M-O-T-H-E-R

Do you remember that old routine the Smothers Brothers did on their show?  I think Tom wanted to recite that verse* about Mother--you know, M is for...
Then Dick (the younger) would say to Tom (the older)--go ahead, Tom, say the poem.  So Tom started out:
M is for the Many things she gave me--(pause)
O is for the Other things she gave me--(another pause)
T is for the Things she gave me--(awkward pause)

And, then Tom would stop.  Stuck on H not really knowing the verse about "Mother."  Predictably, that would earn Dick's derisive scorn.  Of course, the routine stopped there--Tom never finished his version.

Well, Mother's Day is one of those days which the predominant culture lauds and bathes in positive association.  All of us had a mother--whatever other relatives we have, we all have for certainty two: a mother and a father.  But not all of us have happy memories attending this day. 

I know this has been the subject of a previous post--for, you see, my mother died on Mother's Day.  Of course, I still celebrate this day.  I honored my mother on this day when she was alive, and now that I have a step-mother, I honor her.  I have honored other mother figures in my life.  And I have been honored as a mother.

But, still, the day brings a moment's reflection--it raises a lump in my throat, quickens a tightness in my chest.  No day is a good day for the premature death of one's mother--but to have that death occur on Mother's Day?  Well, the overlapping of happiness with grief inevitably arises.

No need to belabor the subject--but each Mother's Day I naturally think of my mother, and I also remember her death.

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* In case you don't know the verse (actually the lyrics from an early 1900s song)--here it is:

M Is for the Many things she gave me,
O Means only that she’s growing Old.
T Is for the Tears she shed to save me,
H Is for her Heart of purest gold.
E Is for her Eyes with love light shining,
R Means Right and Right she’ll always be.

Put them all together, They spell MOTHER.
A word that means the world to me.

It's Complicated

Today is Mother's Day and, while I am happy to celebrate it, and even to receive cards and gifts from my children, I approach Mother's Day with a somewhat rueful attitude. Yes, it is a day to celebrate, but it's also a complicated day.

Here's why.

My mother died on Mother's Day, so at the same time I celebrate and call up with deep gratitude the memory of my mother, I also feel a frisson of grief.

Since Mother's Day is celebrated, in the U.S., on the second Sunday in May, the specific date moves around. While the actual date my mother died is May 12, I think of her death twice--on Mother's Day. . .and again on May 12.

I am certainly not alone. Obviously, there are my siblings--my brother and my sister. We all experienced the same event, and therefore have the same thoughts--recalling our mother on Mother's Day AND recalling her death.

But more than that--I had a co-worker who had gone through the exact same loss. I was working at the Pennsylvania Department of Health. The two of us were executive assistants to the Secretary of Health. This woman was particularly close to her mother--more than a mother/ daughter relationship. More like best friends. The mother lived in the Washington, D.C. area, and had driven to central Pennsylvania to visit with her daughter on Mother's Day. She then drove back south to D.C. On the way, for inexplicable reasons, she crossed the center line on a four-lane highway (without center barriers) and crashed head long into an on-coming car. She was killed outright, as was the mother in the other car. On Mother's Day. At the time, I was so struck with the sad irony of losing your mother on Mother's Day.

I recall reading a book, some years ago, by Robert Fulghum. He is a minister, and wrote--in his book It Was On Fire When I Lay Down on It--about the conundrum of preaching year after year on Mother's Day. Part of his dilemma arose from the fact that he is not a mother--so how to preach about the wonderfulness of being a mother. But beyond that, he pointed out that not everyone has a wonderful mother. So, he posed some hypothetical questions. Here's the toughest one:

" How many of you find Mother's Day painful, especially when it involves thoughts and memories of such matters as adoption, abortion, divorce, suicide, rejection, alcoholism, alienation, abuse, incest, sorrow, loss, and words like stepmother, mother-in-law, and unspeakable obscene references to motherhood?" (p. 100)

Well, you can imagine the reaction he got. He said the congregation got very quiet; he also looked out and saw the pain. Also, predictably perhaps, he was attacked as members left the service--by at least one person: "Shame, shame, shame for spoiling this day."

I find that anecdote searing in its honesty. Not everyone has (or had) a wonderful mother. For people who were abused by mothers, what does Mother's Day mean to them? For women who are failing as mothers, what do they feel?

See--it's complicated.

But, this day--I rejoice to have been blessed with having a wonderful mother. My memories are the source of joy for me--even sufficient joy to take away the sting for its also being the anniversary of her death.

And, as I wrote last year--beyond my mother as mother, I am also blessed to have had other marvelous nurturing women in my life--my stepmother, my aunts, and my mother-in-law. Nothing complicated about that.

Channeling My Mother

Yesterday was one of those days--I felt as though I was channeling my mother. She was one of the most energetic industrious people I have ever known. And organized. She could get things done.

I awoke early, before 6 a.m. (in deference to all of you who say--PAH. Early?--understand this is REALLY early for me). Since I was awake, I decided to trim the bushes in the front of the house. Then, I mowed the grass--with all the rain this year, the grass grows quickly.

In the afternoon, I had a dentist appointment--the prior gum surgery turned out well (whew). And then I decided that it was time to round up some neighborhood kids for a summer swim.

After preparing dinner, and upon my husband's return from work (he's the one doing real work--i.e. for pay), we went to the local car dealership to pick up my new car (more on that in a subsequent post).

All in all--a good and productive day.

Now today, I can reflect. In so doing, I note that today is the anniversary of my mother's birth. Were she still alive in the flesh, (she is most certainly alive in our loving memories), she would have been 90.

The Love of A Mother

So, I went to tea today with my step-mother. This little event is something of an annual tradition at the retirement village where she and my father live. It's a nice idea--a time to honor mothers and daughters. After all, all women are at least one of those!

Since I was with my step-mother, the event got me to thinking about mothers. Herewith, a few thoughts.

What makes a woman a mother? You might think the obvious answer--she has a child or children. And, in a sense, you would be right--but I will be more expansive than your answer might have intended. To be the mother of a child means that you nourish someone, in a loving maternal way. And that does not require that you have actually borne a child.

This definition certainly applies to my step-mother. She is a blessing straight from heaven. After my mother died, my father announced that he intended to re-marry. All of his children quickly voiced their support and consent. Enter--Verna Mae--my step-mother. Now, of course, it wasn't quite so simple or whirlwindy as I make it sound. But about two years after Mother's death, my father and Verna Mae were married.

She is the heart and soul of steady, unflinching goodness. My mother, Dorcas, would have been a hard act to follow. She was a great woman. Verna Mae had neither need nor inclination to compete with that kind of person. Verna Mae is calm, low-key, solid, and grounded. I don't think she has ever been threatened by the memory of my mother.

Here's part of what makes Verna Mae amazing to me--she had never been married before she married my father. Perhaps, she thought she would live her life out quite happily as an independent unmarried woman. That she was willing to consent to marry my father is a great thing for our family--that's the amazing part: her willingness to trade her life to that point for the unknown.

Maybe you begin to get the drift of this partly rambling reverie on motherhood. Verna Mae had no children--at least none that she gave birth to. But she has loved me and my brother and sister. She loves our children. So she is every bit a mother and grandmother to us all.

There have been several women in my life who are mothers without having had children. Previously, I have written about my favorite aunt. She has never married, and has never had children--but, oh, did she ever provide loving nurture to me. She nurtured a love of classical music in me. She took me to see movies when I was a child (which, truth be told, were verboten as far as my very strict grandfather was concerned), and she enthusiastically discusses politics with me.

She also exemplifies how being a mother (or grandmother) means nurturing children. She lives in a town in New York state, some 20 miles north of New York City. Across the street from her house lives a family where twins were born about 13 or 14 years ago. When the young couple who had the twins asked for my aunt's help caring for the babies, my aunt's first reaction was HELP. "I don't know anything about . . ." (fill in the blank with some essential baby care skill)--that's what she told me.

But, she pitched in. And over the years, she has become the grandmother for those twins. They come to her house every Sunday morning, giving their parents a wonderful time of quiet and respite. She has patiently answered the questions these sweet girls have asked. She lets them do things, such as draw on the walls, that would no doubt be absolutely forbidden in their own house.

Believe me, I could go on. It fills me with sweet comfort and deep pleasure to know that not only did my own mother, and grandmothers love me fiercely, but so do my step-mother and my aunt.

So, here's to all the mothers--whether the children they have were born from their bodies or from their hearts.

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One more quick "mother" update. The first of the baby doves has hatched. Scrawny little thing, really. But the mother dove is rather fiercely protective of this seemingly inconsequential bit of fluff.

Born on the 7th of July

There have been a fair number of news stories about how many people want to get married today, since the date is 07-07-07. The thought is that, with seven being considered a lucky number, getting married on this day should be particularly auspicious. Well, I don’t know about that. But this date does have significance for me—July 7th is my mother’s birth date. Were she still alive, she would have been 88 today.

I have previously written about her death, and indicated in that post that I would someday write about her life. Well, today is that day.

My mother was born in 1919 the fifth child and youngest daughter in a family of eight. Her father, David Slagenweit, was a farmer in Morrison's Cove, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Cora, was what we would today call a stay-at-home mom. They named this fifth child Dorcas Mildred.

I don’t know much about my mother’s growing up years—just bits and pieces. The farm house they lived in was appointed as farm houses were then—no indoor plumbing, a summer house which served as a kitchen in the hot summer months. The farm had a dairy herd, crops to feed the cows, and at least chickens that helped supply cash. All eight children worked at various farm chores. During the Depression years, they were poor but never bereft. I do recall Mother telling how she and her sisters made dresses from the feed sacks they bought. At that time, feed sacks were imprinted with designs that made turning them into dresses not unusual.

Morrison's Cove Valley

I know that she went to public school, but when her mother became ill and could not care for the youngest in the family, my mother dropped out to stay home and care for her little brother, Davey. After a few years, she wanted to complete her high school education. Since she was older than her classmates, she hoped to speed up her course work and complete her high school in less time. But the local school would not allow this approach. The high school was quite willing to have her as a student, but not willing to have her expedite her schooling.

The church she belonged to had at that time an academy appended with the junior college it ran. (The academy has long since closed, but

the college has expanded to 4 years and continues to flourish.) The college president heard of my mother’s desire to finish high school. He offered to allow her to do an expedited program at this academy. As the daughter of poor farmers, she felt she had no financial means to go to the academy. The college president assured her she could do it. When she graduated, her final bill read PAID IN FULL.

While my mother was never able to continue on to get a college education, she was a very intelligent woman. She was self-assured, vivacious, witty—in short, a born leader. She also had a mischievous wit about her. While she was going to high school, she was about 4 years older than many of her class mates. Since she stood 4 foot 11 inches in her stocking feet, her diminutive stature lent itself to a presumption that she was younger. She would tell her teenage classmates she was 20, but they thought she was teasing. I can imagine she said it with enough twinkle in her eye for them to not know for sure whether she was teasing. . .or serious.

I think I should give you an idea of what my mother looked like. As I said, she stood 4 foot 11 inches tall. As my children were growing up, they loved to stand next to Grandma and measure themselves. They were thrilled when they passed her height. I don’t know how much she weighed, but most of her life she was trim. She wore size 5 shoes—noteworthy because when that size was the display size, she could get great deals on shoes. As a young woman, she had black wavy hair, twinkling brown eyes, and a hint of dimples when she smiled. She had a sunny smile, as attested to in photos, but as she grew older, she was reluctant to smile unguardedly—she didn’t like the way her teeth looked. I always thought she was beautiful—partly because she was my mother and partly because she was. As she grew older, her black hair turned salt and pepper gray, and eventually white. While she never cut her hair, it didn’t really grow very long, not much more than shoulder length. What was singular to me about Mother was not the way she looked but what she was.

Since my father was ordained as a minister, she was a pastor’s wife. She was also a missionary, having felt a call to mission work as a young woman. When my father first saw her, she was working as a church worker in a tent meeting. The ministers were John and Emma Climenhaga, my father’s parents. My mother, Dorcas, was a young worker who helped lead singing, along with another young woman. My dad had come for the weekend to visit his parents, and saw this black-haired petite woman standing at the front of the tent—she was wearing a yellow dress. He was smitten, and asked his brother who she was. His brother gave her name and also allowed as how someone else was interested in her. Whether or not that was true, my father, who characterizes himself as particularly shy as a youth, had enough courage to convey his interest.

When they got engaged, my father told my mother that he intended to be a missionary, hoping to go to Africa. So, in agreeing to marry my father, my mother was also agreeing to become a missionary herself. My father has always said that he was able to accomplish all the things he did because of my mother. She had many gifts—she was organized, she was a gracious hostess, she was a capable speaker. As a child, I thought of her as Wonder Woman.

There were some rough places in her life. After my sister died, my mother began to suffer various physical symptoms. Perhaps today, her condition would have been recognized as stress induced illness. But at the time, she was deeply concerned that something was very wrong with her. She talked with a missionary doctor, a sympathetic woman, who gave Mother some medication, likely a narcotic. Mother recounted that having that prescription, and also knowing that her symptoms were psychosomatic gave her the ability to shake it off. She told me she said to herself “Dorcas, snap out of it” and she did. She was strong.

I recall a time when my mother was going to a function at the church where she and my father were. As she entered the church, she slipped and fell smack on her tailbone. She was clearly in pain. But she got up, shook off any help, and went about attending the event. She was stoic.

One of her greatest attributes was that she could listen to people. Many people came to her to pour out their woes. My mother kept every confidence. And she gave good advice. I think she listened without having to judge, then gave people sensible advice that they could follow. I wonder if there weren’t times that she was lonely. A pastor’s wife, after all, can’t go unburden herself to people in the church.

While my mother was very intelligent, she tended to ignore intellectual issues. Our family loved to discuss and even argue about various issues. Mother would tune these debates out. She could also tune out general noise. Our family had a penchant for listening to music, or television, sometimes almost simultaneously. Mother could be in the room, and you would remark about some song that had played—and she would say, what song? She could simply not listen to something she didn’t want to.

With each of her three children who grew to be adults, my mother had a special relationship. She met each of us where we were. I was the oldest child, and probably had the least one on one time. My sister, the youngest, had many times when she and Mother would shop together or get together and bake. My mother encouraged my brother, and even helped arranged for several young women to come tea so my brother might find a suitable mate—oh, it’s a long story but one of those women did become my brother’s wife.

One time my mother said to me—“I hear that you think I shouldn’t be driving.” I looked at her most puzzled. Then she said, eyes twinkling, —“well, Geoffrey (my son) said you told him little old ladies with grey hair shouldn’t be allowed on the road.” Oops. Yes, I had said that, in frustration while driving behind a slow little old grey haired lady. When Geoffrey said that to his grandma, she said—“well, Geoffrey, I may be little and I may be grey, but I am NOT old.” Typical mother—she got double fun out of that. She teased Geoffrey about his repeating what he heard me say, and she teased me by reporting that I was saying she shouldn’t drive.

One of the last times I spent with my mother was a shopping trip. I had Presidents Day off from work, and suggested that we go shopping at a local mall. So, together with my daughter we headed off for a day. By now, Mother was tiring easily, due to a defective heart valve that she had. We walked leisurely, shopped some, and stopped in time for lunch. A special on the menu was eggplant parmesan. My mother said she had never eaten it (which amazed me, given all her travels). That’s what she ordered. At the end of the day, we returned home, having spent a few ordinary hours together.

Three months later, she had died, due to a hospital acquired staph infection post-surgery to replace the defective heart valve. Not long after her death, I had to drive by the mall where we had shopped. I could barely see to drive, my eyes were so blurred by tears. That was in 1991. Sixteen years have passed since her death. And, the keen edge of grief has dulled with time. We all still miss her—my dad (who has been fortunate to remarry a wonderful woman), my sister, and brother, the sons-in-law and daughter-in-law, and all her grandchildren.

My mother and me

The Donna Quilt

I have very few items in my possession that would count as family heirlooms. But one item that might fit that definition is a quilt.

I say "might" because this quilt was not handed down through generations but rather made expressly for me. The seamstress was my mother. She decided to make a quilt for each of her children. While my father was bishop (in the church they belonged to) he had to travel. He oversaw a number of states including Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and Kentucky--and getting around to churches required some travel. When my mother accompanied him, she took along quilting squares and stitched them.

When the whole quilt was finished, she and her two sisters, Ada and Kathryn, got together and assembled the quilt. They attached the backing and the batting, then rolled the quilt on a frame and set about the actual quilting process.

I love that image--three sisters on in years, communally sewing. I bet they reminisced about family, about growing up together, about their lives, their children. I imagine they laughed and maybe cried. Perhaps they even sang.

I have come to see this quilt as a metaphor for me--stitched together of fabric from the snippets of my family.

Here are some of the pieces that go into the Donna quilt:

*my red hair--from uncles Arthur, Mark, and aunts Kathryn, Katherine.
*my being an alto--from my paternal grandmother Climenhaga
*my love of singing four part harmony--from my paternal grandfather Climenhaga
*my ability at art (modest)--from my paternal grandmother Climenhaga
*my being always hotter than anyone else in the room--from my maternal grandmother Slagenweit
*my playing jokes on people--from my maternal Pappap Slagenweit
*my expansive vocabulary--from my father and my uncle Arthur
*my keen interest in politics--from my aunt Leoda
*my love of classical music--from my father and my aunt Leoda
*my skill at baking--from my mother
*my toughness--from my mother
*my being organized--from my father and my mother
*my overall body shape--from the Slagenweits
*my intellect--from the Climenhagas.

Enough pieces! Thankfully, I feel pretty well stitched together. And very grateful to all the people in my family who have contributed to the complex fabric of which I am made.

While I was taking photos of the quilt, my cat Allie climbed on it, and settled in! So she gets her picture in the blog!

In Memory of Mother

Editorial note: I waited until the end of Mother's Day to post this blog, so as not to sound too sad a note for this day of celebration.

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My mother died on Mother’s Day, in 1991. So each year, as Mother’s Day comes and goes, it is a bittersweet celebration for me. While this day is for celebration of all the wonderful mothers, it is also a day of remembrance.

April 1, 1991, my mother had surgery for a relatively routine heart valve replacement. I believe the original problem with her heart valve was spotted during a complete physical that was required as a condition of being allowed to enter Ontario, Canada. My parents were moving to Guelph, Ontario, where my father would work as a minister. Since Ontario has a province wide health system that includes any resident, the provincial powers wanted some assurance (I presume) that my parents were not totally decrepit before they entered. Anyway, during that physical the doctor detected a tell-tale sound that indicated one of her heart valves was not closing properly, so blood was leaking between the chambers.

While this condition was not an immediate threat to her health, it would need to be remedied sometime. She continued for 6 years, (and by then my parents had moved back to the US) and then decided to have the valve replaced. She had been tiring more easily, and knew it was time to have the surgery.

The surgery on my mother went well—the defective heart valve was removed and a pig valve inserted in its place. But the evening of her surgery, she was rushed back into the OR as she was clearly losing blood somewhere internally. My dad and I had gone to see her, and she was very very pale. During that second surgery, they restitched some of the sutures, and returned her to the ICU for recovery. I do not know when—whether at the first or the second surgery—but sometime my mother contracted a staph infection. Staph is a ubiquitous bacterium, being basically everywhere. It is in the soil, on our skin, just everywhere. And it is one of those bacteria that hospitals dread.

We did not learn that she had a staph infection until just before she was due to come home. My sister had come in to see her (from Indiana) and was going to be with her for a few days while she recovered. The evening before Mother was due home, my sister and I were visiting her. I had taken along a little stuffed pig—in honor of the pig valve—and for my mother to hold against her stitches when she coughed. She began to cough, and by the look on her face it was plain that she was in deep pain.

So, returning home was cancelled. And my sister went back to Indiana. The hospital staff began to check for bacterial infection, but for whatever reasons, they waited two days before taking specific action; when they did, they operated again. What they found was that my mother’s sternum had basically been destroyed by the bacteria. So, the surgeon removed the necrotic bone, and packed the incision, so it could drain. And intubated my mother.

Thus began 5 agonizing weeks of roller coaster recovery, and relapse. After several weeks, my mother had another surgery, for a trachestomy to allow her to breathe through a tube in her neck, and talk if she chose. During the weeks she was intubated, she could not speak although she tried to talk around the tube. By circumstance, my work situation at the time was such that I was able to visit her almost every day. My dad, of course, also visited her. We tried to coordinate our visits so we could together try to understand my mother’s messages.

My brother was in a doctoral program in seminary in Kentucky, and was coming up on the end of term. Further, his wife Lois had just had her father die on Easter Sunday before our mother went in the hospital. Each time I would talk with my brother, giving him updates, he would ask—should he come and see Mother. I answered, no, I don’t think so yet. (To my everlasting regret, by the time I thought he should come and see her, it was too late. I have apologized to my brother for this failure of judgment on my part.)

The trauma of ICU care is very hard on family members who see their loved ones suffering. Of course, ICU was even more traumatizing on my mother. I distinctly remember one day when my dad and I visited, my dad asked if Mother wanted him to pray with her. She had been a woman of strong faith all her life, but whether from frustration or ICU psychosis or what—she refused. I don’t know how my dad felt, but that little incident underscored how dehumanizing ICU care can be.

I got to be an expert in reading chart notes, and in converting Celsius temperature readings to Fahrenheit—in the US we should have converted to decimal systems years ago, but we haven’t. But medicine has, so all the temp readings were noted in Celsius. I watched her fever, from her body’s efforts to fight off the bacteria, rise and fall. She went through courses on all the available antibiotics as one after another failed to whip the staph.

On Thursday before she died, her temp reached 40 C (104 F) and I knew. I just knew she wasn’t going to make it. I came home, after visiting her, and walked around the block of our neighborhood crying. I told my husband—she’s not going to make it.

The next couple days, she endured her final struggle. The staph infection had spread throughout her system, resulting in small intestine necrosis. The surgeons performed emergency surgery on Mother’s Day, and found only 2 feet of viable small intestine. As the one surgeon said—that is incompatible with adult life. As I drove to the hospital to “discuss treatment options” with the surgeon, having called my dad to alert him also, my mother had a heart attack on the operating table. She was resuscitated, but when she arrested a second time, the surgeon took the initiative and said—no more. By the time we got to the hospital, she was gone.

I write this without rancor, without tears. Not because my mother’s death didn’t touch me, but because time has passed and eased the sharp pain. We all still miss her. She was a remarkable woman. Having written of her death, I will write of her life on her birthday, which was July 7.

One final note—on that Thursday, when my dad and I visited Mother, I was standing on one side of her bed and my dad on the other. She could not turn her head, and as it happened she was looking at me. She looked at me long and lovingly. The depth of that look was other-worldly. She kept looking and looking. My dad remarked that he wished she could have looked at him. Quite frankly, we would have had to change positions, and that may have disturbed her peace. I told my brother and sister about it afterwards. I am convinced that in that look was a distillation of all the love my mother had for us all—especially my dad, and her three children. And perhaps she too knew that her life on earth was ending.

So, Mother’s Day—a day of bittersweet celebration, and loving memories.