Remembering Mommy

I don't have the luxury that some do.  My mommy memories are just that.  Memories of a woman I called "Mommy."  I never grew to "Mom" or the wonderfully patient "Mother" that teenagers always say with rolled eyes and long sighs.

Mommy was a strict disciplinarian, and we were kept on short leashes.  I wasn't exactly the best of children, I guess, because it was a rare thing for me to spend a whole day without getting in trouble, somehow.  It wasn't lack of good intentions, either, just, well, being a kid.

Saturday nights Mommy would spend a lot of time putting her darling daughters' hair in pin curls, twirling each piece, over and over, then fixing it with criss-crossed bobby pins.  Sunday mornings her fair-haired daughters would be dressed in similar but not matching outfits.  We were Irish twins, and my stocky sister was actually taller than me most of my life, even though she was younger.  My mother enjoyed allowing others to believe we might be twins.

I wish sometimes I were older when she was dying.  I was a very astute, precocious child, and understood the whisperings that I caught, and read everything an eight-year-old can find about cancer (sadly, in those days it wasn't much, though it included an article in a woman's magazine that very graphically described a family's last months with a daughter dying of breast cancer).  She began to suspect something was wrong at Christmas of 1976, and went into the hospital to have a small growth removed from her neck just after the holidays.  We went to visit her afterwards, and she showed us the black stitches and told us it was nothing to worry about.

After that, Grammy and Aunt Doodoo (I think that misnomer was my fault, since I was the oldest of her neices and nephews -- her real name was Donna Lou) took turns, spending weeks at our house while their husbands kept things going at home.  This lasted several months, until I explained to one of the teachers that I left early every Friday so my relatives could drive the hour and a half back to central Pennsylvania to spend time with their own families because my mother had cancer.  The teacher graciously volunteered to let us live at her house, and we lived there until my father remarried later that year.

To my memory, in the last six months of my mother's life we saw her three times.  One time at the teacher's, one time visiting at home, where she was so weak my father carried her from place to place, and on Mother's Day, which was the last time I saw her alive.

I was curious, but could never bear to ask - everyone said her hair had fallen out, and that she was wearing a wig.  It could have been because my young eyes were not observant enough, or maybe it was a really good wig.  That last visit I thought she was the most beautiful woman ever.

I still do.

She was the one who sent me back to bed, again and again, until I was promised that the next time that foot climbed out of the bunkbed its owner was being spanked back INTO that bed.  It was Mommy who made me homemade pizza, and the fresh fruit cocktail cookies that waited for me when I got off the bus from school.  She was the one who put me on the couch with a tv tray when I was home sick from school, and brought me coloring books and hot soup while the soap operas were on.

I remember her sitting at the kitchen table, writing letters to family member after family member.  This was before the days of email and instant communication.  Correspondence took more time, more care, and she had both, in spades.

She had the most beautiful voice.  Our neighbor played piano and organ, and would invite my mother over to sing, and beg her to sing just one more for hours.  She had a clear, beautiful soprano, but was always more comfortable singing soprano 2 or alto.  It wasn't just the lower ranges of it.  She enjoyed making the lovely harmonies and counterpoint that the lower voices contribute.

I can picture her in heaven, her voice raised in chorus, and still as beautiful as ever, her hair shining, her eyes clear.  An angel shared for a few heartbeats, doing her best to raise good girls and be a good wife, Mommy was with us too briefly, but she shares a piece of my heart forever.