By Paul H. Wegner
1954 ST. VINCENT’S HOSPITAL ID CARD for the author’s mother, Maria Wegner (née Cortes). Photo courtesy of Paul H. Wegner.
In the last several years of her life—her dementia worsening—my mother became an indefatigable hoarder, as if the compulsive collection of physical items might somehow serve as a final, desperate blockade against the inexorable splintering of her mind. One weekend my brother and I were tasked with clearing out a former bedroom that had become so unmanageable that the door couldn’t even be pushed closed to hide the chaos. I sifted through the piles slowly, sparing random items from the shredder, like the pay stub from 1967, back when my parents lived on Jane Street and my mother worked at nearby St. Vincent’s Hospital (where she would become head OR nurse and stay for over 30 years until retirement). My brother, meanwhile, joked about our family archaeological dig while quickly and deftly extracting precious family photographs interspersed in various strata of the jumble.
Suddenly, I came across a repurposed old shoebox from Bamberger’s, the contents of which rendered me unable to continue. Hundreds and hundreds of recipes, many annotated with my mom’s distinctive cursive, meticulously clipped and carefully ordered into small yellowing stacks. I don’t know why this affected me more than the discovery of my father’s baby book from 1930 or my second-grade story about a superhero whose powers included flight, invisibility and “being good at gym.” Maybe it was because I had anticipated her saving and our finding those types of keepsakes. Maybe it was the thought of plans unfulfilled and time unspent together. Maybe it was just the culmination of a difficult day.
All I know is, I kept one of those clippings, too.
Paul H. Wegner is a resident of Charles Street, husband to a wonderful and talented wife who he hopes will resume her acting career, father to a high-energy, gregarious tween daughter and to the young cat she rescued.
