My Mom's Better Than Martha

Warning – don't let the opening f-word scare you off. This isn't sad.

When my Mom passed away, the family was too broken up to participate in the funeral. Like most United Methodists, we sat in the congregation and let the preacher do all the talking. Tragically, the minister didn't know Mom that well – he came along when her illness kept her home – and he approached the service as a sort of Mad Libs for the Bible, telling the story of Martha and plugging in Mom's name when he could as an example of her being a woman who cared about her home and serving her guests. My disgust with this shallow representation of my mother was the only thing pulling me away from my tears, until I laughed afterward at my brother's friend's first words in the lobby, "Who the hell's Martha?"

My mother, Faye, loved Mother's Day. You could name a date in May years out and she would know if it were Mother's Day. One time I'd mentioned when my friend was planning something, and she said in disbelief, "But that's Mother's Day."

I, a reasonably selfish and never-into-being-a-mother type (a part of me couldn't imagine never having children, but another part of me couldn't imagine the actual having of the children), felt toward Mother's Day the way a lot of people feel toward Valentine's Day. If we make a big fuss on this one day because the calendar says to, is that really sincere? Is it making us look that much more unappreciative the rest of the year? I also thought it was a little weird to see my otherwise selfless Mom – the one who took care of the cooking, cleaning, shopping, yard work, while we kids couldn't wait for Dad to get home – getting excited about a day where we were supposed to make a fuss about her like it was her birthday or something.

Then one day, Mom looked me in the eye and said, "Mother's Day is to me what Halloween is to you."

Oh!

The center of my year. The day that makes me so happy, I look forward it to more than my own birthday. Both my parents indulged my irrational love of the holiday wrapped around Gomez and Morticia Addams. I would never question her love of her holiday again.

But I didn't fully understand her love of it until – literally – the day she died, when my Dad, her husband of 55 very loving years (and the man who "got" us kids while Mom who clearly didn't "get" us sat quietly in the background), shook his head, lost, and said, "I don't know what I'm going to do. She understood you kids."

What?

That wasn't the sentence I was expecting to follow "I don't know what I'm going to do" after his lifelong love passed away. We were all grown up, and what did he mean she was the one who understood us? He was kidding, right?

Then in the next five years before Dad joined her – and every day since – I began to realize just how much he wasn't kidding and how seriously Mom took her job. In her opinion, the family and house came first, and she made sure the man of the house and the father of her children looked good. Not that Dad wasn't a good man – he was a very good man – but Mom, it turns out, made him look GREAT.

Starting with "Can I have a puppy?"

I've wanted a dog my entire life, and all my childly begging was met with, "Your mother says no," with the occasional added, "She grew up on a farm and doesn't want animals around her house." So after Mom passed, and Dad and I were living together for a while, I mentioned now we could get a dog, and Dad announced, "We are not getting a dog!"

Ah-HA!

That also reminded me of years before at a family reunion when I was holding someone's dog in my lap and petting him for ages. Dad said, "I've never seen Marilyn like a dog so much," and Mom – in a memorably rare moment of dropping the protective Dad shield – said in disbelief, "Are you kidding? She loves dogs!"

Part of the disconnect with us kids and Mom was, even though she was extremely loving, she wasn't the huggy type, and we kind of picked up that trait in response. She was by no means a snob, but there was a Southern gentility and modesty that repressed gushing, and it wasn't until years later when she knew we were safely grown and she hadn't raised spoiled brats that she began to brag about her children's accomplishments.

Dad and I also noted later that she adored babies and toddlers, and it was when children had gotten old enough to have opinions of their own – and say no to cuddling and whatnot – that Mom didn't quite know what to do with children. That was a harsh departure from the idyllic world of mother and child she must have envisioned in her childhood, the appreciative loving return for working so tirelessly.

But she found other ways to show her love. One of the few memories from my elementary school days is showing her – an excellent Southern cook and baker – a photo of a marble pound cake, a marvel of regular pound cake with a different flavor cake baked inside. How did they do that? She said she could do that. No way!

So I bargained with her (the early days of this shy kid too nervous to ask for a favor without offering something in return) if I got straight A's on my report card, would she make a marble pound cake for me? She agreed, and I was so excited to come home two weeks later with my report card. I ran into the kitchen to show her my all A's, and she opened the Tupperware cake case to reveal the magnificent marble pound cake she'd baked for me. I was thrilled, except – hey! What if I didn't make all A's? She just smiled.

A memory from my even earlier childhood – which made no sense to me at the time – was Mom at my sickbed, telling me she'd trade places with me if she could. I thought that was ridiculous. Who on earth would be willing to suffer an agonizing sore throat and earache for someone else? It wasn't until I held the next baby in our family – my nephew – in my arms and thought, yep. I could push him out of the way of a speeding car. Mom wasn't faking it.

And in all this Southern modest grace and decorum – the week she was recovering from a stroke, she couldn't remember the word for "strawberry," but she insisted Dad tell me to call Alicia and cancel her weekly hair appointment – she raised us in a fun home and we laughed a lot. She left most of the performing to the rest of her family of entertainers, but I still think fondly of her reading the "Three Little Kittens Who Lost Their Mittens" poem to me when I was a little girl, acting out the different voices of the mewing kittens and the firm but loving mother cat.

For Mom and Dad's golden wedding anniversary – 50 years of marriage – my brother wanted to put together a big party, which wasn't Mom's style. Wayne said, sorry, we're doing something to celebrate. Mom said she'd much rather have all of her children and grandchildren together for a few days, since both my brothers and their families lived in different parts of the country and we were never all together. So Wayne and his wife arranged an out-of-town getaway, and we all enjoyed hanging out together in the North Carolina mountains.

Before we broke up and headed back in different directions, I asked everyone if they could do anything in their life, what would it be? A landscape designer, a singer, a return to a previous job with its amazing benefits, a writer – the list went on. When I asked Mom, she said, "Did it." And smiled at her family.

Take that, Martha.