When I was a sophomore in college, I contracted mononucleosis. I felt miserable. Fever, fatigue, severe sore throat. Nothing tasted good.
I tried to tough it out for a few days in the off-campus apartment where I lived with three other friends, but they weren’t much in the way of nurses. I knew there was only one way I was going to get better soon.
Fly home to momma.
That was the first memory that came to mind when my wife, Betty Gail, suggested I might write this week about memories of our mothers, both now deceased.
I’m now into my fourth generation of observing motherhood.
My mother’s mother lived with us when I was growing up. From her I got the first inkling that it’s easier to be a grandparent than a parent.
Our daughter, Elizabeth, is raising our three grandsons in Nashville with her husband, Chris. I am thankful for how she has grown into such a fine mother, way more patient than I ever was as a parent.
And, of course, there’s Betty Gail, with whom I partnered in raising two children and who brought tenderness, compassion and complete selflessness to the task.
On Mother’s Day, though, the women Betty Gail and I perhaps think of most are the ones who raised each of us.
In some ways, the two women were alike. Both were strong-willed women who sometimes clashed with their husbands, mine way more so. They both liked to cook and were good at it. Both worked outside the home. Both loved their children and grandchildren unconditionally.
But they were different, too. Marguerite liked being married while my mother, not so much. That might be why Marguerite’s marriage lasted 65 years while my mother’s half as long.
Marguerite would always sit down at meals with her family. My mother rarely did. Maybe that’s the difference between raising two children and seven.
Marguerite grew up in the country and with that developed a lifelong love and respect for nature. She passed that on to her daughters, scolding Betty Gail at the age of 4 when she tried to stomp on a frog. One summer, Marguerite made bug nets out of metal coat hangers and netting she had around the house so the two girls, and two boys who were visiting their grandparents next door, could catch butterflies, grasshoppers and other insects, about which Marguerite would then teach them.
My mother was kind to animals and liked flowers, too. She also tackled nature with gusto. Rather than spray for weeds, she’d pull them out by hand. When two oak trees in her yard produced what seemed like hundreds of seedlings, she would spend hours each year digging them out.
Betty Gail learned from her mother how to be a good nurturer. I learned from my mother how to be thick-skinned and independent.
Not sure that I always deserved the trust my mother put in me, but it allowed me to learn from my mistakes and feel confident about going far away for college and ultimately settling in Mississippi, rather than my home state of Kansas.
By the time I was in high school, my parents had gone through a bitter divorce, and my father had moved to California. Since I lived with my mother, most of the parenting decisions fell to her. She was not a helicopter parent.
The summer before my senior year of high school, I asked her for permission to drive to Mexico with a friend, Manuel, with whom I worked at a neighborhood restaurant. The plan was to drive his car to his hometown in Mexico, and I would drive it back alone to Kansas City — a 1,300-mile trip — while he stayed behind for a few more weeks.
She said OK, which surprises me more now than it did back then. This was before the invention of cellphones. If the car had trouble or we had an accident, we’d have to figure it out. She was hesitant, but she thought I could handle it, and I did.
When a mother bird helps teach its baby how to fly — and thus survive in the wild — it comes with a price. That baby bird strikes out on its own.
When I flew home from college with mononucleosis, it was because I knew my mother would nurse me back to health. She did it through all my childhood illnesses and had the knack like no one else. But those two weeks of recuperation didn’t change the arc of my life.
She would years later tell me that she had stopped trying to influence my decisions. “You’re going to do what you’re going to do,” she said. I would just shrug my shoulders because we both knew she was right.
There are many things for which I am indebted to my mother. She gave me life and lots of brothers and sisters. She made me feel loved and worthy. She taught me to value honesty, hard work and education.
And she let me become the person I wanted to be.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
