an entry for her 73rd birthday

Out running on this blustery winter day, I considered how to honor my mother on what would have been her 73^rd birthday. But where to start? Back at home, clean and in comfy clothes, I have dug out her journals and found a birthday entry from around when she turned the age I am now, 41: December 30, 1980, the very day of her 41^st birthday.

Overall in her journals, she does not write about me constantly, or even often, despite our closeness, but I seem to pop up as a topic on her birthday entries. Perhaps this is because it was always the holiday break, and we were spending day after day together (and I know how challenging that can be with my two kids).

In this birthday entry, she worries that her friends, with whom we were on holiday, were disapproving of my suddenly immature behavior (the usual: bathroom and sex humor) and new use of the word “homosexual.” (She does not describe how.) Though she thought I was being immature and inappropriate, she wanted to defend me.

“As I write this, it sounds as if I am the child. This sitting apart and writing is something I did, too, as a child.” She didn’t know how to confront the issue, so she got it out in blue ink on paper in her lovely (but hard to read) cursive. I understand this disappearing, finding a space to express and create alone. I am doing it right now, as my husband and kids play with Legos in the next room.

I want to remember her, celebrate her and connect with her today. That requires quiet moments and writing. I am the apple to her tree in so many ways. Despite our likenesses, I have been thinking about where we differ: She disliked much of the music I like (“All I can hear is the pounding.”), she would disapprove of my dark purple hair (“Oh, Caity, it looks so harsh.”), and she wondered at my dedication to running (“I am just so impressed!”). I can hear her in our dis-connections, too, and feel close to her.

My favorite line from this journal entry? “My new awareness and acceptance of the tadpole qualities of men.” I don’t (necessarily) agree, but I laughed out loud. A great line, if a tad, um, sexist. Then I think of my house, in which I am the only female (even the dog is male), and I wonder if she might have a point. Sometimes. Maybe. “Tadpole qualities.” *Giggle*

Underwood Portable

I have an Underwood typewriter from the 1940s and I am playing with it and thinking of my mother.

(Of course, I had to scan this to post it.)

five years ago today...

...my mother died. I should be doing work, but instead I seem to have dedicated today to remembering her.

I am finding old photos, scanning them, posting them on my facebook page, and updating the facebook page I created for her (https://www.facebook.com/GlendaAdams1939). I re-read an interview she had with Jan Hutchinson in the October 1988 issue of the journal Fine Line. They talk about whether her writing is autobiographical, morality in her writing, whether writing is political, women and writing, and my mother's two novels (at the time) Games of the Strong and Dancing on Coral.

copyright Nancy Crampton for Cane Hill Press

I am drawn to where they discuss how writing "mother stories" was unusual at the time (my mother had just written "The Day of the Mothers," which was included in Australian Short Stories No. 22). My mother says,

"I really like to try to write about life for women at is really is and life for single mothers. It's an extraordinary life that many of us lead with lots of pressures and responsibilities that are too easily pigeon-holed. Either you go to work or you bring up your family -- and it's not just either/or for economic and all other kids of reasons. But you wouldn't want to give up the responsibilities; they're wonderful responsibilities. It's a connection most mother's don't want to give up, the one of caring for their children. Plus, they have to work for economic reasons. And most women aren't doing work they like. I feel I'm a very lucky person that way because most women have terrible jobs and are poor. It's a very complicated area for us to write about."

Though many of her stories are dark, sometimes surreal, she says she can find a "fluffier," "lighter side" to stories with children: "Whenever you've got children, there's hope, this open-endedness, the next day, and it's delightful despite the troubles."

I'll take the words "wonderful responsibilities" and "delightful despite the troubles," and remember how much my mother loved me. And I will also think of them when my two young boys require so, so much, as children do. Despite or because of all of it, they are delightful and wonderful, the next day.

my mother's ski sweater

In honor of what would have been my mother's 72nd birthday, today, I wanted to write something thoughtful to honor her. I wrote some notes about what she called the "clothing museum." It included clothes of hers and mine that were special in some way. I have not finished this piece for many reasons. I will get to it, soon. For today, I will post one photo of one item from that museum: my mother's ski sweater from the 1950s. It was handmade, tiny and wool.

I would never have worn it--even if it would fit me--because wool makes me itch. And I never saw my mother wear this sweater. But I picture her in it when I read her short story, "The Circle," in The Hottest Night of the Century, which revolves around a skiing trip.

James, James (or Slippery Crockery)

I am reading the pages of my mother’s unfinished novella, first named Slippery Crockery, then James, James, after A.A. Milne’s poem:

     James James

     Morrison Morrison
     Weatherby George Dupree
     Took great

     Care of his Mother,
     Though he was only three.
     James James Said to his Mother,
     "Mother," he said, said he;
     "You must never go down
     to the end of the town,
     if you don't go down with me.

She writes of a family—mother, father, son, daughter—that in structure alone reminds me of her own. The story plays with who is like whom: the mother defining the two “plodding,” capable ones—herself and the older son—and the “geniuses”—the father and younger daughter. Yet the daughter and mother can repel each other like magnets: “like forces repel.” So she suggests the daughter must also be like her mother.

I think of my grandmother, who died at the age of 91 in the year 2000, whom my mother said went silent when angry and would not talk, sometimes for extended periods. I never saw this sweet, tiny woman angry, but I was not her daughter and did not know her before she was in her 60s. I read how the mother in James, James wordlessly leaves the house:

     Our mother had taken to leaving us, slamming the front door and 

     walking, almost trotting, to the bus stop at the corner.

     "J.S.O.," our father termed it. "Just stormed out." The first time 

     she stormed out, he said it with astonishment, but gradually it 

     became a simple statement of fact, like "how do you do." J.S.O.

I wonder if my grandmother ever stormed out. Now, as a mother myself, I know I threaten it sometimes. I keep promising myself that I will stop this practice, but I often want to close the door and walk down the street when my two boys go at it. Sometimes I do walk out the front door and sit on the front stoop and take a deep breath, but the boys follow me, crying, within moments. I wonder if I share a certain anger style with my grandmother. But I can certainly yell—more than I think my mother ever did and unlike the closed silence my grandmother dealt out.

This novella is not autobiographical, and it mixes parts of real people together into one. I see my stepfather in the father, as well as seeing bits of what I know of my grandfather, who died long before I was born. But is makes me think of who is like whom in families, how we label each other, take on roles.

And I am also beginning to think I could finish up this novella for my mother—if I could find all the pieces of it. I have two drafts in hand, and some computer files. I have heard there are 50-75 pages total. I have much fewer in hand. 

Sunday, December 30, 1979

On the day my mother turned 40, she wrote in her journal, and a fair bit of it had to do with me (which is actually unusual in her journals). I have left out what was personal for her alone. I wish she had not felt so frustrated with my 8 1/2-year-old self, but I find it interesting, even reassuring, to read what she was feeling. And, as a mother, I totally understand:

"My fortieth birthday, and I’ve just had a quarrel with Caity, the same old thing, a contest of wills, with each of us knowing we were in the right. Our first fight since Friday lunch on the train, when I made her throw out the apricot yogurt she had ordered for lunch and then not wanted. We have both made new year resolutions. Caity first, and she wrote 'no to much fiting with my mom,' and then I wrote 'not too much fighting with my daughter.'

Caity troubles me. She isn’t how I would want her to be. She seems to bully and cheat and cry and sound like a brat. On the other hand she is sweet, too, and innocent, not crafty, and she is responsible and trustworthy. I have messed up rearing her. She thinks I am terrible—mean, angry. And yet I hear these other kids on the train and they sound obnoxious, some of them. The children at the Hilton with older brothers, or any siblings, seemed to be able to cope in the world more gently and amiably that Caity. Everything terrible I have caused her."

I may still not be gentle and amiable deep down inside, but I hope I am not a bully or a brat anymore on this day, my own 40th birthday. 

philosophical? (July 1970 and July 2007)

I may be including some of the too-personal stuff I hoped to avoid (for example, in the first quote, G is my father), but this passage from July 13, 1970 captures something I share with my mother:

“The only things that concern me are philosophical questions and observations of life and passions. And everyday my experience becomes more intense. I wish I could share this. But when I rattle on about the thoughts crossing my mind—I admit they may seem puny and uninteresting to G—then he gets a bored look, interrupts me mid sentence, or replies on a completely different subject. I don’t know if I embarrass him or bore him. But I do need an exchange—for it is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me, and I want to share it, to take the plunge into the mind with someone. If he were to confide in me the same way I am ready to confide in him, I know I would be interested and listen and empathize and respond. But I feel a blank wall from him; and I really feel he is not really interested in my inner workings, in me as a person.”

My mother is one of the few I know who thinks (thought) like this, thinks as I do. I miss it. The piece I wrote for her funeral in July 2007, long before I had her journals in hand, included a bit about “philosophical questions and observations of life and passions”:

“I already miss talking to her on the phone – being able to call her and talk about nothing important. With the time difference between us, we often talked at odd hours for her, even 11 or 12 at night. Even the “nothing important” stuff was interesting to her. She could discuss anything as if it were a story or a philosophical question to be examined – whether the topic were something trivial like a bad haircut or something meaningful like becoming a mother.”