While cleaning out my mother’s writing room a few weeks ago, I found this beautiful Mother’s Day gift my brother wrote for my mother many years ago and felt I had to share it.
April 28, 1998
“I should have been born in March, but Mom fell down the stairs; so that’s when I was born. In February.”
That’s all I have so far: I’m writing a Mother’s Day present and I want her to laugh, remember and realize what a positive influence she has been in my life. I want to recount an experience with my mom that embellishes what she has meant to me. Mom has a problem, a complex concerning the idea, only through her eyes, that she was an inadequate mother. I disagree – I know better. After all, I was her son.
This is why I’ve chosen memories. Memories aren’t perfect, Things become altered with time, but what is remembered, thought out, and viewed with an unbiased mind as something that happened, even with altered details, can create the mood and feelings – such as love, admiration, respect, dignity, integrity and the formation of character that was present when the memory was a fact, an actual event. Ray Bradbury made a profound statement when he said,
“God how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship – each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other.”
So, with the first line and Bradbury’s thought, I’ll dig through the files of my memory. I know what mom should know, but I’ve got to find a way to show it to her.
These are the memories that flit through my mind most often:
While very small, riding in the back seat of our faded blue, dilapidated Rambler station wagon, I remember looking out the window at a middle class, dignified neighborhood of well-kept homes in South Denver. Huge, fat trees sent sunlight in speckles on the cheerful cottages.
Bright: Every memory I have of childhood is bright. Intensely lighted so that the people and places are fuzzed by the brightness as in a filtered photograph. We sped down Downing Street toward my grandparent’s house in Englewood. Down the busy street lined by peaceful homes on a sunny Sunday morning. People mingled in front of a tan-brick church. Elderly women in spring colored dresses, men in pressed slacks and white shirts and children, spontaneous, flitting, running and laughing with each other. And among the crowd of people, as obvious and strikingly unusual as a penguin in Mauii, there stood a “hippy.”
I remember his heavy beard as dark as his three-piece suit and a vast bush of thorny hair. I couldn’t comprehend this man casually talking to an older couple, being accepted in such an environment, mingling with people whom I thought should deny him. As we passed, I gleefully giggled and said, “Mommy! Look! A hippy went to church!” Propaganda of that time pounded the opinions of the world into a five-year-old boy’s head – that hippies, defined as long-haired freaks, were bad people. Mom looked and commented, “Anyone can go to church, Stevie.”
“But, Mommy, he’s wearing a suit and he’s got long hair,” I said. “Just because some men have long hair doesn’t bean they’re bad people,” mom explained. I struggled with this thought, pondering it. The memory of the man with long hair and a dark suit, my mom actually defending him, and what the rest of the world said about such people stuck with me for days. I distinctly remember telling people that I saw a hippy all dressed up and talking to people after church. My grandmother didn’t know what to say, my grandfather said nothing, as usual. I think my dad disapproved. But mom, I felt, was original and genuine. After all, hippies were people too. In a world boiling with fanaticism, my mom’s strength of character allowed her to see the world in an open way, without the shackles of a narrow mind.
And yet this story tells too little of how mom gently molded me. Even when she was angry, she was the strongest person I’ve known. For her Mother’s Day gift, I could remember a time my temper probably severely disrupted our reputation in the neighborhood. She taught me responsibility for my actions.
I must’ve been about five or six years old on that Saturday morning. Sunlight from the east put a gold hue into the world, casting long shadows across green lawns and red brick houses. Soft red filtered by guilded morning light, I stood in the driveway of our yard hollering to Patrick Gardner, my best friend’s younger brother. Patrick squatted on the corner of their yard in the stubby grass speckled with dandelions and milkweed. I don’t remember why, and I probably didn’t know why then either, but I was trying to get Patrick to come over. He squatted like a young, spindly, pale weed without a budge or even a comment. The more I hollered, the deeper his roots sank. Enraged, I spewed forth an effusion of poetic profanity. I couldn’t have had the proper grasp of curses at that age to form a smooth cadence. It must’ve sounded ridiculous.
Patrick’s mom burst out the door and stood there staring at me. My own mom gaped at me from our front porch. Patrick’s dignity flared up and he stood, pulling up the roots and strode away. I wonder what I said. I wondered then too. As the pounding, enraged blood seeped from my throbbing head, and everyone was staring at me in disbelief, I realized what I had done. I knew then that I had become a renegade, an outlaw. And yet, I wondered what I had said. Once hustled into the house, I asked indignantly what I had said, not denying it but wanting to understand what I faced.
“You know what you said,” mom stared at me calmly. I saw it would be useless to argue. Now I realized that whatever words had poured from the true devil hiding somewhere inside me, must’ve been so horrendous that it produced a look of fire, indignant surprise and a void of how to deal with such a crime, across my mom’s face.
Finally, severe and collected she spoke, “I want you to go to your room for fifteen minutes and think about what you’ve done. I need to think.” It wasn’t a sentence for the crime – a crime beyond the realm of punishment. Mom had to let it sink in and I had to be out of the way, that was all.
I’ve never remembered the profanity spoken, whispered of across the neighborhood. I do remember Mom’s verdict. After I had pondered sufficiently, I was to cross the street alone and apologize to Mrs. Gardner and Patrick. There was no other punishment, but I wandered through the day, faced with my dad’s return from work, the silence of the neighbors, friends, my sister, mom…everyone. I felt the mark of Cain on my forehead. The world regarded me with a frigid silence.
Mom never once acted reproachful. She never said another word of it to me. Dad was apparently baffled beyond comment because he never said a word of it to me. Mom never served any more of a punishment than my own conscience gave me. “I love you, Stevie,” mom said as she tucked me into bed that night.
A similar event occurred around the same time period, when I was five or six years old. The widow, Mrs. Galloway, lived in a dark brick house with tall, spiraled columns – eight of them – bright white and angelically imposing that lined the front of the house. A bed of petunias strove to match the achritecture of the house, repeating it with tall stems, slender and gracefully weaving in the breeze. Michael Cardner and I couldn’t resist. We each picked one for our moms, telling them that we had gotten Mrs. Galloway’s permission. My mom knew right away – petunias don’t grow like weeds. She smiled even though I lied and thanked me. The smile, the glee, the profound feeling of a gift for mom and the beauty of her acceptance obliterated any doubts in my conscience. How could such a perfect thing be a crime?
Mom knew and I’m sure she felt the conflict, certain that the gift was a crime. Of course, Michael and I were sent to Mrs. Galloway’s house. The apology delivered by two sincere little boys, was accepted. Mrs. Galloway’s charcter must have matched my mom’s, but what mom had to say to me must’ve been difficult.
Mom pointed out that I knew better, that she shouldn’t have to remind me. I think it was more of a punishment to her than to me. Mom was gentle, grateful, severe but not once angry; she has integrity. I can’t put into words the concept mom so perfectly illustrated, but with a smile and a good feeling, I was grounded for the afternoon.
At the age of 13, while crunching over blankets of snow, I walked to school with my friends. They talked about my mom very little and when they tried, they couldn’t understand her going back to school at her age. Their mothers were unidentified women who were content to cook in nursing homes or work as nurse’s aides, cleaning up messes. I saw little hope exchanged between my peers and their mothers, but pride burned in me for mine. I worried that mom would give up the idea of college in a year, but hope burned in me for her to go on.
How can I describe the strength, the love, character, integrity, vitality, the spirit of her, the force that quietly surges, the bright light, the essences of ethereal and tangible feelings that have come together in one person? Is she beautiful or is it what only I can see? She has influenced me. She has shaped me and given herself to me.
Now I see that those hopes and that pride were reflections of what mom has always given me. If she could, mom would spoil me but what more could she give? No car, house, money or anything could be as fulfilling as the glimpses of her ~ who she is, what she represents.
Right now, I’m broke, momentarily defeated and holding on and struggling but I know I will succeed because mom has shown me how. Mother’s Day is coming soon and I may be penniless, but I can give her a small gift. Something she has given to me and something I greatly cherish. Here is my gift, this simple bouquet of memories. I love you, mom.
