I see postings on Facebook memorializing mothers with notations that their offspring "miss them every day." Those words are posted by those who are lucky enough to have had their mothers' presence in their lives for many days. I knew my mother for 8,180 days. I imagine I have thought of her every day since she died on June 8, 1971, but she was not present in my adult life so I cannot say I miss my mother in the way I sense others miss theirs. I never really knew my mother as an adult. I was barely an adult when she died. I never got to have the type of conversations with my mother that friends in their thirties, forties, fifties, even sixties had with their mothers. I didn't know my mother as well as they knew theirs.
Twenty-two did not seem that young to lose my mother. How could I complain when I had friends who had lost their mothers as children? I was the caboose baby trailing the other two Kelly kids by eleven and nine years. I never expected to have parents into adulthood. As my then thirty-three-year-old sister said at my mother's funeral, "At least she lived a long, full life." My mother died at fifty-eight.
I did not come from a demonstrative family. It may be an Irish thing. I once told a friend I had a perfect opening line for a book but no book to go with it: "I remember the day my mother hugged me." My friend, last name Flynn, responded, "Your mother hugged you?" (I used the line in a short story but still would like to write a book go with it).
The last time I saw my mother in the hospital--she would die overnight--I considered saying "I love you," but my family didn't talk that way. A declaration like that probably would have terrified her. When my brother, who had flown up from his home in the Bahamas to see her, walked into her hospital room, she muttered, "Oh, boy. I must be in trouble." My point is that, as a family, we were not prone to emotional displays. My sister-in-law used to grab me and push me into my brother for good-bye hugs. I don't think I ever hugged my sister.
I believe, however, there is, shall we call it, subtext that indicates there was, and continues to be, true affection underlying the reserve.
I have a tendency to hold onto the grab handle above passenger car doors but have no idea why. Make that had no idea why. Sitting with my hand stuck up in the air seemed like a bizarre position. But think back to your youngest years when you were led around by adults with your arm in that exact position. In my case, often I was holding onto my mother's hand. I wonder if that is why holding that handle feels so comfortable now.
When I think of my youngest years with my mother, I recall that position and being completely engulfed in taffeta. I am sure there were other materials and I am sure there were straight skirts, but I remember burying myself in those taffeta skirts. You could hide from anyone in there. They offered such safety.
Not that I hear it very often, but I like the sound of taffeta to this day. And the smell of Chanel No. 5. And the taste of maraschino cherries plucked from a Manhattan cocktail. And travel.
My mother married a man, a devout Catholic, that she said, "would not walk to the corner if the Pope was passing by." On the other hand, all you had to say to my mother was "Do you want to go . . ." and she was in the car. Seeing the world was one thing she missed in life. When she died we found an article clipped from Look magazine with pictures of the ten best hotels in the world. She did not get to visit any of them. Perhaps that's why travel is so important to me. Perhaps, I am traveling for her.
Sometimes, overtly. When I had a layover in Tokyo after a thirty-day trip to Asia, instead of staying at the airport, I took the two-hour ride from Narita to the city, stayed at the Imperial Hotel (she loved luxury hotels), rose early and toured as much of Tokyo as I could before heading back to the airport. Walking through the Imperial Gardens, I said aloud, "Is this enough, Mother. Can I go home now?"
Sometimes, subtly. Like anytime I upgrade to a hotel room with a view in a first-class hotel when I probably could stay down the street in a Motel 6.
My mother's name was Mary. She lost her father at the age of five and was shipped off to boarding school for a few years. She came of age in the Depression and, although I don't know if she wanted to work or go to college, she did neither until the late thirties when she went to work at an insurance company and met her husband. Being a wife and mother became her job. She lived in an era when married life meant staying home and taking care of the house. Even after the kids went to school, or left the house for good, her job was to stay home. My father actually said, "No wife of mine will ever work." I don't blame him for that kind of thinking. It was the custom of his era and he wanted to do what he believed was best for my mother.
I doubt my mother ever read The Feminine Mystique but she recognized the restraints trapping mid-century women. She wanted to make sure I had options she didn't have. She explained that Ida Lupino was a director as well as an actress and that it was quite an accomplishment in that era. She urged my friends and me to move to New York and try comedy writing which was not the normal career path of teacher, nurse or secretary. (We didn't.) She made sure I knew what was going on in the world especially that there was a growing Civil Rights Movement and that people did not pay enough attention to her personal "platform" that this country had mistreated the Native Americans horribly and needed to make amends.
She taught me how to behave in public, to move around in the world and to remember that every unfortunate person was somebody's baby. She did not teach me how to cook, clean or make a bed. If I am going to stink at something, being bad at cooking, cleaning and making my bed does not worry me. Failing to be polite, self-sufficient and kind would worry me greatly.
I am a rule-follower but I didn't get that from her. When I brought home my first B in conduct, she had to console me. She felt it showed I had gumption and I was not going to let "them" push me around. I was in second grade. Maybe because of that, I was free to choose whether to follow the rules or not. Most times, I choose to follow.
My sister told me a story shortly before she died that changed my idea of my relationship with my mother. I always imagined she liked me okay, and I never really wondered if she loved me. I figured that was her job. When I was two and a half, my family had, as usual, decamped from Philadelphia to the Jersey Shore for the summer. My father stayed behind in the city and traveled down for weekends. After becoming ill, being misdiagnosed and treated incorrectly, I developed a neat trick of stopping breathing and turning blue. My sister recounted how my mother, alone at the Shore with her children, ran out of the house carrying my limp body screaming, "Somebody help me. My baby's dying." Spoiler Alert: someone did.
Whenever I think of that story, I realize what I must have meant to her. An outward reserve can hide a real depth of emotion. Even though I didn't think my mother hugged me, I suspect she did. Maybe not with her arms but in so many ways for each of those 8,180 days.
© 2021 Jane Kelly
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