MountainMornings

Born in 1908, Gertrude Smith was a flapper. Barely 5’2” tall, her blonde hair was neatly combed into a Marcel wave ending just below her ear. She told me once or twice, that when she was young she was a “rebel.” Her ancestors were Irish coal-miners, who settled in Scranton, PA. She was widowed three times. I was her last child, and these are some of the things she taught me.

“Signs are for sheep.” My Mother could always find her way in, around, over  or under a problem. She encouraged us to think for ourselves, never to take “No” for an answer, and to always hit back harder when faced with a bully. She did not suffer fools at all. When Nell and my Mother first met as teens, she was sporting a black eye. When asked how she got it, Nell said, “Your Mother could swear like a sailor.”

“I’ll not only walk again, I’ll dance.” After losing her husband to a brain  tumor, and surviving the car accident that sent me to live with Nell, this is what she had to say to her doctors. The engine of the car had crushed her beautiful dancer’s legs. The legs that had won many a late night contest with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra. There would be no wheelchair in her future.

“Fine, all the more for the rest of us.” This was said whenever I refused to eat something. Mother believed in reverse psychology; this was her parental mantra. Surprisingly, it worked. Watching my brothers and sister chow down with glee always made me rethink my decision. Nell made me finish everything on my plate, which I hated. With apparent indifference, Mother gave me permission to control my own life; and maybe saved me from an eating disorder?

“You are in your perfect place.” A big believer in Norman Vincent Peale and the Power of Positive Thinking (this came in her later, post-Freudian years), Mother would hang a picture of something she wanted on the refrigerator.  Inevitably, she’d get it. She talked about the science of the mind and eventually became a big muckity muck in the Unity church. I knew she hated most organized religions, so this was puzzling to me. But in the end, I believe the combination of spirituality and psychiatry brought her a certain peace.

“When they’re in here, I’m their Mother. When they’re outside , they’re in God’s hands.” Having six children may foster this type of thinking – it is the antithesis of helicopter parenting, necessary for survival mode parenting. Once as young wives, Nell was having coffee in the dining room with Mother and saw my older brother Mike teetering on the porch rail, over a 30′ drop to the back yard. This was her reply, looking serenely at Mike out the bay window, to my nearly panicked foster mother. You might say I benefited from the Yin and the Yang of motherhood.

Happy Mother's Day, I still miss you.