MII.W11
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FREE AIRFARE
For Two To
ORLANDO or HAWAII
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Richard Charles
Rare Coin Galleries
Michigan's Only Fully-Accredited Coin Dealer
4000 Prudential Town Center
Southfield, Michigan 48075
(313) 356-5252
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Advertising in The Jewish News Gets Results
Place Your Ad Today. Call 354-6060
100 FRIDAY, MAY 31, 1991
Remembering Mama's
Only Status Symbol
SARA NUSS-GALLES
Special to The Jewish News
F
or women of my
mother's time and
place, a mink coat was
the ultimate status symbol.
Perhaps it was the priva-
tions these Holocaust sur-
vivors suffered during the
war and their enduring
nightmares that made this
fur coat, trite as it may have
been to some, so mighty a
symbol of security.
In my mother's case,
security did not extend to
many material objects. She
permitted herself few com-
forts.
She walked long distances
to save pennies, foregoing
the bus despite heavy bags of
groceries and the fierce
Chicago weather. She work-
ed in a quickly darkening
room, rather than "wasting
the light." And rarely did
she eat anything fresh, hot
and tempting. She preferred
instead to wait until the
family had finished and eat
what was left over. When it
came to her wardrobe, her
everyday clothes were
nondescript.
From when my parents
came to America in 1951,
they worked in a variety of
jobs. Finally they ran their
own business, often 14 hours
a day, seven days a week.
Much as we four children
labored to awaken them to
the patriotic practice of
taking a summer vacation,
we never succeeded. To close
the store, to abandon their
comfortable apartment, to go
to sleep in strange beds and
be at the mercy of a restau-
rant were all mishigas,
craziness of the most bizarre
sort.
So many American sym-
bols of arrival were viewed
with a mixture of suspicion
and disdain in our family
that it was startling when
sometime in the 1960s my
mother began admiring and
expressing interest in the
mink coats of other women
in their circle.
The extent of our parents'
social life was visiting
friends' homes, weddings
and bar mitzvot — bat mitz-
vot were as yet uncommon in
their milieu — and the one
or two dances held each year
by the "greeneh," the
newcomers' organizations.
So why this sudden, burn-
Sara Nuss-Gallen is a writer
in Madison, N.J.
ing interest in mink?
I don't know. But soon my
mother had acquired a richly
hued full-length mink coat
with a large shawl collar
and, best of all to me, ex-
quisite rhinestone buttons.
It looked lovely on her,
made her feel like a queen,
and was the perfect just-
below-the-knee length which
fit the short hemlines of the
time. It was an oltser, such a
treasure to my mother that
she rarely wore it, saving it
for only the most splendid of
occasions and then guarding
it like a hen protects her
chicks.
She never had her name or
initials embroidered into the
lining as some women did, so
she lived in constant fear of
The coat looked
lovely on her and
made her feel like a
queen.
having it mistakenly, or
even purposely, taken.
When she did finally wear
it somewhere, it was like
having a baby all over again.
My mother either held it, sat
with it or, if moved to dance,
circled only within a small
radius of her mink. Even
then, she watched it con-
stantly.
I thought of it as an
albatross. But to her it was a
cherished symbol of how far
she had come in this new
world.
In 1984 my mother died.
My sister and I, the two
daughters, discussed what to
do with her precious coat. It
was now some 20 years old
and quite outmoded, so there
was no rush to claim it. We
pondered the possibility of
having it remodeled and
finally agreed that my sister
would take the coat and
have it redone for herself.
Five years passed and I
had forgotten the coat until
the strong anti-fur lobby
aroused both my sympathy
and my memory of my
mother's mink.
I asked my sister about the
coat and discovered that she
had decided against
remodeling. It hung in her
spare closet. She said she
would never use it, and I was
welcome to it.
I put it on and noticed that
something had changed
since the last time I had
tried on the coat. In recent
years I had grown partial to