Thinking about my Mom....

It has been 30 years since my mom died....I wasn't there for her illness and I wasn't next to her bedside when she died. Do I feel guilty about that? Yes I do but there's nothing I can do about it....then or now. She died way to young (61) and there are so many questions I would love to be able to ask her but alas, she took her secrets with her....like we all will do some day.

Mom and Dad at wedding

I have written about this in prior posts to this blog but I really didn't know much about my mother. I know almost nothing about her childhood or her teenage years. I know almost nothing about her college days or the courtship of my dad. I know very little about their early life together and quite frankly, I know very little about her up till the time she died. She held everything very close to the vest...I'm not really sure I knew the real Jeanne H.

I do remember her temper, I do remember her humor (somewhat), I do remember her stand-offishness (a lot!), I do remember her vindictiveness (somewhat) and I do remember many other adjectives as well!!

This short little blog will highlight three memories (not in any order) of her that will stick in my mind  forever.

Early picture of my Mom

Very early picture of my Mom

My mom had a temper....we didn't see it often but when it came out, it really came out. I can remember one time when my mom was baking in the kitchen. She was baking pies and she was baking more than one so my guess is that she was baking for some cause or maybe the church at the time. I was young so the details are sketchy. I remember all these pies on the counter with cans of whipped cream all around. My dad walks into the kitchen and says something to her. In their younger days, my dad liked to tease my mom but most of the time my mom didn't have time for his nonsense. I was a kid so I thought it was teasing but who knows, it could have been so much more.

Mom and Dad on vacation

Anyway, my dad walks in and says something to my mom....the next thing I know is that my mom grabs a can of whipped cream and sprays my dad and starts screaming at him. He then grabs a can of whipped cream and starts spraying her and he begins to yell. Now they are chasing each other around the kitchen, spraying each other with cans of whipped cream. My mother runs out of whipped cream first so what does she do, she grabs a pie and throws it at my dad. He then grabs a pie and throws it at her....now, they are running around the kitchen, throwing pies at each other....then my mom opens the refrigerator and starts throwing anything she could get her hands on...all the while, screaming at the top of her lungs. She is screaming, GET OUT.....GET OUT.....and when she starts throwing the pots and pan, my dad makes a hasty retreat. I remember her falling to the floor crying but what I remember the most is that I had to stay and help clean up the mess......and what a mess it was!! I assume they made up but there always seemed to be a lot of tension between my mom and dad, at least when I was young.

Mom in red at one of their 100's of parties

The second incident that I remember vividly happened in San Antonio. We lived in a very nice neighborhood with big homes and manicured yards. Almost everyone who lived in the neighborhood had household help that came to work on a daily basis. Remember, this is San Antonio..so cheap, household help was easy to come by. We lived on a corner lot with a very large tree right at the very corner of Rockhill Dr. and Vandiver Rd. At that corner, there was a bus stop. In the late afternoon, around 5 pm.....all this household help would get off work at about the same time and gather underneath this tree (trying to find shade) waiting for the downtown bus to take them back to their side of town. My mom didn't like them gathering under this tree because they were killing the grass and they were leaving small bits of trash, cigarette butts and the like. She went out there a few times and ask them to move, but of course, she didn't speak Spanish so they pretended not to understand her. This went on for a long time until she decided to put a sign out by the tree, asking them not to gather....well, of course that didn't work so guess what she does!.

Mom at far left at another party

We had an automatic sprinkler system at this house so what my mom would do was wait until there was a pretty good size crowd of people under the tree waiting for the bus. She then would go on the back porch and manually turn that section on and the water would drive the "squatters" away. I really think she got a lot of pleasure doing this because she started doing it every evening. She eventually set the timer so that the sprinklers would come on every night on that section only. Finally, after many complaints by the bus passengers, the city moved the bus stop to the next corner. I'm sure she felt that she had won.

Mom on right at yet another party

The third memory I have written about before but didn't mention the reason. My dad bought my mom a Nash Metropolitan car. This was in Baltimore. She and I were coming home from somewhere when the snow and ice was starting to gather on the streets. The car was a stick shift and was new. My mom knew how to drive a stick shift but this was the first one she had had in a long time. All her earlier cars were automatics. Anyway, we were about a mile from home and the roads were getting very bad. She started to drive slower and slower just because she wasn't use to driving this very light car. The other cars were starting to stack up behind her and where really starting to get aggravated with her slow driving. These cars started to pass her and as they did, they would blow their horns.....she got so pissed that she started cussing them out and flipping them the bird. She did this one time to many and when she took her hands off the wheel to shift and flip off at the same time...she lost control and we went off the road, over a curb and down a large hill into the woods. I remember her being so mad, but at the same time laughing her head off. She asked me not to say anything to my dad, and of course I didn't. We were both fine and the car suffered no damage.  

Mom and me in Williamsburg

My mom was a character and I only wish that I had known her better. My sister spent more time with her, especially in her later years after my dad died. I know she has some good stories to tell.