Mother-in-laws are not meant to be your sports-buddies. They’re supposed to be the butt of our jokes, the source of our complaints, the ruiner of our Thanksgivings.
But not mine.
Judith Turro, whom everyone, including her children, affectionately called “Peanut”, was the antithesis of the nagging, fault-finding shrew lamented by everyone from Ralph Kramden to Homer Simpson.
Quite the contrary. Peanut loved me unconditionally because she knew I loved her daughter unconditionally.
She treated me like her son.
Peanut was special.
I quickly found out exactly how unique she was in 1996 when, while still courting Janine – her “wee babe” as Peanut would say – I often found myself on a couch watching my beloved Yankees with my girlfriend’s mom.
It should’ve been strange. It wasn’t.
She’d shout at Ruben Sierra to take better swings, yell at Joe Torre to bring in Bob Wickman when the Red Sox were about to pinch hit and swoon over Derek Jeter because, well, she was woman in New Jersey – they all swooned over Derek Jeter.
As the years passed we watched Giants games, argued over hockey (she loved the Devils; I’m a life-long Islanders fan) and I always knew when I went to her house (practically every weekend) the New York Post would be waiting for me (turned over so the Sports Section was facing upward) next to a warm bagel and a container of fresh tuna salad from the fish market down the block.
I’d stuff my food-hole while we talked about whatever was going on in the New York sports world that day.
As time passed, I’d often hear from my pals about how horrible their wives’ mother’s were and I’d just shake my head. I knew how lucky I was.
After fourteen years of knowing Peanut … not nearly long enough – 100 years wouldn’t be long enough … she was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer, that bastard of a disease that refuses to discriminate – it will take children and spouses and mother-in-laws who understood the icing rule. Cancer doesn’t care.
A very strong and vibrant women grew weak. Her thin body became thinner. My wife and I abandoned our lives in Los Angeles (where we had moved several years earlier) to go back to help Peanut the best we could.
I watched the kids while my wife and her siblings lovingly cared for their mother. I didn’t get to see her too much those last weeks – just an hour or two a day.
But one night I will never forget.
Peanut and I and her brother Michael (Uncle Mike – he had flown in from Hawaii) sat at the kitchen table. Peanut was so weak by this point that she could barely keep her eyes open. I brought up the MLB playoffs – our Yankees looked strong, I said.
I waited for Peanut’s spirited take on who on the team would play like a champ and who the bums were; whom the Yankees had to worry about on the opposition; how the weather would affect the pitchers. But she just sat there. So tired. So sick. It broke my heart.
Trying to get any kind of response from his sister, Uncle Mike jumped on the topic of the Yankees and told a story about how he met Mickey Mantle when he was 11 years old.
It was around 1956 or so and Uncle Mike and his two pals – Billy Sica and Robbie Sorbello (two northern New Jersey names if you ever heard one) – had heard a rumor that the Mick had moved to a house in River Edge .
They all lived in Maywood (a small town next to Hackensack) and River Edge was about 3 miles away. They hopped on their hand-me-down Schwinns and Raleigh Racers and crossed Route 4, pedaled all the way up Maywood Avenue and eventually found themselves too nervous to ring the doorbell of the house that legend had it housed The Commerce Comet.
One of them – Uncle Mike couldn’t remember who – knocked. A pretty woman answered.
“Hello boys,” she said nonchalantly. “S’pose you’re here to see my husband. Why don’t you follow me.”
She turned and walked off. They all looked at each other and then silently followed the woman to the backyard where children splashed in a pool and at a table only a few feet away from where the boys stood, relaxing in a bathing suit and shirt-sleeves, was Number 7 himself.
He looked up at them and raised his eyebrows, at first saying nothing. He studied them for a moment. Then the legend spoke.
“Merlyn,” the ball player asked his wife, “we have anything for the boys to drink?”
Uncle Mike, a native Jersey boy, remembered how funny he thought Mantle’s southern drawl sounded, but he wisely kept that thought to himself.
Indeed, Mike and his pals said nothing – frozen by fear and the desire to not say something stupid in front of their idol.
“You got something for me?” Mickey asked. The boys didn’t answer. What could Mickey Mantle possibly want from them?
Then Uncle Mike realized what Mantle was asking and he fished a baseball out of his pocket because it was 1956 and all little boys kept baseballs in their pockets.
Mickey signed the ball, Uncle Mike and Billy and Robert drank their Merlyn-provided lemonade and they said goodbye to the Hall of Famer. The bike ride back to Maywood was less bumpy. That’s what happens when you’re gliding on air.
“I don’t know what happened to that ball,” was how Uncle Mike finished his tale.
I sat at my mother-in-law’s kitchen table, mouth agape, stunned at the amazing story I had just heard. It was the kind of yarn that normally would have had Peanut jabbering away about Mantle and Maris and the Yankees of the ‘50’s and what New Jersey was like back then and anything else that came to her excitable, wonderful mind.
But she didn’t say a word. She just sat there. So tired. So sick.
She had missed the whole thing. Hadn’t taken any of it in. Hadn’t heard a word of the greatest sports story we’d ever talk about. Except I realized that we’d never get to talk about it.
It was then I knew it was a matter of days, maybe hours – her incredible spirit barely tethered to earth by what little strength was left in her frame.
“Are you tired, Peanut?” I asked. It took a beat for her to know she was being spoken to. But then she gently nodded.
I took her by her arm, feather-light in my hands, and walked her back to her room where a hospital bed had been set up for her. I helped her in and covered her up.
Her eyes were closed. I turned to leave the room, heart-broken, knowing that the beautiful woman who had been a second mother to me was effectively gone forever.
But as I reached the door, “Nick,” she said softly. I turned back and for a moment there was that gleam in her eye. The gleam I’m not a good enough writer to describe but if you knew Peanut then you’d know exactly what I’m talking about.
“That must’ve been some baseball, huh?” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I smiled, stunned to realize that Peanut still had one last surprise up her sleeve – she had heard and comprehended the entire story. Her eyelids fell and I quietly closed her door and left her to sleep.
If the story ended there, I would have been happy to say that that last perfect sentence from my mother-in-law were the final words she ever said to me, except they weren’t.
Two days later she said goodbye to me with something even better.
“I love you.”
