Mother Stories

My mother's life is full of stories, and I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. This is a picture of her taken in 1955. She was 28 years old, 16 years younger than I am now. Wow, that's a mind warp.

She and my father came here in 1955 for what was to be a one year stint at the University of Chicago. That one year has stretched to 53 and going at this point. At 28 she was teaching at the University of Chicago Lab School, learning about life in this strange country, meeting all sorts of new people who would become her friends and community, and she was childless.

My mother really has had a remarkable life. She was the last of seven children, born when her own mother was 48 years old. Her father was a policeman in London. She lived through the war, including being at her aunt's house when it was bombed. She schooled in the country for protection, went to college, met my father bringing in the harvest in Cornwall and moved across the ocean.

After her children were born in 1956, 1961, 1964 and 1965, she was very busy in our lives and had an eventful life of her own. My brother and I went to a baby sitter's house after school two days a week, and my mother didn't have a job!

Mom was always running for or on the school board of whatever district her oldest child was in at the time. She volunteered in our schools PTA, as the Picture Lady, chaired many a committee for many a fundraiser, drove us all over town for dance, piano, swimming. She also recorded books for the blind - even after all these years her voice still has a lovely British accent. And in my high school years Mom ran for a seat in the State House.

As we got older, my mother took up tennis and exercise in general at the age of 53. She traveled the world with her famous physicist husband - China, the Sinai desert, Japan, Russia, Europe, New Zealand (where she had a sister) and Australia (in-laws). My mother also founded a battered women's shelter and fought for services for disabled children across the state. When I went off to college, she was appointed by the governor to be on the Illinois State Board of Education. At the age of seventy, she became a Master Gardener after much, much study and work. She just never stopped. Even now, in her 80s, she is caring for my Parkinsons ridden father, learning about his condition, adapting to life.

All these accomplishments led to stories of her successes, struggles and failures. As grown offspring, our return home for dinner was joyous. Mark loved the story telling, the jovial nature of our two hour (at the table) dinners, full of stories and laughter. And I remember happy, laughing times around the dinner table as children both when people were over and when it was just us. We couldn't make it through a meal without consulting the Oxford English Dictionary.

Mark and my sister-in-law used to number the stories when they were repeated. Grape scissors in Japan - #14, painting the furniture to the floor in Liverpool - #9, hitting the 8th deer on the way home from a late night school board meeting - #23.

Growing up, I always wanted a life like she had. And I guess I do. We have happy, loud, jovial meals in this house too. Our stories may not be as exotic, but they are lively just the same. And some of our stories are about our parents, just as some of my Mom's stories were about hers. Of course, as a homeschooler I don't have the school board issue - I wonder if those meetings still go so late? There were so many expulsions in the drug 70s and 80s!

I'm grateful my mother taught that life is an adventure and a celebration. Happy Mother's Day!