For my mother 1933-2001

A life is like a pebble thrown into a stream. It doesn’t matter if it’s small or big, they all make ripples in the water, then they gradually fade away & there is no trace of where the pebble dropped. It’s as if it was never there. Some make larger ripples and the circles last a little longer, but in the end, the memory fades & disappears, for most pebbles & most people.

My mother was a small pebble in the stream of life. She wasn’t rich or famous. You wouldn’t know her name or what she was like. Maybe the fact that I don’t have any children to pass the memories of her to drives me to want to leave something of her character and stories behind, so that when my ripples stop, someone will still remember her in the world and some measure of immortality will be her due.

I think it’s the duty of every daughter to carry the story of her mother into the world, so I guess you’re the one I tell the story to. That kind of makes you my child, at least for a little while. When I was little, my mother would rock me in this big overstuffed rocking chair that creaked, and I would sit in her lap as she read me a story. So if you were my child, I imagine sitting in that rocker with you now. I still have it, you know. On days when I miss her too much to bear, I sit on that rocker in the dark & imagine that she’s there again, waiting for me to sit on her lap so she can read me a story. Maybe she is.

I always assumed that everyone loved their mother & that they loved them as much as my mother and I did. When I grew up and started to hear people’s stories of their families, I was shocked and appalled at some of the things I heard. Stories of anger, violence, apathy, and abuse that made my blood run cold. One woman my age told me her mother had hanged herself and she was the one who found her. A young girl told me that her mother had produced a great number of children, and that when she was 13, her mother threw her out of the house for no apparent reason. And the mother was a nurse, someone who was supposed to revere and care for people! Someone else told me that his mother had never read him a bedtime story. I couldn’t imagine it. Perhaps I was naïve, but I had had the luxury of being naïve where many people weren’t so fortunate.

After hearing so many stories of what other mothers were like, I realized just how special mine was. If I could have one wish, it would be for all those unfortunate souls who grew up motherless or worse, with a mother who was like the evil stepmother in fairy tales, to share my mother, so they could feel as deeply loved and cherished as I do still, years after she left this world.

What does it take to be a good mother? Do you need to have one yourself to be one? I don’t think so, because there’s just no way my grandmother qualified. She was a selfish, nasty woman whose husband deserted her and her small children, my mother and her two older brothers, during World War II. Mom said she always wanted to be like her own grandmother, who she adored. But relatives tell me that Grandma Fanny wasn’t any great shakes either. As far as Mom was concerned, though, she was the penultimate. Maybe it doesn’t matter what her grandma was really like. My mom grew up in the Depression, when people had “bread sandwiches”, really just bread with mustard, so they wouldn’t starve. Life was hard for most then, and for a deserted wife with three small children, it was probably even worse. Perhaps that’s when my grandmother became the bitter, hostile, selfish woman that I grew up with. Perhaps she was just always that way, I don’t know.

From the beginning, my mother underestimated herself, and was helped along with this by her brothers, who told her she was ugly and stupid. She believed them, and she was actually neither. I don’t think they meant to be mean to her, they were simply being your typical older brother. But what they said to a little girl stuck in her head. Beware the seemingly innocuous remarks you make to a very young child. They take you literally, and things you have long forgotten you said stick in their heads and haunt them all their lives. There is no greater responsibility than the mind, heart and spirit of a child. each of us has been one, and I’m sure each of you remembers some small cutting remark from when you were small that broke your heart. Doesn’t everyone?

So maybe even I underestimated how powerful and strong my mother was, but she taught me to make the best of things when it seems impossible to do so, and to remember to laugh and be silly. Most of all, she taught me to love without reservation, wholeheartedly. Mom had to figure out how to do that without a role model for it in her own life, and I think she could only manage to do that with me. But she did it every waking moment of her life until her very last breath, and I carry that with me. So this is for you, mom.