I had stumbled upon the messages almost by accident. I hear the dad who always made us roll our eyes and good-naturedly chuckle with his insistence on noting the precise instant of his call - "1:33 and a half" - despite the time stamp on the message and Caller ID. The mom increasingly frail as her Parkinson's disease advanced. The mom who called every few hours, brimming with excitement as my family and I drove 10 hours from New Jersey to visit her and my dad. The mom eager to share a juicy story ("Just watching the news and there was another crazy New Jersey guy. I hear that Jewish mother who was ever protective and worried, even as I raised a family of my own hundreds of miles away. But somehow, oddly, the voice mails - those unscripted moments of everyday life - are the ones I turn to most often. I, of course, have videos of her at my Bar Mitzvah and wedding. I have serving platters, wine glasses, and photos of her as a girl and with my children. I cherish her parents' naturalization certificates upon becoming U.S. I have many treasured memories of my mom, who died two years ago this month. I unearthed this message and others from her while plumbing my iPhone's cache of deleted messages, amazed and grateful by this unexpected ability to preserve that voice. But three weeks after she uttered those words my mom died at a hospital outside Detroit. It's the type of message I normally didn't pay much attention to - if I listened to it at all.
I CAN HEAR YOUR VOICE KISS FULL
"Hi, it's mom," she began, then chatted on, full Jewish mom in her distinctive gravelly timbre. The voice mail message was like so many others from my mom over the years. Through their voice messages, saved on his phone, Ornstein has a trove of verbal memories. Charles Ornstein with his parents at his Bar Mitzvah.
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