What a pleasant surprise -- a warm, sunny day at last. Very breezy, but we can't have everything. Rumor has it that it will be 10 degrees warmer one day next weekend. And whenever we're tempted to complain about the weather, we look at the suffering in Tornado Alley and shut our mouths.
Happy Mother's Day to all!
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Tribute to my mom
This essay was published several years ago in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Mother's Poem
By Lynnette Baughman
My mother memorized only one poem. It's a fragment, actually, of a long, fairly obscure poem by the American poet James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). Two or three lines are famous, the rest seldom recited. "And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days . . ."
She couldn't remember the author or the poem's name, so in college when I came across "The Vision of Sir Launfal," and read of the perfection of June in "Prelude to Part First," I wrote it out and memorized it. Mother prided herself on reciting it rapid-fire, the words an aural blur. I surprised her by saying it as fast as she could. From then on it wasn't Mother's poem. It was our poem.
My mother grew up poor in Bradford, Pa., and Duluth, Minn. She was second-generation American of Irish descent, fond of saying in an exaggerated but very realistic brogue, "Me mither's name was McMenamin, and her mither's name was Hannigan!" Her own mother could only stay in school through fifth grade, but my mom made it through high school. It was touch-and-go that last year. Her father had survived smallpox, but his kidneys were damaged. He could only work sporadically; her mother kept them fed by doing washing and cleaning in other people's homes.
Mother had two outfits, one for weekdays and one for Sunday. Her school outfit was a navy blue serge skirt with bloomers. The pinwale corduroy blouse had two sets of detachable collar and cuffs, so she could hand wash one set every night. The outfit was washed every weekend. She had one hand-me-down coat that lasted for years.
"I had to walk a mile to school in bitter cold weather, following a horse plow which made a path on the sidewalks," she wrote later. "I carried 5 cents to ride home on the trolley if the weather was too bad, but I hung on to the 5 cents and walked."
She wrote, too, of her graduation in 1922. "We had no money, but I had to have a dress under the rented graduation robe. We had some real lace curtains that we, as kids, had had for dress-up but which now had gaping holes in them. My mother fashioned a dress out of that lace, and every hole was covered with a rosette made of satin ribbon with a dime-store forget-me-not in the center. The slip underneath was new -- pink sateen. The dress was something to be proud of, and I was. No one had to know its origin."
She had taken the business course in high school, and went to work immediately as a stenographer. When her father died 15 months later, she became the sole support of her mother and sister. She went alone to Philadelphia to find work, then moved the family there to be closer to her married brother.
I was the youngest of her six children, the only one born after the family moved from Philadelphia to Bremerton, Wash. Both my parents worked very hard. After my dad was severely injured working on the construction of Ross Dam, Mother had an even harder life. I scarcely ever saw her in daylight. She rose early to take public transportation to her job, then took a bus and a ferry and a bus to the hospital in Seattle to see my father. We moved to New Mexico for his health, but he died when I was 10.
On some forgotten June day in my 20s, when I was busy with children of my own, in Texas, or maybe it was Michigan by then, I called Mother and recited the poem.
And what is so rare as a day in June? I began. (But I said it her way, "Andwhatissorare asadayinJune?")
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.
The tradition became an annual phone call, and it was a contest to see who would remember first and be the one to call and do the recitation. In 1991 -- I have no idea why -- I almost forgot. On the 25th of June I made the call, and her relief almost made me cry. By then she was so old, so frail. She'd used most of her savings, and it took everything she got from her retirement and Social Security to pay women to take care of her so she could stay in her little house in Las Cruces. Actually, it took more than that. Her five surviving children pitched in every month to make up the shortfall.
I remembered on time June 1, 1992, and I placed the call, planning to recite it without so much as a hello, to make sure I beat her to it. But the caretaker answered instead. I heard Mother's reedy voice in the background. "Who is it?" "It's Lynn." I hear the rustle of the phone being carried to the hospital bed there in the living room.
She, too, skipped hello in order to fire the first poetic salvo. "AndwhatissorareasadayinJune?"
Silly old woman. Silly dear old woman. About four and a half feet tall if she stood up, but she couldn't. Not a month went by without another fracture of her brittle bones. The phone, the mail and visits meant the world to her by then.
She died that December 30, four days after her 88th birthday. At the luncheon after the funeral I made reference to "Mother's poem" to my oldest brother, then to the others. That was when I knew I was the only one who had memorized it. It really was our poem.
My own children knew about "Grandma's poem," though they only knew the first three or four lines. Since I always recited it fast, like a tongue twister, they probably never distinctly heard the whole thing. I had long forgotten the name of the poem.
My daughters and I use the phone (long distance) to excess. Or maybe there's no such thing. It's a big world, and I am, after all their mother. What's a couple dollars? (Of course, when Erika was in Australia, and Shije was in Mexico, and Sonje was stationed in Japan -- and the cost was a dollar a minute -- less contact might have been tolerable.)
There's one phone call I wouldn't trade for the world, though. It came June 1, 1995. Erika, a girl of taste and intelligence, but the daughter who comes closest to being an airhead at times, was 21. Then attending college in New York City, she was a woman of the world, a cosmopolite, but she was still my baby -- my youngest and the youngest of Mother's 20 grandchildren. She was the one who sang "Softly and Tenderly, Jesus is Calling" at Mother's funeral in a voice that would make an angel sin-sick with envy.
"Hello?" I said that June day.
Erika didn't say hello; she didn't need to. She didn't need to say she loved me, either. She said it all with words she read from a book, a book she'd gone to great difficulty to find at the huge New York Public Library. As she told me later, several librarians had been involved in the search for the unnamed poem by an unknown author. All Erika knew were two lines, but they were in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, so the librarians took on the challenge.
"And what is so rare as a day in June?" she began. "Then if ever, come perfect days . . ."
My throat tightened and I fought to breathe. Nothing. That's the answer, I thought. Nothing else is so rare.
Mother's Poem
By Lynnette Baughman
My mother memorized only one poem. It's a fragment, actually, of a long, fairly obscure poem by the American poet James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). Two or three lines are famous, the rest seldom recited. "And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days . . ."
She couldn't remember the author or the poem's name, so in college when I came across "The Vision of Sir Launfal," and read of the perfection of June in "Prelude to Part First," I wrote it out and memorized it. Mother prided herself on reciting it rapid-fire, the words an aural blur. I surprised her by saying it as fast as she could. From then on it wasn't Mother's poem. It was our poem.
My mother grew up poor in Bradford, Pa., and Duluth, Minn. She was second-generation American of Irish descent, fond of saying in an exaggerated but very realistic brogue, "Me mither's name was McMenamin, and her mither's name was Hannigan!" Her own mother could only stay in school through fifth grade, but my mom made it through high school. It was touch-and-go that last year. Her father had survived smallpox, but his kidneys were damaged. He could only work sporadically; her mother kept them fed by doing washing and cleaning in other people's homes.
Mother had two outfits, one for weekdays and one for Sunday. Her school outfit was a navy blue serge skirt with bloomers. The pinwale corduroy blouse had two sets of detachable collar and cuffs, so she could hand wash one set every night. The outfit was washed every weekend. She had one hand-me-down coat that lasted for years.
"I had to walk a mile to school in bitter cold weather, following a horse plow which made a path on the sidewalks," she wrote later. "I carried 5 cents to ride home on the trolley if the weather was too bad, but I hung on to the 5 cents and walked."
She wrote, too, of her graduation in 1922. "We had no money, but I had to have a dress under the rented graduation robe. We had some real lace curtains that we, as kids, had had for dress-up but which now had gaping holes in them. My mother fashioned a dress out of that lace, and every hole was covered with a rosette made of satin ribbon with a dime-store forget-me-not in the center. The slip underneath was new -- pink sateen. The dress was something to be proud of, and I was. No one had to know its origin."
She had taken the business course in high school, and went to work immediately as a stenographer. When her father died 15 months later, she became the sole support of her mother and sister. She went alone to Philadelphia to find work, then moved the family there to be closer to her married brother.
I was the youngest of her six children, the only one born after the family moved from Philadelphia to Bremerton, Wash. Both my parents worked very hard. After my dad was severely injured working on the construction of Ross Dam, Mother had an even harder life. I scarcely ever saw her in daylight. She rose early to take public transportation to her job, then took a bus and a ferry and a bus to the hospital in Seattle to see my father. We moved to New Mexico for his health, but he died when I was 10.
On some forgotten June day in my 20s, when I was busy with children of my own, in Texas, or maybe it was Michigan by then, I called Mother and recited the poem.
And what is so rare as a day in June? I began. (But I said it her way, "Andwhatissorare asadayinJune?")
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.
The tradition became an annual phone call, and it was a contest to see who would remember first and be the one to call and do the recitation. In 1991 -- I have no idea why -- I almost forgot. On the 25th of June I made the call, and her relief almost made me cry. By then she was so old, so frail. She'd used most of her savings, and it took everything she got from her retirement and Social Security to pay women to take care of her so she could stay in her little house in Las Cruces. Actually, it took more than that. Her five surviving children pitched in every month to make up the shortfall.
I remembered on time June 1, 1992, and I placed the call, planning to recite it without so much as a hello, to make sure I beat her to it. But the caretaker answered instead. I heard Mother's reedy voice in the background. "Who is it?" "It's Lynn." I hear the rustle of the phone being carried to the hospital bed there in the living room.
She, too, skipped hello in order to fire the first poetic salvo. "AndwhatissorareasadayinJune?"
Silly old woman. Silly dear old woman. About four and a half feet tall if she stood up, but she couldn't. Not a month went by without another fracture of her brittle bones. The phone, the mail and visits meant the world to her by then.
She died that December 30, four days after her 88th birthday. At the luncheon after the funeral I made reference to "Mother's poem" to my oldest brother, then to the others. That was when I knew I was the only one who had memorized it. It really was our poem.
My own children knew about "Grandma's poem," though they only knew the first three or four lines. Since I always recited it fast, like a tongue twister, they probably never distinctly heard the whole thing. I had long forgotten the name of the poem.
My daughters and I use the phone (long distance) to excess. Or maybe there's no such thing. It's a big world, and I am, after all their mother. What's a couple dollars? (Of course, when Erika was in Australia, and Shije was in Mexico, and Sonje was stationed in Japan -- and the cost was a dollar a minute -- less contact might have been tolerable.)
There's one phone call I wouldn't trade for the world, though. It came June 1, 1995. Erika, a girl of taste and intelligence, but the daughter who comes closest to being an airhead at times, was 21. Then attending college in New York City, she was a woman of the world, a cosmopolite, but she was still my baby -- my youngest and the youngest of Mother's 20 grandchildren. She was the one who sang "Softly and Tenderly, Jesus is Calling" at Mother's funeral in a voice that would make an angel sin-sick with envy.
"Hello?" I said that June day.
Erika didn't say hello; she didn't need to. She didn't need to say she loved me, either. She said it all with words she read from a book, a book she'd gone to great difficulty to find at the huge New York Public Library. As she told me later, several librarians had been involved in the search for the unnamed poem by an unknown author. All Erika knew were two lines, but they were in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, so the librarians took on the challenge.
"And what is so rare as a day in June?" she began. "Then if ever, come perfect days . . ."
My throat tightened and I fought to breathe. Nothing. That's the answer, I thought. Nothing else is so rare.
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