LOTTIE

Her given name meant gentle,

but everyone called her Lottie

except the nuns.

They thought

Lottie was short for Charlotte.

As Charlotte she taught, became

a nurse and spoke with ease

in three languages.

As Lottie

she played the lute and sang

to her own accompaniment and once

with a pianist from the New York

Philharmonic.

After she chose

my father, he ordered from Damascus

a lute specifically sized

for her.

I still have it.

She cared enough to adopt

a Serbian girl until

her parents could immigrate.

In a one-line letter to my aunt,

she wrote, “Hi, Sis, how’s

your love life?”

She died

when I was six.

Decades back,

a woman I’d never met

stopped me and said, “I’m named

after your mother.”

She smiled

as if she’d kept a vow

she’d made to tell me that.

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