My Mother Was Really Something …

My mother was a busy, bustling, talkative woman who married her high school sweetheart and lived to celebrate their 57^th wedding anniversary. The strongest woman I have ever known. Got goose-bumps at the National Anthem and tears in her eyes at America the Beautiful but damned if she’d ever admit it. And she underwent 2 hip replacements, a shoulder replacement, other major surgeries and a stubborn UTI that weakened her system, triggering a stroke and a coronary that ended her life. But through it all somehow she just didn’t believe in illness. Indeed, she was way ahead of her time in awareness of the mind-body connection.

As when at 12 or 13, I came to breakfast saying I needed to stay home as I wasn’t feeling well and she fired back, “What happened at school yesterday?”

Or when she never told me she had a major surgical procedure scheduled and I only found out after the fact. That time I actually phoned every hospital in town to find her. And then – since she apparently didn’t want me there – I had flowers delivered to her, with a card that read, “Thought you fooled me, hmh?”

My mother had many other strengths:

• Worked during WW II as a time-keeper at one of Portland’s seven shipyards – my dad was a welder.

• Taught herself to type as an adult and when I left for college assumed her first office job, taking over for me at a small television store.

• A whiz at math, she could run an amortization schedule without benefit of a calculator. She could have run her own business and, believe me, her math ability came in handy when non-numerical me was trying to sell residential real estate.

• Every year till past 70 she did the u-pick routine to make glorious strawberry jam. And at such an age she even posted an adamantly “pro choice” sticker on the front door for all to see!

Whew, no wonder I’m a risk-taker with some fierce attitudes … but lately I find myself realizing the complications in being raised by such a tough woman, together with a mellow artistic square-dance-caller father. Indeed, I find that I’m a complex amalgam of both. But her perennial scoldings -- don’t cry, be strong, don’t lean, stand on your own feet – ran me for a very long time.

Oh, over the years I’ve tried my hand at business ventures, employed considerable creativity and gave vent to a lot of anger. But now I’ve begun to embrace the foreign art of letting emotionality loose, to be soft and vulnerable. I mean, I’m learning it’s ok to cry copiously in movies or over friendships or sunsets or ANYthing that moves me. And also reaching out to friends, allowing myself to accept help when needed, working through barriers and unleashing the authentic me --brimming with ideas, tenderness, love and glee.

Positively,

Carolan