Photo by Sophie Dale from UnsplashPhoto by Kenny Krosky from Unsplash
Quoting Mom
So often these days,
I find myself quoting Mom…
proverbs, quips, sayings…
Mom had a real treasure trove
of wisdom she shared with me.
“Treat other people
as you want to be treated.”
That one is golden!
It was Mom who taught me that
reliable guide to life.
Mom was unfailing
in her caring and concern.
She gave great advice,
but, in matters of romance,
was a woman of her time.
Mom’s take on romance
was antiquated sexist
nonsense, best ignored.
Mom’s true advice to follow
was, “Think for yourself, Honey!”
After thirty years,
Dad found a younger woman.
Mom kissed a few frogs;
Prince Charming never came, but
Mom found her inner Princess!
My mother, Marian Nicholson, on her ninetieth birthday!
Antiquated Sexist Nonsense
“It’s a man’s world,” was the mid-twentieth-century consensus.
My mother passed several of the following outdated gems along to me:
Always let boys win if you want them to like you.
Act helpless. Let a boy be your hero and lift heavy objects for you.
Play “dumb.” Laugh at all of his jokes. Always agree with him.
Pretend to enjoy doing all the things he likes to do.
Don’t chase after boys. Make them chase after you!
Play hard to get. Never be the first to say, “I love you.”
Hide your passions. You don’t want him to think you’re “easy.”
If you “give in” to a boy, he’ll “dump” you and “kiss and tell.”
Go to college to find a husband, even though you know
you will be a homemaker after you marry.
A woman must never make more money than her husband…
His delicate pride can’t handle it.
Let a man think he’s boss…
Use “feminine wiles” to get what you want.
The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach…
Cook all of his favorite dishes.
Men are like little boys…They like to be told
how handsome, strong, and smart they are.
Make a habit of paying exaggerated compliments to men…
It builds their fragile egos.
Men are unable to control their impulses.
Women must be the guardians of morality.
If a woman wears a short skirt and gets assaulted, it’s her fault.
Sex is something a wife must endure for the sake of her husband.
Fortunately, I never fell for any of this antiquated sexist nonsense!
Sorry, Mom, but I don’t believe in playing games.
I was paying attention when you taught me to be honest and to
“Do unto others as I would have them do unto me.”
With respect to this poem’s dubious advice, I quote Mom,
“You might as well laugh as cry!”
Photo by Jason Briscoe from Unsplash
*Cautionary note: Some of the antiquated advice in this poem may appear to work in the short term, but some of it could come back to bite you later! Authentic relationships tend to be based on honesty and mutual respect. How long would you be willing to pretend you are enjoying a food you actually detest? How would you feel if you found out that someone was playing you? Better to be real!
My Children…Ellen, Joe, and Katey. Joe’s service dog BABY.
Joe advocates for the rights of disabled people and disabled people with service dogs. During the pandemic, when homeless shelters closed their doors, Joe prepared hot food and delivered it to homeless people on the street. He helps homeless people whenever he can, finding information for them, giving them food, a pair of socks, or a haircut…
Katey and Ellen visit their brother, Joe, and his dog, BABY, on their way home from my house.
Visits Then and Now
A couple of years ago,
when my daughters visited me,
we were on our way to swim with manatees…
All tours were cancelled!
On the road, we found
restaurants serving only carry-out.
Two hours before we arrived at our hotel,
the dining room closed…
The museum we had planned to visit
had closed the day before.
We walked around the city
for two days, eating carry-out.
Beaches had closed near my house.
My daughters caught
one of the last flights home to Texas…
Covid had arrived!
This year my daughters visited…
vaccinated, masks ready, restaurants serving,
beaches open, manatees waiting…
Happy Thanksgiving!
A Thanksgiving sunset at Blind Pass Beach. Photo by Ellen.From my beach chair, I watched Katey build this sand castle with a moat connected to the Gulf of Mexico. Ellen, meanwhile, was swimming enthusiastically in the cool water. She came out just in time to photograph the sunset and Katey’s sand castle.
A Tribute to My Daughters
My daughters, Ellen and Katey, visited a very elaborate Pumpkin Patch near their home in Texas.
A Tribute to My Daughters
Ellen and Katey volunteered at their church to help with Vacation Bible School, online this year because of Covid 19. They are standing in front of one of the sets they helped to build. Ellen was also involved in writing and other aspects of the project. Church members wrote the script, composed and performed original music, and videotaped the episodes with great skill! It’s a big church with a lot of talented volunteers.
Eve Ellen
makes her mother proud…
ambitious,
creative,
dedicated. Her life is
a labor of love.
Katey and Ellen frequently help out at a friend’s horse barn and enjoy riding the horses. All types of animals gravitate toward both of my daughters.
Katey Marie
makes her mother proud.
Her joy is
contagious!
Horses, dogs, friends, family…
life shared in photos.
Ellen and Katey enjoyed the sights and the rides at the fair.
Emails, calls…
My daughters have their
far-away
lives to live.
Times spent together, precious…
cherished memories!
Rez and Vibe love to cuddle. Vibe, in the foreground, is on his way to becoming a huge dog! Vibe and Ellen. Vibe loves the pool…Rez, not so much! Vibe also enjoys kayak rides, but I am afraid he may already be too big for that.Katey, Cheryl, & Ellen in front of “The Greatest Show on Earth,” a mural at the Ringling Circus Museum. The museum visit is one of the wonderful memories of our trip.
This is the final post about my daughters’ visit during Thanksgiving week!
The second poem is my attempt at writing sharadomas, a form of poetry featured on David’s blog, “The skeptic’s kaddish of a son.” The poem, “Warm love or: Glowing memories” was posted on December 7, 2021. Sharadoma stanzas have a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5. I didn’t attempt a cleave poem, although David’s was lovely!
One Saturday about forty years ago, when my husband was at work, my young daughter, Ellen, and I watched fire and smoke moving down the mountainside toward our house. We packed our car with something irreplaceable…our photo albums. My fifty-two-year-old daughter still has those albums, memories of her childhood.
An Album of Childhood
Photo by Joice Kelly from Unsplash.Photo by Romina Veliz from Unsplash Photo by Josh Applegate from Unsplash.Photo by NeonBrand from Unsplash.
Photo by Deb Dowd from Unsplash.
Photo by Prince Abid from Unsplash.Photo by Robert Collins from Unsplash.
My father never had any sisters. He grew up a wild boy skipping school to swim in the creek and trap skunks. In high school he was a basketball star very popular with girls, several of whom wore his class ring on a chain around their necks. He was a skilled hunter and fisherman and helped put food on the table. From time to time, he worked in his father’s siding business. When World War II began, he lied about his age and joined the navy at seventeen. He was, I think, a “man’s man,” always more comfortable in the company of men than in the company of women.
My birth may have been a disappointment to my father, my being a girl. I was also a lot like my mother, with whom he had little in common…imaginative, creative, a lover of art, poetry, and music, uncoordinated and not very good at sports. Still, he was proud of me, ambitious for me, and he was my hero!
My brother was born two years after me, and when I was four, my sister was born. While my mother was in the hospital, I remember Dad trying to make Shirley Temple-style curls in my hair one Sunday morning. I remember his consternation when the ends stuck out at the bottom. I must have been quite a sight going to church with my hair looking like that!
My father’s first assignment as a minister was to three little country churches in Pennsylvania. While Mom went home with my younger brother and sister after the first Sunday service, I always continued on with Dad to the second service. I listened to every sermon three times, never tiring of my dad’s wonderful stories. I remember standing beside the piano when I was five and singing my first solo.
Visiting my grandparents when I was four or five, we went to the swimming pool in Wheeling, West Virginia. My father asked me if I would like to dive with him. With my arms tight around his neck and holding my breath, we went off the high dive together. My father was my hero!
When I was seven, I started piano lessons, which continued for nine years, although I had little musical talent. Eventually, I played the piano and antique pump organ at church when no one else was available. I wasn’t very good! I sang in the choir for years, often performing solos and duets. When I was eleven or twelve, I would put my hair up in a French twist and go with my father to hymn sings at neighboring churches. With my hair up, I thought I looked older and hoped people might mistake me for Dad’s wife. Of course, that was pretty silly!
Mom persuaded Dad to include his daughters, as well as his son on his hunting and fishing expeditions. Though I didn’t shoot, I enjoyed going with my father and our dog, Lady, to hunt quail, and I was always the one to prepare them for cooking. When we went fishing, I was usually the one to clean the fish.
One day, Dad took my brother, sister, and me to fish for bluegills in a farm pond. I got my line hopelessly tangled. Trying to break the line by pulling against my foot, I embedded a fish hook deep in the calf of my leg. My father cut it out with his pocket knife. I was very brave. “You are lucky I just sharpened my knife!” my father said. I still have a little purple scar on my leg.
When I was in high school, hunters sometimes stayed at our house. They would get up at four in the morning to go deer hunting with my father. I also got up early and fixed them a hearty breakfast. I enjoyed listening to their hunting stories and fish tales.
Like his mother, my father was a talented gardener. His huge garden helped to feed our family. I remember Dad teaching me how to plant beans and pull weeds. We all shelled peas, snapped beans, and husked corn. In the early years, my mother canned, but when I was about six, we got a large freezer, and my parents kept it full of vegetables from the garden and fish and meat my father brought home. My father also raised beautiful flowers that my mother and I enjoyed making into arrangements for home and church.
My mother was an excellent cook and baker. Mom turned the abundance from the garden into delicious meals and baked pies, cookies, and cakes. Dad had been a cook aboard a ship when he was in the navy and was always reminding us that the best chefs are men! When it came to preparing deer steak or frying trout, Dad often did that job.
Always the athlete, Dad never played a sport he didn’t like…darts, bowling, ice skating, roller skating, skiing, hiking, swimming, college football…When I was in high school, he used to outshoot teenagers on the church basketball court. My father, brother, and I got our Red Cross lifeguard certifications together. They scored higher in the water test than I did, and I scored higher on the written exam! In his seventies, Dad was still skating with the church youth group.
The youth group activity I enjoyed most when I was young was hiking in Shenandoah National Park.We would pile into the back of an old hearse and head for the mountains. After the hike, we enjoyed burgers and hot dogs cooked over wood coals and we roasted marshmallows.
One day, without my parents’ knowledge, I wore my bathing suit under my clothes. Our group hiked to the top of South River Falls, a tall waterfall with a pool in the middle that was reported to be bottomless. Many people have died walking near the waterfalls in the park. Luckily, I didn’t die. I just climbed down through the middle of the falls and swam in the pool at the bottom. Oddly, I don’t remember being punished for that episode. Maybe Dad saw himself in me that day!
On another hike, I walked through a yellow jackets’ nest. Swatting the bees as I ran, I knocked my glasses off. Days later, my father returned to the trail and found my glasses. Remarkable! My Hero!
When I was in high school, my parents’s marriage, always a mismatch, began to steadily deteriorate. Life at home was often unpleasant because of the conflict between my parents. Also, I found the restrictions imposed by my parents unbearable.
I had a brief, but very unfortunate experience at a religious boarding school. The repressive and malevolent attitudes and the rampant hyprocricy at the school made me question religion. I became an atheist at age thirteen. Though I continued to participate in church activities for many years, I think my parents were aware that I no longer accepted their beliefs. Stubborn and independent, as both of my parents were, I obeyed them for the most part, but was pretty outspoken with them about my views.
My father was as frustrated as I was, I think. He had trouble seeing me grow up and was reluctant to relinquish control. When I was seventeen, he did several things to me that were very hurtful. I think he later regretted his actions, although he never said that he was sorry. He was much less controlling with my younger sister as she grew up.
After their children were grown, my parents went through a very messy divorce. Dad and I both made efforts to maintain a relationship until the day he died, but I could never fit his mold. I always loved my father, and he loved me, but, like Humpty Dumpty, our family could never be put together again.
My father died at age seventy-five in 2004. I have many treasured memories of my dad and a few memories it took me years to forgive. Fulfilling his wishes, family members sang some of his favorite hymns at his funeral in a little country church where he was the pastor. My father had “died with his boots on!”
To all the fathers everywhere, you will never be perfect. Don’t stress over it. All any of us can do is our best! We love you. We will always love you!
Blue Hole, where my family liked to swim and fish. Photo by Taber Andrew Bain CCBY2.0
My Father
Father,
human being,
excellent example
of many admirable skills:
great speaker and storyteller,
gardener, fisherman,
hunter, builder,
athlete!
Father,
good intentions
and high expectations.
He didn’t model compromise
or practice co-operation.
He focused on rules, not
relationships.
He tried.
Father,
childhood hero!
I was so proud of him,
and I know he was proud of me.
Though I could never fit his mold,
I always loved my dad,
and he loved me.
We tried.
South River Falls, Shenandoah National Park-Virginia, USA. Photo from Adobe Stock
This Sunday, May 9, 2021 is celebrated as Mothers Day in the US. Wherever you are, feel free to join in! Tell your mother you love and appreciate her. Spend time with her if you can. Call her, bring her flowers or candy, take her out to dinner…whatever is in your heart to do. If your mother is no longer alive, take a moment to remember her and all the good times you spent together.
My Mom, Marian Nicholson (1924-2015) always encouraged me in a love of nature, art, and poetry. At the age of forty-five she fulfilled a lifelong dream and graduated from nursing school. We were very proud of Mom. As she grew older, my sister and I increasingly looked out for her. The last thirteen years of her life, she lived near me and we did a lot of things together. This poem is about the last four years of Mom’s life, when she was in an independent living center suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. It was a sad time, but it gave us both pleasure to spend a great deal of time together.
I celebrate Women’s History Month by posting this poem in honor of my mother.
Gulf Coast Poet 