One of my favorite pictures, circa 1988
from L-R: Pam, Nannie, Mother, me
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well?
My mother. ~Ann Taylor
http://youtu.be/7SOrmtqTVHc [Good Mother/Jann Arden]
Today is my mother’s birthday. She turns 72. What is more amazing to me than her being 72, is that she no longer seems to mind that people know her age. Trust me, this is a big deal! This is a woman who fudged so much about her age over the years that she thought for a time that my birth year was 1964. [It’s not.] So, when she mentioned a few years ago, that it doesn’t bother her anymore if people know her age, I called her out on it.
"I’m onto you!" I told her with a chuckle.
I think she realized that she was busted! Innocently, she asked. "What do you mean?"
"You just want to hear people say in awed disbelief when you tell them your age, ‘my God! You look FABULOUS!’"
She laughed. Not admitting one way or the other whether I’d hit the nail on the head.
I didn’t need her to. I knew I had. [And, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to hear every now and then that you look fabulous!]
"Mm hm...." I replied, laughing myself.
One of the benefits of age and being close to one’s mother is that you begin to know them and what they’re up to in the same way that they always knew what you were up to as a kid. It’s the back-of-your-hand kind of knowing.
That’s where I’d like to return for a moment: my childhood.
Before I do, let me make this preface. The title of this entry is from a paper that I’d written in a college English class. It was my final exam. The professor asked us to keep a journal for a month and, at the end of that time, find a recurring theme within our daily reflections and write a term paper about it. Between the lines of my comments–observations were traces of my mother – her voice–her influence on me. I could see, plain as day, her imprint. I submitted the idea to my professor who was hesitant.
"I don’t want this to be a bubble-gum paper," she told me.
I remember bristling by the classification. "You don’t think that one can write a serious, thought-provoking paper about a mother’s influence?" I asked, defensively.
"Okay, Ms. Bosher," she saw my point and raised my challenge. "And what are you going to call this paper?"
She was testing me to see how confident I was in my proposal. I looked her in the eye and replied. "I was thinking of reversing the metaphor that Sylvia Plath used in her poem Metaphors, where she used the imagery of a "calf in cow" to describe her observations about being pregnant. Instead, I’ll call my paper Cow in Calf to illustrate my mother’s influence and the observations that I have on that point, which came through in subtle ways within my journaling – a mother’s influence from child to woman."
She was quiet for a moment. I could tell, as she considered it, that she didn’t think it sounded "bubble gum". She took the paper that I’d written my idea down on and signed off on it.
"I hope it reads as good as your pitch," she said.
I smiled. "I think it will read better," I replied. I got an A on that paper.
I have it somewhere in a suitcase of stuff I saved over the years of special school items. It would be a daunting task to try and locate it now. My mother would be another year older, I think, before I found it. I know, however, it’s there. So, I’ll try and recall as much of it as I can and weave it into this updated version.
I hope she likes it as much as she did when she read the first version. It is my homemade gift to her for her birthday.
Let me begin by saying that I have a good mother. I feel very fortunate in being able to say that, because I know not everyone can. I do, however, and I’ve never taken it for granted. I hope my mother can say from her perspective that it’s so as well.
I have a saying that I found years ago and saved. Anyone who knows me, knows that I collect quotes and whatnot. I use to write them down in spiral notebook, but now, with the internet, I can pull them up whenever I want to. [Yes, I remember them...] The one I’m specificially referring to is this one by Linda Wooten. It says: "Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn't know you had, and dealing with fears you didn't know existed." As a child, I knew nothing about my strengths, but I certainly knew about my fears. This was a big one for me:
When I was in the third grade, the year was 1973, there was something called "busing" which came about after court cases were won which addressed prior racial segregation in the school system . It integrated black children into, until that time, schools that were comprised of all white children as a means to overcome the effects of residential and racial segregation. Children from different school systems were transported by bus into different districts. My mother, who worked as a secretary in a junior high school, was transferred from the school across the field from my elementary school, across town to another junior high school. It was very disconcerting to me. Until that development, I could look out the window of my classroom and see, across the field, the school where my mother worked. It was a comfort.
What wasn’t a comfort was the news that she would no longer be working at Southside Jr. High School. There would be no more looking across the field, seeing that school building and knowing that my mother was there. It was very unsettling to me. When I left to go to school in the morning, I didn’t know where she went. I just knew that she wasn’t across the field anymore.
I started to have anxiety attacks when I got to school. I cried. I cried a river. I cried so much each day to the point that they had to get my sister out of Mrs. Pennywit's 5th grade class and have her come talk to me. I don’t think Pam minded being pulled out of class, but she was not too thrilled with her assignment, which was to calm her distraught sister.
"Stop crying!" she said sternly. "You’re not a baby!"
No. I wasn’t a baby. Still, I cried.
This ritual went on for a few days until, finally, my parents were called.
That night, when my parents tucked me into bed and after they’d heard me say my prayers, they asked me what was going on that was making me cry every day after I got to school? I was quiet. They pressed.
I didn’t know a lot about the new school where my mother had gone to work, but this much I knew: she had to cross over a railroad track. It’s funny how kid’s minds can work – the things they think about that seem so out of left field. I remember finally telling them what my fear was: I was afraid of my mother crossing over those railroad tracks every day. I was afraid that a train would come out of nowhere and hit her, and she would be taken from me. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know why I was afraid of that. Suffice it to say, I was, and it was very real to me. Instead of scolding me for being silly or telling me I was being ridiculous, my mother taught me my first lesson in respect for another person’s feelings.
She suggested to my father that she take me to school with her the next day so that I would know where she was, and I could see where she worked, and I wouldn’t have to think scary thoughts about it anymore. So, the next day, that’s just what we did. She got my brother and sister off to school, then off we went. My mother was a trailblazer! She took her daughter to work years before that concept became vogue.
I remember the drive to school; I remember coming upon the train tracks. When we reached it, my mother slowed the car down, then stopped. She showed me what she did every morning: she looked to her left then she looked to her right, and when she was certain that no train was coming, she crossed over the railroad tracks.
"I don’t ever cross the tracks if I see train coming," she assured. "I wait for it to pass."
I nodded. I felt better. It was a relief.
When we got to her school she showed me around. She had me color something while she went in to speak to the principal for a moment, then came out and took me around the school, showing me the lunchroom and the teacher’s lounge. Then, she showed me the most important place: her desk. On it, was a tri-frame that had a picture of my brother, my sister and me.
She turned on her electric typewriter and let me run my fingers across it. The keys jumped with a fast clicking sound, and there was a ball inside the open space that spun around as you touched the keys. It made me laugh. She let me pull the copies from the copy machine and carry them back to her desk. She let me put letters that she had typed into envelopes, seal them and lick the stamps that went on them. Then, I got to put them in the place on her desk for outgoing mail.
At lunchtime, we went out and sat beneath a big oak tree and had a picnic. My mother spread a blanket down onto the ground, and we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and potato chips. For dessert, I had a Hunts snack pack chocolate pudding cup.
She asked me if I liked her new school. I remember nodding that I did like it.
"So," she told me. "When I drop you off at school in the morning, this is where I come. This is where I am until I come to pick you up. Your school has the phone number here, in case they ever need to reach me. I’m 15 minutes away. Remember how easy it was to get here from the house?"
Again, I nodded.
We went back inside, and she let me help her with the work that I could help her with. I got to help her open the mail and hold folders open in the tall file cabinet, where she had to file daily papers. Everything we did was exciting. She introduced me to teachers who stopped by for this or that, and when the school day was done, she let me take the plastic covering and put it over her typewriter.
That day, when we went home, she let me make the call when we got to the railroad track.
"Look to the left," she said. "Is anything coming?"
"No, M’ame," I replied.
"What about the right?" she asked as we both glanced in that direction.
"It’s all clear," I said.
"Then it’s safe to go," she replied and when I agreed, she moved the car over the tracks.
I never forgot the day that my mother took seriously my concerns and, instead of telling me that there was nothing to worry about, she showed me that there was nothing to be concerned about. I never cried again.
My mother was a very involved parent. She was home-room mother; she went on field trips. She made sure that, before the school year ended, she made cupcakes for all the kids in my class to celebrate my summer birthday, so that I wouldn’t miss out on that momentous event that the other kids got to enjoy, when their mothers brought cupcakes in during the year for their birthdays. It’s the little things. It’s the small details that are important – that make a child know they are important. My mother paid attention to the little things and the small details. She made her children know that we were and remain important to her.
It’s not easy being a good mother. My mother, however, made it look easy. I remember telling her once when I was in my 20's that I hoped I was half the mother to my children that she had been to me. Sadly, I didn’t get to mother my children, but that’s a story for another day. Still, given the opportunity, I think I would have done a good job, given the example that I’ve been blessed to have since 1963.
I was a clingy child. I don’t know how I didn’t drive her crazy, and who knows...maybe I did, but she never let on, if it was the case. I was clingy for a reason. After we moved from Virginia to Florida, my father went to Harvard for a time. I think I was five years old, and I didn’t really understand. I thought he had gone to heaven. As a result, I didn’t let her out of my sight. I didn’t want my mother to disappear too, so I stuck to her like white on rice. I know it upset both of my parents that I thought what I thought, and I suppose the reason I thought it was because the lady at the end of the street died of cancer, and was no longer there. Her children were left with their Daddy. I didn’t know, at that point, what cancer was, but I knew what being gone was. I asked one day where the lady went, and my mother told me that she’d gone to heaven. I guess my child’s brain associated being gone with going to heaven.
Even after my father called, specifically to talk to me. I still thought he was in heaven. I remember, after that phone call, she asked me if I felt better having spoken to my father. I nodded that I had and asked her if the lady down the street got to call from heaven and talk to her children? My mother bit her lip, troubled....thinking. She went to the encyclopedias we had and pulled two volumes down, then sat me down on the sofa and pulled me into her lap. First, she turned to a map of the United States and pointed to Massachusetts.
"Your Daddy is here," she told me. "In Boston. He’s not in heaven. I would tell you if he had gone to heaven."
I stared at the state. It was a long way from Florida, but it didn’t seem as far away to me as heaven. I didn’t know how far away heaven was. I just knew that it was somewhere up beyond the clouds. I didn’t even know what heaven looked like except what I’d been told in Sunday School.
I touched the place she had pointed to. "Boston," I repeated.
She nodded. "Boston."
Then, she pulled the next volume and opened it to Harvard University. She pointed to the school. "This is where he is in Boston," she told me. "He’s in school there – grown up school, and when he finishes going to school, he’s coming back home."
That perked me up. "Really? When?" I asked.
"Soon," she said. "In about five weeks."
She took my hand and took me over to the calender. She showed me what one week was, then she moved her finger down and counted the weeks off. When she turned the page, there were only two weeks down on that page, before he would be home. She took a pen and marked the day we were on then put an "x" over the day he was scheduled to come home.
"Why don’t you take the pen every morning and mark off the day until you get to this ‘x’," she pointed to the one at the end of the five weeks. "When you get to that one, Daddy will be home."
Sure enough, she was right. When I got to the end of all those check marks, my father came back. I still have the small Harvard sweatshirt he brought me. The first anniversary, a year ago, after my father really went to heaven, my husband and I went to Boston. We drove by Harvard University, specifically the business school, where my father attended. I remembered my mother taking the time to show me all the details of where he had been in a way that a child’s mind could understand it. I still don’t know what heaven looks like other than what I’ve been told in church. It’s a beautiful place is all I know. I remember thinking as my husband and I drove around Harvard, that I hoped heaven was as beautiful as Boston...
My mother also showed me that she had faith in me even when I was very young. She didn’t tell me that I couldn’t do something that could have been perceived as dangerous. Instead, she showed me how to safely do it so that it wasn’t dangerous, then she let me do. Using a sharp knife by myself and cooking are two things that come to mind, when I speak of this. I think it was because she was the daughter of farmers and did a lot of things in the kitchen when she was a young girl. My grandmother taught her how to move about safely in a kitchen, and she taught me.
Then, there were certain traditions that we shared. When I was a young girl, the last day of school was a half day. We got out at noon, then, officially our summer began. My mother always took us to Burger King for lunch to celebrate. It’s a little thing, but it’s a visceral memory. It’s been 40 years, yet to this day, I don’t ever eat a Whopper Jr. that I don’t think about the last day of school and being treated to lunch by my mother. It’s a warm, fuzzy feeling that never leaves when I go there. It’s something tangible that I can still do that makes that memory continue to have life to it, not just as an echo of the past.
My mother taught me how to apologize after a disagreement, but more importantly how to express true regret over something that was wrong and which needed forgiveness. I was a young girl in the company of a few of my friends. I mouthed off to my mother about something. I honestly don’t remember what it was, probably because she lightly popped my mouth with her hand, and that contact shocked my brain to the point that it’s one of a few memories that I can’t recall with precision. What was so devastating about it was that she did it in front of my friends. It wasn’t that I didn’t necessarily deserve it, it’s that I was coming into an age where that was the worst thing your parent could do. She knew it as soon as she pulled her hand away from my mouth and saw the look in my eyes. The silence in the room was suddenly deafening, and it was one of those moments where everyone paused because they weren’t sure what to do next? Like a snail, I pulled up into my shell and was quiet for the remainder of the time I was in that setting. When we were in the car alone, on the way home, my mother glanced over at me. I could see her glance peripherally, but I could feel it more than anything.
She cleared her throat and said regretfully. "I’m sorry I did that! I shouldn’t have done that!" She didn’t detract from the apology by saying, "but you shouldn’t have mouthed off to me after I told you to stop." No. She didn’t minimalize what her action meant to a 12 year old girl. She stood in the uncomfortable place of wrongness and asked me for my forgiveness.
I didn’t want to give it so readily because what she had done seemed so much worse to me than me mouthing off to her. It wasn’t like I had humiliated her in front of her friends. But, I had disrespected her in front of mine. In her mind, it was, I’m certain, equally upsetting. I forgave her. More importantly, I asked her to forgive me. It was a two-fer lesson and an important one. I learned something about respect and forgiveness that day. My mother has never lightly popped my mouth since, and I’ve never disrespected her in front of my friends.
Honestly, I don’t know how my mother did it all. She was a wonder woman but not in the comic book sense. She cleaned the house; cooked the meals; shopped for the groceries; did the laundry; tended to her children and worked to boot.
I remember my father’s response when he learned that I’d written my term paper about my mother and how her influence had effected me into my adulthood. I think he thought it should have been about him. I’ve never taken anything away from my father, and I give him credit where credit is due.
Still, for this particular assignment my mother and her influence was the clear choice as that is what came through in those journal entries. This is not to say that my father hasn’t had his own influence on me or imprinted upon me in his own significant ways. He has. My mother would be the first one to tell you some of those ways.
However, in raising us, my mother accomplished everything she did with two differences from my father, who traveled most of the time from the time I was about 10 onward. He left on Monday mornings and came home on Friday nights. He called during the week, and we spoke with him, but he was off doing important work with the union, and my mother was home with us. She didn’t have a wife to pick up her slack in certain areas. She didn’t get to sleep through the night when her children were in the bathroom sick. She was right in there with us, and she had to get up the next morning to get the other children off to school, schlep the sick child to the doctor, and deal with all the added responsibilities that the sick child posed, who was namely me.
It was never a case of one being better than the other. My father was a wonderful provider. He was a good man. He taught me many important lessons. He was a good father. My mother, however, was a better juggler than he was. It was that plain and that simple.
My mother taught me how to take care of myself as woman. How to be gracious and diplomatic without being anyone’s patsy and certainly no one’s fool. She instilled in me that it was important, as a woman, that I get the best education that I could so that I could always take care of myself financially, and never have to stay in a situation that was unacceptable to me or diminished my self-respect. She taught me from a woman’s standpoint, that I had a right to an opinion; I had a right to express it; my thoughts were as important as anyone else’s; and, most importantly, to never stand for anyone laying a hand on me. Yeah, I’ve got a good mother...
...And, when I think of my mother, I think of the woman who laid in the bed with me on nights when I couldn’t sleep, and stayed with me until I fell to sleep; I think of the woman who kissed the places that hurt, and if it still hurt even after she’d kissed it, she pulled me into the rocking chair and held me for a while, rocking me until the tears subsided and the calm of that movement made the anxiety of the injury not seem so earth shattering; I think of the woman who knew my favorite meal as a child and made it every year on my birthday; I think of the woman who was at every school function for everyone of her children; who accompanied me on field trips; who ran around town getting this thing and that for whatever function I needed it for, but she didn’t just do it for one child. She did it for three.
I think of the woman who always let me crawl into her bed and sleep with her if something had unsettled me in the night and scared me, and she never told me that I was too old to do it, because she knew, with age, comes different things that unsettle and frighten a person, and she knew, in times like that, that the only thing that could make it better was the strong, secure arms of one’s mother. I remember the woman who drove me up to college along with my brother and called me every day for the first week until she knew that I was comfortable being away from home. I think of the woman who came along with me in my catering adventure [a story for another day...] and worked hard alongside me; I think of the woman who drove over from Jacksonville to Gainesville to have lunch with me on my day off from work so that she could check out the man who I would later marry and couldn’t stop talking about. I think of the woman who helped me plan my wedding and pick out my dress. But most importantly and the greatest comfort over all of those other important things she did throughout my life and all the other comforts she provided me with, is this:
I remember the woman who held me after I lost both of my babies and rocked me in her arms and wiped my tears away and cried herself because it was one of but a few things in this life that she couldn’t fix for me. It was something that she couldn’t kiss away and make better. Still, in those most cruel of my life’s moments, there was nothing quite like that "mama hug"... Her "mama hugs" have sustained me through some tough moments. I am blessed to have such a good, caring, loving mother.
As a result, I’ve grown into a strong, independent woman, because my mother allowed me to be that insecure, clingy child. She let me grow through it and out of it at my own pace. She didn’t push me. Now, I’m able to stand on my own two feet, confident in the woman I’ve become, secure in the fact that I’ve been given all the important and basic tools I need to survive in this world. It doesn’t matter how old I become. The child in me knows that true home is always where mother is. Her door is open to me whether I’m four or 48. I speak to her everyday, not out of any sense of obligation but because I want to. That’s a testament to her.
This is her day, today. It’s one I celebrate with as much gusto as I do my own birthday because some days are just better than others. Today, for me, is one of those days. It’s when my mother came into this world. Nothing has been the same since!
Happy Birthday, Mother! I can’t believe you’re 72! My God, you look Fabulous!
In case I don’t say it often enough, the lyrics of this song sums up best how I feel about you, "I’ve got a good mother, and your voice is what keeps me here – feet on ground; heart in hand; facing forward to be myself..."
I love you to moon...
For those who would like to read the poem that was referenced at the beginning of this entry. I’ve attached it:
Metaphors, by Sylvia Plath
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train, there's no getting off.
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