But the fount of wisdom of our genetic pool really flows from Mother. She is a philosopher savant. Mother improves standard epigrams by getting them wrong and somehow still right -- "the emperor's nude clothes," for example, or her infinitely more interesting insight into logrolling: "One back scratches the other." Reminds me of her admonition "Do undo others," and the always appropriate "You can lead a horse to water, but you don't want to drink it." The horse sense doesn't end there, either; countless times Mother has inveighed ("oy-vayed," really) against "washing horses in midstream." If you do and drink it then, you're only doing it to spite your mother. On the other hand, "God bless the child that gets up and gets his own."

Mom has her own school of thought that the general public could do a lot worse than to attend. "Just like out of a can" (see following recipe), for example, is her highest culinary award, meaning it tastes good enough to have been mass-produced. (We were raised as Campbell's soup kids, right down to the roses on our chubby little cheeks.) Too, she knows people: "There's good and bad in every group," she likes to note, and if you can't reason with some people, you can always season, which is why she "carries a grain of salt" at all times.

Speaking of which, there are the four don'ts: "don't be afraid to ring the meat buzzer" ("they keep the good chickens in the back"); "don't start with the neighbors" (a shonda hopa mit the neighbors); "don't tip your head" (did she mean "hand", or was it what my brother Howard did?); and the Zen-like "don't ask," the last being almost enough to make you want to have kids just to not answer their questions with it. (Why does a fifty-eight-year-old furrier run off with a girl half his age? "Don't ask.")

Even "don't ask" was, often, saying too much: When any particularly sensitive subject was touched upon, e.g., why Freida's marriage ended sometime during the honeymoon, Mother would jab her finger several times in rapid succession toward the ceiling and, with alarm, whisper the name of Marcie, the all-hearing woman upstairs, in an attempt to prevent her from becoming the all-knowing. For Mom, in her finite wisdom, knows that sometimes the best saying is saying nothing at all.

ADDENDUM

"First buy a box of frozen spinach. The long kind. Don't get the short." You mean the chopped? "No, don't get it. The chopped. Get the long kind or it won't work. Boil it. You know how to boil water, don't you? -- and while it's boiling add some sour salt (they have it at Kohl's), or if you haven't got that a little ReaLemon is good, not too much (it's strong!), and then put in some sugar while it's cooking for the sweet." How much sugar? "Enough for the sour. When it's done boiling, leave it in a bowl and let it cool good. If you don't, when you add the sour cream, it will curdle." What sour cream? "The sour cream you add to the spinach when it's good and cool and put in some nice hard-boiled eggs, sliced." Shouldn't there be some liquid? "Of course, you add that. But serve it cold, from the icebox. All the boys liked it. Davey loved my borscht. Just like out of a can."