Friend of this series A.K. wrote in reference to yesterday’s installment: "‘Meet Mama (It's her birthday)’ is as much about your father as about Mama…there's nothing in your reminiscence about her birthday. Upon seeing the title, I figured you were setting the stage to describe events that occurred on one of her birthdays.” This brought up one of many ironies; I know more about my father than I do about my mother.
In itself, knowing more about one’s father than mother isn’t particularly ironic, however there are contributing factors. My father wasn’t much of a talker, especially when it came to himself. He was intelligent, but he kept most of his thoughts private. I have probably been in the presence of members of his family (mother and seven siblings) less than a half dozen times in my life. For the 18 years I spent with my family, most were spent in close proximity to my mother’s parents and siblings, and visits were fairly frequent (depending on who was on speaking terms with whom).
Uncle B. and his family (my mother’s brother) lived on the same block as us; my grandparents and Aunt M. and her family lived six blocks away. Everyone was in walking distance—if you called first. I never thought of it back then because it was a way of life, but I think it’s kind of sad that kids could live so close to their grandparents yet see them by appointment only. If my granddarlings lived nearby, Gramma’s would be an open house.
Now, for my benefit more than A.K.’s, I’ve been trying to remember my mother’s birthday celebrations, but it’s futile. The only ones I remember were after I had married and had kids of my own—family get-togethers with my parents and brothers (my younger brother either still in school or away building his own life history, the older between wives). It’s not that her birthday wasn’t celebrated before we started moving out; it was more of a private celebration.
Although I don’t think that we kids were a big part of our parents’ life, they definitely had another life in which we did not participate. Her birthdays were part of that life—an opportunity for a date night. On her birthday, he would take her to dinner and give her the appropriate gift of jewelry. Which brings us to another irony. Over the years my father gave my mother lots of jewelry. She supplemented the collection with good pieces of costume jewelry (e.g., Trifari). When my mother was put in a nursing home and my father gave me her jewelry, the collection consisted mostly of costume jewelry. Why? Because as Alzheimer’s advanced, she did something with the good stuff. Once my father found some in the vacuum cleaner bag; God knows what she did with the rest. It’s a safe assumption that tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gems are in a landfill somewhere. From dust they came…
Very interesting.
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