Mom... The Other Mary Elizabeth

In honor of Mothers Day, this is a reposting of a previous blog from 2014.

Waking in my crib in a shade-pulled room to the fragrance of perfume, that I now know as Aphrodesia, she lifted me and I noticed her cherry-red fingernails.

Hot dog, no bun, ketchup. 

Picnics on Belle Isle, milk from a Roy Rogers thermos. I got the lid, she drank from a Dixie cup.

Born the year Girl Scouts were founded.

A tan shirtwaist dress worn with a halo-large black flat brimmed hat.

Up to her thighs wearing long pants and tied leather shoes, yanking me from beneath a docked boat in Lake Chemung. 

Once, when I was in sixth grade, staying to watch me play softball.

Smoking in the front seat, the window cracked an inch in a torrential rain, my knees getting soaked.

A sandwich cut in half kitty-corner, the side with the top of the bread cut in half again, with five or six chips and three or four carrot sticks, next to a fruit juice-size glass of milk.

A bag of Oreos - wrapped in foil for my birthday, sent in a construction paper Easter basket, a construction paper Christmas stocking, as an exams care package and a new-mom care package.

Smoking with my high school friends once we were in college.

Smoking by the back door.

Bringing home a drunken woman the night she burned her house, who slurred and stirred her words with tears and whose big bleached-blond hair smelled of smoke and liquor.

My grandfather’s cousin Minnie, who gave up a life of her own, to live with him and his two year old daughter when his wife died in childbirth, became “Aunt” Minnie and ruled with stultifying rules and no affection. Mom often heard, “No doctor’s daughter will…” And, she didn’t.

In college at 16, sneaking up to the attic floor in Cadillac Hall at Marygrove, where the nuns lived, to smoke with her friends.

Calling the local police about a blinking light cautioning a dead end at our back yard that interfered with her kitchen radio and ending up as a headline in the town paper, something to the effect of, Woman Complains Blinking Light Protecting Her Children is a Nuisance.

Skipped two grades because she was brilliant.

An argument between Mom and Dad and him finishing it with, “No wife of mine will work.” And, she didn’t.

Her arm wrapped in bandages to reduce the lymphedema.

Replacing white cabinets because they were yellowed from cigarette smoke.

A discussion about whether she should color her hair, she didn't.

At five years old, letting me choose green puppy wallpaper for my own room in our new house.

Every picture of her youth shows a child dressed formally with fancy, expensive clothing and accessories.

The two of us in my “toy” closet, her yelling at me, and then laughing at my retort.

Asking her to explain the term Facts of Life, and the disappointment when I already knew them.

Early in my summer break after my sophomore year in college, she climbed the stairs to my bedroom to bring me a small pile of folded laundry, an act I don’t remember happening before or after, and opening the dresser drawer to put the laundry away and “discovering” my birth control pills. Having lived those same years as a parent, I am highly skeptical at her surprise, but in awe of her acting skills.

Gardenias

Pansies

Dandelions

Laughing at Jim Piper who purposely spilled water down the front of his shirt to illustrate a thyroid condition, then letting him bum a cigarette

Walking on a broken ankle without complaining from our house onto a bus, up and down the steps of Tiger Stadium and off the bus when it arrived back home from the event. Then letting my dad take her to the hospital.

Allowing Jim Piper call her Mic.

Making me wear a dress my first day of college. I saw the same dress last night at the symphony 40 years later. (Seriously.)

Making me wait until April Fools day to get my ears pierced and years later getting her own done.

Wrapping Debbie the dog in a blanket and putting her in the car during a horrific snow storm, taking her to the vet, Doctor Nurse, (seriously) for a proper whelping and coming out an hour later to find a puppy in the snow, that slid from the blanket. It lived but was the runt and favorite.

Wrapping gifts – like the Christmas I hoped for a watch and opening a cardboard watch that said Timex filled with socks, then finding a plastic Timex box, the one with the velvet display that holds a watch and finding a Santa whistle, and opening a wrapped toilet paper tube and finding a Mickey Mouse watch…. Exactly what I wanted.

Infuriated that a nun would tell her that my brother would be nothing more than a sales man, when that was my father’s job.

Crying when Kennedy was shot.

Crying when Debbie the dog died.

Crying when (pussy) Willow dropped a bird at her feet.

Crying when my brother graduated from Notre Dame.

A mad dash just before my dad got home from work to clear the kitchen counter of mail, schoolbooks, match covers and other debris, just after she’d changed her clothes and put on perfume.

"I'm dressed underneath"... the explanation for not looking ready for an occasion. 

Putting on a dress and make up, getting my dad to put on his suit to take a picture of themselves as if they were with us the day I got married, instead of being sidetracked by an illness that prevented them from participating.

Preparing for visits from cousin Edith by buying stinky cheese and rye whiskey.

Being gracious to a relative who pinched breasts and brought gaudy marble lamps he expected relatives to hang immediately upon bestowing them.

Drawing a face with Mercurochrome on my knee and blowing on it to diminish the sting after a skinning.

Never wearing a bra again, nor having reconstructive surgery.

Standing over me to write a book report. Helping me rewrite a sentence to make it coherent, but not rewriting it for me.

Eating Lorna Doones at a table outside on the train station platform in Kalamazoo while waiting for the train to Detroit.

Taking the bus to downtown Detroit with her to go to the dentist and shopping at Hudson’s.

Standing at the ironing board sprinkling water from a beer bottle with a stopper that looked like a wine-stop but with holes.

Teachers, nearly every teacher, commenting on her unique and beautiful handwriting.

Supervising the Girl Scout Hostess Badge and having us scouts plan and execute a tea that included cucumber sandwiches and ginger ale.

Hosting a Coketail party before prom with four card tables of guests and serving chicken salad and ginger ale.

Giving me books, encouraging me to read, going to the library.

Dressing up and make up before leaving the house for anything.

A seething anger at the idea that another family inherited her father’s estate when he remarried at 72 years old and was hit by a bus in Miami on his honeymoon.

Laughing with a woman who kept dropping bananas for me to pick up at a church event when I was three or four

Holding my bike the afternoon I definitively decided to ride it without training wheels after scraped knees and arms from previous attempts. 

Making a Snickers Bar last a week by cutting off a bit for dessert after each lunch.

Bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo and peanut butter sandwiches.

The water glass by the kitchen faucet filled with whiskey.

Bouts of creativity always mixed with humor. A turquoise painted shell, cotton-ball cloud and an angel ornament.

Sending a big satin pig to my friend Ellen, when she was sad.

Always, always gracious and a little judgmental.

Dad discovering that the whiskey in the bottle was watered down.

Finding the prayer to St. Francis on a plaque in the kitchen, Lord grant me….

Christmas 1978, the first year after they retired to Florida, she put the turkey on the porch to thaw like we always did in Michigan… then threw it out a few hours later because it spoiled.

Awaking in critical care hooked to all kinds of machines, after a surgery had to be stopped mid way leaving her leg unattached to her hip and a broken rib from reviving her, to find us kids bedside her bed and writing us a perfectly coherent, legible note where to find her glasses so she could see us. She was told that she would be in a wheel chair the rest of her life. 

Telling me a month later, still in the hospital, the night before doctors were going to go back in to complete the surgery, that she remembered watching the chaotic scene in the surgical suite from atop a cabinet and she wasn’t scared of dying because she realized she wasn’t done in this life. 

Years after she was gone, I dreamed of her holding my hand and lifting me up through a house and about to leave the earth when we stopped ascending to chat. I knew I wasn’t done on earth yet either. I’m fairly certain some one would have found me dead in my bed that next morning if we hadn’t had that chat.

Pffft, she was in a wheel chair for a few weeks... tops. She used a cane for distance.

Her joy in Monica her first grand child.

Her smile holding Alex.

She wrote letters to my siblings and me. Every once in awhile I think of writing to my son, but instead he gets texts, emails, and postcards. Maybe I will write one today.

Near the end of her life when I visited Mom and Dad in Florida, I remember her sitting in her chair, a Queen Anne’s type, that they’d had someone cut down the legs so her feet touched the floor, that an articulated floor lamp accompanied which she moved about to read or examine various items, and a table with shelves that held letters, an address book bound by a rubber band, catalogs, pens and stationery. She told me that she thought I was a good mother to my son who was four at the time, then asked me whether I thought she was a good mother.  A few days ago, I asked essentially the same question to my now twenty-seven year old son and saw his expression change from animated to blank. I think I know what happened in that moment to me and then to him. I'll call it system overload.

There is no easy answer. It’s, as the cliché goes, all relative. Decisions I’ve made in my life aligned with or juxtaposed with the structure and foundation my mom and dad provided. I can safely say that as a young adult, all decisions opposed to my parents fell to the side where I concluded she wasn’t a good mother. All those that align, either because I agreed or because the lesson I learned helped me, fell into good mother territory. As a matured adult, I adjusted the place my parents held from guiding to voices that I consult. They are the people who came before. They were neither good nor bad parents. They are my parents for whom I hold the highest esteem and feel all gratitude for my life.  I love them and the stories that made them who they are to me. I appreciate the dots that connect us… those that came before, those in the present and those yet to come. And, so I imagine it goes for my child... system overload, indeed.