Growing up, I favored my father, like most daughters do. I was the apple of his eye. I could do anything and my Dad thought that I was great…a great basketball player and funny writer.
My mother…well, she was my mother. We were like the typical daughter and mom; we were oil and water, gasoline and matches. We fought, had disagreements, and through it all, I still favored my father. By the time I was in high school, I came to appreciate my mother more.
My parents were both born and raised in Utica, New York. They were close to their families. My mother would always tell me about her family back home. I realized now, that telling these stories kept her close to them. One day my father decided to go west and he uprooted my mother, my brother, and I, and started the long drive to California. He made a stop in Cleveland and that was it. We never went any farther. Cleveland became our home. I can only imagine how hard that move had to be for my mom. She was in her mid 40’s. She must have missed her mother, brother, and all her relatives. But she never said a word, she never complained.
She loved her house, and kept herself busy cleaning and fussing with it to make it the cleanest place on the face of the earth, knitting sweaters, crocheting afghans, crocheting the edgings for the Church altar clothes. She tended to her garden, growing beautiful roses, and she loved to cook. Whatever she cooked was wonderful. We didn’t need to go to a fancy restaurant. My Mom was her own head chef in her own kitchen. She could make the most average meals taste like a gourmet meal.
My mother was a tiny woman, standing 4’9” in her stocking feet. When she wore her high heeled spikes, and with her hair piled up on her head, she measured 5”2.” She may have been short but she was one tough cookie. When she was younger, she studied and became a beautician, and owned her own business. A few years later, she married my Dad. It wasn’t until after she died, that my father told my brother and I the story that they had actually eloped. They wanted to be married and that was how they did it, only to come home and live with each of their parents. No one knew about this. It was their secret. Eventually, they did get married in the Catholic Church.
My mother ended up being a stay at home mom, who raised my brother and I. That was what my Dad wanted. I am not sure if my mother felt the same. But she loved us, and made a house a warm home. She made every day fun for me.
What I do know was, I may have favored my father, but my earliest memories are of my mother. I remember her teaching me how to play patty cake, jacks, or how to skip rope. She was the one to show me how to have a proper tea party with my bear and dolls. She taught me how to whistle, too. Later as I tried to teach my children how to whistle, I came to realize that this was pretty difficult. My mother was the first person to teach me how to memorize a poem. I still remember a few lines of that poem, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.
Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
It was the 18th of April in ’75.
Hardly a man is now alive who remembers that day and year.My mother sort of wore a uniform during the week. She wore a tent like muumuu dress to clean the house or work in her garden. She not only wore a muumuu but she wore a girdle with nylons, and her high heel shoes. My mother didn’t drive. She was the one who taught me how to take a bus to downtown Cleveland. Better still, walking was our main mode of transportation. That was how we got to church. We walked with my mother as she legged it to church in her dress, hat, coat, purse, and her three-inch spikes. Walking for us was a form of exercise that my mother made popular long before the late president, John F. Kennedy, would urge our nation to exercise and keep them healthy by walking.
Unfortunately, my mother passed on two fears to me. One was her fear of doctors. I have been able to shake this fear off. I do have yearly check ups and do most of the things that I am supposed to do to keep healthy. The other was her fear of flying. She hated to fly and I do too. I do fly when I have to, but I am one of those white-knuckle fliers. My mother would travel on a greyhound bus for hours from Cleveland to St. Louis to visit her first grandson and me. She played the same games with her grandson as she did with me when I was little. My mother hugged and squeezed my son and told me how much she enjoyed the feel of a baby’s hand. That always stayed with me. I, too, love to touch a baby and small child’s soft chubby hands.
I will always remember the last Christmas that my family spent together, my mom and dad, my brother and my grandson and me. The day we left to go back to St. Louis I remember my mom standing by the open storm door, and waving goodbye. She waved and had a big smile on her face, knowing in a few short weeks she would travel to St. Louis when I gave birth to my second child. She would be helping me out with my children.
My mother had her bags packed weeks ahead of my due date. She called me at the end of January to wish me a “Happy Birthday.” She asked me if I wanted her to come before the birth. I thought about how I was late with my first born, and said that I would rather her come after I went into labor, so that she could be with me longer when I got back home with the baby. That was how we left our plans.
A week later, my mother died unexpectedly. Two days after that I delivered my second son, Christopher. It was all so sudden and sad. Weeks later, I would receive a package from my father. It was a baby blanket my mother had knitted in colors of pink, white and blue, along with a yellow knitted baby bunting and baby hat. I used both of these treasures for all my other children when I brought them home from the hospital.
One day after I had bathed my son, and held him close to me, I found myself gently feeling his hand and remembered what my mother always said about how much she loved to hold the soft hand of a baby. It was when I touched his hand and held it that I wondered if Christopher and my mother touched hands as they passed one another. In that moment I truly felt the presence of my mother. I felt her comfort me.
