Equal Time

Hello! Guess who this is ... yup, it's me after more than a minute. If you "know" me, you might have been wondering where I've been. This summer turned into a time for deep reflection, reassessment, and rest. The last time I wrote to you it was a kind of eulogy for my dad who died June 2. Some unexpected feelings came up in sharing about him and I decided I needed to sit back and drop out a little bit. 

Now, as I feel a desire to reach out and connect with you, I also have a strong pull to honor my mother who died in 2017. After all, she at least deserves equal time for recognition of who she was. 

My mum was extraordinary almost from the moment she was born. Her mother Catherine fled Russia with her sister Barbara during the Bolshevik Revolution. They were young women in their early 20's, looking for a better life. My grandmother married a man who came over from Poland. From the very few details we have, life was a real struggle. My mother was the fifth child born to the couple and the only girl. Her mother stayed home with the children while her father might have worked in the mills. When she was three years old, Eleyena (or "Helen" as the doctor put on the birth certificate) contracted polio and was sent to Children's Hospital in Boston, at least an hour's drive from their rural home.  She was put in an iron lung for quite some time which had just been invented four years before to treat patients with respiratory paralysis related to polio. I doubt that anyone in her family had the means to visit her and she also spoke no English. Somehow, after a few questionable treatments, my mother eventually went home with a brace on her leg.

Four years later her mother died at the age of 42 and the following year her father died at 44. After a stay in an orphanage, Mum was able to go live with her dear aunt and cousin. Her mother's sister was a forewoman in one of the textile mills in Lawrence and she was a very important part of her life. She never spoke about her mother, but would often tell me what Tetya Barbara taught her.

By the time Mum was in high school she was mostly living on her own with whichever of her brothers was around. She excelled in school, graduating second in her class and set her sights on a career. She became a Dental Hygienist two years later and worked for more than 30 years in the field. She took her work seriously and often shared how important good health and eating whole foods was. She was ahead of her time.

She and my dad married just before he went into the Air Force for the Korean Conflict. If you read my tribute to my dad you might remember that for the next five years it was mostly Mum and me while my dad was in the Service and then College. When she wasn't working and I wasn't with my paternal grandparents, it was just the two of us. She took me to "hygienist dinners" and all the women made a fuss over me. These were strong, independent ladies and I loved them. It's important to also note that this was the 1950's. While my mother worked outside the home full-time, she also kept house, cooking great meals and cleaning. After my dad got his first job as a CPA, he worked for a very large accounting firm with strict rules including only wearing dark colored suits and white dress shirts. My mother washed and ironed those shirts and if I came home and Frank SInatra was blaring out of the stereo (she had every one of his records), I knew I would find her at the ironing board. 

I am so grateful that not only did she emphasize good nutrition, my mother also made sure I stayed active. She walked with barely a limp and was very proud to have overcome polio in spite of some surgeries that did not have the best outcome.  She was an avid candlepin bowler and she and my father played in a league once a week -- she was the better bowler! Another favorite for her was going to the shore and walking up and down the beach. She wanted me to be as whole and healthy as possible and let me take dance classes when I was 5. Of course, I was the first child in our town in line for the polio vaccine in 1955. 

My parents moved to a town with a stellar school system when I was in the first grade. Although it wasn't said out loud, I believe my mother felt like her parents were held down due to lack of access to education. She and my father both highly valued learning and equated it with an expansion of opportunities. My mother loved taking classes and learning something new throughout her life and she passed that on to me. 

When I was nine years old my first sister was born. Mum and Dad went on to have a total of four children and I was 16 when my brother, the baby, was born. 

I applied to a foreign exchange program that year and while my aunts and uncles were more than apprehensive about a junior in high school travelling and living in another part of the world with strangers, my mother supported me. I remember her saying, "Well, she wants to go and do this, so we need to let her.".

In her 50's my mum decided to try something new. She went to school for Myotherapy which was a fairly new treatment for musculoskeletal pain and she practiced for a while. I think she was starting to have a lot of discomfort and perhaps thought it would help her. Around the same time that it got harder for her to do therapy on patients, she learned about Post Polio Syndrome. People who had had polio were starting to see new symptoms like muscle weakness, pain, and fatigue. One theory is that the virus could remain dormant in the system and then reactivate years later. 

Mum persevered. For almost 30 more years she continued to be as active as she could. She was busy in her community and volunteered at the thrift shop run by the church she attended. Even though she was starting to lose her balance sometimes, she wanted to stay at home with my dad. She wouldn't hear of moving into assisted living. 

In February, 2017 she started experiencing more pain than usual and she went to the hospital after a couple of days of suffering. The first night there she called for help to go to the bathroom. As the nurses were getting her up, she collapsed and died. She was a few months shy of her 89th birthday. 

My admiration for my mum has only grown in the years since she passed on. Even though we sometimes had some "mother/daughter conflicts", she gave me a lot and certainly taught me about resilience. I have a ceramic plaque she gave me that I hang in my bathroom. It says, "Put on a little lipstick. You'll be fine." It wasn't that she trivialized things or made them unimportant. My take away was that if you do just one small thing that makes you feel better, the situation will improve. 

Thanks for hanging in there with me, both with this lengthy homage to my mum and during my recent "absence". I'm moving forward with creating community in some new ways. Stick around for what's next!

Sending Sparkles and Love Your Way!