I Don't Know Why #6
"Who was Madeline?" The sixth installment of an occasional Oldster Magazine column by bestselling novelist Laura Lippman.
I am haunted by a Ziploc full of angels and I don’t know why.
It’s not the angels per se, Christmas tree ornaments sewn from fabric scraps, ribbons, and rick-rack. These are garden-variety seraphim: golden curls fashioned from yarn, rosy cheeks made with red thread, wings of white eyelet.
No, I am obsessed by the index card attached to the bag, which bears a note in red felt tip: Handmade by Madeline.
Madeline was my mother, Madeline Moore (Hopper) Mabry Lippman—the parenthetical will be explained—who died September 7. I didn’t take many things from her apartment, but I grabbed this baggie of angels, thinking I could attach them to boxes of holiday cookies for my neighbors.
Who was this note for, who was expected to read it? If intended for me, why not: “Handmade by Mama”? If for some future archivist—my mother was a librarian after all—why not her full name, Madeline Lippman? Her mind was sharp, she didn’t need to label things, Memento-like, to jog her own memory.
My plans, as Robert Burns once warned, ended up in aft agley land. My daughter and I baked only one batch of cookies and kept it for ourselves. When I packed up the holiday decorations the first weekend of 2025, the angels somehow got left behind on my desk.
Handmade by Madeline.
Who was this note for, who was expected to read it? If intended for me, why not: “Handmade by Mama”? If for some future archivist—my mother was a librarian after all—why not her full name, Madeline Lippman? Her mind was sharp, she didn’t need to label things, Memento-like, to jog her own memory.
I wondered if the missing surname was a by-product of her complicated paternity, which I wrote about in my Substack obituary for her. My mother had a biological father she never knew—and didn’t even know about until she found his name, Carl Hopper, in the family Bible when she was 10 or so. Her two aunts asked little Madeline never to speak to her beloved mother about that first husband. Despite what her birth certificate said, my mother went through life as Madeline Moore Mabry, then Madeline Mabry Lippman, only to be adopted by her stepfather when she entered graduate school. The University of Maryland required her transcripts and birth certificate to agree and, at last, they did.
So, yes, her “maiden” name was fraught. But why only “Madeline” on the index card? Was Lippman fraught, too? Who is this note for? It’s breaking my heart.
My late father was a low-key personage in Baltimore, an editorial writer for The Sun with an eponymous column. Last fall, right before I was put under for my colonoscopy, the doctor asked if I was Theo Lippman Jr.’s daughter. But my dad died in 2014. It’s been a long time since my mother was known as Mrs. Theo Lippman Jr.
My mother’s handwriting has been breaking my heart for six months now. I see it on recipe cards, her checkbook register, in her meticulous records, which I have consulted as I try to prepare her final tax return.
I have weathered Christmas, my birthday, my sister’s birthday, and now her birthday—she would have been 94, yesterday, April 16th—without my mother. Every week or so, I experience a moment that only she would understand. A gratifyingly lively lunch with my sister, who has good and bad days because of her Parkinson’s. A passing reference to Albert Brooks’s “Memoirs of an Opening Act” routine in the Lorne Michaels biography.
And then there’s the news I never get to share with her. A Hollywood sale, a big award, a nice review, my daughter’s 95 percent on a math test.
Who is Madeline? Who is this note for?
My late father was a low-key personage in Baltimore, an editorial writer for The Sun with an eponymous column. Last fall, right before I was put under for my colonoscopy, the doctor asked if I was Theo Lippman Jr.’s daughter.
But my dad died in 2014. It’s been a long time since my mother was known as Mrs. Theo Lippman Jr. She had a vibrant life in Delaware and when she settled into a Baltimore continuing care community in late 2022, she made new friends easily. She and a neighbor read the New York Times every morning in a sunny nook near her apartment. She had “wine nights” with friends, signed up for outings, kept up with the Grand Slam tennis matches. (“She had very definite opinions about Nadal,” one of her friends wrote me in a condolence note.) She was Madeline Lippman, but the Lippman was secondary. My gastroenterologist notwithstanding, fewer and fewer Baltimoreans remember Theo Lippman Jr. When my mother returned to the city after an almost 25-year absence, she didn’t have to worry about being “the wife of.”
Or “the mother of.”
Because of my writing career, I am what I once described to my daughter as “Baltimore famous,” which I define as being recognized locally, but only when I’m embarrassing myself. Disheveled in a liquor store, undergoing an MRI, tripping over a stanchion at the Orioles’ Opening Day. “Baltimore famous” means I always must be achingly polite, which, to be sure, is the right way to go through life, anyway.
My mom forged a life that had nothing to do with me, which is as it should be. She shelved my books in the library at the continuing care center without comment, had nothing to say about the television adaptation of Lady in the Lake, in part because she was never going to figure out how to watch anything on AppleTv. Of course she was proud of me, but who needed to know that?
She had a vibrant life in Delaware and when she settled into a Baltimore continuing care community in late 2022, she made new friends easily. She and a neighbor read the New York Times every morning in a sunny nook near her apartment. She had “wine nights” with friends, signed up for outings, kept up with the Grand Slam tennis matches. She was Madeline Lippman, but the Lippman was secondary.
Handmade by Madeline. She wasn’t a writer. She wasn’t even much of a seamstress; her meltdown when she had to make 9-year-old me an angel costume for the school pageant traumatized both of us. But she was an excellent knitter, turning out socks and Christmas stockings, sweaters and Afghans, until her hands became too stiff to manipulate the needles. Perhaps the bag of angels represented her last creative outlet?
Handmade by Madeline.
About a month before she died, she confided in me something that had upset her. She had been attending her regular exercise class, which included a man who had shown no interest in her whatsoever. The instructor called my mother by her full name and the man suddenly snapped to attention: “Are you the writer’s mother?”
She was not happy. My mother, who had such a complicated relationship with surnames, wanted only her first name to matter, wanted to matter as a person. She had lived a rich, full life. She had stories to tell, if only someone would ask.
Eight or nine years ago, my mother said I should interview her for an oral history. Why didn’t I come visit her at the beach and tape our conversations? “Mom, that sounds like my old newspaper job to me. Can’t you just talk into a tape recorder and I’ll transcribe it?” I should feel shitty about this, but I don’t. My reticent family had been shaped by its secrets and silences; circumspection was the expectation, and I wasn’t about to poke that bear. My family members, in turn, were terrified that I would expose them through my writing—I guess they had a point. But at least I do it posthumously. I said as much to my mother when she disapproved of a piece about my father. “Well, he’s dead,” I said. “He’ll never know!”
About a month before she died, she confided in me something that had upset her. She had been attending her regular exercise class, which included a man who had shown no interest in her whatsoever. The instructor called my mother by her full name and the man suddenly snapped to attention: “Are you the writer’s mother?” My mother, who had such a complicated relationship with surnames, wanted only her first name to matter, wanted to matter as a person. She had lived a rich, full life. She had stories to tell, if only someone would ask.
Who was Madeline? Her name was inspired indirectly by Madeline Astor. Family legend has it that my great grandmother plucked it from the Titanic’s survivors list and gave it to her youngest daughter. My mother was named for her aunt and now it’s my middle name, but I couldn’t pass it on to my daughter because she was to be raised in the Jewish faith, in which the names of the living are forbidden.
But I could bestow “Madeline” on the main character of Lady in the Lake, a woman who, in the mid-1960s, embraced Marimekko prints, pierced her ears, fled her marriage, and began a clandestine romance with a Black police officer. (My mom did only two of these things to my knowledge.) Madeline “Maddie” Schwartz ended up being played by Natalie Portman, who told interviewers the part reminded her of her Baltimore grandmother.
I keep the bag of angels on my desk, hopeful that I will distribute them during the 2025 holidays, but who knows? My mother would be the first to tell you that I’m kind of feckless. Every morning, I glance at the note and wonder: Who was this note for? Me? Her? The world? Did she think I would assume she had gone on some weird QVC angel-buying binge and throw them out? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How many angels can fit into a Ziploc? That, at least, I can answer: Eight.
I am sure of only one other thing.
If I ever meet that man from her exercise class, to hell with politeness. I’m going to kick him in the shins over and over again, shouting: “Madeline! Madeline! Madeline! Her name was Madeline!”
Laura, it would've been my mom's 100th birthday today; she died at 93 but it feels like a year ago. I had no idea how profoundly I would miss her. Kicking that guy in the shins: what a great idea. xo
My mom was in the hospital a couple of years ago and she mentioned that her eldest daughter (me) was an author. The nurse asked "Is TK Eldridge your daughter?"
When mom said yes, she ran out into the hall to tell the nurse at the desk, "That's TK Eldridge's mother in there!"
Apparently, they'd picked one of my books for their book club...
Mom laughed and said it was her 'fifteen minutes of fame'.