Things my mother taught me

As I've mentioned elsewhere, my mother did not teach me many domestic skills. I don't think she had mastered many to teach, but she made sure she passed as few as possible onto me. I am trying to think of one but basically I am useless around the house. 

But why dwell on the negative? Here is what she did teach me.

How to set a table

I might not be able to cook appealing food to serve, but I can set a mean table. My mother wasn’t much of a cook (by choice) but she could entertain. 

I scared her once when she returned from some afternoon outing and found the table set for a formal dinner. "Did I forget I invited someone?" No, I just set the table. She had to pull something together for us to eat. I wonder who got stuck with the dishes.

There is little demand for this skill these days but I don’t care. I love a formally set table. 

How to travel

Largely because my father, Richard “The Homing Pigeon” Kelly, hated to travel, my mother did not get to as many places as she would have liked. We did a lot of trips to New York (day and weekend), but New York was a short train ride or an easy car ride away. She wanted to make sure I knew how to travel via plane. So, even though DC was also an easy train ride away, when we visited, we flew.

We flew Capital or Capitol Airlines (I need to find the pictures to check spelling) from Philadelphia to Washington’s National Airport (now Reagan). I learned about taxi queues and doormen. Which brings us to another travel category: hotels.

How to behave in a hotel

My mother loved hotels. On our first trip to DC we stayed at the Sheraton Carlton which is currently the St. Regis at 16th and K. Its restaurant was the first place, and maybe the only place, I used finger bowls. On our second trip we moved across K Street to the Statler Hilton. Probably an economy move. 

Even on day trips to New York we often ate in hotels. Lunch or tea at the Plaza. Dinner and cocktails at the Waldorf. 

When we stayed the weekend, it was often at the Waldorf. Since the Duke and Dichess of Windsor (before all their faults were revealed) lived in the Towers, we had to stay there too. Eventually, my father talked her out of the Towers onto the standard-priced floors and finally into the Taft Hotel which he swore was more convenient to wherever we were going. Probably Broadway. 

Her love of hotels rubbed off on her kids. My brother went to Cornell for hotel management. I still am happiest in a hotel. With my family’s encouragement, I noted the number of the first hotel room I ever stayed in: 1410 in the Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City,  New Jersey. There is no plaque.

Years later, just before it was renovated, I stayed at the Waldorf. It was like time travel to a very genteel time. I had been in a super-modern Yotel a few nights before. I loved both hotels. I think my mother would have too.

How to manage my finances.

She taught me how to save but not too much or for too long. She would save until she could (with her little companion--me) splurge on a trip or outing. Okay, maybe I should have listened to my father more on this one. He probably wouldn’t have encouraged a woman approaching retirement age to move to another country for a year of graduate school but my mother would have heartily approved. 

How to listen.

Mine was one of those mothers who liked to talk to strangers. But she never talked at them. She talked with them. She listened. She might not have gotten to see a lot of new places but she got to meet a lot of new people no matter where she was. 

How to think about how other people feel. 

She once accused my father of being too nice but I think she was just as kind. I cannot think of a time I saw her be rude or say a cruel thing.  Intentionally or unintentionally. 

In my opinion, kindness is the most important thing to teach your child - even if she really can’t keep a meticulous house. My mother taught that lesson well. 

© 2022 Jane Kelly

Cocktail hour with the Kellys

When most kids were collecting bottle tops, I was collecting little paper umbrellas from cocktail lounges. Eventually, the collection wore out and was discarded but the sentimental attachment remains. To this day, I am surprisingly at home in a bar.  Especially for someone who barely drinks. 

Just about any drinking establishment will do, but I do have a preference for a place that stocks paper umbrellas or the 21st century equivalent. Cocktail lounges. Lobby bars. Places with comfortable chairs clustered around low tables. They are my favorites. The kind of place where you linger and the visit is not about alcohol as much as relaxation and conversation. Where you feel at home. At least, I do. Possibly because our living room became a cocktail lounge every afternoon.

My parents were fifties parents. Strong believers in cocktails. Every night when my father got home from work, they would appear in the living room with a large silver tray stocked with cocktails and their favorite hors d'ouevres: cheese and crackers. I say they because they prepared the tray together. There was no hint of the little woman waiting patiently with a cocktail for her hubby returning from the business wars. They might have been fifties parents, but my mother was never a fifties housewife.

Originally, the cocktails arrived in a silver cocktail shaker that might well have been a wedding gift in 1937. Then, they received a lovely silver-trimmed pitcher as a gift. Very elegant. A lovely tradition, until they discovered that Skippy Peanut Butter jars had measurement markers on the side. At that point, the pitcher disappeared to be replaced by two Skippy Peanut Butter jars--one for her, one for him--that held perfectly mixed drinks. 

My mother would have to run to the kitchen occasionally to make sure dinner didn't burn but for the most part the next hour was devoted to conversation. I would hang around sometime, but I don't recall ever interrupting. I did, however, snack from the tray as the two friends chatted over Manhattans (I got the cherries), martinis (I never wanted the olives) and Gibsons (I was thrilled when they switched to cocktail onions). To this day, cheese and crackers are comfort food to me. Cocktail hour was far more important to me in my formative years and as a memory than dinner.

My parents really enjoyed each other's company. They shared a friendship of the type that modern research tells us is so important in a couple. They never ran out of conversation.

My father outlived my mother by less than three years. I don't think I ever realized until this moment how painful cocktail hour must have been for him without his best friend. I don't recall his ever having a pre-dinner cocktail after she died.

NOTE: A little irony. On March 7, 2020 I was lingering after an MWA New York meeting with some friends and told them that was my favorite way to spend a Saturday afternoon, sitting around a table, this one in a pubby-like bar, having good conversation. By the next Saturday, no one was hanging out in any bars. Over a year later, I still haven't been able to do that again. I don't miss the drinking. I do miss the conversation. It just isn't the same on Zoom.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

My mother and the man from the bleachers

Within the past few years, I was walking through a store and noticed that little, round, plastic, blow-up pools were on sale for $.99. $.99! I cannot tell you how much I wanted one of those pools as a child, but my parents never relented. I, who was overindulged in more ways than I could list, was never given a simple plastic pool. That sale got me wondering why. 

Parents in the early 1950s were understandably fearful of polio and there was a relationship between swimming pools and transmission, but I don't think plastic pools no more than 48 inches in diameter were the issue.  Also, I think my desire for a plastic pool extended beyond the polio scare. I did not understand. And then it hit me. Baseball. Not an actual baseball. The idea of baseball.

My parents loved baseball. I am pretty sure that baseball had not been routinely broadcast on television for many seasons when I started asking for a blow-up pool. Realizing that made me understand. It wasn't that my parents didn't want me to have a pool. They didn't want to sit outside and watch me in it. Not when there was a Phillies game on. And, if recall from childhood memories of baseball sounds flowing onto the street through the windows of mostly unairconditioned houses, there were a lot of televised games.

Just as an aside, denied a blowup pool, I spent the summer digging a pool in the back yard. I was completely focused on my construction project. Well, that and the tile collection I assembled from the dirt I excavated. My efforts evolved into both a construction and an archaeological project-- all to the accompaniment of roaring crowds and the click of a bat hitting a ball (although not that often when the Phillies were at bat).

My mother loved baseball. Truly loved the game. My interest has always been superficial. However, I have always loved an underdog. (If you were going to be any kind of sports fan in Philadelphia you had to develop a love for underdogs.) So when New York got a new team with an impressive stream of losses, I had to love the New York Mets. And since I was entering my teen-age years, some sort of infatuation had to factor in. I developed an affection for Ed Kranepool. How I don't recall, but I was devoted to him as well as to Troy Donahue, Edd "Kookie" Burns and, inexplicably, Walter Pidgeon.

So, my mother, always interested in a trip anywhere new, got tickets for a Mets' home game at Shea Stadium. She got three so we could take along Debbie Shettsline, now Wernert, a true baseball fan as well as an admirer of Ed Kranepool. However, Debbie got sick and had to bow out at the last minute leaving my mother with an extra front row, box seat, along the first baseline. I don't know if she could return it, but I don't think she ever thought of doing that. Instead, we lurked near the ticket office until my mother saw a man headed for the box office. I suspect she could see that he was going to buy one ticket for the bleachers. Being a teenaged girl, I might have kept my distance as she sidled up to him and asked if he'd like to use our ticket. Not buy it. Use it.  

I still remember what the guy looked like. Average. Summer clothes appropriate for the ballpark. Nothing fancy about him. The kind of guy who likely stopped by his neighborhood bar on the way home from work. I don't know why but he struck me as single, no kids. Maybe because he was alone at the ballpark on an afternoon when most people were working.  It's easier to say what he did not look like. A doctor. A lawyer. A judge. Since it was a weekday afternoon, he probably did not work on Wall Street.

When we took our seats, this man thought he had died and gone to baseball heaven. He pointed out the bleachers where he thought he'd be sitting. He and my mother made easy conversation and he taught us all about the Mets. He bought us drinks and snacks. The three of us had a wonderful time together.

It was a great afternoon at the ballpark. The weather was gorgeous. The Mets won. Partially because in the first inning Ed Kranepool came up second in the Met lineup and hit a home run. My mother enjoyed making me happy, but she also took great joy in making that man happy. I am sure we knew his name at the time, but I have long since forgotten it. I would suspect that he is no longer on the planet, but I bet until the day he passed on he remembered his day at Shea Stadium with my mother.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

Happy Birthday, Mommy

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

 

Going downtown with Mommy

If you asked me to conjure a special memory of my mother at home, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with one. Certainly, there are no memories of her in the kitchen like the ones so many daughters cherish. Given time, I am sure I could recall some remembrances from somewhere inside the house, but what leaps to my mind are the times we spent elsewhere. Anywhere else. If local, in downtown Philadelphia.

Some of my earliest memories are sitting beside her on rides through pitch-black subway tunnels on trains that in the darkness seemed to fly through the air. A dead giveaway that they didn't? The blue sparks flying off the tracks and the screeching of the metal wheels. They never scared me because Mommy was in the seat beside me.

Most outings within Philadelphia were shopping trips that included lunch at Wanamakers. Like many local kids my age, I remember going to the tearoom at Wanamaker's Department Store. My mother always asked for Little Nellie's station and I ordered tea sandwiches (no egg - I was allergic), chocolate milk and chocolate-mint ice cream. It would be my choice today if the restaurant were still open. Well, maybe I'd skip the chocolate milk.

Although I remember many shopping trips, I got to, or perhaps had to, shop two days a year. One in the fall for school clothes. One in the spring for summer clothes. Get what you wanted then or you wouldn't be getting it. With two exceptions (unless she happened onto something she thought you should want which happened fairly frequently):  a Christmas dress and an Easter outfit. And for many years, an Easter bonnet.

Easter was really the height of the fashion season in our house. If I had to guess, I would estimate that 40% of all photos in my childhood were taken at Easter. Easter eggs were great but the day was all about new clothes. Dresses, coats, shoes, handbags and hats. Most importantly hats. My mother loved hats. Luckily, she needed one for every Sunday at church.

My sister liked to tell a story about shopping with my mother in the fifties. Think average costs. Houses around $10K. Cars $2K - $4K. This story involved a hat. I remember the hat involved. A brown satin cloche with jewels on one side. She wore it a lot. Good thing.

In those days, women could not have their own credit cards, but my father had provided my mother with "charga-plates" for all the Philadelphia stores. I think this story might have involved Blum's. I always picture my mother and sister stepping out onto Chestnut Street on a cold winter night. My mother clutches her hatbox in her hand.  Let me mention at this point that hats were not returnable.

     Mother to my sister Rosemary: Did you happen to notice how much that cost?

     My sister, being her daughter, had not.

     The answer: $55. One percent of a house, but only if you rounded up. 

Did I mention I got my financial sense from my mother?

Shoes were also big in our world. Even though my father believed that no one should wear cheap shoes, I swear I saw my mother, when asked the price of a pair of shoes, hold up one shoe and give the cost--of one shoe. 

Even I got annoyed with her when it came time to buy shoes to go with my prom dress. Everyone was getting shoes dyed at Beck's or Dial's where they cost $2.98. My dress was cream-colored so, according to my mother, I had to have the perfect tone silk shoes to match. $38 then. Roughly $317 today. Even I found that extravagant--although because she is the one who brought me up I no longer do. In her defense, my feet did not hurt.

Few people knew that before there was a Saks Fifth Avenue in suburban Philadelphia there was a small store tucked in the corner of Center City Gimbel's store. My mother did. One Easter she gave me a shopping experience there that harkened back to the 1940s. I recall standing on a platform in a designer coat while saleswomen--more than one--fetched accessories. I ended up with a wool dress to match the coat, a crepe dress to match the coat lining, shoes, a handbag, gloves and even the right tone pantyhose. Or maybe stockings. It was a long time ago. Shortly thereafter the sixties started. I am glad I had that experience before it was too late. I am sure that kind of shopping experience is still available, but not in my current world.

My mother was all about getting me out--of the house or of our town. She wanted me to have many varied experiences. I think, maybe, so she could have them too. I am grateful she took me along.

Television helped my family eat better

My brother, nine years older, once said to me. "Boy, when we were growing up, it was so all-American, apple pie and Mom." I looked at him as if he were nuts. That was not my experience of childhood or of my mother. A friend, I've long forgotten who, once told me that my mother was "not very motherly." I think she meant it as a compliment. I certainly took it as one.

My mother was a housewife and mother from 1938 to 1971. I don't think she minded the mother thing but she was never into the housewife part. At least as long as I knew her. One of my fondest memories is coming home and finding her sitting in the living room with the woman who came to clean our house -- eating snacks and watching soap operas together. I gave one of my characters a mother like mine - a woman who not only didn't like to perform housecleaning, she didn't want to witness it. 

Recently, I came upon photos of my parents with my brother and sister doing kid activities. Again, not my experience. Ask me about my collection of drink umbrellas. 

The secret of my friendship with my mother is not that she did kiddie activities with me. I did adult activities with her. I was her buddy, her pal for excursions to get her out of the house and away from any related chores.

The lifestyle my mother and I shared was supported by the weekly allowance she received allegedly for the household. From that, she was expected to feed a family of five. Which she did. Every week she would make a list, call a gentleman named Mr. Rossman and read it to him. She would then unlock the back door and, within hours, a carton of groceries would appear like magic on our kitchen counter. The bulk of her allowance went to Mr. Rossman. She stashed the rest away for outings, some just local, but often day trips from our home in Philadelphia to New York. 

She took me on shopping trips and to Broadway shows but, in the early days of television, she soon discovered that TV shows offered free entertainment. She had to cover train fare, taxis, meals and entertainment with what she could save from the food budget. There was nothing you could do about train and taxi rates, and meals with her were never a bargain, so I guess she tried to economize on entertainment. As television grew, she was in. Television audiences paid nothing.

My first free, in-person experience of a TV show was actually in Philadelphia at Action in the Afternoon. Our local CBS affiliate built a small western town behind their studios and every weekday afternoon broadcast a live western. I have no recollection of seeing it on television but I recall a visit to the set with my mother. A cowboy crouched beside me, lowering himself to my level to be nice but I buried my head in my mother's big, wide, 1950s skirt. My mother, however, did not let my reticence deter her. Having exhausted Philadelphia's television resources, we were off to New York.

In the early days, the Today Show might have had a window where you could watch the live broadcast, but no way my mother and I would have been up and in New York in time for that. The show did, however, offer one oddity. They had a camera and a monitor set somewhere in the wall or window of 30 Rock where you could see yourself on television even when the show wasn't on. I vaguely remember my mother taking me there. I don't recall seeing myself but I do remember the black and white screen and people's amazement at seeing themselves on it. My mother would have had to lift me so I could see myself, but I am sure she did. It's the kind of treat she would have wanted me to experience. In those days, seeing yourself on a screen was not commonplace.

The earliest clear, albeit brief, memory I have of traveling with my mother is having lunch or tea at the Palm Court in the New York Plaza. I suspect I was about four because I remember wearing a fancy dress for our trip and feeling too small for my chair. I recall the excitement of seeing the actress, Ann Southern, at a nearby table. Aside from that cowboy from our local station, I don't recall any previous in-person sighting of someone from my TV screen. Ann Southern did not disappoint. She was every inch the star with a mink coat draped over the back of her chair. I think that may have been the same day my mother took me to see The Big Payoff an early television quiz show. I can envision where we sat but I can't figure out how she got me in there. Maybe there was a time when there was no age restriction for TV audiences or maybe she told them if there was an age limitation they should have put it on the ticket. I have an odd feeling it might have been the latter. 

As I got older, my mother included my friends in these trips. I remember bits and pieces. I recall getting interviewed to try out for Password (my friend, Debbie, got an invitation) but not seeing the show. I have no idea who the celebrity guests were. I guess after the excitement with Ann Southern I had gotten pretty blasé.  I know there had to be other shows, but I have no idea what they were. Maybe watching the Game Show Network would conjure a few memories.

When the proliferation of talk shows hit the airwaves my mother latched onto two. The Merv Griffin Show and the Dick Cavett Show. These shows, especially Cavett, had incredible guests. I wonder who they were. Even when I can pinpoint the week I went to Cavett and look at the guest lists, I just cannot remember. I must have carried the blasé thing too far. 

An aside: I know we saw Sonny and Cher somewhere. Not sure if Cavett or Griffin. They were not yet the megastars they became in the early 1970s. My mother became a huge fan but died before they hit it really, really big.

My mother had her fifteen minutes of fame on the Merv Griffin Show. She wasn't seeking it. We'd gone with a friend of mine and her mother. The show decided to play a prank on an audience member. I hate pranks and the one that day was particularly unfunny. I would say that even if they had not played the trick on my mother. They told her that her seat (on the aisle in the balcony) was reserved but she was welcome to sit on the steps to watch the show. I know. Hilarious, eh? I have tried to locate the clip because it shows not only that she was a good sport but that she was gracious about the whole episode. I would have advised the "comedy" writers to find other work.

NOTE: You had a very sad experience at the Merv Griffin Show. A comedian bombed. Deservedly but still it was sad to see. I remember he turned to Merv and said, "Help me, Merv. I'm dying here." The flop sweat was visible. On the way out I heard his mother explaining, "They just didn't understand him." I never remembered his name, so I don't know if he ever pulled himself together, got new material and succeeded. He had a lot of work to do.

My mother watched television at home too. Needed to avoid that housework! So, she knew when The Mike Douglas Show was moving to Philadelphia. She got tickets for the first day and we ended up in the first row. I had to look up that the show featured Vic Damone, Vivian Vance and John Gavin. I only remember John Gavin because by then I was a teenager and he was very handsome. (I think Sheldon Leonard may have been on too, but my Google search showed Sheldon Lewis. Since he had been dead for several years by that time, I am ruling him out.  That I would remember.)

Years later my sister said that she always knew when my mother was planning a trip to New York because we would be eating hot dogs for a week. That wasn't true. I don't think my mother ever ate a hot dog in her life.  I understood my sister's point but I think she was looking at things from the wrong angle. Yes, my mother's food allowance supported our adventures but expensive Broadway shows would have limited the menu. But not television.  Television helped my family eat better.