MOM never wanted to impose. On Aug. 16, 1955, at age 40, she and my dad began making $15 payments every other month for two plots at Sharon Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery in suburban Boston. With every visit, the cemetery gave me and my brother a little toy. We loved those family outings to the cemetery; sometimes we stopped for ice cream. According to the payment card in Mom's safe-deposit box, the two plots, costing $343.75, were paid off in 23 installments, on May 15, 1959.
One more thing the boys would not have to worry about.
At home, Dad was the screamer -- Dad's belt for strappings hung at the top of the cellar stairs -- but Mom was the tough parent. We grew up in blue-collar Quincy, Mass., without much money but did not know it, thanks to Mom. If a piece of fruit was damaged, Mom ate the brown, mushy bruise and announced, ''Sweetest part of the banana.'' For years I wore corduroy pants handed down from my Cousin Mellie, who was 50 pounds heavier. In fourth grade, when I finally noticed, I asked for a pair of jeans. ''What are you, a dungaree doll?'' Mom snapped.
She made clear that education was paramount, and from an early age we knew our parents would pay for the best college we could get into. Mom expected that to be Harvard. When I brought home a report card with four A's and a B, Dad said, ''Good job,'' but Mom asked, ''Why the B?''
She was born in 1914 in an East Boston tenement, a child of immigrants -- her dad was a junk dealer -- and survived the 1918 influenza epidemic after weeks near death in quarantine. In 1932 she graduated from Girls Latin, a Boston public school, got a perfect score in math on her college entrance exam, then went to Radcliffe for two years before leaving to take a state civil service job. It was the Depression and her parents needed the money.
Unlike Marlon Brando in ''On the Waterfront,'' Mom never complained to Rod Steiger that she could have been something. She didn't have the luxury, time or inclination for introspection, and besides, she became the highest something she aspired to just in the nick of time. After waiting four years for my dad to return from World War II and five more for him to finish college and get a steady job, she had me at 38, my brother at 40. They bought a house for $15,000 in Quincy, where Mom proceeded to live for the next 50 years.
From the day I was born to the day she died, she was first and foremost a mom. She stayed home until we were in junior high -- in those days elementary kids walked home for lunch -- then worked as a school secretary so she'd be home when we were home.
Something about her parenting kept me young for my age; I was a late bloomer sexually, didn't drink or smoke dope until college. I believe waiting was good for me and have strived for the same with my kids.
She achieved this by spoiling us, but not in the classic sense; from sixth grade on, when Mom woke me at 5:30 a.m. to sell newspapers at a local factory, I was expected to work. Her spoiling was emotional. We knew that her primary role on this planet was as a parent, that we were the center of her universe, that her job was to keep us safe and on target, and that she would never abandon her post. This, I think, contributed to making me a secure and surefooted adult. It also gave me strength to go my own way when it was time.
She did not give ground easily. Once I was home from college, and she was angry about my dating non-Jewish girls. Armed with fresh facts from my big-shot education, I detailed history's atrocities for her and demanded to know how, in such an unfair world, she could possibly believe in God or that God cared about my dating habits.
''Of course I don't believe, God has nothing to do with it!'' she yelled. ''You're Jewish.''
Being a pragmatist, she eventually saw this as a lost cause, and let it go.
In the summer of 1980, when I was a reporter in Miami, she called to tell me Dad had died. Later I figured out he'd been slowly dying and had been conscious for five days at the end. ''Why didn't you tell me sooner?'' I asked.
''I didn't want to worry you,'' she said.
Becoming a grandparent gave her a new outlet for her mothering, and as I watched her with my babies, I understood better how I was raised. She would never just play with them. ''Where's the light?'' she asked. ''What does the cow say?''
Her hubris was her sons. Every car she bought, she put a Harvard sticker on the rear windshield, right up to the final Dodge Spirit in 1991. By then, it was 17 years since I had graduated, 15 since my brother had, but she wanted the world to know.
Until she was almost 90, she took three subways to see her ailing sister on the other side of Boston. When she reached the last station, instead of taking a $5 taxi she waited for a bus, then walked a half mile uphill. I'd yell that she had a ton of money and ask what she was saving it for. ''Michael, I'm not a taxi person,'' she'd say.
By then, I knew what she was up to.
A few years ago, as her mind was failing, we brought her to live near us in assisted living on Long Island. In June we learned she had ovarian cancer, but almost to the end, my brother and I took her for outings. Her shaky hands and her illness meant all she could eat at the Laurel Diner was pancakes, and she didn't talk much. But when I got up to pay the bill, she'd say, ''Make sure you put it on my account.''
Though my dad never made $400 a week as a newspaper copy editor and my parents never invested in anything fancier than a T-bill, Mom amassed an estate large enough to pay for my four children's college educations.
She died two Sundays ago. I wanted to cremate her and take the urn to Boston, but my brother said it sounded too much like ''Harold and Maude.'' So we had the O'Shea Funeral Home drive her the four hours to the Jewish cemetery.
Tilda Winerip was buried on a glorious fall afternoon, in the grave she'd paid off half a century ago, Lot 409, Section 11, Space 1. Afterward I asked my teenage son Adam what he thought of his first funeral. ''It was happier than I expected,'' he said. Mom had a good, long life and left behind many funny stories.
Her '91 Dodge with the Harvard sticker now sits in our driveway for my teenagers. Her life savings is heading for 529 college accounts for their education. Her voice plays on in my head. Everything I write, I tinker with up to the last moment, until the editor calls deadline, trying always to turn that B into an A.
Copyright 2006 - New York Times