Our mum Steffi was an utterly remarkable person in many ways - and although I already knew this of course, it’s been brought home to me by the huge number of messages with the kindest words from family and friends in the last few days since she passed away. Some of the words people have used to describe her are: kind, loving, witty, gracious, creative, energetic, beautiful - I could go on… added to this many people have shared their many happy memories of Mum and especially, of her famous ‘Steffi Stones’ - but I’ll come back to these later.
I feel I have vivid memories of her early life through all the stories she told, and that were retold by many members of the extended family and also her many friends - almost as though I was there. Perhaps because these stories were told and retold so often that they became absorbed into my own memories. In truth I’m only really qualified to speak about her life after 1965, when I came along.
My mum gave birth to me in the hospital in Nahariya and brought me back to Kibbutz Beit Ha’emek where we lived. I have very happy early memories of living on the kibbutz where she and Dad were part of a vibrant community, many of them friends from Habonim and with whom she kept in contact throughout her life.
We returned to London in 1968 and Mum (who I called Ima) stopped speaking to me in Hebrew and started speaking English. I remember being in the little flat in Belsize Park when Ima came home with my baby sister Timna in 1969. We then moved to Muswell Hill and I started school - where I was no longer Noach but became Noah.
We really did have an idyllic childhood, and I remember endless days playing outside in summer - in the garden, or the park, or in winter, playing hide and seek in the cellars or attic of the house in Grand Avenue, with friends from school, or cousins, or friends who were like cousins - while Mum and the other grown ups would talk and drink tea or sometimes wine. Mum loved food and was a very adventurous cook, so our childhood food was full of delicious Mediterranean dishes like Baba Ganoush (unusual in the 1970s) or Ashkenazi delicacies like Gefilte Fish and home-made Challah. Years later, my mum taught me to make Challah and I treasure her old folded piece of paper with the photocopied recipe and handwritten notes in the margins. I think anyone who ever tasted it would agree that my mum made the best Challah in the world.
She not only made the best Challah but she was also an adventurous wine maker and although I was too young at that point to actually drink it, I remember the big demijohns bubbling away, full of fermenting strange concoctions such as Tea and Prune wine. Of course her signature wine was Elderberry and she also made an incredible Elderflower champagne. We had a big old Elder tree in the back garden and when she moved to her house in Palmers Green the first thing she did was plant a Black Elder in the garden. She also requested that when she was gone we plant an Elder Tree for her here at the Woodland Cemetery, and although the timing is not right for us to plant it today, we will do so later this autumn.
There are so many stories and memories I could share, from so many parts of her life and mine, but one period that was really important - from my perspective - was my early teenage years, when Mum and I became Culture Vultures together. We would go to see exhibitions, such as the Chagall retrospective at the Royal Academy, or Russian Constructivists at the Tate, or to the Theatre, or even, occasionally Rikkudim, where I’d join in tentatively in an awkward teenage way, amazed at my Mum flying around the room with nimble-footed joy and beaming amongst her equally nimble-footed friends. We would read the same books and watch the same films - I remember the year Channel 4 started and they screened a season of Luis Buñuel films and I watched every single one with Mum, my mind blown with all these new cultural experiences - and this led me directly to art school and to want to become an artist (which, for those of you who don’t know, I am to this day). I always felt that Mum’s creative side was something so important to her that she might want to do more with it. When I went to Middlesex Poly (as it was then - showing my age now) for my Art & Design Foundation Course, I said to Mum: you would love this course so much - trying out all these different materials and processes, and experimenting with different creative techniques. Then again, Mum’s life was a bit like an extended Art & Design Foundation.
One of the many ways in which she expressed her creativity, which many people here will know, is her famous painted stones (known by many simply as ‘Steffi Stones’). For those who don’t know, she would spend hours on the beach at Brighton collecting smooth, rounded stones that she would bring home and paint with intricate and eccentric designs, in vivid colours and often with messages on them for the people she made them for - for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and sometimes for no reason other than as a token of love or friendship. She must have made hundreds of these over the years, and in the last week, we have received so many messages from family and friends, not just expressing how much Mum meant to them, but also mentioning the stone she painted for their birthday in 1977 - often with photos of these stones carefully kept amongst the precious objects people have carried with them throughout their lives, sometimes to the other side of the world.
I was discussing this amazing legacy of painted petroglyphs yesterday with Timna and Roger, and we hatched a plan which I’ll share with you all now. We would like to invite anyone who still has one of Mum’s stones to photograph it and send the photos to us, with a description of when they received it and where they are now. In the next few months, we would like to collect these together and make a little book, to be printed and available on demand as a reminder of Mum’s amazing creative life.
Steffi was of course Mum to Timna and I, and a wonderful grandma to Megan, Max and Joe, mother-in-law to Darren, sister to Roger, and stepsister to Jane and Peetamber and their families. She was a beloved cousin and aunt to so many in her extended family and a ‘second mum’ to many across the world. She was absolutely delighted when I met Selma - and of course Maija and Rosa too - ten years ago - and we are all delighted that they have become part of our family, along with Ian and Ruairí and the cats. It means that our loving, extended family now has an Irish branch too.
Some of the many messages we received over the last week expressed surprise at Mum’s passing - with some people saying they didn’t realise how unwell she was. Mum was always proudly active and independent and although she had some serious health issues which had a big impact in the last few months, the truth is she did not want to be defined by her illnesses. She was clear in her wishes for the funeral, which is why she wanted us to gather here at this beautiful Woodland Cemetery and plant a tree for her, and she was clear that she wanted people to be colourful and to celebrate her life with joy - and the love of life that she was so well known for. Incidentally, this is the reason I think for the perhaps slightly surprising choice of [the Rocky Road to Dublin] amongst her chosen music for the service.
We’ve established by now how creative Mum was but perhaps a lesser-known fact about her is that she was really pretty good at keeping up with modern technology. When her fingers became too stiff to paint stones she switched to using the computer and latterly iPad to make the wonderful cards that so many people here received from her. She also got quite adept at finding ways to use technology to adapt to her changing circumstances - and one of her great discoveries was dictation on the phone. This meant that she could send texts and WhatsApps and emails to us without her fingers jumping to the wrong place on the tiny touch screen. As I mentioned before, I called her Ima throughout her life and she called me Ben in return. When she first started using dictation on the phone, it mis-heard her and wrote her name as ‘Emma’ (E_M_M_A) instead of ‘Ima’ (I_M_A). This became a standing joke between us and we used to call ourselves Emma and Ben in our messages. I moved to Ireland nearly five years ago, although I haven’t lived in London for many years, and so in the last few years I spoke to Mum every day on the phone, with many messages in between - and we always signed off in the same way.
I will miss her, terribly - although I believe that she is still very much with us. Her physical self may have departed, eventually to be transformed into an Elder tree, but her spirit has infused each and every one of us who loved her, and whom she loved in return, and she will be with us always.
So I’ll just end by saying as I used to say to her in my texts: ’Laila Tov Emma, neshikot, Ben’
No comments:
Post a Comment