All Too Familial

I'm heading back to Madison in the morning. My mother suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage this afternoon and is hanging on by a thread. She's unconscious and the doctor's prognosis is grim. I'm in such shock that I barely remember biking home from work.

Here is something I wrote about her a few years ago:

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My mother was born in small unincorporated township in Richland County, Wisconsin. Her ancestors were Anglo-Saxon peasant stock, farmers mostly, but some were property holders. There’s a famous [locally] geographical feature named after her mother's family north of Madison.

Born in 1937, she wasn't a depression child and yet wasn't a boomer.  She was a middle child and had older siblings: two sisters and a brother [added: she outlived them all]. I heard stories of siblings who died tragically: an older sister near her age who accidentally burned to death as child; two others died in infancy. For quite a time my mother was the youngest in a poor but relatively happy family. But something happened.

I never knew what my grandfather did for a living -- itinerant may best describe him. He was a talented gunsmith is all I knew. I met him once -- when I was about 8. He left or was kicked-out by my grandmother when my mother was young. The family then moved to the small town of Richland Center. She has memories of him meeting her after school and of him carrying her piggyback and giving her treats, and of her mother then taking away those treats.  A reconciliation was attempted around the time that my mother must have been 7 or 8 and two more siblings--twins (a boy and a girl) resulted, but the marriage ultimately failed.

My mom was raised by a single mother in the 1940's and 50's in the days before being a single mother was commonplace.  She babysat the younger twins while my grandmother worked nights in a restaurant, eventually working herself to any early death. My mother claimed that she raised herself, watched over occasionally by older siblings and by a neighbor woman, who was also either divorced or widowed. These women -- my grandmother and the neighbor, were key to developing her character. But the misfortunes of others played a role too. As an adolescent, she watched her eldest sister marry, have kids, and then descend into single motherhood by the fault of an abusive and alcoholic husband. She became determined to escape that cycle.

She was good-looking and met my father while still in high school. They dated for a year and then married a month after she graduated from high school. She had my brother and then me and raised us before returning to school when I was 8, getting an AA degree in dental assisting (just like Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower my dad teased her). She eventually ditched the dental assisting.

She outlived my father who died in 1995. She was utterly miserable for a few years but then, five years later, met a wonderful man who became my stepfather.  He's been a wonderful companion for her and he's a millionaire (on paper) [added: I'll be seeing this wonderful man again tomorrow]. My wife says that my mom will now live forever.

Here she is front and center with some diving friends when she was 28 or so. The photo was taken by my dad.  That's me and my older brother looking on (was my head really that big?).  The photo was taken at Devil's Lake, WI circa 1964.

I'm eternally grateful to her for raising me. She made all those untold sacrifices that many women did in her era as a homemaker before the term became somehow pejorative. Of my parents, she alone was the one who encouraged me to go on to school after high school and she made sure that my father was on board too (he preferred that we boys learn a trade).  She had seen the lasting damages that wrong choices had on individuals and families and was determined not to pass these things on whether by nature or by nurture.

Happy Mother's Day Mom!