Today, I told Mum 3 good things about herself.
I plan to tell her another 3 things tomorrow.
1) You always stuck up for your kids.
2) You never complained.
3) You were never a hypochondriac.
Today, Sunday, April 9, I told Mum, you taught me that :
4) Girls are as important as boys -- not often said in the 1950s
5) Education is the way up and out.
6) It's more important to help your kid with a geography project than clean the house.
|
|
 |
Monday, April 10, 2006
This afternoon, I told Mum I learned from her that:
7) Doing something decent is what matters not getting thanked for it.
8) Discovering new surprises in the garden is a real joy, and there is always something happening out there.
9) Feeling a sense of responsibilty is empowering -- unlike Sandy, I did my own book reports. Geography was another story entirely. Sandy did help me with science including making the model of the brain for me without any substantive help from me when I was in 8th grade ... I have no talent for such things, so I can't be too hard on her.
10) Numbers 10-12: After I told Mum numbers 10-12, I misplaced the paper. Things have been crazy around here, with Holly and the dog catcher, etc. Mum told me today (Saturday, April 15, not to worry or make up 3 new things. She said take your time. The note paper will show up. So, ... 10-12 are to come.
11) Lost in my office.
12) Or lost in the house ... Mum said I'll find them, and I believe her.
13) Prioritize. Mum taught me that you can't always do what you are supposed to do at the time. She used to say, whichever kid is crying the loudest needs to get the attention. That's why I knew she'd understand when I didn't call her on Wednesday. I spent 3 hours trying to get Holly back from the dog catcher without luck. Holly is now officially a "jailbird," having spent the night in the Fairfax County Animal Shelter.
14) Setting a goal (while admirable) can change over time. After all, suppose I have 6 good things to say Mum taught me one day, do I save 3 for the following day?
15) It's OK to lose your temper with someone you love, and if they really love you back, they'll forgive you. I wanted to strangle Artie Wednesday night for saying the spaghetti I gave him was "yucky." That is an exact quote from a man who is old enough to know better. He wanted to strangle me, too. The next morning we said we loved each other and hugged. I told Sandy, and she reminded me about the time Grandpa complained about the spaghetti, and Mum dumped it on his head. I'll have to see if she remembers.
On Thursday, April 20, 2006, I told Mum all about spending another 2 hours driving out to Fairfax to get Holly back from the dog catcher. After rambling on about Holly's and my grand adventure, I said to Mum, "You taught me that ...
16) If someone needs a listener, then be one.
17) If you can help, then do it.
18) Try not to judge.
Today is Friday, Good Friday. I decided to remind Mum of 3 memories I have from my childhood. She's feeling sick today, but my brother, sister-in-law, and their 4 daughters are taking good care of her. She has no pain, only nausea and a great deal of fatigue.
19) Even though our house was right on the beach in North Weymouth, Mum would never let us go swimming before late June. "You'll get polio, she warned." No amount of begging or whining ever got her to change her mind.I've since learned that a lot of mothers told their kids the same thing. I was one of the first kids to get a polio shot right after Dr. Jonas Salk developed the vaccine. Mum also always knew what time high tide was and what time low tide was. She heard it on the radio, and it was the first question we asked her every summer day, so we could plan our activities.
20) If you hate your tuna fish sandwich, add potato chips and it will taste just like chicken...I can't believe I fell for that one!
21) When we lived in Weymouth, and I came home crying because it was dark outside and my feet were freezing from the snowy walk, Mum got a huge pot of warm water helped me off with my boots and socks, listened to my complaints, and warmed me right up.
Saturday, April 15, 2006. Mum is feeling better today. Just very tired.
22) I told Mum that she was the love of Dad's life, even when she pushed all his buttons. He's the only man I know who would stop by the roadside to pick wildflowers to bring home to her. He also made his own greeting cards for Mum. She said she still has some even after her house flooded two or three times. (The overhead pipes froze and burst) and lots of family photos and cards were destroyed.
I reminded her of the card he made for her when they went to stay with my sister-in-law, Eileen, in Fairbanks, Alaska. The card was made from a piece of tree bark Dad found on the ground, and he made up a sweet poem to go along with it. The last words he spoke before he died unexpectedly in his sleep from a heart attack were to Mum about 3 a.m.. He said, "I love you very much." Then they both drifted off.
23) Now, I am cheating. For number 23, see numbers 10, 11, and 12. Mum told me it's OK.
24) Even though we were raised Roman Catholic, Mum never "bought into" a ridiculous, rigid, orthodoxy. She knew we all make mistakes. And even though she could have a wild Irish temper (throwing tomatoes at the mean neighbor's house and dumping the spaghetti on Dad's head when he complained about it) she always had forgiveness in her heart ... and still does. (Well, every now and then she held a grudge. I do, too, but am trying to break the habit. After all, we are Irish. I think it's in our blood.)
I haven't told Mum the next 3 things yet because it's too early in Texas where she lives, but I'll tell her later today.
Since it is Easter Sunday, it has to do with Mum's ability to forgive. Here are three memories of things that made Mum madder than a wet hen but she forgave.
25) When I was about 9 years old and my brother, Richard, was 7, Mum caught us trying to fit into her girdle ... harder than you'd think. He was halfway into one leg, and I was almost all the way into the other. I never tried to get out of a tight spot faster in my whole life. We planned to see if we could walk around the room in it. An experiment that was doomed to failure.
26) Richard and I tried to see if our bums (that's what you call them in Massachusetts ... not butts, bottoms, or that "bad" word that starts with "a" and ends with "s") would fit into the silverplate Revere fruit bowl Mum kept on the table. They fit perfectly, but the bowl flattened down immediately over the footed stand part (I don't know what you call that part, Sandy will know). Even after the bowl collapsed the other one of us tried. It was a matter of pride. I forget which one of us went first. Then we wrote our names with a pencil around the base of the matching silver candlesticks. Who knew silver was so soft! The names were indelibly "etched."
27) When I first learned how to write the letters of the alphabet and spell, I took a red crayon and wrote SUSAN on the inside of the living room lampshade. Susan was the 2-year-old who lived next door, and Richard was only 4 years old, so he was in the clear. When Mum turned on the light that evening, she said, "Did you write this?" I looked at her innocently and said, "My name's not Susan." I have totally blocked out the aftermath. It's probably just as well.
28) I just thought of another one. See Mum's photo on this page with those pretty circular curls on either side of the part in her hair. The way she used to make those curls was to roll a little piece on her hair into a circle and put two bobbie pins in a criss-cross fashion over them to hold them in place. The bobbie pins had rubber tips. I don't know why I did it, but I bit the rubber tips off every one. Doing your hair became pure torture. We never bought new bobbie pins. We just winced as the rubberless ones dug into our scalps.
I just called Mum. It's noon in D.C., so it must be 11 a.m. in Dallas. My sister-in-law was bringing Mum fresh strawberries for breakfast. I remember that the farmers in Miami, Florida, used to open the strawberry fields to the public for a 25-cent fee after the migrant workers moved on. It was around this time of year. We used to pick so many strawberries, we had them in pie, strawberry shortcake, on our cereal, and God only knows what else. Mum probably told me to put strawberries on my tunafish sandwich to make it taste like roast beef. Only kidding. Mum sounds OK today, but still tired and her mouth is very dry. Maybe it's the medicine she's taking. I'll have to find out.
Mum used to take us blueberry picking in North Weymouth. The berries grew wild on the sandy hillsides. I love blueberries. Richard used to eat them as fast as he picked them. It used to drive me nuts, so I tattled on him. Mum did not like tattletales.
29) Mum agreed to be the Brownie leader when I was about 7 years old but only if our next-door neighbor Lee Oliver would agree to be the assistant leader. Lee agreed. What a team they were. The only time Mum got mad was when the other Brownies' mothers showed up very late to pick their kids up and she got stuck babysitting for them. I thought it was swell. One Christmas, Mum and Lee had us all make candles using paraffin blocks for the base and melting other wax to decorate the sides of the candle. We whipped that wax to a foamy froth with the electric mixer, then we patted it onto the sides of the candles with a dinner fork and stuck sequins and fake holly into the hot wax for further decoration. I loved it so much, I decided to try it out 30 years later with Michael's Cub Scout troop. Ah, Mum, there were some things she never told me. The Cub Scouts loved it. They used the whirring, wax-covered beater as a weapon. I was scraping wax off the kitchen walls for a year.
30) I reminded Mum of how she used to help my brother Richard with his paper route. It was brutal. I don't know how either one of them stuck it out, but they got up every morning at some God-awful time to pick up the papers and then deliver them. Mum got her driver's license when I was 12. I'll bet she was sorry about that as she was driving around Miami in the dark so Rich could toss the newpapers from the window. There was one crabby guy who always called to complain his paper was missing. He called one Christmas morning about 5 a.m. just after Mum got back to bed. She and Rich knew he was lying, but they went out again to deliver another paper.
Today is Thursday, April 27. Mum who is now receiving visits from the people at Hospice. She still doesn't complain.
31) Mum was always good about keeping secrets ... at least as far as I know, she was.
That's why I told her everything as a teenager. I thought all my friends told their mothers everything, too. When I let it slip that I talked to Mum, my friends were horrified. I had to promise I'd never tell her anything about them. I promised, but am sure something must have slipped through every now and then.
32) Mum gave me answers to most of the questions I asked when I was a kid and shared her memories with me. I'm glad she did because she can't remember them anymore. This past week, if I gave her a bit a story from her childhood, she could usually fill some of the forgotten details.
33) I'm glad I asked Mum what I was like as a kid. Most people never think to ask that question, but I did about 30 years ago. It was pretty revealing. She said when I came home from grade school, she never knew whether I'd be the happiest kid in the world or the most miserable. There was never anything in the middle. I haven't changed much, just leveled off a bit.
The time is so short, I'm trying to remember as fast as I can. It doesn't work that way.
34) Hearing Mum's words echo in something I say. When Sandy says, "Gad!" I remember that Mum always said that. Mum's parents must have used that expression when they came over from Ireland in the early 1900s.
35) Mum never used bad language.
36) Mum's sure-fire way of finding out if a child was fibbing was: "Let me see your tongue." If you asked her, "Is it black?" she knew right away if you were guilty or innocent. Nothing to do with the tongue, it was the shifty look about the eyes that always gave kids away.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Mum now has 24-hour hospice care.
37) Mum laughed when we were talking on the phone the other day. I was just remembering how she liked holidays, but didn't go overboard to the point where you wished Christmas would be postponed for another 3 months. She liked to tape the Christmas cards we got over the doorframe and insisted on putting the lead tinsel on the tree strand by strand. She knew that Richard and I got sick of the SLOW way she liked the job to be done. We either threw big clumps of the heavy stuff somewhere near the top branches of the tree, or squeezed it into hard little wads of lead and threw them at each other. We also were not nearly careful enough even when trying to do things the right way; Mum would have a nice long strand of tinsel, while our strand would wind up being broken into 4 inch pieces before we managed to hang it.
Every Thanksgiving, Dad got the job of taking Richard and me to Plymouth Rock , so Mum could have, "a little peace and quiet" while she cooked the turkey. The Rock had no fence around it then and it was bigger. After souvenir hunters chipped away at The Rock, the fence went up. I'm really surprised that Dad, Rich, and I were not out there on those blustery November mornings without chisels.
Monday, May 1, 2006.
Mum died today.
|