…It’s been a difficult couple of weeks for us all I lost my dear friend, Lynn Swan, unexpectedly and it doesn’t seem like I can stop thinking about her boys, Joe and Mike, who are dealing with the pain of the first Mother’s Day without their Mom and the grandchildren without their Nan.
……Lynn and I didn’t really become good friends until I lost my husband, Bill. I was so busy running for office, building a career, raising kids, that I really didn’t take time to focus on making friends. Bill was my best friend and we were pretty inseparable in the time we had together.
……..And, then he was gone. I was like a deer in the headlight. The independent woman who had been alone for so many years had forgotten how to live a solitary life. I knew Lynn had lost her husband of many years shortly before me. I picked up the phone; dialed her number and simply said “I don’t know how to do this alone.”
……..I wasn’t alone from that point out. Lynn and Joyce Heise took me by the hand; shoved me out the door; and showed me how to navigate the world alone again.
…..Mother’s Day doesn’t surprise me. It doesn’t creep up and I say “Oh my, It’s Mothers Day again. How can that be?” Nope, I ignore it. I don’t like it. Not only because I don’t need a day to remind me of Mom, I see her everyday in my daughter, granddaughters and great-granddaughters, but I miss the mother I don’t get to be anymore.
……Like most mothers the winds of time blow too swiftly for me. My brain told me that when I gave birth that these my babies, would grow up and become adults. My mind could handle that. But, my heart? Nope. In my heart I froze them in time and I return to that time when I need a warm fuzzy. I don’t think I’m alone in doing that. I think we all freeze our kids in our mind’s eye at a certain age and that image never leaves us.
…….But, I take it one step further. I love clothes and I really loved kids’ clothes. So mine are frozen wearing my favorite outfits of all time for them.
………Shannon is five, wearing a green pinafore dress with long bangs and puppy tails that extend past her shoulders. There are green bows atop the puppy tails, ruffled white socks and patent leather shoes.
……. Doug is maybe seven and he wears the outfit I loved and he hated. He might have been Christopher Robin. Even so, he was not thrilled when Mom came home with bell bottoms with red and green stripes and a turtleneck with the Winnie the Pooh logo. I was thrilled because he was my little Pooh bear. He describes the day he wore that outfit to school as one of the most humiliating days of his life.
……My Mom, too, is frozen at 40 in a Lilli Ruben suit with a white fox collar and a pillbox hat. She loved clothes and her closet reflected it. It was the sixties and women everywhere were discovering their ability to step out of the stereotype society bestowed on them.
Margaret Carroll didn’t have to do that. She knew she wasn’t like the other girls in the Catholic School. They had two parents. She didn’t even know the name of her father. Her mother had abandoned her after giving birth, leaving her to her grandparents to raise. A staunch Catholic family they were embarrassed by the little girl that had been foisted on them. A tragic train accident had taken their beloved son and they were bereft of affection for Margaret. But maternal instinct must be the strongest of them all because Margaret had a fierce love of all she deemed as hers. She was a mother who did not let a child go to sleep without hearing “Mother loves you.”
……. Life was hardscrabble back then and when Dad went to war she fended for herself and my sister, age 2. When the checks to the homefront were delayed, she had nowhere to turn. Both sides of the family had disowned them. Dad’s for marrying an illegitimate Catholic. Her’s for marrying a divorced Protestant. There was no job too menial or too hard for her to take on to keep her daughter fed. She scrubbed floors, cleaned house, took in ironing and at one point, delivered milk.
…….I always longed to have been there to see Mom, a shy 20-year-old, set out to get her husband elected to office for the first time. He had filed before he was called up and it fell to her to conduct the campaign. I think there must have been a tremendous metamorphosis going on as she trudged door-to-door with a two-year-old who had been coached to hand the voter a card with a picture of Dad in a sailor suit and say “Please, vote for my daddy. He’s fighting the war.”
…….They voted for that sailor. Dad was the only Republican to win in a Roosevelt landslide.
…………Dad came back from the war and assumed office. Mom stepped back into the traditional role of housewife. He was the breadwinner and she was the helper. She forgot she was so much, much more.
……..Until it was time for her to go to work again. When Dad died in 1989, he and Mom had been divorced for years and Mom had stepped away from politics altogether. I was writing his obituary, when she learned of his death. She came to me and put her arms around me to comfort me. In grief, we say the stupidest things. I had announced my intention to run for the House of Delegates, but my very first campaign loomed ahead.
……“What will I do without him. He was my everything,” I sobbed. “He knew everything, everyone…..who’s gonna get me elected?”
……It was as if the years dissolved in a nano-second and a 20-year-old Margaret snapped into place. Mom smacked me on the head. “Who the **** do you think got your Dad elected? Your Mother did and your Mother will get you elected.”
………And, so she did. She was a natural at politics because she truly liked people and she never knew a stranger. She wore jacket with “Pettit for House” emblazoned on the back… to the store….to the beauty shop……..even to church. She would approach strangers and say “Do you know my daughter?” If they didn’t by the time she was done, they knew me and she knew each of their children. She had made a new friend. I had won a new voter.
……… I see her in each of my children and grandchildren: The refusal to give up despite overwhelming odds; the ability to be a fight like a man and still be a lady; and a capacity to care about the things and the people she loved that was boundless.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.
