Yesterday would have been my Mom's 97th birthday, if she had not left us in her 91st year. But in her honor at this time, I want to post something I wrote while she was in her eighties, and still very much alive. I know everyone loves their mother, and that is wonderful. But I want to let you know that everyone loved MY mother, too. And she pretty much loved them all back. Here is my tribute to "Bertie," the most influential person in my life.
FLYING, LOOKIN’ BACK
When I was about twelve years old, I received my most memorable lesson in avoiding stereotypes based on sex about household responsibilities and duties. It came from my very traditional, role model mother. I don’t remember if I was asked or not, but I do remember that I washed or dried the dishes after dinner. My brother and I usually made a high-stakes game of it by tossing the dinnerware across the kitchen, piece by piece, from the drying rack to the cabinet where it was stored. This was how we honed our skills as football receivers and gold-glove baseball defensive players. It takes concentration and soft hands to avoid parental remonstrance. In my memory, there was never a broken piece of pottery as a result of our game.
On this evening, I do not remember if I was washer or dryer, pitcher or receiver. What I do remember is that I sassily said to my mother after the last piece was put away, “That’s gratitude for you; you didn’t even say ‘thank you’.” My mother was (and still is) the most traditional of Southern women. She did not work for money outside the home except for a brief stint at a family restaurant which her brother was managing at the time. What she said to me was all she needed to say to turn upside down my half-kidding reference to the belief that the household was her total responsibility. She said, “And did you thank me?” You see, she had made the dinner, as she always did, and it was ready for me when I returned from the paper route (from which I kept all the income). The dinner probably consisted of four or five vegetables (three or four of which she had canned, pickled or preserved after picking from our garden), maybe some meat of an inexpensive variety, and at least three choices of dessert. She always did that. No, I had not thanked her nor had I thanked my father, whose labor provided the funds with which the purchased food was bought and who worked with her to plant, weed, and harvest the home garden. It was all taken as my due until that night.
Arresting and memorable as this moment was, it does not scratch the surface of the quotes, slogans, poems and prayers that are the pieces that make up the mosaic of my mother’s legacy to her children and to the rest of the world.
We began calling her Bertie by the time I was in my teens, a name that had evolved from the time when I was six and was first allowed to see her after she had a serious operation. I thought she sure was “purtie.” Through the convolutions of time and word play (one of the favorite family recreations) her name became Bertie, just as my next elder brother became “Fog” and I (the youngest) was “Bones, Sr.: or “Sens Bonior,” alternately while the eldest brother evolved from “Bones, Jr.” to “Jones.” And the last word on any factual disagreement was hers. She knew everything and she remembered clearly, “Everything.” It was not just an article of faith - it was fact. When she spoke, we would look at each other, acknowledging the frailties of our own remembrances with the debate - ending litany, “Bertie Knows.” She didn’t argue. She didn’t have to.
The store of sayings is folksy, funny and frequently obscure. “Fine as frog’s hair,” is not original or particularly unusual. But “looking like he had corn to sell” seemed to describe a particularly self-congratulatory stance or manner. To me it conjured up a vision of pomaded hair and a puffy chest. The articles of clothing were not essential to the image - could be bib overalls or could be blue serge suit. It was the attitude that mattered most.
In my middle teens, my mother made sure I learned, “An answer to a maiden’s prayer is not a chin of stubby hair.” This delayed my mustache for twenty years and my full beard for another fifteen. By that time, I was no longer looking for maidens. The only other advice I remember in the romance department was that in looking for a mate, I would do well to spend at least as much time considering the idiosyncrasies of the mother as the charms of the daughter. Once again, Bertie knew.
I’m not sure I ever figured out what a “Drugstore Cowboy” was. I am reasonably sure it was not a compliment. Maybe it was the way they straddled the stools at the ice cream bar. More likely it was the way they sort of hung out in front of the store, looking important. I’ll bet some of them looked like they thought they had corn to sell.
The most obscure saying but also the most intriguing is the expression, “Flying, looking back.” It seems to evoke in each person, a slightly different image: maybe recklessness from not looking where you are going; or speed so great that the wind forces you to turn your eyes away; or such a happy feeling of being alive that you are looking back in pleasure over the movement, excitement, and the joy of life! That’s my image. But there is also just the slightest bit of the dog with its nose turned into the wind that we have all seen in windows of cars and the back of pickup trucks. Excitement, happiness but speed so great that it’s not entirely comfortable.
There are other stories and other sayings. But the common thread that emerges is that they are about people, their attitudes, their foibles and their eccentricities. And they are funny, rather than hurtful. They are empathetic and not critical. They recognize that we are all wonderfully different but yet distressingly similar.
Bertie has always been a student of human nature, an affirming, loving and humorous observer of people. On the affirming and loving side, she is the confessor, the therapist and the lay psychologist. She is an unschooled practitioner of the therapy of just listening without comment. My strongest memory of childhood is of Bertie, holding the phone to her ear and saying every five to ten minutes the only word needed to provide the talker on the other end of the line a breath before the next onslaught. She would say, “Well,” in a slightly lilting way as if it were preceding a sentence which never followed; or as if it were a question; or an expression of sympathy. That one word served to provide her side of the conversation. And people always called with their problems.
She has always cared about people. When she’s worried, she bakes cakes, cookies and pies. I had one uncle who, when presented with the usual three or four options being offered for dessert, would say “Have you been worrying about something this week, Addie?” Most of the time, when she worries, it’s about other people. That’s what her life is about.
There is no way to describe the “little girl” sense of humor she has retained into her 80’s. I can only give quick snap-shots of a seventy-something woman, sitting with her grandchildren around a table having a contest to see who could make the most realistic animal sounds. She always won the donkey sound and I swear, I could see her nose vibrate. Or the time we got her on a go-cart at a track. She may not have broken the record for speed or shortest lap time but she still holds the record for smiles per mile.
No discussion of Bertie would be complete without mentioning her faith. When I was about six or seven years old, I asked her about heaven. I told her that although I enjoyed singing with the family, the thoughts of floating around playing a harp and singing all the time was not my idea of fun. I thought we should play baseball, hide-and-seek and flashlight tag. Bertie responded with something which comforted my young mind a great deal. “ We don’t know what it’s like, but we can be sure that it is going to be much better than anything we have ever known here.” Another example is when I complimented her on the dress she wore to her eldest granddaughter’s wedding. She told me it was an answer to prayer. I asked her if she thought God really cared what she wore to her granddaughter’s wedding and her response was classical simple faith: “He might not care what I wear to the wedding, but He cares about the little things that are important to me.”
If anyone ever gets to heaven it should be Bertie. And on her way to heaven I believe she will be able to remember her life of service to others. Then, maybe for the first time and maybe not for the first time, but definitely and for certain at that time, she will be flying, lookin’ back. Looking back at a life well lived and a world made infinitely better because she was here.
Dennis S. Clower
