My mother and her generation of women

Today, September 22nd, is my mother’s birthday. Had she still been alive, she would have been 93 years old today. I wish she had made it to that age. Sadly, she passed away in March 2001. There is not a day goes by that I don’t think of her and miss her. She lived her life her way and did things her way (like Frank Sinatra whom she liked a lot) and while that could be amazingly frustrating at times, I think it’s what kept her going through the hard times in her life. And there were a number of them, as in the lives of most people. She was not an aggressive or self-seeking person, nor a particularly talkative one. You had to pull personal information out of her about her formative years, her childhood, and even young adulthood. What I did learn from her is that her mother (my grandmother) went blind, probably in her late sixties/early seventies. My best guess is that her mother had glaucoma that was either too far gone when it was discovered, or that there were not very good treatments for glaucoma at that time (1940s). I actually searched online for an answer to the latter and found it here: http://www.brightfocus.org/questions-answers/what-was-the-primary.html. I never had the chance to meet my grandmother since she died before I was born. My mother put her own life on hold for a number of years to take care of her mother, including postponing her ambition to go to college. She had to work and she did so, probably supporting the two of them on her salary as an assistant librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library. It was there that she met my father in the early 1950s, and they were married in 1955, a year after her mother died. Whenever my mother talked about her own mother, it was always in a kind way. I never heard my mother utter one unkind word about her mother or about having to take care of her. She did express regret at not being able to finish college; she started but then had to quit. Once married, she had three children and raising them became her life. And when my father became ill with cardiovascular disease, she took care of him too, without complaining about her lot in life. She just did it.

Her birthday today reminds me of all of the older women in my mother’s generation whom I’ve had the privilege and honor of knowing, and they are not few. Most of them are dead now (had they lived, most of them would be over 85 years old): the women in my childhood neighborhood; the mothers of my close friends; my aunts; some really wonderful teachers in grade school and high school; the women I got to know in the different jobs I’ve had through the years. They inspired me with their values, sense of responsibility, commitment, loyalty, and charitable behavior. They were women of faith, many of them. They credited their faith with getting them through the hard times. They also believed in the value of family. They had their imperfections and faults, but they tried to live up to their ideals. That’s all I could really ask of role models when I needed them. I only hope that I can be half as good as they were when it’s my turn to be a role model for young women starting out. I certainly don’t feel as though I’ve got it all together. But I do look to my faith to help me through the hard times. And I remember the supportive natures of most of the older women I’ve known. If I can hang onto my faith and be supportive of others when they need my support, I guess I’ll be alright. Plus I know I’ve got my mother in my corner, rooting for me.  

In praise of fathers

I am reminded of my father at different moments in my life; I can be reading a good book or watching a movie, and suddenly I’ll think of him and want to talk to him about the book or the movie I know he would have liked. I remember our long walks on hot summer evenings when I was a teenager, just him and me, ambling slowly along Broadway in Tarrytown, down as far as the Sunnyside estate and then back. We always had something to talk about. Or I’ll remember him toward the end of his life, when illness had weakened him and he had become a fragile man. Those are the ‘memories that bless and burn’, as my mother used to say. I am reminded of him and of all of the elderly fathers in his generation who are still alive, today on Father’s Day. Some of them (like my friend Jean’s father whom I look forward to seeing each year on my annual trip to NY) are sick and struggling to get well; I send my best wishes for a good recovery from across the ocean. They are always in my thoughts and prayers, but especially today. They are a part of a generation that is fast fading away; many of them served valiantly in WWII and that experience shaped the rest of their lives. They might have married and had families, but they also shared camaraderie with their fellow soldiers, the depth of which none of us will ever really understand. Most of them were sparse with details concerning their wartime experiences. My father was no exception; we knew he was stationed in England and that he helped load bombs onto planes (the reason for his chronic back problems), but that was the extent of it. There are some photos to that effect. What he mostly imparted to us was his feelings about England--how much he loved the country and the British people. That’s what he talked about, and that’s what stayed with him many years after the war. He kept in touch with an older married couple he met there, and they would write him long letters telling him about what was going on in their little neck of England. Sometimes they sent pictures of their son and his friends. I remember the letters he received; they were always on blue airmail paper (still available at Amazon, of course: http://www.amazon.com/Kikkerland-Mailblok-Airmail-Paper-Block/dp/B004VNAOT4). I remember that paper, having written a number of airmail letters, and I can remember the excitement I felt about receiving an airmail letter in the post.

The thing that strikes me about my father now, when I think of him, was how willing he was to share his life with us. He was not a selfish man when it came to his feelings and thoughts. That is what I remember about him today, on Father’s Day, how his willingness to share his feelings and thoughts helped to create a family life that I remember to this day. Because the latter is not possible if its participants shut down, close themselves off, make themselves remote to those around them. It is not possible to be fully private and to be an active family member. I think my father found a good balance; he was a reserved man in many ways, but he was also a social one who looked forward to gathering the family at the dinner table in the evenings when we were growing up, to good conversation, and to holidays when his brother and sister would come to visit. Ours was not a perfect family; there were the requisite family dramas and squabbles as in most families. My parents didn’t always tackle them as well as they should have. But that’s not what I remember all these years later. What I remember is my father coming home from work and us children rushing to greet him at the door. Or his taking us to the Westchester County stamp fairs so that we could get interested in stamp collecting (his hobby that eventually spurred the rest of us to start our own collections). Or his taking us to the Sunday afternoon classical music concerts at the Washington Irving junior high school—classical music was another love of his. Or his willingness to discuss nearly any book you might want to discuss with him; if he hadn’t read it, he would read it so as to form an opinion about it. He left this world far too early, but what he shared with his family remains with me forever. Happy Father's Day to him and to all the fathers I know who take the chance and are willing to share their thoughts, feelings, and pastimes with their families.   

Mother's Day

Mother’s Day in the USA is this coming Sunday, May 8^th. Someone on Facebook has come up with the idea to post a picture of your mother as your profile picture until Monday May 9^th. Normally I don’t participate in very many Facebook ‘events’, but this one struck a chord and I posted a wedding picture of my mother. I think it’s a good idea and a nice way to honor our mothers on Mother’s Day.

My father passed away in 1985, and my mother in 2001. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of them both. My parents were quite strict when we were young, so it took some doing on my part to really get to know them as people and as friends, but I had managed to do that by the time I entered my twenties. I remember being afraid of my mother when I was a child; she had her rules and ways of doing things, and you did not want her to get angry at you if you broke the rules or ignored her wishes. But she was also the type of mother who had milk and cookies ready for us each day after school, and the door to our house was always open to our friends. She liked our friends. Several of my friends to this day will still comment on how kind my parents were to them when they were growing up, especially when there were problems or emergencies. That is always nice to hear, because I remember them that way too. And when we finished each school year, they would take us and our friends out for ice cream sodas at the local Howard Johnson restaurant. Those are nice memories.  

After my father died, my mother and I became close friends. It was a friendship that was defined in large part by her personality, likes and dislikes—she was a quiet person by nature, reserved rather than extroverted, friendly, curious but not nosy, kind, hospitable, not a big talker, and not a gossip. She was a doer and we enjoyed doing a lot of different things together--going out shopping, walking, exploring new towns, driving around just to drive around and take in the local sights, and going to the theater or ballet in Manhattan. She was born in Brooklyn but moved to Tarrytown when she married my father. She ended up loving Tarrytown and was a member of the Tarrytown Historical Society. One of the things I miss most about her is her incredible holiday spirit. It was infectious, the energy she had around the holidays, especially Christmas. She loved everything about Advent and Christmas and could not wait to start Christmas shopping. She pushed for getting the tree up and decorated each year. She loved buying gifts for others and was generous in that way to a fault. She thought very little about herself and I always remember worrying about that as I was growing up. It always seemed to me that she should pay more attention than she did to her own wishes and dreams. But she didn’t. When she got old, she had very few wishes; the few that she had were easy to fulfill—we would go shopping in White Plains and then eat lunch at the local diner. We always ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a dill pickle and cole slaw on the side, followed by coffee or tea.  She was a real tea drinker—she loved her tea. Sometimes during the summer, she wanted to go to Friendly’s in Pleasantville to get an ice cream sundae, and that was always fun, getting in the car and driving around the Tarrytown Lakes and talking about the changes in the town and the area on our way to Pleasantville. When I visited her on my annual trips to New York from 1990 onward, I would stay with her and we would enjoy our movie nights—watching videos of some of the old films that she liked, like Adam’s Rib, Meet Me in St. Louis, Home Alone, White Christmas, and others. I find it both comforting and sad to watch those films now, because they always remind me of her. It is funny what we remember about our parents; my father was a great reader and I remember my talks with him about the books he/we had read, or about the business world and his work experiences, or about faith and the church. With my mother, our conversations were more oriented toward school, the teachers, the women in the neighborhood who were her friends, local events, and the like. She spoke very little about her youth, but as she got older, I tried to absorb the little information she did share, so that I could get some idea about her mother and father, both of whom died before she married and had her own children. She always spoke well of her father; he seemed to have really loved and respected her mother. I do know that her mother went blind when she got older and that my mother lived with her and took care of her; I understand now that my grandmother probably had glaucoma and that there was no treatment for it at that time, with resultant blindness. She was also close to her brother, but did not see much of him or her sister after she married. But that seemed to be more common in those days; women married and had families; husbands and children became their priorities. This was prior to the feminist movement. But my mother did not really have many tales to tell about her growing up, and we always wondered why she was so secretive about her youth. It always made us that much more curious, but she did not spill the beans no matter how much we questioned her about her childhood. With my father, it was quite different. He was quite willing to share his childhood and teenage experiences with us. I feel that I got to know my father in a way that I never quite managed with my mother.

A few years ago I took it upon myself to make a family album for myself and my sister and brother. When my mother died, my sister and I went through her belongings and found many old black and white photos and the corresponding negatives. I spent some years sorting through them all, arranging them chronologically. I scanned the good photos and made a digital photo book that came out surprisingly well, especially the photo reproduction of my parents’ wedding reception at the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn. It is amazing to see all their family members and friends gathered in one place—a perfect photo in such regard. I have spent a lot of time poring over that one photo, trying to identify each person at the reception. This leads me back to the photo of my mother that I posted on Facebook; it is her wedding photo and she looks beautiful and happy. It is a reminder to me once again that my mother was a young woman with hopes and dreams of her own, and that she looked forward to her marriage and her future in the same way as every other bride. Not everything worked out as she would have liked, that I know. It never does. My father’s illnesses were something that neither of them could have predicted would assume such a large place in their lives. Yet my mother stayed energetic and positive until the end, something which also makes me admire her since I doubt that I would have had half her energy and positive outlook faced with similar situations. So on this Mother’s Day, I honor her memory by writing about her. She has influenced me in so many ways, and I am forever grateful for having had the time to spend with her as she got older. I only wish it had been more in the few years before she passed. But she never complained about my living in Norway, and I remember that she told me that she planned to come to stay with me in Oslo a few weeks before she died. I would have loved that.