Swarthmore Mom Celebrates 119th Birthday! (Briefly Dated Al Capone)

The headline grabbed you, right? The Swarthmorean doesn’t want the truth, it wants eyeballs on the page. Just doing my job. As I explained to Mom.

Her look was withering. “Is there anything you don’t turn into fiction?”

Oh, so coy. As if she doesn’t know she created this monster. This wounded creature who cannot tell a simple truth. We are partners in crime, Ma and me. I’m Mama’s boy.

And she’s no ordinary mother! Anyone who went to Swarthmore Elementary School in the 1960s and ‘70s knows Merrie Lou Cohen, revered children’s librarian. People still come up to me, all misty-eyed as they tell me how much they loved being read to by Mrs. Cohen, how she changed their lives. It isn’t easy being the child of a celebrity. You’ve read the stories of Hollywood children. How they spend their shrunken lives trying to get their famed parent to notice them, foraging for crumbs of approval. I am inextricably linked to Mom, closer than close. Close? Hell, she lives next door, 50 feet away! I try so hard to be a good boy, but when I’m not, she’s right there to catch me.  

She said, “Couldn’t you just this once have played it straight? ‘Beloved Librarian Celebrates 95th Birthday?’” 

“Come on, Mom. I’m competing with a pandemic. You know I need big. I can stroll down Dartmouth Avenue and scoop up a dozen 95-year-olds in five minutes.”

“You have a point. The Quakers in this town just keep on ticking.” She thought a moment.  “I rather like the Al Capone angle, though,” she said, sipping her tea daintily. “I wonder if Al was a good kisser.”

“Mom!” 

“You said I dated him.”

“Why would you kiss Al Capone on the first date?”

“What if I bore his love-child? Love-children! Now there’s a headline! ‘Beloved Town Librarian Gives Birth to Capone Twins.’”

“Mother, please! The Swarthmorean leans toward sensationalism, yes, but it’s not the National Enquirer!”

She clucked her tongue at me. “My little Jonny – too timid to swing for the fences. If you’re going to turn facts into fiction, go big or go home.”

See how it is? I try to hook her up with Al Capone, but that’s not good enough. Nothing’s ever good enough. I begin to sniffle.

Mom reaches for a Kleenex and dabs my eyes. She always has a box handy, not for her use but mine. “So timid, my Jonny, so, so sensitive. I remember looking out the library window, and there you’d be on the playground, weeping under the jungle gym.”

The hapless child of a powerful celebrity – of course I wept! My formative years were filled with children running up to me and saying, “I love your mom. She’s the best book reader in the whole wide world!” Imagine hearing that day after day on the playground. “Mrs. Cohen does the best voices.” And then they’d imitate her wild rendition of the Cat in “The Cat in the Hat.” In my head, I still hear them chanting, “I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny, but we can have lots of good fun that is funny.”

Imagine being Marlon Brando’s son and hearing children imitate Vito Corleone all day long on the playground. Wouldn’t you weep under the jungle gym?

I wanted her all for myself, but she was owned by thousands of children. Mrs. Cohen, perched on her reading chair – queen upon her throne – dazzling generations with her Charlotte, from “Charlotte’s Web.” And, oh my god, when she did the death of Charlotte.

I reached for another Kleenex. Stared at my white-haired mother in her chair, the bookcases behind her stuffed with the one thing she truly loves. Books. Words. Oh Mother, Mother – I devoted my life to that which you love most. I became a writer for you. I wanted your love, but you loved words.  And so I filled pages and pages with words. But it was never enough. I’d hand you a novel it took me years to write, and you’d gobble it up in an afternoon. My god, it was always more, more, more.

Yes, guilty as charged! Yes, I turned Mother’s birthday into fiction – because I no longer know what is true and what is not true. I write, therefore I lie. Books, oh ruinous books! 

I cried out. “I blame you, Mother! For this literary life I’ve led. I blame you!”

The old librarian regarded me. Smiled. “You’re welcome,” she said. 

Ah Mom. Thank you. And let me wish you a happy 120th birthday in advance. Beloved Mrs. Cohen – you’re leaving the Quakers in this town in the dust.

Writer Jon Cohen lives in Swarthmore.