Remembering Mary Ann

Every year on April 15 I find myself mired in a strange conflict of emotions. This is the day that my mother died and, the God’s honest truth is, I don’t know what I feel. I miss her. I guess you can’t NOT miss your mother. But, in addition to missing the archetypal mother and all that goes along with that, I miss her, too.

Our relationship was rocky and uneven. I was her first child and not the child she wanted. She wanted a girly-girl who liked dresses and ribbons in her hair and dolls and tea parties. She wanted a darling little girl with a sunny disposition and loads of charm. Actually, what she wanted was Shirley Temple. Instead she got a dreamy, introverted, quiet kid who had no interest whatsoever in clothes or hair or having her nails painted. She got a daughter who would rather play Army soldiers with her brothers or read a book --- endless books --- and who wrote stories, some of which upset her. Later on she bore my sister Anne and she finally got her girly-girl. The truth was she never quite knew what to make of me. My childhood was one long series of adventures in failing to fulfill her expectations. It wasn’t fun.

Later, when I was the only one of her eight children who decided to lead a somewhat Bohemian life, things changed between us. For years she disapproved of my singleness, my moving around the country, my series of boyfriends. She always liked the men in my life and was more disappointed than I was when things “didn’t work out”. When I moved to Texas she made her first trip away from home, took her first airplane ride, and came to visit me in Houston. In Galveston she saw the Gulf of Mexico for the first time. Later, when I moved to Marblehead she came there and saw the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.

I’m glad that we had a few adventures together because she was actually a good travelling companion. She liked people and would talk to anyone --- a thing that almost got us in to trouble a couple of times. Men loved my mother. She was tall and statuesque and had dark hair and eyes and a low, rather sultry voice. In New Orleans she walked into a coffee shop and announced that we were strangers from out of town and lost and three men followed her out to the car to give us directions --- it was New Orleans so we got three different sets of directions. In Chattanooga she struck up a conversation with a tall, lanky fellow in a restaurant and I had one hell of a time getting rid of him when we were trying to leave. I thought he was going to follow us back to Pennsylvania. And in the Citadel in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she began chatting with a bagpiper in Highland dress who offered to meet her at our hotel after his shift was over and show her the nightlife in Halifax. That one scared her a little and she suggested we leave town. I told her to just stay in our room and not talk to strangers. Later that evening when I heard the mournful, dreamy notes of his bagpipe floating down on the evening breeze I wondered how I would explain all this to my father if I woke up the next morning and found her gone.

So I am happy to have those kinds of memories to cherish when the aspects of my character that have suffered because of early issues with her start causing problems in my life. I try to remind myself that she did the best she could and we had good times together later in life.

I’ve come to the conclusion that what makes family different than other relationships is that they’re always there. Even when they’re half a continent away and you haven’t talked to them in years and years and, oh, yeah, they’re also dead. But still she’s there. She’s there when I make a wilted lettuce salad or a BLT or a pitcher of iced tea --- things she and I shared a love for. She’s here a lot lately as I watch these old movies filled with movie stars she was dazzled by --- William Holden and Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable and James Stewart. And lately, as I am aging, she’s been showing up in the mirror when I glance at myself unthinking. She’ll always be there.

So, Mom, I hope you are fine wherever you are. She was a good Catholic who loved the Church and so I’m sure she is wherever good Catholics go. You drove me crazy and I miss you. Love you, Mom.

Thanks for reading.