Not Becoming My Mother Read Online Free PDF Page A

Evelyn C. Wight, as she suggested that Mom consider work that combined her talents for words and music. “You must use your most outstanding characteristic in choosing a career,” she cautioned. “Idle aptitudes cause restlessness and may detract from a woman’s success and happiness.”
    In conclusion Ms. Wight suggested that Mom seek work with an agency doing public relations for musicians. The irony was not lost on Mom, but it was too late for her go into business with her mother.
    When the Depression ended, so did my grandmother’s fabulous career. She told her family that she folded her business because no woman worked unless she had to. “She didn’t want people to think that Dr. Emil couldn’t support her,” Mom told me. I think that my mother believed that, but it was not the truth.
    There were a few cryptic letters from famous people in the box, and as I struggled to find out what they meant I discovered that Mollie did not walk away from her job—it was wrenched out from under her. Culture is not an easy sell in hard times, and at the start of the Depression Cleveland’s impresario went looking for a more lucrative career. (His daughter thinks he survived by selling nasal preparations.) When prosperity returned, he wanted his job back. And despite my grandmother’s success, he got it. “Did my father play on sensibilities at the time that he had a young wife and three little children to support and Mollie didn’t?” his daughter wonders. “I don’t know.”
    My grandmother fought back, trying to create a business without the blessing or backing of the big New York organization. “What a pity that the cancellation in your course is such a problem,” wrote Ezio Pinza. “I would love to help you out of your difficulty . . .” Other artists offered help as well; Rudolf Serkin even offered money. But it was an uphill battle, and after a few more attempts Mollie gave up. Her career was over, and although whining was not her way, I don’t think she ever recovered.
    But things were finally looking up for Mom. Just after her excursion to the Human Engineering Laboratory she met my father at a party and fell instantly in love. Ernst Reichl was a quietly elegant intellectual who had fled his wealthy German-Jewish family because he had absolutely no desire to go into any of the businesses they owned. Lacking any talent for money, he persuaded his family to let him get a PhD in literature. And then he came to America to pursue his passion for books. When he met Mom he was convinced that she was a kindred spirit, and immediately began planning a life with her.
    “Terribly busy and happy,” Mom wrote giddily to her parents in the first month of their marriage. “I’ll write tomorrow.”
    Dad was endlessly admiring. He thought Mom was the smartest, kindest, most generous and most passionate woman he had ever met, and he never stopped telling her so. His letters are filled with the incredible joy of having found her; he could not believe his luck and she blossomed beneath his appreciation.
    “I wish,” he wrote, “that I had your jubilant self confidence, your supreme assurance that what is good for you and yours is the right, the good, the only thing to do. I am going to lean heavily on your strength.”
    The war years were a good time for strong women. Dad was too old to be called up, so he moved into her small apartment, squeezing in with my brother, then eight, and his little dog, Tippy. My parents pooled their resources, found an investor and created a small publishing company to produce handwritten literary books.
    In the first photograph taken in their new office Mom looks so happy. Her dark hair is pulled straight back, and she wears perilously high heels, seamed nylons, a slim skirt and no makeup as her fingers fly across a typewriter. They had very little money but they didn’t care. They were together, doing work that they both believed in, and for the first few years the letters are