Mother’s Day is coming fast. It reminds me how lucky I was to have a good, caring mother who watched out for me all her life. Mothers are like that.
Sometimes, of course, that watching out part was a bit of a problem. Not that I did anything bad, but, as boys will, I got into my share of trouble. All part of growing up, I say. Always, it seems, she was keeping an eye on me.
Take the time we were at Cook’s Pond, for example. I was all of three or four and not exactly a fish in water. At that point how my older brothers managed to float around on their backs without effort was a mystery to me, never mind swimming like eels, diving under and a dozen other feats which older brothers practice on a regular basis just to make sure you realize they are that much better than you.
Meanwhile, I practiced swimming in shallow water, occasionally trying to swallow the pond from time to time.
Wandering up to my neck and dancing on my tiptoes, I flirted along the shoreline, no doubt pretending that I was actually swimming in a vain attempt to deceive my brothers into thinking I was catching up fast. Then, the bottom fell out. Literally.
I do remember something of darkness and swallowing a lot of water, before everything went black. I awoke to my mother’s face as she pumped the last of the pond out of me on shore.
I guess that was the first time I realized how important mothers were. That is, the kind of mothers who really watch over you and worry about you and kind of keep an eye on you, even when you think they’re not looking. I learned my lesson: don’t go in deep water until you can swim. It is an appropriate metaphor.
My brothers, of course, contributed to my delinquency whenever they got the opportunity.
Most of the time, however, they acted as buffers for potential future mistakes. They would make the mistakes and get duly punished for them. I would jot down the experiences in my mind for future reference under the category: Things to avoid if you don’t want to get punished.
This just made matters worse. Since I didn’t try anything I had seen them get in trouble for, I pretty much avoided getting punished most of my childhood. This drove them to distraction at times. I was a quick learner.
The other half was that to survive we all had to work together. My sister had her chores, my brothers and I had our chores, and my mom worked 24 hours a day, it seemed. Growing up, we didn’t have much at all, but we survived, mostly due to supermom.
Saturday was wash day, for example, with my mom rolling out the washer into the middle of the kitchen floor, hooking it up to the sink and beginning the Herculean task of washing four kids’ dirty clothes. I still think about how that all worked, with the clothes going through a ringer following the wash, then hanging them all out on the line to dry.
When the wash was finished, she rolled the machine back and proceeded to wash and wax the kitchen floor, while one of us usually got the job of vacuuming.
Sometime later in the day, the clothes would start to come back in from drying, load after load, and the ironing would start. When I read about Sisyphus rolling the rock up the mountain every day, I understood immediately.
Her labor of love, however, created a home. Saturday night aromas still linger in my memories today. The smell of fresh wash off the line, ironing stacked on the table, baked beans in the oven for supper all mixed together, along with a gleaming kitchen floor. I think I can still smell it if I try hard enough.
Besides being part psychologist, chef, mechanic and farmer, my mother also had an unofficial doctor’s degree, which she put to use time and time again.
Like the time I accidentally put my hand through the kitchen window or the time my brother Sammy fell out of a 30 foot pine tree and suffered a concussion (that’s another story) or the time I tried unsuccessfully to cut off my foot at the ankle with an axe.
I can’t even count the number of surgical procedures she successfully practiced on us. Take the axe incident, for example. I was out chopping brush in the field behind the house with an axe my father had only recently sharpened up for me. When my father sharpened axes, you could shave with them. Really. You didn’t run your finger down the edge, like my city cousin did one day after dad had just finished sharpening up a hatchet.
“Wow that is sharp!” remarked my cousin, blood pouring out of his finger.
“Go inside and get that bandaged up now,” my father replied. “I told you not to do that.”
Needless to say, I was always careful with the axes he touched up. But cutting brush can be tricky. I swung, the axe glanced off a stump and hit into the top of my boot. I grimaced and looked down, but I didn’t see anything.
Lucky me, I thought, and continued my chore. Then, I felt something squishy inside the boot. The one that I had hit. I looked again and realized that I had made a very neat cut right through the boot which paralleled a lace, making it almost unnoticeable.
Once inside the house and in a chair with my foot up, I related the tale to my mother. She carefully removed the boot to discover a large gash (I still have the scar) across the top of my foot and a boot full of blood.
“Jeepers crow,” she said, and went to get the medical kit. She never seemed to get panicky about anything.
Three homemade butterflies later and some gauze, and I was good as new.
As we all grew up, like the flowers in the gardens she nurtured and watched so carefully, she continued to keep an eye on us and our comings and goings, our achievements and our disappointments. Kind words and healing advice never stopped, as well as an occasional scolding when merited. She was always making bandages it seemed.
Years after her passing, I still have the feeling she is watching over us.
Yeah, mothers are like that.
The above is an excerpt from the book Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sanity… by Dick Martin, a Glocester resident, former Burrillville High School teacher and contributor for NRI NOW.
Martin can be contacted at [email protected].
