The Art of Riva Leviten

Good advice from my mother:

“You look different,” my mother said when I visited her recently.

“In what way?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” my mother replied. “More solid.”

“I’ve been meditating,” I told her.

“Yes.” She smiled broadly,  nodding her head. “Yes. Meditation is freedom.”

When I told my mother I’d cooked dinner for 23 people over Thanksgiving, she told me I should slow down and take care of myself. “Don’t try to be a girl scout,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Girl Scouts do everything,” Riva said. “You have to pace yourself. Because you’ll knock yourself out and then you won’t know where to go or what to do.”

I said nothing.

“Promise me you’ll do that,” my mother said. I started to cry, very quietly.

And then my mother, who has trouble hearing, who I thought missed so much, asked “Are you crying? It sounds like you’re crying.”

I couldn’t speak.

“Please do this for yourself if for nobody else,” my mother said. “You have to pace yourself and say ‘I can’t do everything.’ Take care of yourself. Please don’t hurt yourself. It’s not worth it.”

I cried silently. Or so I thought.

“I hear you crying,” my mother said. She sounded like she had a decade ago, when she was more cogent.

“I’m ok,” I managed to lie.

“You’re not ok.” It was eerie how focused my mother was. It felt like I’d been driving on a very dark highway with her for a very long time, with no noise in the car, with a broken radio. Which had suddenly come to life. Her signal was so strong.

“Please promise me that you’ll do what I say,” the woman I thought had disappeared said to me. “There’s nobody to pick you up. I’m too old. We’re not girls scouts.”

I wept.

“What are you doing?” My mother knew exactly what I was doing. “Don’t cry,” she said. “Oh please don’t cry. It makes me so sad.” She sounded like a young woman. Like a young mother. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m writing down what you said,” I answered honestly, posting this blog in real time.

“We’ve got to have a good girl scout system,” my mother said. “You can’t manage everything. Promise me that you’ll make yourself less available. Write me a letter. I’ll always be thinking of you. It’s painful to me that you’ll be working too hard. Just tell me you’re going to behave yourself. Because I can’t do it. I’m running out of time. I don’t know how long I’ll be around. None of us do. Don’t punish yourself. Take care of yourself. Write yourself  a letter so that you do that. Because I can’t come and do that. Too much travel.”

I was speechless.

“How many children do you have?” my mother asked me. “Don’t they need your help?Promise me you’ll listen to me. Can you do that? Can you promise me?

Finally I could. I stopped crying. “I promise,” I said.

While celebrating Riva’s 81st birthday with her and Betty, I made this video:

I’ve seen my mother a fair amount in the last few weeks, as I’ve gone back and forth to Martha’s Vineyard, stopping in Providence. “You’re smart to pack up and go everywhere,” Riva tells me.

Her traveling days are over but she’s sending me out into the world with the same “quiet advice” she gave to her friend Brian Larkin, whose comment you can read in Riva’s guestbook.

“What are your favorite memories?” I asked Riva.

“I think it’s very important to have people in your life who you care about, who care about you,” she said.

Riva is speaking less and saying more.

My mother’s vocabulary may be shrinking, but her message is clear. Despite the fact that she is no longer able to make art, or particularly interested in even looking at, or talking about her own art, she’s sure about one thing in her life.

“I was always different,” she says.

She says it matter of factly. Or maybe, in her own now-quiet way, she is boasting. And trying to tell me something. She may be in a nursing home. She may be playing bingo. She may be wearing tidy clothes and not understand where she is.

But she knows how she got here.

Riva was moved to the advanced care unit of her nursing home, which was sad news until she settled in, and gave Priscilla this gift:

“It’s so gratifying,” she said. “It’s lovely to see people helping everyone. I think it’s going to be successful because everyone is thinking positive. It’s very beautiful and gratifying to see what you can do with next to nothing.”