This is the third and final installment of Part II of my mother’s diaries; these being 1970-1995. The last one ended with my mother’s class reunions and her reliving the happy High School years. She worked for, and attended, all of them – in contrast to me, who attended none of my class reunions, which also went to and beyond the 50th year. Here I pick up with something that surprised – and ultimately puzzled – me in these last diaries.
Perhaps of all the topics of the entries in this second set of diaries, the ones that really jumped off the page for me were those that started on:
1981: Jan. 28. She starts reading her early set of diaries “from 1935.” What, I’m thinking. Oh, no, she’s going to find and relive all that angst over the first year of my life. Yet also: how interesting that she is reading this.
But months go by, and no mention of the diary. Until:
April 3. “Reading diary to Roy – 1940.” OMG: reading to my father? What is she going to do at the part when he gets into a fight with my grandmother, and my mother is thinking about taking poison?
April 4. “In the evening reading diary to Roy – the year we married. Enjoy re-reading diary.” Okay, this is still the happy stuff. July 4, 1941.
April 9. My mother’s older brother and his wife, who at the time lived in New York, were visiting them. “I read my diary to them.” Does she really want to share all this trouble with them? Or does she not remember that awful first year of my life? Has she repressed it? Oh, mother, you are such an enigma sometimes.
No more mention of the diary, so I’m thinking she realized the hazards ahead in the diary and stopped. At least, she stopped reading it to my father and the family. Until six years later.
1987: July 5. “Spent day in back [yard] – Sunny & reading diary at High School – 1935.” She’s reading it alone, since she mentions that Roy is doing some chores in the yard. Note: this is the day after their wedding anniversary. She’s reliving the High School years.
July 6. “Still reading old diary.”
July 14. “Reading my Diary from 1934 – so many things you forget in life – especially teens and 20s.” Mother, you were 15 in 1934.
July 17. “I’m reading my Diary to Roy 1941 & 1942.” So, again, she’s reading it to him. These dates would be the late courtship and the wedding. Now what happens when she gets to my birth and the aftermath? Doesn’t she remember this?
Again, no more mention of the diary. I’m thinking: she got to all the trouble and stopped, realizing what she was getting herself into. But no. Surprise! Three years later. The diary again. What keeps bringing her back?
1990: June 23. She’s reading the diary. And she’s back to the beginning in 1934. “Some things I do not remember.” What, pray tell, does she mean by this? She just read this stuff three years ago? And why did she start all over in 1934?
June 24. Reading the diary for 1935. She doesn’t say if this is alone or with my father. I assume it’s alone.
July 7. Reading the diary from 1934-1938. “So far.”
July 20. “Still reading diary from 1940.”
That’s it. It ends again. No more diary reading. Of course she may have read the whole thing and relived the trauma year, but she just doesn’t want to talk about it. All I know is what she recorded, not all that happened in her mind. Or she may have picked it up much later, after she stopped the diary at the end of 1995.
After my father died in the summer of 2002 we had regular phone conversations. I started visiting Pittsburgh twice a year until she died in the summer of 2011. I don’t recall her ever mentioning her reading the diary. Did she ever get to the ominous year 1943? And, if so, what did she think? The way these diary readings seem to stop and then start again – frankly, I find it puzzling. At first, I thought she had seen the trouble coming and so stopped – at least stopped reading it out loud to my father – for obvious reasons. But the way she starts again, and is reading it to him and to my uncle and aunt – well it just brings me to thinking how much my mother reminds me of that line (misquoting Churchill) about “an enigma wrapped up in riddle.” I’ll never know, it seems.
There is one more topic in the diary that I want to talk about. My mother loved sports and was very athletic. Physically she was small (around 5’ 2’’) and slim. As a teenager, she played a lot of tennis and also golf. After I came along, playing tennis was rare; but golf and later, when I left home, bowling filled her time. These twenty-five diary years are full of entries about golf in the summer and bowling in the winter, often several times a week. Two high points:
May 7, 1973: she almost had a hole-in-one. How close?
April 8, 1992: Bowled three strikes in a row. Way to go, Mom.
I should point out that these topics often got a rise out of her. “My bowling is terrible.” And so forth.
Sometime after I left home, she joined an aerobics club. She went several times a week for many years. I suspect that all this exercise is a factor in why she lived to age 92.
To be clear, I don’t want to leave this document, and the reader, with a negative impression of my mother. As I said in Part I: she was always good to me. At all times I felt safe and loved around her. I don’t remember ever having an argument with her; or even just being angry with her. I loved and still love her dearly.
But she was limited in her expression of love, as she was in all the emotions, as we have seen. To be honest, she was more like a big sister than a mother. I mean this, almost literally. Let me tell you this true story. When I was around ages ten to thirteen, she had a job. This was the mid-1950s when the steel mill where my father worked often went on strike, and there was no income. Strikes could last just a few days, but sometimes weeks or even months. My mother had clerical skills from High School: typing, shorthand, basic bookkeeping, and such. So she got a job, for which she went out each day dressed up in heels. But those small heels wore out quickly and had to be replaced. There was an Italian shoemaker, Joe – stereotype and all, with a thick accent – who had a shop nearby. One day she told me to pick up her shoes at “Joe the shoemaker.” She had lost her ticket, but it was her pair of bright red shoes, which I knew, and which had already been paid for. I walked to Joe’s, and upon entering I immediately spotted her shoes with the new heels on a shelf. I pointed to them and said that they were my mother’s shoes that I’m picking up. “No,” said Joe, “your mother didn’t bring those shoes.” I looked at him with a puzzled face. “Your sister brought them,” he explained. “That’s impossible,” I retorted, “I don’t have a sister.” “Oh,” said Joe, who now had a puzzled look as he took the shoes and put them in a bag.
Coming home, I told my mother this story – and she went ecstatic. She was on the phone the rest of the day and evening telling everyone that her shoemaker thought she was my sister. I’m convinced that it was not that she didn’t want to be a mother, but that she didn’t want to grow old. For example, when my boys were born, she bluntly told me that she did not want to be called “grandma.” She said she pictured an old lady in a rocking chair – I assume, rather like her own mother, who spent many hours just sitting and staring into space.
I’m convinced that my mother never wanted to grow up: a female Peter Pan. I remember her often telling me that as a teenager she vowed never to get married. Recall, from Part I, how she initially resisted Roy’s advances when they were dating. I believe she just wanted to spend her life playing tennis and golf. Later, it was golf and bowling. And, honestly, in many ways she treated me as if she were my sister – the two of us supporting each other, in the wake of the father’s difficult personality. Which reminds me of this: when my grandmother and my father often fought, my mother would come into my room, close the door, and tell me that she promised that when I’m married that she will never live with me. Moreover, recalling Part I, on my being an only child – I’m of a mind to venture this: my mother was the big sister that I never had. In short, in answer to the question posed by the title, I’d say “Yes.” And I’m okay with that.
A Coda
I wish to add – and therefore end – this story of my mother with an image and a final quote from her diary. The pictures below are the two sides of the American Legion Medal that she won in High School in 1934. (They are two-inches in diameter and are still given out today.) Dated Feb 9, 1934 the award lists these qualities: Courage, Honor, Leadership, Patriotism, Scholarship and Service. My mother was proud of this award, often mentioning it – which I’m sure was one of the highlights of those four joyful years. I’ll therefore end on a positive and light note, with the following. In her diary I found this at the end of 1934. “Receiving the American Legion Medal. When I went up the stairs to the stage, I was so excited, I tripped.”
