A Big Day in the Sun for Southland Moms

For all the jokes the Woody Allens of the world have made at the expense of the Jewish mother--about her meddling, the guilt she can turn on like a light and her insistence that her children eat something--there was nothing but love and lox Sunday for that icon of maternity.

Hundreds of sons, daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren filled the courtyards and dining rooms of the Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aging to celebrate Mother’s Day with the nearly 700 women who live at the home’s two campuses in Reseda.

As Jerry Shapiro’s 87-year-old mother, Rebecca, swayed and sang along to the band’s love song, the Tarzana pharmacist wondered what career the artistically talented woman passed up to raise him and his sister.

“She’s always sacrificed herself for everyone else in the family,” Shapiro said. “That’s basically what a Jewish mother does.”

Throughout Southern California, mothers took advantage of the second Sunday in May, which President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed as theirs in 1914. They planted trees in a San Fernando Valley park and took free yoga classes in Hollywood. The Anaheim Angels singled out the “No. 1 Baseball Mom,” and in Long Beach, mother dogs were allowed off their leashes to run on the beach.

On Los Angeles’ skid row, Katherine Ford spent Mother’s Day without her five children because she didn’t want them to see her life on the streets. “But I’m thinking about them,” the 41-year-old woman said. “They wanted to come downtown, but I wouldn’t bring them downtown. It’s too depressing.”

Down the block, Fred Jordan Mission served a Mother’s Day meal. Mothers, with or without their children, ate a free lunch of chicken and rice. For the last week, the mission gave free makeovers and manicures to mothers on the street.

Among those at the mission Sunday was Christian Ortega, 11, who said he wanted to buy his mom flowers but didn’t have the money. His family once went to the beach on Mother’s Day, before they fell on hard times. “But today, nothing,” he said.

At the Jewish Home, Jan Fogelman brought her mother a box of her favorite candy. Fogelman’s mother is rapidly losing her memory, and like many of the home’s visitors Sunday, the child is now caring for the parent. Fogelman wiped away tears as she talked about her Jewish mother, who taught her enough to cook for Passover but otherwise wasn’t much in the kitchen.

“She didn’t cook. She didn’t bake. God love her, spaghetti came out of a can,” Fogelman said.

The men of the Jewish home will be honored next month, on Father’s Day. But after nearly three decades of owning a pharmacy that sold greeting cards, Peter Shapiro, a father and husband, isn’t expecting much.

“Mother’s cards always sold out,” he remembered. “Father’s cards, we always had left over.”