It’s sad, but true, that many of us don’t really appreciate our mothers until they pass away or we have children of our own. When speaking to our children, we often say things like, “Just wait until I’m gone,” or “Wait until you have children.” When I was 10 years old, my mother went through “the change,” as menopause was called back then. She also had her first attack of crippling arthritis and was bedridden for a time.
One day I overheard her crying in her sickbed, as she talked with her visiting sister.
I felt such sorrow because I thought she was crying from the pain that she was enduring. As I listened, I heard her tell my aunt, “She is only 10 years old and she has to do the scrubbing, cleaning and cooking that I should be doing.”
Imagine that, I thought; she feels sorry for me, instead of herself.
She was able to get around some time later but was stiff and crippled from the disease for the rest of her life. That did not stop her from baking bread, sweet rolls and raised doughnuts every Saturday. Her baking was known by all the neighbors in the summertime because of the heavenly fragrance emanating from our open doors and windows.
A local businessman walking past our house one day stopped at our front door and asked if he could purchase a dozen of her raised doughnuts. She immediately packed up a dozen for him to take home to his family, refusing his offered payment.
She hobbled from the kitchen stove to the cupboard, preparing family meals without modern conveniences.
Laundry day was an all-day affair because we did not have an electric washing machine and she had to operate ours with a long handle that she pushed and pulled, as well as operate a foot pedal to move the agitator inside. Rinsing clothes was a backbreaking job as well, as she lifted the sheets, towels and clothing up and down in a large galvanized tub and then thrust them through a hand-operated wringer.
Drying clothes in the summertime on the outdoor clotheslines was more physical labor as she pegged the wash on the lines strung between trees. As a toddler I trailed behind her, handing the clothespins to her. She made me feel as though I was such a big help. I also remember neighbors commenting on the white-ness of our sheets and dish-towels.
As she was shopping for groceries one day, limping quite badly, a person who did not know her said to the grocer, “How can that woman be so cheerful? Doesn’t she know how bad off she is?”
There were many times when I walked into the kitchen and heard her humming as she went about her chores.
She was a deeply religious woman and never lost her faith, no matter how many times or how severe the attacks of arthritis came until at last she could no longer walk.
Her last years were spent in a nursing home. Friends dropped by to see her one time and they discussed the misfortunes that had befallen mutual acquaintances.
My mother remarked, “We are lucky to be so well-off compared to them.”
The visitors said they did not know whether to laugh or cry at her remark. No one could be worse off than she was at the time.
She never said, “Why me, Lord?” but accepted her lot and claimed she was better off than most people.
I now know I, too, was better off than most people because I had a mother like her. I wish I could tell her that today.
