Mom and I were doing the morning chores, feeding and watering new baby chicks. Suddenly, “Oh Pauley, Pauley, don’t run, don’t run away from me, you’re going to hurt yourself,” she frantically called after me. I tripped and tumbled in a headlong sprawl on the sidewalk. The glass jar in my hands shattered to pieces as a jagged edge of glass pierced the inside of my right arm, about two inches above my wrist.
Blood was bucketing out, I was crying and so was mom. She took her shahtz (apron) and made a tourniquet just below the elbow. Mary, the maute (house maid) ran down the street to the neighbors for help. The English neighbors had a car and quickly drove mom and I to a doctor’s office in Hartville, where they stitched my arm where a mark has served as a constant reminder to what mom concluded that day. “You always need to listen to your mom, she knows what is best for you”
We lived on Geib Ave in Hartville Ohio, having recently moved here a just one year before from Geauga County, fifty miles to the north. My memories begin here at this small farm when I was three years old. A large white house with a white barn located directly across a dusty gravel road.
In parenting Mother was not as strict as dad, so I learned early it was better to seek permission from her rather than dad. She was all heart with an easy… “yes you may.” I recall being swooped up in her arms in a big bear hug, then having her plop a big smooch on my cheek saying “Pauley, I love you so much,” I was the fourth born in the family with four more children yet to follow. She loved her children, working so hard for our best. If she had favorites, it was never apparent to me. My love for my mother was absolute, complete… sincerely with all my heart.
Mom packed our school lunch boxes every morning. My metal lunch box had a cowboy roping a calf on the front lid. At times there were four or five of lunchboxes, lined in a row on the kitchen countertop waiting to be filled. Bologna sandwiches, cookies, carrots or celery strips, chips or pretzels and hot chocolate in the thermos. Some days when groceries were low, for thirty five cents I could buy a hot lunch from the cafeteria. It was where I experienced my first Mac and Cheese.
On Monday mornings, while still in bed I’d awaken to the hypnotic surging hum of the dreaded wash machine engine. Mom had a gasoline powered washing machine, located in the basement. This noisy cantankerous machine belched awful smelling carbon monoxide fumes through the house. To start the dreaded thing, meant winding a rope around the pulley, set the choke at just the just right place, and pulling the rope with all the gusto you had. It was never easy, often taking many pulls to get the engine started, or the rope could break. Clothes were hung outside on clothes lines with wood petzahs, spring, summer fall and winter.
Perhaps the most dreadful part of all was the life zapping job of ironing! A hissing, clunky kerosene iron spewed flames and extreme heat had to be pumped with air periodically. Here she toiled and sweat, pulling and pushing, pulling and pushing, back and forth to smooth out the clothes. She tolerating the antiquated ways of ironing while neighbors, friends and even her own sister Sylvia enjoyed electric wash machines and irons. I’m still haunts at times when in my mind’s eye, I see her standing at the ironing board, pushing and pulling toiling through the heat and cold, babies crying, diapers to change house to clean and a hungry family to feed! Her tear drops wetting the clothes, knowing there was no end in sight week after week of the same.
Life got better for mom after a maid moved in to help mom. She lived right in with us and walked back to her home on the weekends. The maid, Mary Yoder had a reputation of an being a stout hard worker. We soon understood why. She was up early before dawn often in the gardens pulling weeds, making breakfast, picking strawberries, or blicking peas before anyone else was even out of bed. She was a jovial, fun character. I enjoyed teasing and needling her. Mary had a peculiar way of emphasizing things she thought to be right or true with an emphatic “yes sir” except, she couldn’t say it like most of us can. It always came out as “Yetts Sur”
Later, another house maid, Miriam Wagler worked at our house one or two days a week. Her pay was $2.50 per day, later went to $3.00 per day. Her job was to iron our clothes, sometimes it was all day job. Miriam says mom was particular in how she wanted things to be done, in ironing, folding clothes, making beds. She was a tremendous help for mom.
We received a weekly magazine called the Young Companion that came in the mail on Wednesday afternoons. I’d sit on the stone wall next to the the mailbox waiting, waiting for the little mailman and the magazine to arrive, “it’s here, it’s here mom.” She dropped everything to read a weekly continued story. Week after week we read the entire book titled, For One Moment by Christmas Carol Kaufman.
It was a true heartbreaking story of two German brothers, Herbert and Willie caught up in the horrors of the 2nd world war. At times mom’s emotions would overwhelm her and us children gathered around the table leaning in for every word. At times she was simply unable to continue reading the story, and so we all wept around the table. The value of reading to children is unquestionable as I reflect on this book, this story and able to recall the two brothers, their names and details boys in the story, 60 years later.
Mom had a soft loving heart for her children and anyone she met. Especially to those marginalized and often cast away from society as losers, poor, the ridiculed. The fringe people that didn’t quite fit in knew they had a friend in mom! She was there for them, with kindness offering hope to many desperate souls on the margins trying to to find their way.
Most of life, tho she was troubled with low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, not good enough. Now looking back, the trauma of being an adopted child and the manner in which she found out that her parents were not her birth parents, left deep emotional scars and weighed heavy on her.
I suppose there is a difference between being a good person, and being a good parent, but she ably demonstrated both. Generous, sometimes to a fault, unable to even conceive of doing wrong. That was mom!
Thanks Mom…you demonstrated a simple, sincere love, the kind that springs from deep within, and never runs dry!
A Grateful Son,
Paul
