Twenty-two years ago today, my mom passed away. You can read the whole story HERE. (Okay, so that’s not the whole story. But it’s the story of that day, for me.)
So today I’ll tell you some reasons I’ve been grateful for my mom.
She was bright. Smart, yes, but also Lit Up. She shone, can’t you tell? She laughed.
She was a reader. She read everything, it seemed to me. She was in a book club, which I found all so terribly grown up and fascinating. I remember she led a discussion on the book “Follow the River” by James Alexander Thom. It’s the story of a woman who was captured (at age 23, and pregnant) by I can’t remember what kind of Native Americans, and she lived with them for years before she broke away and traveled like a thousand miles to find some semblance of home. At least that’s what I think, since I’ve never read the book. How could I not? I don’t know. I just haven’t. But Mom did. And she took notes in her perfect, careful left-handed cursive in the margins of her paperback. She introduced me to Shel Silverstein and Chaim Potok and Erma Bombeck and L.M. Montgomery. I have distinct kid-memory of sitting in a chair with her and listening to her read aloud recipes from magazines. And the year we moved from Seattle to Boston in a green station wagon with no a/c and (by the time we passed Oregon) no muffler, she read us “Johnny Tremaine,” knowing that we’d soon be smack in the middle of some serious history. (Sometimes an Irish lilt would squeeze out when she read. I don’t know how. She wasn’t Irish. But it was cool. And I blame her for my propensity to read with accents.)
My mom was a trooper. She was sick, all the time. I didn’t really get it, because she was the only mom I’d had. I just figured that moms went to hospitals for a week or so every year. Just normal, right? But do you know what? She made it to every football game, every basketball game, every play, every concert. Even the middle school band. Bless her. She got up in the mornings and made hot breakfast. (I found out later that many, many days she went back to bed after we left the house.)
My mom was a musician and an artist. She liked to draw, and I have a few precious pictures she did for classes or whatever, that she chose to keep. I have stacks, stacks of music that used to be hers. I can’t play the piano more than one note at a time, but I love this music. She had classical stuff and Broadway stuff (her “Funny Girl” is falling apart at the spine) and horrible practicing books like Hanon. She taught piano lessons for years. Tried to teach me, but I must have been unteachable. She taught other people, though, and when she died, a bunch of her piano students bought a beautiful framed poster that now hangs over my younger brother’s piano. It says, “Bach gave us God’s Word. Mozart gave us God’s Laughter. Beethoven gave us God’s Fire. God gave us Music that we might pray without words.” (It’s from a German opera house. Those Germans know how to be proud of their own. I love that about them.) She had long, pretty fingernails that would hit the keys just before the note played, so everything was in a syncopation if you sat close enough to her hands to hear the percussion parts.
My mom was an only child. She loved her mama and Nana and the aunts and uncles and cousins. When we lived far away from Grandma, my mom was on the phone with her at least once a week. (I so distinctly remember the conversations that would start, “Of course everything’s all right, Mom. I’m sorry you were worried. You can bet that if something’s wrong, I’ll call right away.”)
(That’s not her mom. That’s my dad’s stepmom, my Grammy. She was a diva. Totally. You’d have loved her too. Chocolate-coated, my Grammy was. Beside Grammy is Older Brother, who visits here as OmaHeck, then Mom holding me, and skinny, skinny beatnick Dad.)
My mom was a singer, too. She loved to sing. We had a singing house. And a singing car. We sang all the time. Not too long before her death, she grew some sort of something on her vocal cord and her singing was diminished. I bet that was a painful loss for both her and my dad. She loved Barbara Streisand. I knew every word to every song Babs ever recorded, because Mom and I would sing them all. Once, Babs recorded “Over the Rainbow” with Judy Garland, and that one can still bring tears to my eyes. She loved to do shows. She was a staple in the community theatre and encouraged me to get in it with her.
She was a cook. Mmm. And a chucker. That’s my word for it, anyway — it’s the way I do my cooking: Chuck it in if it smells right. She made the world’s best spaghetti sauce. And (I think I’ve told you this before) neighbor kids would come over and fill up cups with the sauce and eat it with spoons. She actually wrote down the “recipe” for that one, but it’s never tasted the same when anyone else made it. Once she burned pork chops. In the microwave. I think it’s best if we didn’t get any more detailed than that. She bottled and canned and juiced and made fruit leather. I so wish I’d learned fruit leather from her. But it wasn’t a 15-year-old priority to make it, just to eat it. She taught me how to cook, how to chuck, and how to feed people with food and with love. I have not taught my Kids that. I don’t want them to be okay without me. Yes, I am aware that is wrong, and twisted, and a little sick. Thank you for asking.
My mom was a teacher. The kind that taught us, at home. And the kind that found things that needed teaching and went ahead and taught them. She was “the Picture Lady” at our elementary school. She’d bring in a poster-print of a famous artist once a month or so and teach us redneck kids about Van Gogh, Manet, Picasso, Cassatt, Monet, Chagall, Gaugin, and Rembrandt. And more. Lots more. She never thought we were learning quite enough in school. So she’d give us more, after school. And she’d march into the principal’s office, all 5’1″ of her, and Demand Stuff. She taught those nuns what it was to fear the wrath of this little Mormon Mommy. When I get demanding at school and possibly ball up my fists onto my hips, I smile. Channeling the Mom is such a good thing.
I’d hate to give you the wrong impression here. She wasn’t perfect. She never made just the right amount of rice for dinner. Too much or too little, always. She burned pork chops, remember? She didn’t quite know what to do with a moody-emotional teenage girl. Drama was a mystery. She lost her temper (but not as often as she deserved to). All of which combined to make her REAL.
I wish you could have known her. I wish Husband could have known her. I wish, so much, that my Kids could have known her. (Here’s why)
But mostly, today, I’m grateful that I could know her. That I could learn from her, and on a good day, that I could find her, here, inside me.
(12) Comments for this blog
I loved your story! Plus your mom is SOOOOOOOOO SO SO SO SOOOO amazingly pretty! Oh, and by the way I am from the school that you visited.(Hllcrest Jr. High) And came up and talked to you after about the book The Book Thief.
I loved your story! Plus your mom is SOOOOOOOOO SO SO SO SOOOO amazingly pretty! Oh, and by the way I am from the school that you visited.(Hllcrest Jr. High) And came up and talked to you after about the book The Book Thief.
Aw, Becca. I love this. She sounds amazing. Aren’t you lucky you had a mom like that.
Aw, Becca. I love this. She sounds amazing. Aren’t you lucky you had a mom like that.
Your young mom reminds me so much of Mark. I love reading about her and having known her. I often look back, and think of our mothers and wonder, “how did they do it all?” And then I just keep plugging along hoping I can do a fraction of their amount of good.
Your young mom reminds me so much of Mark. I love reading about her and having known her. I often look back, and think of our mothers and wonder, “how did they do it all?” And then I just keep plugging along hoping I can do a fraction of their amount of good.
When I spoke of your Mom’s virtues, I too needed to show that my praise was evenhanded, not just slavishly infatuated. To catalog her shortcomings: she hung the toilet paper rolls wrong side out, never understood the breadth and depth of a teen-age athlete’s appetite, and had a really embarrassing tennis swing.
That’s about it.
There’s one more thing about your Mom. She really loved, trusted, and believed in me. She felt eternally confident in my company. She made the secret finger pattern on her cheek that said, “I love you” across the room when she couldn’t tell it with a trace on the back of my hand. She loved me before I loved her and catalyzed the happy family that will outlast age, sickness, death or any other impediment.
OK, so she was inadequately discriminating about my character. But it contributed to 20 years of just plain happy, secure love. And no matter how much I doubt myself, I know she will love me again. I expect she’ll greet me with the finger pattern that will say, “I love you; this is going to be fun.”
When I spoke of your Mom’s virtues, I too needed to show that my praise was evenhanded, not just slavishly infatuated. To catalog her shortcomings: she hung the toilet paper rolls wrong side out, never understood the breadth and depth of a teen-age athlete’s appetite, and had a really embarrassing tennis swing.
That’s about it.
There’s one more thing about your Mom. She really loved, trusted, and believed in me. She felt eternally confident in my company. She made the secret finger pattern on her cheek that said, “I love you” across the room when she couldn’t tell it with a trace on the back of my hand. She loved me before I loved her and catalyzed the happy family that will outlast age, sickness, death or any other impediment.
OK, so she was inadequately discriminating about my character. But it contributed to 20 years of just plain happy, secure love. And no matter how much I doubt myself, I know she will love me again. I expect she’ll greet me with the finger pattern that will say, “I love you; this is going to be fun.”
I hope your editor can get rid of my duplicate post.
But also, did you know that Mom’s great-grandpa was born in Ireland and emigrated to New Brunswick, Canada by about 1850? His wife was Jane Hierlihy, for pity sakes. So trust me, the lyrical burr comes from honest roots.
I hope your editor can get rid of my duplicate post.
But also, did you know that Mom’s great-grandpa was born in Ireland and emigrated to New Brunswick, Canada by about 1850? His wife was Jane Hierlihy, for pity sakes. So trust me, the lyrical burr comes from honest roots.
Oh, man. Your dad just killed me.
Thanks for telling us about your mom. I’ve read all of your thank you posts tonight but I really wanted to stop by and comment on this one. Because I get it.
Oh, man. Your dad just killed me.
Thanks for telling us about your mom. I’ve read all of your thank you posts tonight but I really wanted to stop by and comment on this one. Because I get it.