Still Pondering Mother and Driving

As Fio was speeding down I-35 at her usual eighty miles as hour, she suddenly wondered what Mother's life would have been like if she had ever learned how to drive. Would she have taken advantage of her mobility to make friends outside of PTA, the neighborhood, and the family church? Would she have been the one who picked up the cleaning and did the supplementary shopping instead of Dad? Would she have spelled Dad at the wheel when we drove up to Ohio and Pennsylvania to visit relatives?

One thing for sure, she wouldn't have had to use the bus to get downtown anymore.

A Little of This and That

Fio is convinced that, between her art, writing, and compositions, she will be famous and her offspring will be rich....long after she's dead.
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Everyone drove over to the family house years ago after father-in-law's funeral. The adults gathered around in the living room, and the kids got together in the back bedroom. To everyone's surprise, Fio's mother joined the kids' group. On reflection, Fio thinks she was over-awed by the in-laws' toney neighborhood and toney house. As you can imagine, Fio didn't get that gene. Remember, she's the one who thought that the royal jewels on display in the Tower of London  looked tawdry.
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Fio is beloved of a mosquito. It kissed her on the cheek, then shyly flew away.
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Husband, perhpas feeling nostalgic for times gone by, put An American in Paris on the television last night. Twenty minutes later, Fio picked up La Senora de la Computadora and left the room. Too many stereotypical cheeky Americans and charming French children from Central Casting, too much singing, dancing, and blazing Technicolor. The only reason she'd stayed as long as she did was because of the non-stop action, which, as every romance writer knows, is the key to holding your audience's attention.
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Target has refurbished its dining area for the worse. It's as barren as a hospital operating room.

Evil, Dancing, Attendance

Why do people do vile things like steal all the money out of the savings account of the nation's oldest veteran? Like shoot a random teenager dead at a gas station? Like massacre five journalists in their office? Like imprison young children? Like make fun of someone who is disabled? Fio doesn't understand people like that, never will, and really doesn't want to.
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There'll be dancing in the street
When Trump is gone
Dancing on the street
And dancing on the lawn
Dancing at dusk
And dancing at dawn
Glad to see the last
Of Putin's pawn
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According to Mother's school attendance records, she was never late nor did she miss a day from first grade through eighth. A worthy record, and she expected the same of Fiorella, who was sent off every day, rain or shine, in sickness or in health--except, of course, for scarlet fever, chickenpox, measles, whooping cough, and a couple of bouts of the flu. Yep, Fio never got those extra points for perfect attendance on her report cards.

What's on Your Mind, Fiorella?

Fiorella has been on a de-clutter binge for the last couple of years, sort of like when Monica scream-sings "Throw away, throw away!" in "The Medium." Right now, she's going through old, moldering pages from years ago--poems, drawings, short stories, newspaper clips, partially-written novels and theses, copies of tests she gave her students, and more. Any takers?
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Sheldon and Amy's wedding was the highlight of Fio's television week. It was not only cute, sweet, and funny, but it took took her mind off Trump for a thirty whole minutes.
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Fio is convinced that if you know how to say "hello" and "thank you" in ten different languages, the world is your oyster.
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Sonia Dog's main goal in life is to love and be loved, which is one of the reasons that Fio loves her so much.
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Mother would not approve of anything this outrageous, but Fiorella has moved the furniture around in the den so that it's all at a slant to the walls of the room. The rearrangement was necessitated by Husband's recliner being the only thing at a slant and driving Fiorella nuts.

Generational Analysis

Mother signed Fio up for every uplifting or educational activity available, from summer day camp to twirling to swimming to theater. She also volunteered to, in turn, be a home-room mother, head a Brownie troop, and participate in PTA. She made most of Fiorella's clothes, kept the cleanest house on the block, convinced Dad to buy a piano for Fio, provided Fio with art materials, introduced her to poetry, and encouraged her to read every book in the house. Mother was a woman with strong values, and Fiorella could not have had a better parent. She loved her mother very much.

But Fio, if you loved your mother so much, why do you give her so much negative press?

Because she was my mother and I modeled myself after her. Thus it is important for me to explore every aspect of her to understand myself, as I hope my daughter will do in regard to me.

Anger and Violence

About the guns--Fio has read that psychologists say anger, not mental health problems, is what triggers violence, and she can believe that from her own experience.

When Fiorella was in junior high, she walked to school because, as you will remember, her mother didn't drive. Most of the time it was no problem because the school was only about five blocks away, the weather was mild, and there were a few other kids walking too. But one horribly stormy day, as cars full of warm, dry schoolkids driven by their mothers splashed by her, Fio was the only one walking. By the time she got to school, she was so furious that she would have taken out the populace if there'd been an assault rifle available. When her social studies teacher tried to find out what was going on, Fio said she was angry that FlyTaff, a government installation on her way to school, was crowding the sidewalk with its parking. But actually, she now realizes. was angry at her mother.

Perfectionist

Mother had a good heart, but she was prone to judge everything and everyone that came along. Names were a prime target. Even though Mother had given her own daughter a weird name, she felt free to critique the names other people had bestowed upon their children. Houses were also  fair game. As a devoted reader of Better Homes and Gardens, she mentally critiqued every dwelling she enetered, and, when she was home, gave the family her review. Her gavel also came down on how people dressed, fixed their hair, and lived their lives. Of course, Fiorella absorbed the perfectionist eye--and the mouth--at her mother's knee and made herself extremely unpopular in school by voicing her own judgments. Even now, in her dotage, she struggles to scrub off the vestiges. Back off, Fio. Live and let live.

Swimming In The Family

Austin son sent Fiorella a picture of himself taking Baby into his wife's family's pool for her first swim, and all I could think of--aside from how sweet my son is and how cute my granddaughter is--was how my mother, who never learned how to swim, was determined that her daughter would learn. Somehow Mom, who didn't drive, got me to lessons at a big, scary auditorium-type pool in Akron, and then, when we moved to Texas, enrolled me for lessons with the local YWCA.

And now, here's Mother's great-granddaughter being introduced to swimming when she is just six months old.

Passing It Down

Fiorella's brother unloaded two stacks of family memorabilia on her, and she is both thrilled and overwhelmed. Dad's high school graduation picture hit her hard, and the elementary school essay on Christopher Columbus by her uncle Russel, who died of a burst appendix when he was fourteen, made her cry. Then there were Mother's report cards and the  carefully preserved receipts for her payments on the loans she had to take out to pay for her final years of college.

The emotion is overflowing, but so are the chairs in the front room. So are the shelves in the bottom of the china hutch and the shelves beside the front room fireplace. How can Fiorella respect the memories that were precious to her parents, Husband's parents, and those back down the line without setting up a fire hazard? And how can she preserve the albums and photos and miscellany without unduly burdening her children?

One thing for sure--Fio better start winnowing her own memorabilia. No need to add to the pile.

Stability

Mother's house was her snailshell, except that she never moved it, perhaps because her childhood was spent moving from house to house according to her father's employment fortunes, which were controlled by how well he knew the local politicians and how much he drank. Well, Mom did move once, to Texas, because Dad, who was also good with people but who didn't drink, got a job promotion.

Waco, Texas, was a shock to her because it was so different from Akron, Ohio. Texas accents back then were so strong that they sounded like a foreign language. And there weren't many natural trees around. And the rather plain one-story house Dad had bought for the family was so different from her charming two-story in in Ohio. Sure, the Texas house came equipped with a dishwasher, washing machine, and two bathrooms, but its front porch was minuscule, the kitchen was a quarter of the kitchen she had left behind her, it lacked a real dining room, AND THERE WAS NO BASEMENT.

Fio remembers the look of horror on Mother's face, the tears in her eyes, when she met the house for the first time, but being her mother's daughter, she rolled up her sleeves and went to work, dragging Dad in her wake. The garish wallpaper was the first thing to go.

Through the years, Mother brought that little house on Proctor Avenue to its glory. It was her creation, her haven, her stability, and she lived in it the rest of her life, never having to move again.

Aging

Fiorella wrote this sonnet twenty-five years ago, and it holds true today: 

                             

TO MY CHILDREN

When I am old, so very old I stink

Of unwashed underarms and brain cell death

So old I shake, my spine and stature shrink,

I whistle, quake, and rattle with each breath--

When I am old, so very old I drool,

And age spots big as elephants appear,

When I forget my name and act the fool

And talk too loud because I cannot hear--

Even when I'm angry, trapped in rage,

Become a miser, call each dime misspent,

When I am cruel and stupid in my age,

When I reject you, scotch your good intent--

     Remember once I loved you of my will,

     And in my heart of hearts, I love you still.

Slapping and Spanking

Mother could be very kind and loving and she also had a temper. An example of both sides was when she made a couple of nightgowns for her granddaughter, which Fio appreciated, but was dumb enough to say that armholes had to be enlarged. Mother flared like a highway beacon. Why? Over armholes that were so small that Daughter couldn't get the nightgowns on?

When Fiorella was a child, a slap on the face was Mother's way of letting Fio know she had crossed a line. The slaps didn't occur that often, but enough that Fio started cringing when Mother moved quickly, which made Mother all the more angry. "It's not as if I beat you!" she'd say. But she did, although only with a yardstick. In later years, Mother always said Fio moved so fast that she could never get a good whack in, but that isn't how Fio remembers it. (If you are wondering, Fio's major infraction was not coming when called.)

Fiorella would like to tell you that she never slapped or spanked her own kids, but she did--after all, her parents were her role models. But after a couple of years of motherhood, she stopped spanking Older Son when she realized that it didn't work, that he saw the spanking as payment for whatever he had just done, and now he was free to do whatever he wanted to again. So instead, she started building a conscience in him, which was much more effective.

Mother loved her children firecely, just as Fio loves hers, but Fio has never told her children that she hit them because she loves them, that it's God's will. Where did that idea come from? Probably from Mother's own mother, maybe passed down for centuries.

But it ended with Fiorella.

Precious LittleTime

Shock--Fio forget to post today, which is understandable with the schedule she's trying to keep. She raced out of the house this morning to meet with a friend at Starbucks--the same friend she stood up the day before because Fio was waiting at the wrong Starbucks--only to wait again because this time she was 24 hours too early. What else to do but drive off to the post office to buy Christmas stamps. The machine didn't carry them so she had to join the tail end of a l-o-n-g line. Bored to tears after finishing off all her physical therapy exercises as she waited (neck, shoulders, plies), she started talking to the people standing behind her.

The line refused to move, but Fiorella overheard a post office lady (who was moving up and down the line with a whip to keep the lions in check) tell someone that H-E-B sold Christmas stamps so Fio said good-bye to her new friends and sped on up to H-E-B, only to stand in a new line, this time at a register. Fio asked for nativity stamps, but the clerk said she only had Santa stamps, but that every register had a different stamp. Now your Fio was not about to spend her precious time standing in line at twenty registers to find out which one of them carried a stamp appropriate to her Christmas card so she walked over to the service desk and--voila!--the clerk had an acceptable batch of stamps on hand. Fio bought 100, which should put the national treasury back in good shape, then zoomed down to Hobby Lobby to buy more red ribbon for decking the halls, then drove home via Walgreens, where she picked up pildoras (pills) and a few Christmas treats.

The whole journey, Fio smiled a lot, talked to everyone, and even exchanged cards with a few other artist types. Yes, Fiorella on the roll is a sight to behold--and perhaps beware of. She is not the person her mother wanted her to be, but  Mother is long dead, and although  Fio feels her maternal love more and more every day, her strictures have faded away. Fio is Fio, and she will continue to devote every minute of her time to saving the world.

Tis the Season

Step four of Fio's Christmas decorating. She decked the driveway with strands of tinsel last weekend, got all the storage bins in during the week, and yesterday she put together the twenty-year-old family Christmas tree. Come afternoon, Austin son and his wife drove up from Bastrop to put up the lights and decorate the tree, which is a monumental undertaking because Fio has MOUNDS of ornaments. She posted a photo of the wonderful results on FB this morning, but she still has to roll her mother's embroidered tree skirt under the branches. Step four will be the swag along the staircase railing, which will take at least a day, and step five will be hanging the plastic snowflakes from the little tree out front, which Husband usually is kind enough to help with. Later will come the swags over the living room door jamb, the dining room door jamb, and the dining room window. By Christmas day, every shelf and surface in the house will be loaded with tinsel and Christmas what-nots. Yes, Fio is a decorating fool. ENJOY!

Taking on All Comers

Fiorella doesn't understand.  After she and her brother left the family nest, her mother had a hard time finding ways to occupy herself and actually went through a period of depression. Fio herself has wrestled with depression from time to time, but never from lack of things to do. There are always pictures to paint, languages to learn at, stories to write, a house to whip into shape, and now, five and one-third acres to tame. Fio's often feels overwhelmed, but she's never at loose ends.

March

Fio's brother gave her a small box of greeting cards that their mother had received when her own mother died. A leather remembrance book lay on top of the pile, and reading through it made Fio think about not only her maternal grandmother, but her paternal grandmother and maternal great-grandmother, all of whom  died when Fio was a young child. Curious, she Googled her foremothers' death dates and learned that her great-grandmother had died on March 2 (when Fio was two), that her father's mother had died on March 11 (when Fio was three), and mother's mother had died on March 22 (when Fio was four).  

Does Fio see a pattern here?
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Newspapers

Fiorella's mother had been a journalism teacher, and the family always subscribed to a newspaper, much to Fio's benefit.  She learned to read from comic strips, and a newspaper validated her childhood art by publishing it.  In high school, she edited the longest-running Latin student publication in the country one year and the state Latin student publication the next year.  Later on, she married the son of two journalists. In graduate school, she originated a department newsletter. Later, in between teaching and grading, she wrote for the local newspaper and even set up two tabloids on her own.  Yes, Fiorella loves newspapers. but her own children are barely aware of them.  Why bother when they have television and computers at their beck and call?

Fiorella is sad.

Second Mother

Children often have multiple mother figures in their lives--aunts, grandmothers, and the like--who have a lasting influence on them.  Due to death or distance, Fiorella had none of these, but she did have Eve Paule, her best friend's mother.

When she could, Mrs. Paule gave Fio rides to school, swim lessons, sewing lessons, art lessons, and Baylor Children's Theater.  Fio also accompanied the family to college-sponsored musical performances, and she was allowed to study their Time-Life art books, which nurtured her own art. But most of all, Eve Paule was kind to Fiorella, and when she died, Fiorella attended the interment and was invited to pour a handful of dirt into the grave.

Blessed be the memory of Eve Levine Paule, Fio's second mother.

Love and Hate

Gramp could be a great guy when he wasn't drinking. Mother said he always cautioned his children against using the word "hate" because it was such a strong word, an admonition which Fiorella took to heart.  Of course, somewhere along the line, Mother also learned that "love" is a weak a word, or, as she told Fio, that one should prove one's love by what one does rather than what one says.

The latter concept, Fiorella totally discarded. She uses the word "love" freely and often

Love and Duty

I lower the blinds at night and raise them in the morning.  I close doors, drawers, and toilet lids. I know all the kids' phone numbers by heart, and I observe all birthdays.  I pay the bills, deal with IRS, and take care of the bank accounts.  I strike up relationships with the neighbors and wave at every vehicle that goes down our country road.  I give generous tips in all circumstances.  I pray for everyone--everyone--every day.

I am a woman, a wife, a mother.  I can do no other.