Things My Mother Taught Me
by Austin
Repath
It
isn’t easy talking about my mother. Not sure why. My father
was absent much of the time, and my mother became my friend and confidante.
Maybe that explains it. Being a mommy’s boy, I spent much of my early
adulthood freeing myself from the apron strings and establishing my own
male independence.
Yet she was the one who formed me and gave me much of what has made
my life happy and successful. To begin with, she loved me. Maybe
a little too protectively, but she loved me. One of my earliest memories
was of my mother sitting with me in a huge upholstered rocking chair and
reading to me from a large hard covered book, that if I remember rightly,
I found in a neighbour’s garbage. It had pictures of knights on horseback
riding across hills and vales, of what must have been, English countryside.
“Read that story,” I’d say, pointing to a picture. And she would
read and rock until I fell asleep, nestled in her arms.
When I was older, just entering my teens, I asked her to teach me to dance.
She had once been a dance instructor, and our family’s one claim to fame
was that we were all great dancers. She put on some music, a slow
fox trot, and stood me in the middle of the room. " You always start in
the center of the room," she informed me. “Dancing is simply,
walking to the music,” she told me, “And if you should step on the girl’s
toe, you should expect her to apologize as her foot shouldn’t have been
there.”
We walked around the room to the music, my mother showing me how to lead.
“You have to show her which way you want to go, and you do this with one
hand on her back and your hips against hers.” She put my hands where they
should be. “Now make sure you signaled me which way we go," and we
danced around the living room. “There” she said firmly, “the rest
is up to you.”
That was the end of my one and only dance lesson, but it was enough.
Before the school year was out, I had earned the reputation as the best
dancer in the school.
My mother had this knack of giving me the confidence that I could do anything  and
be anything I wanted. A great attitude to go through life with. The
downside was that I took my mother’s view of my abilities literally. And
so I spent much of my life being greatly disappointed as my innate abilities,
definitely average, never seemed able to deliver my expectation.
Life proved far more complex and difficult than being the best dancer at
the high school sock hops.
“If only, mom, you had given me a little more sense of reality, my life
would have been so much easier. And yet then I would never have tried
so many marvelous endeavor, writing a novel, singing, playing the violin.”
She hadn't bothered to tell told me the whole family was tone deaf, that
we were ordinary folk. She led me to believe that I would marry the
princess, be the boss’s favorite, go from success to success. And so I
have led a life of spectacular expectations, never-say-I-can’t leaps into
whatever adventure presented itself, and crushing, fall-on-my-head failures.
`
"All of this I owe to you, mom, and in truth I wouldn’t have wanted it
any other way."
Her simple Irish way of meeting life has stayed with me to this day. Once
going off to the dentist, she informed me that she would start worrying
about the pain the minute it started to hurt and not a moment before.
I think I found that the most admirable bit of advice she ever gave me.
Even more precious, she showed me what it was like to live with a woman,
showed me that they were fun to be with, great to talk to, that a kitchen
was a place to play, that ironing was an art, and that if you broke a piece
of china, laugh.
As I grew older, busy with a teaching career, looking desperately for a
mate, my visits home became less frequent. I began so see my mother
as talkative and possessive. I was secretly glad when she moved out
West to live with my sisiter. My mother died out there unexpectedly.
I wish now that before she had left I had told her what a special
mother she been to me.
What I have instead is a memory of a day shortly before she left.
I had come by the house to show her my new motorcycle. She was old
and frail, but she insisted that I give her a ride. As we rode through
town mom sat behind me, a red kerchief around her head, one arm around
my waist, the other waving at everyone along the street. I could tell she
was imagining herself a young motorcycle moll wheeling down the street,
one arm around her own private Marlon Brando
"And mom, for that moment, for you, I was."
You
might also enjoy reading In Praise of a Good Man,
a tribute to my father
Austin
Repath (thepilgrim@look.ca)
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