After My Mother Died, Another Woman Took Me Under Her Jewish Wing

When I converted to Judaism, I found the ‘Jewish mother’ I never had—a woman who resembled my own mom in surprising ways

By Siân Gibby for Tablet Magazine

I was born on Tisha B’Av—although I didn’t know that for forty-some years. Growing up in a small Midwestern city in an entirely agnostic home deliberately devoid of any religious influence, I’d never heard of the holiday. And neither, I suspect, had my mother.

Patricia Martin Gibby was raised Christian in even a tinier and more out-of-the-way place than her youngest daughter was. A brilliant and beautiful girl, she earned a scholarship to college that plucked her from her impoverished town in the Rocky Mountains and desposited her in the academic atmosphere she would take to like a thirsty plant to water and live in happily for the rest of her life. When she and my father got engaged, his friends told him they approved of her because “she was pretty and she was smart.”

Another trait she had in spades, one that really flourished in adulthood, was her musical ability, especially her love of singing. As a young girl, Mom played guitar and warbled cowboy songs on an honest-to-HaShem ranch, and when she grew up and left the West she always found a way to be singing. If a college where Daddy taught didn’t have a vocal group, Mom assembled one, the best of which was Earlham College’s Choral Ensemble, which performed early music (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque). They sometimes rehearsed at our house, and I loved to drift off to sleep listening to the sound of their complex harmonies blending in the living room. Mom herself had a gorgeous soprano voice—not thin or tinny, but rich and golden-sounding. She always sang out, full throttle, with nice vibrato (not too much), embarrassing me in public when I was little—during “The Star Spangled Banner,” for example.

Mom had a hard time relating to me most of my life; I suspect that we were too much alike in some ways for her to feel at ease with me. But I’m proud of the characteristics we shared: enjoyment of reading, a wide streak of weepy sentimentality, skill at foreign languages (Mom became a French teacher). And especially our love of singing.

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