A year or so after my bar mitzvah, I was seated on my synagogue's bimah with my confirmation classmates for an obligatory lesson. Two boys behind me--familiar to me as bullies, since I was one of their constant targets--started poking me with pushpins.
As their torture was amping up, I observed a middle-aged woman quietly enter the sanctuary and position herself at the opposite end of the room. She glared at my persecutors, though they remained oblivious to her. But moments later, as we were filing out of the sanctuary, she made sure they took note of her. With her voluminous, heavyweight shoulder bag, she whacked them in a manner that let them know she meant business. "Don't you ever bother him again!" she roared. They never did.
The middle-aged woman, my defender in that moment and countless others, was my mother, Betty Nagler Miller.
The incident, almost 50 years ago, will remain indelibly imprinted on my mind.
I will remember it, of course, for Betty's over-the-top response, which, in today's social landscape, might be considered as abusive as my perpetrators' actions. It also begged the question: What 14-year-old wants their mother to fight their battles?
But I will also remember the episode for my mother's singular focus: to protect her only child from harm. I would often joke with my mother that no one was allowed to hurt or criticize her child … except for Betty herself.
Betty, who died four years ago, a day after turning 93, was many things: longtime public-school teacher, lover of the arts, bibliophile, loyal spouse to a very problematic husband (that's another story), and cat lady.
Yet if you asked her what most defined her, what gave her the greatest joy, she always said, "Being Robert's mother."
Being Betty's son, though, was not always the greatest joy. Sure, there was comfort in having an unswerving champion on my side. But with Betty's laser focus on me, I felt compelled to meet her manifold expectations. I was to get the best grades. I was to be productive every waking hour-piano lessons, ice skating lessons, Hebrew and Sunday school, creative arts classes, weekly forays into the city for plays, concerts, or museum exhibits. And I was to offer no dissent.
Diminutive as she was, she was a force of nature. My force of nature.
I am not complaining-mostly not, anyway. I will be forever grateful to my mother for the expansive world view she proffered.
But I felt tremendous pressure to succeed. And when I didn't live up to her hopes for me, I felt her anger acutely, in my stomach, and in my head, from the pounding headaches I experienced frequently as a child.
I better understand now what propelled Betty. Her own disappointments through the years were her constant companions: a father who died when she was 12; a Holocaust that extinguished much of her father's family; a Great Depression that forever kept her vigilant about money; and a society that relegated educated Jewish women to certain professions (teacher, social worker, librarian).
When I came out in my early 20s, I again faced my mother's consternation. But over the next four decades, she moved steadily along a continuum of acceptance: from begrudging to partial to full. Betty's abundant love overrode any prejudices, and she treated my husband as a second son.
About 10 years ago, as dementia reared its ugly head, Betty felt tremendous shame in her memory loss. "I'm so stupid," she'd say to me often. "Mother, you're anything but," I'd reply. "You have a cruel disease."
Fortunately, the disease wasn't so cruel as to rob her of her recognition of me. When I'd visit her at a group home for people with similar conditions, she'd perk up at the sight of me. "Just remember," she said. "I love you profoundly."
I love you, too, Mother. The world feels less safe without you in it.
Robert Nagler Miller is a journalist and editor who writes frequently about arts and Jewish-related topics from his home in New York.
