Sunday, May 14, 2017

Accidental Mothers

Mary Jane with Lucy's mom

LUCY BURDETTE: Some years ago, John and I went to a resort in the Poconos with a group of friends over Mother's Day weekend.  We played tennis and ate well, though the resort was well past its heyday and beginning to crumble. One of the nice touches was that all of the women received a rose for Mother's Day. No one asked whether we had biological children or stepchildren or grandchildren. The assumption was that all the women deserved a rose. And that got me thinking about how mothering figures come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes in the shape of a teacher or a therapist  or a grandparent or neighbor or a sister, or even a father. I thought it might be interesting today to talk about a mother figure in our lives who is/was not our actual mother. (Though if you'd rather talk about your mother, that's fine too!) 

The photo I've shared is of my mother with her best friend Mary Jane, who was our next-door neighbor for many years when we kids were growing up. She had her own five children, but she was kind and welcoming to all of us as well. And many years later, after my mother and her husband had both died, she became my stepmother.  She was lots of fun and she opened her heart to my siblings and me, as she had when we were children. She loved to dance. I can remember so clearly the day we took MJ and my dad to see STRICTLY BALLROOM (a great upbeat movie, by the way!) As we came out of the theater, she turned to my father and said: “Throw away your cane, old man, and let’s dance!” It was pretty special to have a stepmother whom we'd known almost our whole lives, who had a shared history, and who had known my mother quite well.  So today I'd like to raise a teeny tiny glass of wine to Mary Jane (as we used to tease her, since she was a tiny person)…

How about you Reds? Who would you like to remember?

JENN MCKINLAY: When I first moved to Arizona, I was lucky enough to get a job working for the Phoenix Public Library system. One of the first people I met, who became a surrogate mom to me, was a woman named Cay Culbertson. She had short gray hair, glasses, and a laugh that barked out of her. And when you really made her laugh, she'd slap you on the back so hard she'd send you across the room. She had three grown children but she made room for me in her family, as well as anyone else who needed a mom. She took the time to meet everyone and get to know them, to make them feel welcome and that they belonged. She was a fierce protector of her people but had great humor and could laugh at herself, even when she locked herself out of her car for the millionth time. When she passed, it was a crushing blow that rippled through the library system and positively gutted all of us. The piece of advice she gave me that I hold most dear and frequently refer to was when her son, about thirty at the time, started to have seizures for no explicable reason. I asked her how she was dealing with the worry and she said, "Well, I turn it over to God and then ten minutes later I do it again." I'm not particularly religious, but I've never forgotten that or her and I never will.

Debs with Nanny and cousin Meredith
DEBORAH CROMBIE: I would raise that mothering glass to my grandmother, without a doubt. Lillian Lorraine Dozier, nee Jordan, mother of four, of whom my mom was the second eldest. To me, she was never anything but Nanny. Widowed during the Depression, she somehow managed to raise her kids, and somewhere along the way, when the kids were grown, she got a teaching certificate and left Texas for California. This is the part of her life about which I know so little, and sadly, all her children are gone now, so there's no one to ask. I do know that when I was born, she came back to Texas and moved in my family. We shared a room the first few years until my parents added a wing to the house for her. She was my primary caretaker, my best friend, my supporter, my counselor. She taught me to read and to be interested in everything. We planned world adventures with a globe and issues of National Geographic. She was fascinated by Egypt, but the longest journey I remember her taking was by train to a spa in Mineral Wells. I was with her when she died at eighty-six of congestive heart failure. It took me another ten years to write my first novel, but I was thinking of her, knowing she would be cheering me on. So, cheers to you, Nanny, and a dozen roses, too.

Hallie and her mother

HALLIE EPHRON: My mother, bless her heart, had barely a nurturing bone in her body. Somehow she ended up having four of us. Fortunately she and my father made a good living as screenwriters so we had help. World Class Help. The mothering I got was from the lovely Evelyn Hall, who worked for my family for more than 40 years, and Amelia James Evans who took care of me when I was little. They were smart and cozy and when you were with them you felt safe.


RHYS BOWEN: My own mother wasn't exactly the warm and cuddly type either. She worked from the moment I was born but I was raised by two wonderful women, my grandmother and great aunt. Nanny was soft and gentle and I don't ever remember her ever raising her voice. My great aunt Sarah Ann (known to the family as Min) was blind, extremely well-read and kept me occupied with stories she made up as well as books she remembered plus games of pretend in which I was always the heroine...fairy princess, good queen, and she was always the villain--evil fairy, bad queen, or poor old woman gathering sticks. She had a phenomenal memory and when she couldn't sleep she would recite whole Shakespeare plays to herself. My story-telling gene clearly came from her.

Hank and her mother
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Rhys, that is astonishing. Yes, indeed, you had wonderful teachers. As for my mom? Yeah, not so cuddly.  My mom was so smart, and very chic, and worldly and artistic--but I don't think I can remember a time when I was growing up that she said to me: good job, honey! (Is that fair?) One of her favorite comments was: "I'm not criticizing, I'm observing."  My Gramma Minnie, also not cuddly, was pretty great--she taught me to knit and crochet and type. Oh, on her Underwood typewriter that was in a kind of suitcase thing. I loved it, and used to type like mad, mostly copying the vocabulary words in Readers Digest.  But who I would remember is my mom, no question. You don't have to be cuddly to be formative. I think of her, and am grateful to her, every day.

INGRID THOFT: I’ve been wracking my brain trying to name some mother figures in my life, and I think I’m coming up empty because I hit the lottery in the mother department.  I really can’t say enough good things about my mom; being her daughter is one of the greatest blessings of my life.  One of the many things I love about her is her sense of adventure.  She is extremely curious and loves to travel and learn about other cultures.  She traveled to the Soviet Union when it was the Soviet Union and to India.  More recently, we’ve been to Vietnam, Greece, Turkey, and just over a year ago, we traveled to Spain, just the two of us.  We rented a car and drove through the south of Spain, which was exciting and occasionally nerve-wracking.  One afternoon, we found ourselves inching our car down the circular tunnel of an underground parking garage in Ronda.  The walls were so close, we contemplated that it might be our final resting place!  We survived with another great travel story to add to our repertoire!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Ingrid, we hit the same lottery - my mother has been cuddly when I needed it and a boot in the butt when I needed that. I was also fortunate to have three very different, very influential grandmothers: Grandma Greuling, Grandmother Spencer and Grandma Fleming. The former, my mother's mother, was twig-thin, highly opinionated, sharp as a tack and enormously house-proud. It's because of her I live in a 200 year-old-house. 

Grandmother Spencer, also known as Spencie and Maw Maw, was my southern grandma, plump and soft as a featherbed, who read her bible every evening and would set tables groaning with the most amazing southern food. No matter how old she got, she always took great care with her appearance; hat, shoes and bag, powder and lipstick. When you look at me, you can see her - I won the Spencer side in the gene pool. 

My Grandma Fleming came into my life when I was in my early teens, moving close to our house after my folks got married. I would stop by after school for cookies and to tell her how my life was going that day. She was an excellent audience for a dramatic teen, a combination of sympathetic and no-nonsense. I created a character modeled on her in my novels - Russ Van Alstyne's mother Margy.

Jungle reds, tell us about a mothering figure in your life!

38 comments:

  1. Without a doubt, my mom. She was a woman of integrity, committed to her family. We didn’t have much, but she made certain her children didn’t realize that as they were growing up. She was a woman of great courage even though her life was difficult. She taught us to keep on keeping on, to do the right thing. She was fiercely proud of her children and her grandchildren . . . I think of her and miss her every day.

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  2. For me, it was also my mom. She was seriously ill until she got her kidney transplant at age 38 (I was 7) so we spent a lot of time together indoors as a family. She taught me to be kind, polite and to follow my dreams. We did not have much but I never felt deprived. She was a good cook, made most of our clothes and some of my toys. My mom frequently took me to the library to quench my thirst for reading. She never went to university/college but encouraged me to follow my unconventional academic path into geography and eventually climate change research. She passed away in 2003 and I do miss her all the time.

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  3. Besides my own mother, I would name my aunt Jo, my father's younger sister (and what reader and aspiring writer doesn't love that name?!). Mother to three boys herself, she was elegant, funny, nurturing, and always welcomed me into her home. Her relationship with her handsome writer husband, my Uncle Dick, was close and dear for the sixty years they had together until Jo passed away too early at 82 a few years ago.

    Roberta - indeed, a rose for all!

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  4. Commenting on Hank's picture... it's so scary, we could have been twins.
    Loving these remembrances.

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    1. Hallie, I was looking through the jungle red photo archives yesterday and saw a picture of me which kind of stopped me in my tracks. I thought: I had forgotten about that photo! I wonder when it was taken. And then I realized… It was you.

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  5. I've been fortunate to have a lot of strong, cool women in my life. My mother was a great, creative, loving mom when I was little, reading to us, teaching us about birds and gardening, as well as color theory and the elements of composition. When Mom went back to work as an art teacher, she hired Mary Rail to do some light housekeeping and take care of me in the afternoons, when I came home from kindergarten. Mary taught me how to spell, and we would talk about dogs and cooking and stuff. She never once treated me like a dumb, bratty kid, which I undoubtedly was. I also had two strong--but strongly different--grandmothers, and a fantastic aunt, all of whom gave me excellent role models as I grew up.

    As an adult I had remarkable teachers, mentors, and friends who helped me through the rough places of life when my mother wasn't there to assist. I suspect much of their advice was better than I might have gotten from Mom. Now that I am the adult in the room, I try to pass the favor along by mentoring students at the Dallas arts magnet high school--super smart, talented kids who maybe don't know much about life beyond the stage. Knowing how many great women have influenced my life, I miss seeing them in most of the books I read. That's one reason why I love Lucy's Miss Gloria so much! So, roses for everyone!

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    1. Oh Miss Gloria sends you the biggest hug Gigi, thanks for all your memories!

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    2. I admire Gigi so much for the mentoring she does with high school kids. Some of them don't have much in the way of adult role models. For someone to listen, to take an interest, to give advice, is priceless.

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  6. My mother was a lot of things, but nurturing was not one of them, not while I was growing up. She had to work, thanks to my alcoholic dad, and I guess she couldn't dare give way to her emotions. Having four kids to raise made it imperative for her to hold it together. Because now, of course, she's an entirely different person, 180 degrees from how she was then. We are very good friends now, too.

    I have memories of sitting on my dad's lap, but do not recall my mother ever kissing or hugging me or my sister (she doted on our youngest brother, though), until the day I got married in 1970.

    However, her mother, my darling grandmother, more than made up for my own mom's lack of warmth. Grandma so clearly loved me, and it was a comfort to know that growing up. She encouraged me, and always gave me (and all of her many grandchildren) the best presents. I spent a lot of time with her and Grandpa, some of my fondest childhood memories, times that created a pool of calm in my turbulent real life.

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    1. And we turned out fine, right Karen? You turned out perfectly!

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    2. Thank you. As did you, my dear!

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    3. Karen, sounds like your mom really struggled...so fortunate that you had such a grandmother to fill in the empty spaces!

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  7. Roberta, I was so touched by your story. How lovely, that your dad and your stepmom had such a long shared history.

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    1. yes it was unusual and I felt lucky to have had her in our family!

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  8. It was my Mom first. She was beautiful, graceful, intelligent, and strong. She was one of those people who everyone loved and wanted to be around for her kindness and care to listen to what was important and happening in their lives. She taught me to be understanding of those who appeared contrary in any way, to realize sometimes they were struggling with a personal problem. She also told me I was very, and sometimes, too trusting, something I still am though I try. She kept a good balance of grace and strength, I could only hope to achieve. She was tireless, and always ready to start the day, dressed in a beautifully coordinated outfit from early in the morning. In spite of all this strength and wisdom, she was gentle and self-sacrificing for those she loved. My grandmother was the dreamer, the opera singer, schoolteacher, who taught me how to crochet and how to sew clothes for my dolls, and how to bake and cook. They were both housewives who took pride in their homes, which were decorated in good taste and always elegance. Both were great readers, a passion shared with their husbands! My Mom, a debutant, grew up in a beautiful city home in Buenos Aires, in its golden years; and her mother, my grandmother, the daughter of well- established Italian immigrants, grew up in the city of La Plata, in the province of Buenos Aires, a city paired with Paris, and they both taught me what caring and living life with grace and strength should be, to always have faith. I remember and think of them everyday.

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  9. My mom was a sweet, kind, gentle person. She (and my dad) shared with us a love of reading and encouraged us to learn, to get an education. She was a good listener and was not judgmental. One of my friends told me that she could talk to her about things she could never discuss with her own mother.

    My dad died suddenly when my parents were in their fifties. Mom was a lost soul for a couple of years, and then slowly found her way again. She blossomed into a whole new person. Putting behind her the plans she and my dad had had for their later years, she retired early and began to volunteer in different areas. Within a few years she was volunteering between twenty and thirty hours a week, depending on which week of the month it was!

    She died at Christmas time in 1997. In the years since then people have introduced me to people who knew her. When they find out she was my mother, many of them start crying and tell me how much they miss her. I hope I can make as much of an impression on others as she did.

    Deb Romano

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  10. I am so enjoying everyone's stories! Karen, I don't remember getting much affection from my mom, either, when I was a child. But she was my champion through the very difficult years of my teens, and when I was grown up, she was my best friend. And she became a darling and very loving grandmother. It does make you think about what was going on in our parents lives that we couldn't know as children...

    Happy Mother's Day to you all!

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    1. As the oldest child, I knew way more than I wanted to. Later in life I heard a lot of people blaming their parents for how they turned out, and I just can't get around how odd that is. Parents--including us--do the best they know how, most of the time. As most of us know, we control how we think about our own lives.

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    2. Yeah, that's a hard lesson though, to leave the past behind and take up the future. It's what a really good therapist can help with:)

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    3. Whenever I read a novel in which the protagonist, usually female, finds her mother to be annoying or has a thorny relationship with her mother, I can't relate to the person at all. My mom was warm, nurturing, supportive to me and my siblings. We all miss her very much. As I mentioned earlier, I strive to be the kind of person she was. She learned from the best: our grandmother was the same kind of person. We've been blessed to have them in our lives.

      Deb Romano

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  11. Jean Raines. She was an amazing role model to me, and to everyone who knew her.

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  12. It's amazing how different everyone's relationship with their mother is. My mom is the single greatest woman I have ever known. She taught me by example that I could do anything I set my mind to, and she was a cuddler and a butt kicker as needed. Most of my childhood memories are of time spent outside adventuring with her and my brother by day and nestled on the couch reading together every night. Safe to say I never would have become a writer without her. I think I've always had amazingly loving and strong women in my life because my mother taught me how to look for them, as well as teaching me how to cut the toxic ones loose - an invaluable life lesson.

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    1. you said it sister on that invaluable lesson! and we sure are glad to have you here among the reds:)

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  13. I think these are the kind of things one only realizes as an adult. As a child my mother was just "Mom" and I didn't think about, or evaluate her either as a person or caregiver, she was just THERE. Later, as an adult, I realized how supportive, warm and caring she was, but as a kid, she was (one of two) authority figures, what she said went. Unfortunately we didn't have many years as adults together, and my father had already passed by then. I didn't know my grandparents on either side, so the only mom-person was my actual Mom. I loved her.

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  14. I hit the lottery in the mother department. My mom and I are so different, yet she never seemed to mind that fact. She let me be me.

    I am enjoying everyone's stories.

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  15. My mom was a no nonsense type who was a stay at home mother - she was rarely home though! She was driving us to practices, appointments, and recitals. She was leading Cub Scouts, Campfire Girls, and 4-H and being a room mother. Later she was on the school district PAC and I remember being astounded that my mother was going on an airplane with the other political ladies to Los Angeles for a state meeting!! She presided over the county homemaker club and advocated literacy programs, and had meeting with execs to have educational tv shows at our local tv stations. I can only remember once I really needed her and she wasn't home ... I had had an "accident" at school and needed some clean clothes - I ended up calling our next door neighbor and she came to my rescue!

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    1. What did she say when she found out, Pauline?

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    2. I honestly don't remember! But I can never forget the day because it was the end of year awards ceremony in the gym and I went up to get the best Physiology student award and when I came back to my seat the boyfriend of my friend (her mother was the one who helped me)told me "there's blood on the back of your dress.) I just asked my 85 year old mother and she said she thinks she was on jury duty that day!

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    3. Oh, my gosh...what we don't go through! You are so tough..xoxoo

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  16. Happy Mother's Day to all the moms and mother figures! And positive wishes to those who have lost their mothers or don't have the mothers that they need!

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  17. I have been offline since Friday because I've had my two granddaughters for the weekend, and that's the best Mother's Day present ever. Now, in the mothering department, my mother was wonderful in the love, believing in me, and valuing education and reading departments. She was interested in what I did and encouraging. My father was a bit distant, but my mother made up for it with all four of the children. Mommy, as I called her until the day she died twenty-two years ago, had a sweet nature, a sweet smile, and taught by example to be a good person.

    I've enjoyed reading everyone's mother stories tonight.

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  18. This being the first Mother's Day since my Mom died, I had some people checking in with me to see how I was doing. It's funny that this both was nice and annoyed me. Nice that they worried, but annoying that they think I might jump off a roof or something over being sad she's gone.

    I don't know that I have any kind of mother figure beyond people around the same age as my mom that check to see how I'm doing. But nothing in the way of guiding, directing or seeking advice from.

    Sadly, I found out this morning that one of those women has been experiencing health problems since Easter with a heart attack and kidney failure. This is a woman who is the epitome of an Italian woman that cooks. Also the only person I know who could make Italian food that I would eat. (and her scallops wrapped in bacon are divine!)

    But beyond that kind of admittedly superficial type of relationship, I can't say that I have any alternate kind of mother figure.

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    1. As for my mom, she was awesome. She was the one who taught me how to throw a baseball, backed me up when I needed it, kicked my ass when I deserved it and just basically did all the things a great mom should.

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