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Mother - A Remembrance

Mother18

I have many incomplete posts about my Mother. Thus far I have been unable to find words that are worthy of her. I doubt I ever will. I'll try again and hope that at least I can paint a picture that would not embarrass her in its inadequacy.

 

 

My Mother was beautiful, inside and out, smart as a whip and talented on accordion. That is how she met my Pop when he was in the Navy during World War II, when she was a USO Accordionist. Fast forward several decades....

 

She had already had a complete family – two girls and two boys – perfect really, but then she was pregnant with me. She thought she was menopausal when I was conceived and she was not Catholic so I've no idea why she went through with having me but she did.

 

No one was happy about my birth. I don't want to beat a dead horse if you have read anything I have written before. I was not planned, not wanted, resented...yada yada yada. Except by Mum.

 

When I was old enough to vocalize, “Why did you have me?” She said, “You were my gift to myself.” She explained every other child was planned, expected, wanted, mapped out but I was her surprise. I was the child she had by choice, not obligation. She could raise me without distraction. I was hers.

 

I don't remember a period where I did not know she had more grace and intelligence in her left earlobe than any other mother had in their entire frame. She helped so many with no appearance of assisting. She kept peace in our family. She was a rock to disabled Veterans and the marginalized alike. She never judged. Everyone deserved and received her love even if they were at odds with her. She never held grudges. She just wanted to do what ever she could to make people happy they were alive.

 

Grace. That should have been her name but instead it was May. May as in Spring. May as in birth, beginnings, emerald as new cut grass. May, fresh as daffodils or the first harvest to feed the hungry, her heart as pacific as oceans.

 

I've never met any to compare with her. And I know it is not just the years that separate us on this terrestrial plain that make me think this. When she left me she confessed that she felt guilt for leaving me motherless so young. I said to her, “I would rather have YOU for the years I've had you than another Mother for a life time.” I meant it then and I still mean it now.

 

That young orphan had no idea how hard life could be. She did not know she would be homeless and literally living on the street. She did not know there would be times where she would be asked to trade her integrity for survival and when she would not make the trade, she would, at one point, wish she was dead. She could not know then how the hole in her heart would feel after spending as many Mothers' Days without her Mother as with her but she had to know she would survive it because she is the daughter of May. Brilliant, beautiful, intellectual, kind, self sacrificing, funny, hard working, joyful, thankful, strong, patient May.

 

If I am anything, it is because I am the daughter of the most incredible person I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. If I won a Nobel Prize or Pulitzer it would still pale to being the daughter of May. I have friends who mourn the loss of their parents at seventy, eighty or ninety and I feel sad for them, adrift with their beginning ended, but not as sad as I feel for them, never having had my Mother as theirs.

 

I miss you, Mum. I love you. And I still would never trade a day with you for the comfort of having another mother for my lifetime.

Family: Questions Regarding Obligation and Love

I am baffled by family; at least my family. I can't quite figure out the balance between what loyalty I owe people because we carry the same genetics and where I can, with good conscience, draw the line to save my own sanity and break from their control. The advice of others hasn't helped either because their viewpoints vary drastically depending on their own reality and upbringing.

 

My mother was very loyal to family. Her own family immigrated to the United States in the early nineteen hundreds. When she married, she moved across the United States from California to New England but still kept her ties with the left coast. My father never drifted far from family. He raised his children in the same town in which his parents raised him since the age of five. Together they bore four children in less than seven years and then a last one over twelve years later.

 

A niece wrote me recently, “I miss the times when grandma was alive not only because she was a good grandma, but because she kept you all together.” She is right; Mum did a great job at keeping us together. The niece goes on to say, “I miss when the ... family actually liked being around each other or at least faked it.” If we did fake it (and I won't argue the point one way or another – you can decide), we haven't done anything many families have not done before us.

 

Several of my siblings were starting their own families when I was still a child. Our father died when we were 31, 29, 25, 24 and 12 years old. Shortly after, our mother & I moved to a small cottage and we started rotating holidays between the siblings' homes because entertaining in our cottage was not practical. When I was thirteen Christmas was at my oldest sister's house and I witnessed a telephone argument between her and my mother where my mother kept saying, “No. I am not going to leave Emma home. If I can't bring her, I'm not coming either.” I know a thirteen year old is not nearly the same as a six year old but I can't imagine a parent going off to celebrate Christmas while leaving her thirteen year old home alone. And no, I wasn't a kleptomaniac, smelly, particularly loud, disruptive or any of the myriad reasons you could think of to engender desertion. Mum didn't, of course, leave me alone but I also didn't enjoy the holiday because only one person wanted me there.

 

Nine years later Mum died. I was her final caretaker. She had been sick for a few years so I was back and forth between college, work and home. I had not yet fully moved out. When I rushed back to work after my prolonged leave of absence, the two oldest siblings not only liquidated our mother's belongings from the house but also mine. There were a few things of value but those could be replaced. The achievement awards, photographs, and little mementos of childhood can not.

 

I recently inherited a copy of our family tree written by the oldest sibling for our grandmother. It was written approximately three years after our father's death. I am the only one living at the time who is not on it.

 

These days we are only brought together by death. The youngest child, but me, is dead from cancer. Our middle sibling had a stroke many years ago and can barely communicate. The second oldest is only seen at funerals. The oldest only calls to announce death or impending death. I jump every time my caller ID shows her number. I would be no less alarmed if a man in a dark hooded cape carrying a scythe knocked on my door.

 

There is a break in the family cloud though. Loved ones I've lost but could not get information about from immediate family (they hoard information as if it were a commodity) are finding me and being found through social networking and the internet. I did learn our mother's lesson and do value family so these reunions are poignant, yet exciting. Also, in banding together we have other means of circumventing the cone of silence and misinformation.

 

What do you think? Do we owe our elders the respect to jump when called, disappear when asked and obey the rules they set for family or can we create our own rules? Are we obligated to be controlled by family simply because they are family?

Brush With Dyslexia

Kangaroo_w_gas_mask

This is a story about a failed educational system and one person’s triumph over adversity inflicted by that failed system. Above is a picture of my brother, the hero of my childhood. He was the baby of the family until I showed up twelve years later.  I adore him.

At some point in his education the Chatham, Massachusetts school system decided he had dyslexia. As a small child I didn’t know exactly what this meant but as soon as I could read I was helping him decipher things. I even had to dial the phone for him because he was convinced he would dial a wrong number as he couldn’t read the keys correctly. I loved helping my brother. It made me feel useful and special.

I never doubted what the school said because my brother and my parents didn’t. In retrospect, I should have. In middle school, classes were divided into high, medium and low. The high class were the brightest children and the low class consisted of the slower learners.  I was placed in the low class where I consistently received good grades. In high school I tested within the genius range and made the National Honor Society. This didn’t make me angry until I was in college where I realized I could have done so much more had my middle school years not been wasted being taught down to. I suspect it is because my family was poor and Chatham, being a very classist town, assumed poor children must have lower than average intelligence. I still feel stupid and believe that I am not performing up to my potential. Try as I might, the building blocks weren’t there and I doubt I will outgrow this.

My brother went onto technical school where he earned his high school diploma and became the most talented carpenter and jack-of-all-trades I’ve ever met. There was nothing that man couldn’t do with his hands.

Years later, my brother called me to tell me he had just tested at a Grade 15 level. I don’t remember what he was testing for, and doubt I asked, because I was floored.  He tested as a junior in college. Further, he told me, they determined he was not dyslexic. After that, he started reading and writing. Similar to me, the ground work he should have had was not there but he did as best he could, miles beyond anything he had done the first thirty-five years of his life. In conversations after he lost the dyslexic label, he would casually mention something he read and I could hear the pride in his voice.  I can not think pride is always a sin when someone overcomes what he did.  I was proud of him, too. Once that label was removed, he never looked back. He didn’t say, “I can’t.” He could and he did and it only made me love him more.