FOCUSING ON MY MOTHER

FOCUSING ON MY MOTHER (BY Lynda Jacobs 1991 )

I don't have any early memories of my mother.
I remember my brothers and farm house and ranch,
my grandpa and some early scenes with my sister,
but I cannot get a glimpse of memory of Mother.
When I was 4 we moved from the ranch at Concho to Mesa,
where we had a house on a couple of acres, a cow and some chickens.
I remember Daddy milking the cow and letting me have some of the milk,
foamy from the bucket, and I remember mother protesting that the milk hadn't been strained yet. That must be my earliest memory of her.
That year my sister went to school and I was left at home alone with mother; Daddy had returned to work. I remember it as a wonderful year, being the center of her attention, being focused on and loved.
Once I told her that I remembered that every noon time we would sit in the kitchen and eat a baloney sandwich and listen to the radio story, "John's Other Wife." She said she thought we must have done that about once, and she did not remember doing it at all, for she usually worked hard and did not indulge in sitting down to listen to the radio or later watch much T.V.

I remember her always scrubbing and cleaning and working hard.
We moved to some apartments when I was 6 and they were old and grubby
and she had the main responsibility for cleaning, painting and
fixing them up to rent. Daddy was working as a carpenter then, but on other peoples's projects. She would let us hang blankets on the clothes line between the apartments to make curtains for our stage presentations that my sister and friends and I created. She suffered bravely through that all, sitting to watch and clapping at the conclusion. I don't know had many we did, it seems like there were many, but maybe it is like the radio story.

Mother liked our friend's mother a lot, her name was Mary Tijama. We spent the night at our friends' house and had them at ours. Itseems like this was a fairly regular exchange. Mother was happy with Mary there; they were such good friends. Then Mary moved away... across town. We visited sometimes, but Mother was lonesome. I didn't know that then, but later she told me how much it hurt when Mary moved away. She said she would never allow herself to get so involved with a friendship because it hurt so much when it was taken away. I don't know when we quit going to Mary's to visit occasionally; the last time was in the spring and the lady bugs were all over and we caught a whole jar full; Mother said we must be sure to let them all go.

My first grade year Mother rode the school bus to school with me on the first day as she had been instructed to do. She came with me to my classroom and planned to stay the whole day with me. In the morning she felt strongly inspired to return home; she followed this warning. Daddy had fallen from a roof and broken some bones and needed her; her brother in law died that day in an accident too. I didn't understand all this at the time, but I remember the day and the fear I saw in her plainly. That may have been the day she told my brother to meet me at the bus stop and walk me home; he fell asleep and forgot to go after me; I tried to walk home and got lost and she found me by driving around the blocks in the car. In my own memory version I can see a little lost girl in an orange dress with little black velvet designs on it, walking hopelessly around.
We moved around a lot in the Phoenix area, from house to house that Daddy bought in a sort of monopoly game he played with real estate. He became custodian of the church across the street as a sort of church welfare job until he got stronger and more able to work. Mother did not say much about it, she scrubbed and cleaned our little house and the next little house we moved into. She worked hard everyday, scrubbing and cleaning and trying to please Daddy. Later she told me she was embarrassed the way Daddy cleaned the church building because it was a pretty scuzzy job; he expected her to help him do it and she refused to; I don't know too much about it; I was only 6 or 7.

We moved to Chandler for my third grade year and lived in the office unit of some apartments. Mother scrubbed and worked to keep the apartments clean and rentable; she was very tired. I don't remember her being happy--ever. Once my sister and I were playing the princess and the pea, using the folding portable bed for the pile of mattresses and a doll for the princess. The doll complained that she hadn't slept well because there was a pea in the bed. Mother entered at them minute and scolded us saying there was no "pee" in that bed, she had just cleaned it herself and there was nothing wrong with it.

Another time a friend came to play with me in that same apartment. We were pretending to be naughty little kids throwing mud at some other kids. I suggested that we take off our shirts, for pretend, so we could throw the pretend mud without getting it on our clothes, and then we wouldn't get in trouble for throwing it. My friend went along, but she went in the closet to really take off her shirt, which I didn't figure out until Mother came in and demanded that she get out of the closet. We had some bags of sugar stored in there and when she saw my friend without a shirt she really scolded us; I don't know why. I didn't know why, but I felt very embarrassed that she would scold my friend. I still get embarrassed when I think of it now. I felt like I had done something really terrible, but I didn't know just what it was. I knew there was more to it than the sugar bags and the shirt.
She scolded me for stealing matches from the kitchen to use my brother's canned heat to cook little pieces of bacon in a jar lid in the garage.
It seemed like Daddy was the one who made the arrangements for dance lessons, and to go to church, but I am sure mother was behind it all.
Mother taught a primary class, and she sent me a special letter about being baptized when I turned eight. I remember reading it a lot before I was baptized.
She arranged our piano lessons and tried to get us to practice. She wanted to learn how to play the piano herself but Daddy yelled at her one day to stop that racket when she was practicing the little songs we were assigned, and she never tried to do it again. She tried hard to get our piano teacher from Phoenix to come to Chandler and tried to line up some other pupils for the teacher (she told me about this years later) She showed so much interest in music that she was asked to lead the music in primary. She said, it was really terrible because she said she couldn't sing and knew nothing about music. Mother often said how poorly she sings in church, and often commented that her children sang just like her.

I gripe and yell at my kids a lot, and I feel badly about it when I do. Usually I remember how bewildered I felt as a child and at least try to explain to my children that I am just tired and grumpy or nervous, or don't feel well, and it is not so much what they have done as my irritability; or if it is something they have done, I try to explain what is wrong or how I preceived it so that have some understanding of their own behavior and how I see it. It took me several years to learn to do that, so my older ones probably have a lot of unresolved questions and embarassments caused by my gripping at them when they were little.