Dear Mom,

Are you still 66?  I’m 60 now.  I’ve done the best I could since your death.  

Do you remember when you told your friend that “only Leslie is unsettled”?  I was 30 then, the night before you died. That’s when you said it, at the theater; I overheard you.  I know you meant that you wanted me to marry and have a family.  Later I broke up with Dany.  I married Val, the one you thought had a nice voice, from Iran.  You had a conversation with him once in the living room while I was in the kitchen.  You told him that you had a relative from Iran, and I walked in when you said that, surprised.  

Dad was very lonely without you.  I thought he would never let me go. He convinced Val to move in when we got engaged.  And after the wedding, he made it nice for Val to stay. Too nice! We finally moved to 53^rd and 8^th Avenue, all the way up on the 20^th floor. I wish you could have seen it.  I was close to Central Park and Lincoln Center and Coliseum Books and Lechters.  

Debi and I used all your tickets to the opera.  We didn’t like it at first, but we’d make a day of it: lunch with Susie, Martha, and Anna Burak, and sometimes Tower Records afterwards to get the CD of the opera we’d just seen.  I wore your fur-lined coat and mostly took naps in your seat.  Then, one night Placido Domingo sang Nessun Dorma, and I cried so much, but I was really crying for you.   I feel, when I am at the opera house, that you are near me.  It is almost unbearable.  

Beatrice dated Dad for a few months. She wore your clothes, used your Dooney and Bourke wallet, like she wanted to be you.  She even offered to brush my hair and I let her. They broke up, and a few years later her cancer returned and she passed away.

Aaron was born in the same hospital where you had me, and – can you believe it? – my OB was trained by Dr. Landsman.  When I went into labor, I had to fill out forms at the hospital, and where it asked for the mother’s name, instead of writing my name, I wrote yours.  

Aaron looked just like you when he was born, and I gave him the middle name Yves in your honor. I was out-of-my-mind in love with him.  In all the blissful moments of his babyhood, I felt like you were a part of me, delighting in him.  

Oliver is your last grandchild. Again I was in love.  We moved to the Parker Towers, a rental across the street from Debi’s building in Queens.  It reminded me of our old Kew Gardens apartment.  It was the same set-up: two-bedroom, two-bath, eat-in kitchen, balcony, a friendly doorman, the same whoosh of air when you closed the front door. I had a view of the World Trade Center, your favorite place to take out-of-towners.

Val and I split up soon after Oliver was born. Everything about being with Val became too difficult. Also, we didn’t have any help, and I had to do everything you did for me and work in an office as well. He moved out, and I was a single mother until Oliver’s fourth birthday.  

Those were difficult years, with little money and a lot of loneliness.  Debi was my constant companion, like a mother to me and also my best friend.  Dorian was kind, leaving me cash in my junk drawer and paying for my airfare to visit him.  He called me all day long.  Once when I was in California visiting him, his cellphone rang and everyone looked around wondering who it could be because I was right there.

Dad married Anna Greenberg’s cousin Nina. After that, we were no longer welcome at his house unless we were expressly invited.  If we were invited, I couldn’t even get a glass of water without asking. Once, when my boys were with Val for the weekend, I called Dad to see if he wanted my company.  “Another time,” he said.  He didn’t know that I was parked outside.  Then I saw Anna’s son pull up with his family.   He had Chinese food.  He walked in as if the house were his.  

After we divorced, Val and I fell in love again.  He moved back to the Queens apartment, and Debi and Dad didn’t speak to me anymore.  I was disowned.  Birthdays and Jewish holidays were particularly painful. I once saw from my kitchen window Dad entering Debi’s building with flowers for Passover.  When I turned 40, Val told me I had a call, and I ran to the phone while asking him if it was my father.  The look on his face was pure pity, so I knew it wasn’t.  Dorian was my champion, tried to mediate, and took my side as my protector.  He always picked up the phone when I called him. It took three years before I convinced Dad to let me back into his life.  Debi followed soon after.  

Val and I bought a house together in Westchester.  We remarried in the living room, our sons our only witnesses.

Aaron is grown now.  He lives with his girlfriend in Washington Heights, and they talk of getting married.  Oliver is 24 and home with us.  He graduated from Queens College, like you and me.

I have a dog, Rhoda, whom I love more than anything in the world.  

At the end of Dad’s life, he was sick for a month in the hospital.  Every day the nurse asked him for his birthday, and he would proudly pronounce “3/25/25,” but on his actual birthday he couldn’t remember.  In his delirium he called for you. “Ou est Yvette?”  He is buried next to you in Mount Hebron.  Soon it will be his 100^th birthday.

We sold the house after Dad died.  That was hard.  Debi and I packed 40 years of memories with nowhere to put them.  I still regret throwing out the shearling jacket you bought me in Italy and Dad’s certificate from the New York Institute of Technology.  

Sometimes I wonder what you would make of the world I live in now:

Manicures and pedicures can cost $85 with tip.

Donald Trump is President.

The Twin Towers are no longer standing.  

It is fashionable to live in Brooklyn.

There are no more phone booths and fewer and fewer parking meters.

Coins are insignificant.

Loehman’s and Lord & Taylor don’t exist, but Saks does.

No one dresses up or wears pantyhose. You would think they leave the house in their pajamas.

People hardly go to the movies.  Miraculously, the Paris Theater is there. That’s where we saw Crossing Delancey, or maybe it was Cousin Cousine.  The Ziegfeld, too.  We saw Star Wars there with Dad on a hot summer night.

I get my hair colored by Javier, your colorist. I sought him out because I always loved your hair color.

I still go to Carmel on 108^th Street to get lebne and pita and kashkaval cheese and sambousek.

All your friends are gone except for Vally.  Do you remember when Val and I met you and Vally at the theater to see Three Tall Women, and we thought it was so funny that they had such similar names. She looks the same, by the way.

May died of cancer; all your sisters, too. They died after you, even though you were the baby.

Debi lost Stanley, and he is also buried in Mount Hebron.  

Dorian will be 75 next month.  He is still in Walnut Creek, although in a different house.  He and Claudia had twins.

Debi is 70 and is in the same apartment.  Alix Austin lives with her.  Remember how she broke his heart when they were teenagers?

You have a great-grandson, Benjamin.  He is three and looks like Chloe, and a little bit like Debi.

Dany never married.  

I write a lot about you.  It is like having you with me, especially how you laugh or the sound of your gold bangles.  How you got mad at me for imitating your accent when I said, “When you are right, you are right.”  How you couldn’t stop yourself from eating cheese and drinking the whole container of kefir.

I can cook almost all of your food, like gratin and mejadra, but not the rice pilaf.  

I live in New Rochelle.  I remember you used to go shopping there for clothing, and I thought it sounded so fancy. My house is shelved with all your precious books, and on the walls is the artwork you collected. I framed your library card with your signature, and I have it on my desk.

Laurie Anderson is still performing.

Spalding Gray died by suicide.

Pavarotti died, too.  I had a chance to see him on stage at the Met.

Woody Allen continues to make movies, and he married Soon Yi.

I went to a dinner and Salman Rushdie was there. He wore a patch over one eye because he had been stabbed.

I won a prize for my writing.  That was one of the times I missed you the most.

I also missed you when I got married and then when I got divorced.  I missed you when I had Aaron and then Oliver.  I missed that they didn’t know you. I missed you when I got fired from the bank because I couldn’t do it all, at least not well.  

I miss you when I read a really great book and I can’t share it with you.  Do you remember how we read all of Paul Auster’s books, one after the other?  He is gone too.  

I used to be afraid that I would forget your voice, but I now know I never will.

Love,

Lellybelle

Leslie Lisbona was featured in the Style section of The New York Times in March 2024.

Aside from Synchronized Chaos, the first journal that ever accepted her work, she has been published in JMWW, Smoky Blue Literary & Arts Magazine, and Welter. Her work has been nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net 2024 contest and won the nonfiction prize at Bar Bar Magazine (2024 BarBe Award) https://bebarbar.com/2025-barbes/

She is the child of immigrants from Beirut, Lebanon, and grew up in Queens, NY. 

https://leslielisbona.substack.com/