Remembering my mother

Over the years when friends their mother was their best friend or that they shared everything with their mother, I couldn’t even imagine that type of relationship. I know facts about my mother but in spite of investing significant time with her during the last decade of her life, I never felt like I knew her. I even tried interviewing her – she would answer any question I could think to ask her with as few words as possible – no elaboration.

My mom was the second of 4 daughters that grew up on a farm in Iowa. She was the homecoming queen but always qualified this with the fact that there were only 4 girls in her class. She played the clarinet in school. She met my father at church in high school and they dated for a couple of years before he went off to the Air Force and she went to a 2 year teacher’s college.

After she got her teaching certificate, she married my father and moved to California where he was stationed. She taught school and had 2 children during the 2 years they were in California. After my father’s discharge they moved back to Iowa and my father enrolled in college. My mom did substitute teaching and had a third while dad was in college. She lost her mother to cancer just after she had her third child when she was 25. My dad got a job and they settled in town near where both of their family farms were. She did not teach for a few years while she had 2 more children. She was a Tupperware lady during these years. My dad got a new job and they moved the family of 5 kids 3 times in 3 years until they found a place that minimized the time he spent on the road doing soil testing for farmers.

After we got settled for the third time and her youngest was 2 years old, she went back to teaching full-time. I was 10 by this time and capable of helping out a lot at home. A few years later, she went back to school in the evenings to get her 4 year degree. My 3 brothers were in year round sports and she was an avid spectator for all of them. She studied in the bleachers at baseball games. She did at least one load of laundry every day often late at night to make sure all sports gear was ready for the next game. I know she slept but I never really saw it.

She was a kindergarten teacher and we made a lot of bulletin boards with construction paper cut outs. I generally understood my role was to help her maintain the family. She graduated from college the year before I graduated from high school and I was proud that I had been a piece of her being able to accomplish her goal.

She rarely spoke about anything that she wanted except she wanted my dad to stop smoking which he finally was able to do at age 40 after his first heart attack. When I was quite young she spent a lot of time looking at floor plans for a new house so I think she must have wanted one. She wanted a family vacation to visit friends from the service in California and when I was 15 they loaded 5 kids in a station wagon with a homemade wooden car top carrier and spent 2.5 weeks going to California – north to south and then came back though the Texas. panhandle. I cannot even imagine planning such a trip without the internet. We made it there and back with one car breakdown in Utah in the middle of the night. She stayed in the car with us 5 kids while my dad hitchhiked to the nearest town. I am not sure if she was scared or not as we all pretty much slept through it.

Prior to my grandfather’s death, he asked my father to take over his farm that would be co-owned by my mother and her 3 sisters. As an agronomist, my dad always wanted a chance to put into practice his passion for soil conservation techniques. He said yes to farming against my mother’s wishes and she returned to the farm she grew up on at age 40 where she lived for 35 years. I was in college by this time so what had been summer “farm camp” for me was now our family farm. After the move to the farm, she continued teaching which was not my father’s preference. She loved teaching. I think she understood the powerful influence that teachers had on their students and I think she used her power wisely. This power teachers had over young children terrified me.

When I got unexpectedly pregnant during my first year of residency, I understood that she was far more ready to be a grandmother than I was ready to be a mother. There was never going to be a good time to have a child so I decided that it would be helpful to have a young child when I lived less than an hour from very eager grandparents. She was a wonderful grandmother and on more than one occasion, she took sick leave from teaching to take care of my sick son because there was NO way I was going to stay home with a sick child. My son spent at least one weekend a month on the farm with my parents for 3.5 years of my residency and he did “farm camp” every summer until he was 16. When he started taking playing the drums seriously, she arranged to bring school drums to the farm for the summer so he could practice. She spent more time outdoors in the garden that summer.

She had a strong will. She became a widow one month after my parents moved from the farm into a brand new home she always wanted. Without the farm house and my father to look after, her health failed pretty rapidly. After a year in her new home, she moved to an independent living apartment in a retirement community. She decided to take her 5 kids/spouses, grandkids and spouses on an Alaska cruise with some of the money from the sale of the farm. About 6 weeks before the cruise, she announced that she was ready to “go find Dick and see what he was up to”. She had decided did not want to go on the cruise because she would be a burden to the rest of us. There was nothing we could say that would convince her that others on the cruise would be using a wheel chair. Ten days before the cruise she got her wish and died. We had time to have her funeral and get ready for the cruise – which was THE celebration of our parent’s lives – the best gift they could have given us. Staying connected to the extended family was important to her. That week really cemented the relationships of her grandchildren.

Who was my mother? She was a strong, organized, hardworking woman who did what was expected of her – she had 5 kids, supported my father’s decisions and made a few of her own. No matter how long my days were during my career, I never felt I worked as hard as she did. She was a avid Chicago Cubs fan. To this day, I cannot figure out her fascination with sports. Another mystery was her absolute dislike for getting presents for Christmas or her birthday. She liked jigsaw puzzles and Solitaire which are my favorite escapes. She was a early childhood educator and greatly enjoyed her 11 grandchildren.

I think my relationship with my mother was pretty much the same as her relationship with her mother – distant. She never interfered with my life and was absolutely there when I needed her the most – to help raise my son. THANKS MOM!