to my parents, I must add that I’ve heard many stories from friends whose parents were similarly obsessed with feeding their children. At this point, it is obviously up to me to take the necessary steps to liberate myself from this legacy.

* * *

Holidays were an especially trying time. On one hand I enjoyed the festivity of the holiday and the hustle and bustle of all the preparations; on the other hand, it was a time of intense family togetherness and we could hardly call ourselves a family. It was a time when my longing for brothers and sisters was greater than ever. I was about twelve years old when my mother finally convinced me that there were not going to be any new members of our family and that I should stop soliciting friends for names of doctors who had delivered their mothers.

Then there was the issue of prayer. For her I could never pray enough. There were many times that I felt that God was probably satisfied with me, but I never felt my mother was satisfied. I wasn’t pious enough and I didn’t pray long enough. She was always looking for opportunities to catch me doing other things when I should have been praying.

One Rosh HaShanah, I was on my way home from synagogue about an hour or two before my parents were to come back when I met up with a friend. This was a girl with whom I spent summers together, but whom I seldom saw during the year, as she lived in another part of town. She was here now for the holiday. I invited her to come up to my house. This girl was somewhat older than I, and I kind of looked up to her. We were both hungry and bored and I thought of the perfect entertainment: we would make popcorn. I’d never made any before, but didn’t let on to my friend that this was so. I wanted her to think I was sophisticated.

I took a colander and dumped in the seeds, covered it with something, held the pot over the flame, and then turned the flame up high. The kernels began to pop, but soon started also to burn. The house filled quickly with smoke. I lowered the flame and they stopped burning. I don’t even remember if at the end any of it was edible.

Presently the door opened and my mother walked in. “What happened!?” she exclaimed. She had smelled smoke in the hallway and was somewhat alarmed.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I explained. “I was making some popcorn and some of it burned.”

My mother’s face took on a look of incredulous horror. She was so overcome she could hardly speak. That she lived to see the day when an offspring of hers made popcorn on Rosh HaShanah! One of the holiest days of the year! “Popcorn on Rosh HaShanah!” She yelled it over and over, and I still hear those words ringing in my ears today. “Popcorn on Rosh HaShanah! Popcorn on Rosh HaShanah!”

Over the years it has become a family metaphor. When we want to say that someone has committed an act of total frivolity and abandon, we say: “It’s as if she pops corn on Rosh HaShanah!”

At the time I honestly couldn’t understand what I had done that was so terrible. After all, I hadn’t transgressed the holiday in any way. Why all the excitement? The message nonetheless got through. I never made popcorn again on Rosh HaShanah, nor, for that matter, did I in the least bit want to.

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