A Mom to Love: Wonder Woman Without the Skimpy Suit

Peggy, my younger sister, wept bitterly on her first day of school.

“Honey, don’t worry,” my mother reassured. “You’ll be home before you know it.”

My sister sobbed louder.

“You’ll love school. You’ll read and color.”

“But you’re so old!” Peggy squalled, tears of shame on her face.

Mom, her hair already turning fine silver by age forty, shut off the spigot: “Do you think these young mothers know how to make volcanoes that explode and really ooze lava? Do they know how to camp and cook outdoors? Do they know how to be room mothers?”

This woman was wise in the ways of motherhood. She could turn out two dozen fudgy-chocolate brownies and handily kill a copperhead snake in the wooded backyard, bearing her trusty hoe—all within an hour without batting an eye. A lifelong Girl Scout, Mom was an intrepid woods woman and leader. She embraced her inner Barbara Bush long before 41 took office. Like Barbara, she looked great in any shade of blue, sported all-cotton L.L. Bean sportswear, never bought a box of hair dye, wore little makeup except a swipe of lipstick, celebrated life on (or in) the water, never apologized for having a robust, middle-age figure, loved every minute of being a mom, and happily wore faux pearls in an otherwise un-fake life.

Mom transformed the commonplace into the extraordinary. Plain bread slices became “buttery, buttery toast with cinnamon sugar on top” that enticed sleepyheads out of bed. She magically cut construction papers into paper-doll princesses and castles. For Saturday fun, the den floor, in the firelight, became the Great Plains, and we were cowboys in our sleeping bags, lulled to sleep by the faint mooing of the herd.

Mom was rather clever at tapping volunteers. A floor to be buffed became an Olympic ice rink. With soft rags tied to our feet, we skated, rendering a lovely sheen on the wood floors in the den. We reserved the hallway for speed-skating events.

From our first day in the world, Mom read to each of us. I figure I tuned in to the sound of her voice while in the womb. She spun tales in which a fairy named Mindy Moonbeam took earthbound children on adventures and dolls and little girls switched places for a day.

Teacher-scientist-costumer-hip couturier

She applied creativity as needed. For an eighth-grade science project, Mom (who majored in botany and psychology) encouraged Martha to use one set of plants as a control group while she talked daily to another group. The objective? To determine whether this cheery attention accelerated growth.

Mom stirred recipes for salt maps with the prowess of a professional baker. However, the greatest headache was Peggy’s overnight re-creation of Roman Empire coinage.

“When is it due?” Mom asked.

“Tomorrow,” replied the reluctant history student.

No problem. Last-minute projects were repeat performances in our household. By the time the fifth kid enrolled in elementary school, Mom had built a supply of art materials—poster paper, construction paper, color markers and pencils, scissors, string, and modeling clay stored in the den closet.

For several agonizing hours, Peggy used toothpicks to carve the profiles of Roman emperors on bits of clay (copied from pictures in the Encyclopedia Britannica) and wrote ink-spotted descriptions on three-by-five cards. Finally, she fell asleep, her head on the kitchen table. My mother and I soldiered on, carving the tiny heads of Caesars in the hardening coins. We skipped Caligula and Nero—Mom could not sanction bad actors, especially after midnight.

For years, Mom sewed ensembles for holidays, dance recitals, pageants, and parades. Her designs included a poodle costume, Jazz Age flapper dresses, witch rags, hippie ensembles, a Japanese kimono (a made-over floral bathrobe), Roman togas for Latin club, and outfits for angels, elves, the Holy Family, and one disgruntled Wiseman (Peggy begrudged a boy’s role).

When my sister Martha went mod, Mom followed suit, at least her sewing machine did. Her greatest triumphs were two hip ensembles—tunics topping wide pants—she dreamed up for Martha’s proms. One was pink-and-gold Paisley and the other lime green with gold-stitched details. With her cropped hair, Martha sported the look of a young starlet at the Cannes film festival.

For the grandchildren, Mom smocked holiday dresses and, continuing a tradition begun in our childhood, gave them matching PJs to wear on Christmas Eve. She also churned out costumes for this generation.

On the road, again . . . and again

Mom spent endless hours she in her car. In fact, it seemed she lived in her car. Because of our stairstep ages, she organized carpools to preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, and middle school.

Mom somehow worked Martha into the routes during her first year of high school. Martha ordered the younger urchins to lie on the floorboards so we would not embarrass her as the car rounded the corner of the parking lot. Mom did not question; she just sailed on with cowering passengers. For all I know, Martha may have asked Mom to hunch down, too, at the drop-off point. (Mercifully, my sister drove her own car after her sixteenth birthday.)

At the height of her carpooling career, Mom spent one to three hours a day in her car. Stoked by Coca-Cola, she scooted us to ballroom, tap dancing, ballet, jazz, art, and piano lessons as well as endless cheerleader practices. At one point, she squeezed my father into the action. Once a week on the way to work, he dropped off Mary and me at the piano teacher’s house at six-thirty for back-to-back lessons. How Mom talked that woman into a sunrise gig mystified me. Promptly at seven-thirty, she raced by and stopped long enough so we could leap into the car to make the eight o’clock school bell.

During middle school routes, Mom endured hours of backseat chatter about girls’ periods, would-be boyfriends, first kisses (of the most sophisticated passengers), and life’s embarrassing moments in the cafeteria and locker room. We squealed a lot about James Taylor. Mom assumed Sweet Baby James was the unobtainable boyfriend reserved for the homecoming court. I imagine Bud’s all-male carpools gave her a satisfying silent break.

In her demanding trucking years, my mother scotch-taped to the kitchen wall more than a dozen oversize index cards—with weekday destinations and times, passengers’ names, mothers’ names, addresses, and phone numbers intricately noted.

She usually showed up on the right day, at the right time, except when she mixed up a middle school route with an elementary school loop, which left us pouting by the flagpole a few times.

Mom managed the household finances and did the heavy driving on trips to Florida. Dad arrived a day later and departed a day early, citing work obligations. (Really?) Mom piloted a station wagon loaded with five children, a dog, and two cats, plus a sailboat strapped on top and a U-Haul attached to the rear—crammed with bicycles, beach balls, and giant inner tubes (former truck tires).

Perhaps burning all that tread made Mom crave a snatch of solitude. She usually found it in the shower whereas most people escaped with television.

Popular culture held little interest. Soap operas annoyed her. For years, my mother thought Linda Ronstadt was one of our friends at college because we talked about her incessantly. She admonished us to bring Linda home for dinner. To do otherwise, she noted, would be unwelcoming.

After Dad took Mom to see Deliverance, she rarely darkened the door of a movie theater. The word pig took on a distinctive meaning for quite some time.

She played the game with the big boys

Mom cared little about fripperies. She was the only woman enrolled in the community auto-repair class (years before it became a popular place for women to find dating material) and often ducked under the hood of her car with the mechanic. She dickered for and sold all her own cars.

Not one of us matched Mom as a jock, though we played enough team sports to learn the value of collaborating in a group. She grew up playing baseball with neighborhood boys and lettered in five high school sports As the first woman to chair committees dominated by men, Mom coached and played as the situation warranted. When she cracked the church’s glass ceiling—first treasurer and then chair of the board—she was not above instructing, most politely, some executives to sit down and hush up during meetings. When one started to storm out because he did not get his way on a vote, she waved her ballpoint pen at him and sweetly said, “Please get back in your chair and finish your job. We need you.” He skulked back.

Southern Gothic was an everyday affair

Mom accepted life as it played out. Her uncle, Colonel Francis Marion Brannan, lived with us for a time. Although fading away, he maintained the decorum of an officer and a gentleman. He thought my father was a general; my mother, a sergeant; and the children, privates. (Later she would joke about never getting the promotion she deserved.)

After the Colonel spent the morning “reading” the newspaper upside down and marching the German shepherd up and down the street, Mom served lunch in the dining room. She set the table with fine silver, china, and crystal. However, that did not stop him from complaining when she ladled a bowlful of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup garnished with saltines.

“Sergeant, the service has deteriorated abominably,” the Colonel declared.

Mom just laughed to herself and then seriously promised to speak to the “mess” about its egregious failing.

Sensible and serene

In her own way, Mom was tough. Her maternal instinct had its own flavor. When a hulking football player bullied Bud in middle school, she went into action. There we found her in the kitchen, dancing and jabbing around my brother (who stood still and ignored her) while keeping her left fist protectively in front of her face. (Bud worked it out his own way. With a preference for brains over brawn, he skipped the boxing lesson and rerouted his daily routine until his adversary lost interest.)

Yet Mom was soft. Any of us could call in the night and suddenly be pulled safely to her, warm against her flannel nightgown. My mother stayed until the tear-stained face relaxed and sleep stealthily offered comfort.

She met most challenges with aplomb. Even when Peggy and her toddler friend Katie flushed some rubber training pants down the toilet and my father dragged home a Roto-Rooter to solve the problem, Mom cracked up. There she stood in the backyard, with all five kids behind her (in order, like the Von Trapp children), in deepest, darkest night, in a drizzle, holding hoses while my father barked commands down the line to “Move up!” or “Go back!” She smiled a little harder after Peggy and her playmate put an extremely soiled diaper in the dryer—and hit the start button.

Mom faced life serenely. When words and names were slipping away to dementia, I wondered how she felt. She took my hand and gently said, “I must accept it.” It was her bravest moment.

How do you describe in a few pages someone who gave you life? Does our own aging smudge memory? Maybe.

Still, my clearest image is my mother’s crescent-shaped blue eyes dancing while we taste freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and sip from tall, cool glasses of milk and chat about the day’s events. I feel her gathering me onto her lap because the boy I loved broke up with me. I hear the mellow dinner bell ringing in the backyard and her voice at twilight calling us to come in for supper—the long vowels, the soft r’s, and the momentary lapse in names until she calls for the baby, too: “Martha! Bud! Mary! Cathy! Mar—, Cath—, Mar—, Peggy!”

Her love did not overlook. Not one of us. Not once.

* * * * *

A veteran of Time Inc. and Dotdash Meredith (People Inc.), Catherine Hamrick is the author of The Tears of Things: Poems (Madville Publishing). The above essay is an excerpt from a book in development, so please comment if it resonates.

Hamrick’s poetry has appeared in Appalachian Places, Appalachian Review, The Blue Mountain Review, The Citron Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, storySouth, and elsewhere.

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