Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

MY YIDDISHE GRANDMA 71

Grandmother replied with a counter-question, "Are you starting again?"

Then Mother heaved a sigh hut said nothing. But her silence really provoked Grandma.

"Why do you sigh? I'd rather you said that you forbid me to do it."

"Fancy anybody forbidding you anything," Mother said sarcastically.

"Naturally," agreed Grandma, "That would be the limit. A child forbidding her mother something. A topsy-turvy world."

Although Mother had promised herself not to become angry, that always got her wound up.

"Even when you are a hundred years old, you will have to be treated like a child.You won't listen to reason. All right, I forbid you to do the scrubbing."

Grandma only shrugged. "Each time I hear the same,'I forbid you, I forbid you.' Can't you say something different for a change because that 'I forbid you' bores me so."

Then Mother left the room, she had lost the battle. Every Monday she lost the battle, and every Tuesday Grandmother was standing at the tub, with a red head and rolled up sleeves. She did not merely scrub, she fought a war with those dirty cloths. She beat and pummeled the laundry as it were her mortal enemy. When the last shirt had been knocked out, she looked around triumphantly. Once more the family wash had failed to conquer her and she remained the winner.

When Grandmother was getting on into her eighties, Father and Mother decided that the washtub drudgery had to end, even though they might have to drag the old