Mother’s been gone for the last nine Mother’s Days. But we never forget our moms, with us or not. Mine advertised herself as “a simple country girl” who went to business school and then to work to help support a Depression-age family. They lost their farm and had to try and make it in an unfamiliar and frequently jobless town. She really did walk a couple of miles to school in the snow. She really never had a dress or shoes of her own – growing up in hand-me-downs from an older and larger sister – until she was grown enough to work and buy clothes for herself.
With all these “handicaps” she managed to understand how to nurture four children in their individual passions for the law, libraries literature, liberal arts and business. Her kids grew up without kindergarten but with the ability to read and write when they entered first grade because they had a “simple” teacher at home. We knew every fairy and Disney tale by heart early on because she had read them to us so many times. We also knew Babe Ruth’s batting average, current stats on the Cleveland Indians and the Fighting Irish, and the verbatim content of Knute Rockne’s “Win One For the Gipper” locker room speech at Notre Dame.
Mom had a few passions of her own.
I don’t know how she managed this maternal hat trick, but she was always there, always strong and then seemingly without effort when the time came, always ready to let us go. Once I experienced my own empty-nest syndrome, I understood what that must have cost her. She opened her home for months at a time when military duty or severe illness left me looking for a haven. And guess who took care of the kids and the son-in-law and of course, the dog.
Hers was the message that helped pull me through when our first-born son died and the cheery, no doubt-about-it voice that continually assured me over long distance that Jim was all right even when weeks went by with no word from Vietnam. “Don’t worry,” she told me endlessly, “I’m praying him home.” She did too.
After retiring to Florida from Atlanta and making many trips to visit us in Flower Town she said, “It’s so beautiful here and I miss these pines and dogwoods and azaleas. How would you feel if I re-retired and moved to Summerville?” It was wonderful. I could be close and help care for this dear woman who was then 74. As it turned out, I was the one who got sick and she took over for me – once again. Even my ideas of helping out my elderly, grey-haired, slow-moving and slightly bent mother went by the wayside. She remained a size 10 blonde who paced off a snappy mile or two around the neighborhood daily. At age 80 she aged me considerably by driving solo to California and back.
It wasn’t until she entered the upper reaches of that decade that mother began to slow down. She spent her last few years living with us, reaching 92. I finally got the chance to partially pay back all that loving care.
Mothering my mother remains one of my best remembered joys.