So, a few of these blog entries have been percolating in my head for the last few days or so (I TOLD you, it’s loud in here……..
So here goes:
I’m turning 56 this summer. OMG, did I just say that? Well, my mother, Rosemary MacDowell Lawrence, died when she was 56 and I was 21. At the time, I thought she was ancient. Now, not so much…..
My sister Maura, as she approached her 50’s, used to have a fear of being like mom and not making it past 56. I’m not sure what that was all about, but that’s what she used to say. Well, Maura actually made it past 59, and despite our issues, and there were many, I miss her desperately. That’s for another story.
I’m not concerned about dying in my 56th year, I’m more worried that I’ll be like my Dad, who died 10 days short of his 90th birthday, or his oldest sister Julia, who, at 100 years of age has outlived all her siblings. That’s gotta be tough, and that’s another story, too.
I really want to write about my mother, and our differences. She packed an incredible amount of living into her 56 years. Never graduated High School because she had to quit school to help support her family. She was Shanty Irish and married up, my dad was Lace Curtain. Hence, her total paranoia about manners. Our living room was always strewn with graph paper on which she did the New York Times diagramless crossword puzzles. She loved words and loved to play with them. She loved Ogden Nash, the Galloping Gourmet, the Smothers Brothers, and Laugh-In.
She loved her children, all ten of them-six girls and four boys, two of whom died very, very young. How do you handle that? Well, she handled it with alcohol, and recently, I’m beginning to understand how that happened. She used to put our jackets on the dining room heater before we went to school on winter mornings. On the day Nancy, the baby of the family, was brought home from the hospital, mom sent us back to school after lunch with two nickels, not the usual one, for a treat at the local candy store.
She hated rainy days, especially rainy Mondays. I LOVE rainy days, especially when they occur in the fall, at the beginning of the school year, and I’m cozy in a classroom. I started first grade the during Hurricane Donna, in fact, we had to turn around and go home after arriving all dressed up and ready to go. Maybe that’s the reason I like those rainy school days so much.
Mom and I had other differences. I’m learning to embrace the similarities I like, and reject the differences that get in my way. I would give everything to sit and chat with her about being a mother.
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