I am my mother, after all.
Last year I presented my only daughter with a coffee cup inscribed with those words. She looked at me, laughingly said, "I don't think so!" We are very much alike, as I am much like my own mother.
As the first-born child in a family of seven children, I recall a special childhood-loving grandparents next door, doting aunts and uncles, and the security of living in a tiny village.
When my dad died, I was reeling. I have lived far away in another state for the past forty years, so I did not have the privilege of seeing him often. His death was unexpected, but I took consolation in the fact that he accomplished what he wanted in his life. At seventeen, he joined the Marines to support the WWII effort.Trapped on the island of Tarawa, he lay wounded from machine gun fire. Surrounded by Japanese and unable to call for help, he promised God that if he survived, he would live a good life, surrounded by his beautiful wife and twelve children. He got seven of us, five short of a dozen. When the youngest child, my brother and the only boy, was born in my junior year of high school, I was mortified when this announcement sounded over the school intercom: "Homer and AMD have a son." Back then, I was an adolescent lollygagging around in my egocentric world. My graduating class boasted 24 students. Small school.
My mother and I are predominantly right-brained. Although I work at developing left brain attributes,
I share her love of the arts and all things artistic. We both love photography, gardening, writing, and flair. She's obsessive about her wardrobe. I have five closets. She loves color, especially lavender. This season, my obsession is purple. She is rigid in her beliefs. People who disagree with me suffer my wrath. She's on the go all the time: shopping, taking classes, dancing, gardening, attending concerts and meetings. Ditto.
I developed a strategy to fend off disagreements with her. I picture her as a young child seeking attention, an adolescent in angst, or as a young woman pondering her future. Although she's eighty-five, she was once all those personalities. I told her that I knew she'd written hundreds of small diaries/journals during her lifetime. She let me read her diary from 1944. At twenty-one, she wrote a page per day: dating, skipping shorthand class, going to movies several times a week, and listing guys she danced with. She was Salutatorian of her graduating class. As the only daughter of a prominent businessman in our hometown, she enjoyed the good life. She wrote a society column for a local newspaper.
Even though she had three maids to help her run our household, one to cook, one to clean, and one to chase us down, she awakened us at 7:00 a.m. every Saturday. Filling a silver tray with tiny demi-tasse coffee cups, she went to each bedroom and sat on each of our beds as we sipped French roast coffee. When I reminisced about this ritual with my brother, seventeen years my junior, he remarked, "What family did you grow up in?" I guess by that time, my miother was lucky to crawl into the kitchen to grab a bottle of bourbon to start her day.
My mother lined us up at the confessional every Saturday afternoon. After confession, Our Fathers and Hail Marys, and our promises never to sin again, we scoured the Legion of Decency in the church vestible to find a saccharine movie to attend [across the street].
We filled an entire pew at Sunday mass. One Sunday my sister Cindy and her partner in crime, our cousin, Robbee, on the pretense of going to the restroom, sneaked into the church lobby and switched every hat hanging on the two hatracks. As gentlemen retreated from church at the end of the service, all h--- broke loose in the lobby. No one else could exit the service because of the hullabaloo. Every one of us children had to answer for that crime. My mother could not believe that this was not a well-contrived plot to embarrass our entire family, dead or alive. More material for confession.
Her voice talks to me in my head, as I am sure my voice rings in my childrens' ears.She has more aphorisms in her repertoire than Ben Franklin. "Practice makes perfect." "Early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." "Waste not, want not." "All the way to Heaven is Heaven" [What?]
It's very difficult to watch your parents age. I am 63 chronologically, but my emotional age is much, much younger. I try to remember that my mother is a person in her own right. We are all products of our genes and our environments. Based on my mother's interests and activities, she is very young at heart. I know she's happy with her life because she told me she has no regrets. That's a comforting thought.
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