It's here again, Mother's Day -- a holiday originally proposed by Ann Jarvis in 1858 to improve the lives of impoverished women and their babies in the Appalacian region of America. The day has grown and let's hope -- to God -- that there is never ever a paucity in the love we show our mothers.
There's so much to do for my mother right now, but thankfully I get help here and there. My mom was far from the model of preparing for the end of the tunnel, but she did well in one area that's paying off with interest. She was adept at making friends -- through church, the neighborhood, civic clubs, work...One of those friends, a woman who knew mom through an organization they both belonged to around 20 years ago, offered to drive her to and from church.
"I really thank you, Nancy," I told her. "Are you going to take her to Sunday school, too?" Yes, Nancy told me she planned to do the Sunday school thing as well.
"She may not understand everything you're talking about, but she'll enjoy the social connection," I told her.
Everything went beautifully, Nancy told me later. Mom thouroughly enjoyed Sunday school as well as the preacher's sermon afterward.
"She answered this question about a parable of Jesus," Nancy told me. "She expressed herself so articulately. I couldn't repeat exactly what she said. She understood the parable in a way I hadn't thought of."
People like Nancy are a blessing, not only for their helping hands, but for the way they raise your spirits. Aren't we in need of hope today? A revival?
"Your mother never talked bad about anybody else" in the organization they belonged to, Nancy told me. "She was always ready to help other people, always positive. Other women there gossiped like crazy, but Vickie never got into that."
Hmmm. That's not exactly how I've always known Mom to be. I could tell some other stories. But isn't it interesting how a family member might present herself among others, how others might have perceptions of her that broaden your own?
Mom and my son Max
Anyhow, my mother was born Sept. 24, 1945 in Larned, Kan., a Western Kansas town that has been unfairly stigmatized over the years for being home to a state hospital for the mentally ill.
"Oh, that's why you're like you are," a bunch of nimrods would say when they learned of her birth place.
Her parents named her Victoria Lou after her paternal and maternal grandmothers, respectively. She goes by Vickie. Her last name was McElroy, and when she was in elementary school, the little imbeciles called her "macaroni."
Mom never wanted to be here, going to school with the little boneheads anyway. She held a grudge against her parents well into adulthood for leaving the beloved mountains of Colorado where she lived as a small child and began school.
Her dad ran a sawmill out there. A fellow in a company truck got killed in a wreck. There was some kind of lawsuit, it cleaned my grandfather out financially, but I don't know the particulars. Neither does Mom. She was, but a little girl at the time. Some say Grandpa could've rebounded and made a go of it in Colorado, but he was too emotionally tied to the land where his mother had lived out her last years and died 20 years earlier. So it was back to Kansas.
The family lived in a shack in the town of Jett, Kan., population 3,500 at that time. Her girlfriends from school were surprised when they came over and found out she had to share a room with her brother. In those middle childhood years, she didn't know the family was poor because her mother did everything she could to make it a happy home. As she got older and entered junior high, she became self-concious.
There were only two houses in Jett, still without indoor plumbing, and Mom's was one of them. Sure it was fancier than some. A concrete floor. Two-holer. But it was still an outdoor shitter.
Her dad worked in construction where the work was seasonal. Her mom worked as a waitress in several restaurants before she hired on at Ben Franklin, the dime store where she would work for the next 23 years.
"So where'd you get your clothes, the salvation army?" some girls at school would ask her, hotsy-totsy types who thought their shit didn't stink. "Your mom still work at the DIME store?"
Screw 'em. Mom had her pocket of friends she was comfortable with and that was her circle, exactly the worldview her son would take some 20 years later. She did want to join Pep Club at the highschool, though. With envy, she looked on those girls with their pretty, pleated skirts, the kind she wanted so bad. But her parents didn't have the money to buy her a pep club outfit.
Her dad had a hot temper, but he had good moments too. When Mom's black cat, Nosey, ran away, she cried for three days, but one morning her dad opened the door to a shed at a construction site he was working at and..."Look, what I found," he told the girl, holding the cat in his calloused, carpenter's hands, that evening. He didn't even like cats.
It was a good time when the radio would play, what forawhile, was her favorite song. It was -- even for then -- an old, outdated radio, a 1940s wooden Philco floor radio, the size of a bookcase. Mom could be at one end of the house, but when she heard that song, she'd sprint forward and turn up one of the bakelite knobs that adjusted the volume.
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
Never let it fade away
Her favorite teacher at Jett Highschool was her English teacher, Mr. Ralston. I looked him up in an old yearbook. His first name was Melvin, but he went by Duke.
"Nobody wanted Duke Ralston for English," she said. "He was tough. You were gonna learn something in his class or else."
Mom wound up learning more in his class than any other in high school. She never accumulated more than, maybe nine hours of community college. My dad was just out of the Army when they started dating and she married him, mostly to get out of her parents' house. They divorced, she married a second time, and divorced a second time. Never married again.
But that's life. I have friends, some married, some who've been divorced two, three times. People struggling to bring up their kids, people who have lived through job losses and other indignities of life. That's been Mom's life, and no, I haven't always seen her positive as her friend Nancy has. But she's always loved gardening and Mom has planted a few good seeds in life.
In the early '90s, thirty years after she'd had him for a teacher, Duke Ralston was back in town, selling real estate or something like that. When someone suggested to him that he hire Vickie McElroy as an administrative assistant, he remembered her fondly.
"Oh, she struggled in my class, but she worked really hard," he said. "She made out pretty well."
favorite highschool teacher.
All those years later and he remembered her.
I take her walking around the city lake, frequently. She loves the breeze, watching the bicyclists and joggers along the path, the geese babbling along the water.
"You're in good shape, Mom," I tell her. "I know 30-year-old lardasses who wouldn't make this as well as you."
I ask her about her about things like working with her mother at the dime store. She remembers with clarion recall.
"My mom was assistant manager," she said, adding that her mother didn't want any appearance of nepotism. "She always made sure I worked in a different department than her. If I came to her with a question, she always said, 'Go ask so and so.' She wanted me to fend for myself."
I change conversational topics as if they were waves shifting in the wind.
"So what do you think of Texas, Mom?" I asked her.
"Well, I don't like it," she said, then gets some of her information correct, some half-correct and some completely incorrect. "Jeff had some job there at a newspaper after highschool, but some bad people came along and wouldn't let him write. I don't know the whole story."
"That's me, Mom," I said. "I'm Jeff.
"You're Jeff?" she said.
"You betcha," I answered and she laughed into the halcyon breeze.
Her dad had Alzheimer's and died at age 78. I knew there was a possibility she would catch it some day, but I didn't expect her to show signs of dementia in her '60s. What can I say, you play with the deck you're dealt. Not that I say that with any sense of bravado. I think the whole damn thing sucks. That phrase, "It is what it is" -- I hate that. Hate it almost as much as that freakin' serenity prayer: God grant me wisdom to accept the things I can't change.
Later, we took a walk to the library. I took her to where the old Jett High School yearbooks were shelved and grabbed the one dated 1963. "I haven't seen that in years," she said. (Her yearbooks were destroyed in a flood.) I turned to a page full of senior photographs, she pointed to a picture of young girl in a black dress cut low to the shoulders and said, "That's me."
Extracurricular activities were listed next to Mom's picture. She was in glee club, worked as a student librarian, belonged to a Christian organization called Y-Teen, maybe one or two other things. Interestingly, pep club was listed as one of her activities. Did she get one of those skirts after all?
These days, Mom loves eating at the senior center, dining out with her friends and God forbid if she misses church. She laughs more than ever, loves to rave over my kids (her grandkids) and how they're growing up even if she doesn't always remember their names. Sure, she could have hatred and bitterness toward people, but she chooses to think positively. There's still time to learn things.
still time
Your mother has a story. If she's around today, and even if she's not, it would do you well to find it out. It's your story too.
"Catch a Falling Star" -- Perry Como
