Remembering Mother

Copyright © 2008 Judith J. Bentley

It was the standard teaching to mothers in the first half of the twentieth century that they should not spoil their babies by holding them or giving them too much attention. I was born in March of 1945 in the Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Roanoke, Virginia. To this day, I have no memory of my mother ever holding me or giving me a hug during my early childhood years. Because I never felt close to my Mother, I decided to ask her about my early years and about her concept of what a mother is. Although Mother told me that she couldn't remember her mother ever hugging her either or saying "I love you" to her, she knew her mother loved her.

"How did you know?" I asked her.

"Because she did things for me." When I told her that the guards at the Virginia State Penitentiary "do things" for the inmates but that doesn't mean they love them--it's their job, Mother told me that she never held me during the first 18 months of my life because she had undulant fever which she had contracted from spoiled meat and she was afraid she would give me the fever. Unfortunately, I didn't learn this until I was in my thirties and I had believed all my life that my Mother didn't love me or want me. She did help me learn to ride a bicycle during my preteens by walking beside me while I fell into the ditch until I could learn to keep my balance.

During a visit with my parents after I had turned 30, I found my baby book, a lock of my baby hair, my report cards and several photos taken of me. One of the photos was of me when I was three. I was sitting alone in a metal swing on the front porch in Hamilton, Virginia with a frown on my face. Another photo was of me dressed in an Easter hat and suit, standing in the front yard. I remember the hammock that hung in the side yard between two trees. I used to love to rock back and forth in it and look up at the sky. I remember warm gentle breezes as I swayed under a canopy of green. One day, I ventured out too far by myself and a large dog bit me, leaving a scar on my left hand. This turned out to be a blessing because when I was in first grade the teacher insisted we learn our left hand from our right and I couldn't remember which was which. Mother reminded me of the scar. "Just remember to look at it when she asks you which hand is your left hand." These were my first lessons in the usefulness of boundaries and scars.

Mother had been preoccupied in her role as a Methodist preacher's wife. She attended numerous nightly church meetings during the week in addition to the Sunday school and church services on Sundays. She was a career woman too so was not at home with us during the day before we started school. She taught high school students math, chemistry, biology, French and German for years until she received her master's degree in guidance counseling and left the classroom for the guidance counselor's office.

Mother employed a series of maids as housekeepers who were to look after us while she was at work. My favorite was a black woman named Lizzy whose two front buck teeth had a sizable space between them. Lizzy smoked a lot, chewed gum, and generally goofed off most of the day. She wasn't physically affectionate, but I have one memory of her letting me sit on her lap. I remember the very red lipstick she wore and her laughter that would always wind up in rounds of wheezing coughs and spasms. Mother wasn't fond of housekeeping but she would do it if she had to, especially when it came time to move to another town which was every four years in the Methodist Church. My father would get his new appointment at the annual conference held in June and then we'd have to pack up and move. As soon as she could teach my sister and me how to dust and vacuum, we had household chores to do every weekend which we had to complete before we could play. We took turns cleaning the upstairs and downstairs of the parsonages where we lived and before our big moves, Mother would make sure we left each parsonage a whole lot cleaner than we found it. I remember one floor we waxed on our hands and knees and then polished with a sweeper that made a lot of noise and was hard to control. It seemed to have a mind of its own and would was always trying to head for the wall.

When Mother was home, she was always busy. She sewed some of our clothes, especially our Easter dresses, because we didn't have a lot of money to buy clothes and she was a very good seamstress and taught my sister and me both how to sew. She would stay up all night sewing just so we'd have a nice Easter dress to wear on Easter Sunday. I admit that I resented the effort she put in to make us appear presentable to the community since she never put forth that much effort to spend time with me. Keeping up appearances was very important to her.

I developed an early resentment that Mother didn't seem to have much time for me and I took that to mean that she preferred not to spend time with me. On another visit with her, when I told her how I felt about my childhood years, she explained tearfully that she thought it was her duty when she married my father to fulfill her role as a Methodist minister's wife and that that came first before her children and she was sorry if she hadn't been the mother I had needed. As an adult with a child of my own, I couldn't imagine anything more important that being a mother, definitely not a career, so it has always been a mystery to me how some women can be have children and then abandon them.

In spite of her busy work schedule and church responsibilities, Mother always managed somehow to have breakfast ready for us during the week before she left for school. When she came home in the late afternoons, she made our dinners and on the weekends, she'd make wonderful Sunday dinners that sometimes included hot home-made rolls. I remember the wonderful aromas of her pot roasts and fried chicken. She made delicious frozen fruit salads and all kinds of cakes, pies and cookies for dessert.

In the summer, Mother would do a lot of canning. She'd sit on the screened-in back porch and shell butter beans and peas and snap string beans and sometimes she'd let my sister and me join in. This was one way we got to spend time with her. She kept a well-stocked pantry and we'd eat all year long from her summer canning. She made cucumber and watermelon rind pickle which I loved mostly because it was so sweet and juicy. She canned tomatoes and peaches. I used to enjoy standing inside the pantry on the back porch and gaze at all the Mason jars loaded with peaches, tomatoes, string beans and pickles. The pantry was the preferred spot for Snowball, our white Manx cat, to hide her new-born kittens too. Snowball was the most unusual cat we ever had. She wasn't one bit scared of the dogs in the neighborhood. When we heard a dog yelping, we knew Snowball had jumped on his back and was riding him out of our yard. We had seen her do it more than once.

Sometimes in the evenings, Mother would sit with me and read a story out of some ugly orange colored child care books that I hated. I don't know why I hated them so much. I think it was that I didn't like the stories I had to sit and listen to until she decided she'd read enough of them for one sitting. I remember having difficulty learning to read in grade school so she would have me read to her from the Weekly Reader I would bring home. I am glad she did that because with practice I learned to read really well.

Though Mother always kept herself busy doing something, she didn't seem to be happy with her life. She didn't smile alot and seemed sad sometimes though she didn't ever talk about her feelings. In fact, she was often silent as she went about her chores. Keeping busy probably kept her from having to think much about her life or about who she might have been. She had wanted to become a medical doctor and had been a pre-med student in college but some male doctor had convinced her that medical school would be too stressful for her. When I asked her why that was, she said it was because she had a heart murmur. So she became a teacher instead and a Methodist preacher's wife. I used to wonder what her life might have been like had she become a medical doctor. I wondered if she would ever have married my father.

Mother could speak French and German fluently. In college she had lived in a French-speaking dormitory where no one was allowed to speak English so that's how she learned to speak French. I never found out how she learned to speak German. After World War II, my family took in a Hungarian refugee to live with us for a while. Her name was Emma a Contesse. She could not speak a word of English and my mother couldn't speak Hungarian, but they could both speak German so that's how they communicated.

When my sister and I were in high school, my mother up and decided we should be home-schooled in German. She obtained the State Department of Education's approval of our home studies, ordered our textbook and began giving us lessons in the evenings at the dining room table. I didn't understand why we had to study German. I didn't like its harsh sounds or mile-long words that were hard to pronounce or spell correctly. My sister and I were fiercely competitive and would argue with Mother if one of us scored even a point higher than the other on tests. After only a few weeks and to our great relief, Mother gave up in frustration. I don't think we even made it through the first half of the textbook.

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In the Fall of 2006 the loss of several members of my extended family through death triggered deep grief that lasted several weeks. A grief support group through a local hospital helped me process my feelings of loss. One of the exercises the counselor asked us to complete was to write a letter of gratitude to a person we had lost. Because I never felt close to my Mother and felt she had abandoned me during my childhood and early adolescence, I chose to write a letter to her to let her know, nevertheless, that I now realize the positive difference she made in my life and the many fond memories I had of things she did for me for which I am grateful.

When I was a small child, maybe two or three years old, I was bitten by a dog while playing in the front yard of the home where we lived in Covington, Virginia. In my early elementary school days, I was required to distinguish my left hand from my right and I never could get them straight. I must have told Mother about my difficulty because she had an easy answer ready for me. "Just remember it was on your left hand that the dog bit you." Sure enough I could look at my hands and see which one had the scar right below the thumb. I used Mother's suggestion many times after that. I still have that scar though it is faint now, but it has served me well over the years as I discovered I have absolutely no sense of direction.

I am grateful that Mother loved kittens and allowed us to have pets early so that we learned how to care for them. I remember a favorite fearless female Manx cat of hers named Snowball, who used to jump on the backs of roving dogs, driving them yelping out of the yard. When Snowball had kittens, Mother tenderly nursed them and gave them warm milk. I have remained fond of cats and kittens to this day and feed neighborhood strays but take care of two indoor cats who offer unconditional love and companionship.

Mother used to prepare delicious, mouth-watering Sunday meals in the parsonages where we lived, especially when guests were invited, as well as at the cottage on the Chesapeake Bay that Pop had built. We all relished her home-made rolls, pies, cakes and cookies. I have rich memories of the auromas from the cottage kitchen of fried fish, hush puppies and oysters and visual memories of the fresh fruits and vegetables she spread out on the cottage porch table, the crab pots she set out in the evenings to retrieve in the early mornings loaded with fresh crab. Pop had the month of August off from church responsibilities, and the family spent the entire month at the summer cottage living carefree, enjoying the beach and salty warm bay waters, collecting sea shells and driftwood. We were a middle class family but because of my parents' hard work, frugality and vision, the family lived "high on the hog."

From childhood through my teen years, Mother and Father provided piano lessons for me. They purchased an old upright Steinway piano with its original ivory keys for me to practice on. I took piano lessons from my elementary through high school years. My parents also provided ballet lessons and by the time I was in high school, they bought an Armstrong flute for me so that I could play the flute in the high school marching band, which performed in parades, at football games and special school concerts. They gave me the Steinway piano when I became an adult and it traveled with me from place to place until I sold it to a family of musicians. At an auction, I purchased a Werlitzer piano - solid cherry - and have had it tuned. I still enjoy playing the piano. I am grateful that Mother and Father recognized musical ability in me and encouraged me to develop that talent.

Mother taught me how to sew, knit and crochet as soon as I could hold needle and thread. I learned to make my own clothes. I took pride in my handiwork and when Juanita was born in 1975 I knitted and crocheted sweaters and ponchos for her and sewed a number of outfits for her during her growing up years. Passing on these domestic skills was one of the greatest gifts my mother gave to me.

Mother had gotten her Master's Degree in Guidance and Counseling and was working as a high school guidance counselor when I entered college. In my sophomore year at Pfeiffer College, a Methodist related liberal arts college in North Carolina, I felt stifled and unhappy and knew there had to be more to college life than studying. Mother brought from her office a batch of college catalogs and spread them out on the dining room table of the parsonage. I settled on the University of Kentucky and was accepted in 1965 as a transfer student in my junior year. At U.K. I experienced a much happier college life, greater freedom, and cultural opportunities not available at Pfeiffer. My last two undergraduate years to June of 1967 were my happiest and best.

In the summer of 1973, I became so ill that my parents drove to Atlanta. I recall the long ride back to Virginia. At a rest stop I was so weak that I could hardly walk and had to lie down on a park bench. Mother sat beside me to comfort me. Once in Virginia, I was admitted to the Williamsburg Community Hospital and spent several days there for various tests before being diagnosed with clinical depression. My sister and my parents came to visit me. That hospitalization was the impetus for me to seek therapy several years later and begin a lifelong road to recovery.

In 1974 I was married in Atlanta at the Unitarian Church. I wrote to Mother how much it meant to me that she attended my wedding, wearing a beautiful blue lace dress, and that my sister was my maid of honor, and that my brother and sister-in-law also attended. When our daughter Juanita was born a year later, I had a difficult delivery which extended my recovery time. My mother-in-law came to take care of our baby during the first week at home and Mother came from Virginia to spend the second week while I rested.

In 1980 when my husband and I divorced, our daughter Juanita was 5 years old. I moved with her from our home in the Brookbury subdivision on Richmond's Southside to a low rent, small two-bedroom apartment. I had left the teaching profession in 1978, entered paralegal school and took classes at night while working during the day at local law firms as a temp until I could find full-time employment. Since I did not earn sufficient income as a temp to cover my moving expenses, Mother offered to help me. Years later she assisted me again when I moved into a nicer two-bedroom apartment located near the middle school Juanita attended. It had a fireplace in the living room and sliding glass doors that opened onto a patio facing the backyard of filled with beautiful hanging branches of trees. I remember Mother came to visit me after I had moved in and commented on how amazed she was that I had signed the contract without having seen the apartment itself.

In the 1980's when my parents were living in West Point, Virginia in a house they bought on 5th Avenue after Pop retired from the ministry, I often visited them. On one of those visits, the three of us set out for a long walk one afternoon. Pop walked ahead of us while Mother and I strolled along looking for 4-leaf clovers. This was the only time I could remember that my Mother and I walked together and I wished we could have shared other walks through the years. I was amazed that we found several 4-leaf clovers along the sidewalk. Later I gave away all the 4-leaf clovers we found that afternoon to friends. That walk is stored as a special memory not just because we found so many 4-leaf clovers but because it was with Mother.

My parents were generous in sharing the fruits and vegetables from their backyard garden each summer. Mother would always load up the trunk of my car with bags and bags of goodies from the garden - as much as I wanted - tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, squash, beans, canteloupe, figs and blueberries. Pop had rented a plot from the Chesapeake Corporation in West Point and bought a tractor to work the field with rows and rows of vegetables. When I visited them in the summertime, we'd often drive up to the "big garden" where I'd help them pick from the bountiful supply of fresh vegetables. Pop had turned working in this big garden into a serious hobby during his retirement years and he found immense pleasure in what became a kind of return to the farming days of his youth.

Of all the things I recall my Mother did for me, I am most grateful that she did not pass on to me the racial prejudice she was exposed to and grew up with in her South Carolina home. When I was about 5 years old, Mrs. DuBois who lived next door passed by with her grocery sack as I sat beside the child of my mother's maid on the parsonage's front steps. She called to us in an angry and threatening voice, "You shouldn't play with a nigger!" I was upset that somehow we were guilty of doing something wrong by sitting on the steps and went inside to ask my Mother why Mrs. DuBois had spoken to us so harshly. Her only reply was simply, "She's just ignorant." Until then, I had never heard the word "nigger." I was to hear it many times after that but never from my Mother.