My mom’s lens

I am in my 70’s and have always considered my mother a poor “mom” at the best.  The most common recollections I have are her sitting in a chair reading a newspaper or book with piles of newspapers tottering on each side of her chair and more strewn on the floor in the living room (a bit hard to walk in).   

In my head I know at one point she was a leader in Cub Scouts and Camp Fire Girls (CFG) (similar to Girl Scouts).  I saw a picture of me at a birthday party she had for me but have no memory of it.  I saw a few pictures of us CFG at a picnic table but once again I have no memory.  I do, however, have a few pleasant memories of being a CFG with her as our leader.

My clearer memories are her telling one of her friends that I was like my Aunt Phyl who was ugly at my age (but became one of the top 10 models in the country in her day…that did not happen to me!).  And her yelling at me when I or my sister broke a laundry hamper my dad made for us. 

Or some broken promises that she absently made to appease me. Back then they had “damp bags” that clothes were temporarily kept until ironing…the problem was, she’d forget about them and clothes became moldy. Then there was the dinner she served to me and my fiancé (now husband) where there was a magnet in his food that fell from the vent fan above the stove. (She was not known for her cooking nor her cleaning.)

And of course her sitting in her chair, reading and chain smoking.  Oh, how I hated those grimy ashtrays.   To be honest, I’m not even sure she was reading but possibly just zoning out.

As I write this, so many not good memories of childhood flood in.  Too many to share.  Turns out my mother was diagnosed Bipolar in her later years.  I was never sure that was the correct diagnosis because I don’t ever remember seeing her in a manic state, but the medicine did help.

I, of course, have no memory, but I am told she went into a mental institution 6 months after I was born where they did shock therapy on her.  In the 1950’s it was not a gentle treatment and left her with some side effects.

After I was married, I frequently took her to the psychiatric ward because she was hallucinating and needed medication adjustments.  She always seemed to have an episode when we went on vacation so when I arrived home, I was taking her back there.  

When she was released, she often came to stay at my house.  As a mother of two young children, that was a challenge.  Some nights she’d walk naked around the house slamming the bathroom door which was next to my bedroom. 

My husband was amazing, I can’t ever remember him complaining but always supportive of both me and my mom.  I never wanted to be like my mom and was confident I wasn’t.

And that all would be my memory of my mother if my oldest brother hadn’t preceded me in death.  He, not unlike my mom, turned out to be a hoarder.  He was a great man but died with a second bedroom full…floor to ceiling…of banker’s boxes (at least he was neat and organized about it). 

I received a couple boxes from the mountain is his spare room. They included letters, photos and slides from my mother. I was to review them to see if we would want to salvage anything.  

For Gen Z and Alpha’s…there was a time that photographers developed their pictures into slides to review and pick out which ones were to be developed into hard copies.  Luckily, for me there was a little hand slide viewer in the box. 

I think I received close to a thousand slides to preview (my two remaining brothers got thousands more slides.)  Roughly, I would guess in my boxes there were over 700 of flowers, trees, fields, interesting sites and the rest included people…you can see why it was much more cost effective to not print all those! 

The people slides were of family and a few of people that I have no idea who they were.  What intrigued me most were the slides of the scenery.  Actually, mom was pretty good at scenery (not so with the people slides). 

As I kept going through them, they seemed so familiar.  I felt that if they were digital, I would not know the difference between them and my own photos.  There was a tree silhouetted against a tall brick apartment building.  At least 10 pictures of it…just the way I would have done it.  Making sure to get the perfect lighting…making sure to get just the right angle.

Another, she obviously kneeled down in the tall grasses to catch them gleaming against the sky.  She ducked low to follow a path through a forest in order to get an extended view of it.  She saw beauty in the wild roses draping across a fence post.  Some of her close-ups of flowers were extraordinary.  She had an eye for the beauty of nature that God has blessed us with…I never knew.

I have no memory of my parents actually hugging us.  I think being the youngest of 5, and my mother’s mental illness, I felt she had no depth of feeling for us…or at least for me.  With that as the lens that I viewed my mom, I was surprised and touched when I read her letters to my brother.

I could feel her tenderness for her children…for me.  She wrote of her “heavy heart” at the death of Dr. Martin Luther King…of the fires and riots following.  She wrote of a discussion at the dinner table that she stated she held the same anti-racism belief as I did.  About me she wrote with pride how I was going into the “negro” (please do not be offended…this is a quote from a letter written in the early 1960s) side of Chicago to do social work for a social studies course. 

Also, she wrote of how I missed my brother helping me with geometry.  About my dating life (not much to write on that subject).  About me getting my bangs cut and I looked cute. (Whoa, I never thought she would think that.)  About me maturing the summer I went to Canada on a mission trip.  She cared about what I did…I never knew.

Our family were Catholic, but I thought it was more perfunctory than heartfelt faith. However, in her letters my mom mentioned going to prayer meetings and Bible studies.  She wrote about my dying grandpa who lived with us “The tragedy or sadness of it is not in the fact he is dying, but that he hasn’t any religion and quite possibly no belief in God and is proud of that.”  Really? My mom cared about his eternity!  She did have faith…I never knew.

Her photos and her letters brought my mom from 2-dimentional to a 3-dimentional caring mother.  I now saw so much of her in me…which I thought I never wanted.  But what I really did not want was her mental illness…I learned that she was so much more. 

I was a Cub Scout and Girl Scout leader.  Not mentioned previously, she volunteered in our kid’s school, I did that too.  And that legacy of volunteering stays with me today.  She went to prayer groups and Bible study…so do I.  Though I’m no longer Catholic, the groundwork for my faith was instilled by her.  And my heart breaks for those who refuse to believe in my God…as her heart did for my grandpa. 

And now I am so thankful my brother was a hoarder.  He gave me a gift that I would never have had if he hadn’t been. He gave me a gift of a loving mother.

“I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and I am persuaded now lives in you also.”        2 Timothy 1:5