(Pictured here, Mommy in the orange shawl with 2 friends in Jerusalem)
I can’t just write about Mommy P
,
The P is for Perlman
She gave me my name.
I can’t just tell stories
that will make your eyes shine and your heart soar
She wouldn’t like that.
Mommy likes the hidden world
and the hidden words
the unspoken messages of holiness and
empathy and permission to be
wrapped up in the olive dip and cashew spread
offered with abundance at her table.
Mommy is an inventor.
She invented herself,
as the mother of 8 children
a woman on her own,
a healer, a helper,
and now, a hidden sage in the Old City of Jerusalem.
I met Mommy when I was just thirteen
I soaked her up.
She was new to me. 
So much color-
her conversations were different
her scarves were different
and her son- HE was different.
So I fell in love with him
and only years later,
when we got married
did I get to call her Mommy.
There is so much you need to know
if you want to understand
even the tips of her toes
and so much you’ll never know.
But know this, those scarves you see
on my head
more than fabric, more than colors –
the striving for something authentic
that’s from her.
The daring to write the uncomfortable,
the permission to share the rawest of raw
that’s from her.
The castle of love my children grew up in
surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins
that’s from her.
That was her vision
She carried it alone and now it carries on.
The scarves that Mommy wears
have multiplied over the years.
When I met her it was one, and now two or three.
Gold and sequins and rustic rainbows
Hidden in the layers of fabric is wisdom
pain and pleasure are tucked away in it’s folds
and secret prayers are whispered beneath
It takes a lot of scarves to hold a woman like this.
