Should Harry Potter Feel Grateful to The Dursleys?
5 min read
5 min read
She lost her first case, her first election, and never once stopped moving forward.
If you ask my kids to describe their grandmother, they struggle to find the right word. She's just...Grandma Joanie. The woman who was always there, day or night. A Supreme Court judge who would step off the bench to take any one of our calls. Someone who knows what she wants and figures out how to get it. Someone who believes a "no" just means you need to ask again, differently.
As her daughter, I've been blessed to grow up with the strength of her example. Here are five lessons she's taught me.
We grew up walking distance from my grandparents' house, and almost every Sunday, my mother invited both sets of grandparents and great-grandparents over for brunch. Holidays always included extended family who might not have had anywhere else to go. After every meal, she packed leftovers for a beloved uncle who lived alone and loved her Friday night chicken.
When my grandparents got sick, she moved them into our home, even in the middle of an election year. My grandmother kept running her campaign until she no longer had the energy. My mother never had to tell me family is important. It was a given.
My mom has looked failure in the face many times. She was fired from her first job as an attorney. She lost her first campaign. She was shut out of networking events in a profession that was, at the time, dominated by men. But she persisted.
Me and my mom
She invited those judges to Friday night dinner and they kept coming back. She lost an election and immediately started the next campaign.
I absorbed this lesson early. When I was struggling in a class, I spent hours in the library. During graduate school, I woke up with our newborn in the middle of the night and finished my thesis while holding her. When I ran the Boston Marathon in freezing rain, dropping out never crossed my mind. My whole life, I didn't need to be told I was strong enough. It was in the air I breathed: you don't give up.
My mother wanted me in a Jewish school. It was something she'd always wanted for herself but never had. My education gave me values and surrounded me with friends who were proud of who they were. But the lesson didn't stop at school. Every Jewish holiday was celebrated at home. Every Friday night was greeted with delicious food and beautiful flowers.
When Soviet Jews were struggling for freedom, I marched with my mom at rallies. We walked in the Israel Day Parade. We were lifelong members of our synagogue. When it came time for her retirement party, it mattered to her that all the food be kosher. Through her love for Judaism, she taught me that being Jewish is one of the greatest blessings of my life.
When I was little, I didn't know this about my mom, but she didn't really know what she was doing when she started out either. She told me later how scared she felt as a new lawyer, like an impostor. How as a judge, some cases were so complicated she'd sit for hours with her law secretary just trying to understand the documents.
When she ran her first campaign, she knew almost nothing about politics or fundraising. But she gathered a team of friends and family and figured it out, one event at a time.
I've leaned on this lesson through every hard beginning of my own. When I started college and felt completely lost. When I was a new therapist and didn't know how to help certain clients. No one knows what they're doing when they start something new. My mother's willingness to figure it out as she went still guides me every time I face something unfamiliar.
Ask anyone who knows my mom well what she loves most, and they'll say the same thing: she loves making new friends. Wherever she is, she connects. Whenever I picked her up at the airport, she'd be walking out with people she'd met on the plane, already making dinner plans for the next day. Growing up watching her, I learned to be curious about everyone I meet, and to find connection wherever I go.
Thank you, Mom, for all the lessons you've taught me and keep teaching me. You embody the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself, and you never stop reaching out to help others. I am so blessed to have you as my mother, and to watch you be Grandma Joanie to your grandchildren. Happy Mother's Day.
