Mothers and Daughters

The warm, sultry breeze passed through the window’s metal screen as the soft whirring of the Sears Roebuck window fan lulled us into a drowsy state. Our chins rested on folded hands as we lay on our stomachs and looked out across the two feather pillows, pushed closed together, at the foot of the double bed. Head to head, my sister and I chatted quietly recapping the day’s activities and calamities; an afternoon at the public pool, skinned knee after falling on roller skates, and homemade popsicles melting down our chins in the heat of the Indiana summer. 

Hushed giggling mingled in between the childish conversation traveled from that double bed out through the screened window to where two silhouetted figures engaged in their nightly ritual of conversation, cigarettes and tea. 

Our parents sat with their backs to us and they struck an interesting pose on the expanse of the lawn bordered by maple trees, rose bushes and a home garden filled with tomato, cucumber, and watermelon plants. A solitary weeping willow stood in the middle of the lawn. A pair of Blue Jays nested in our willow every spring, and I can still see my Mother ducking her head when they flew directly at her in a vicious attack as she hung out the laundry. 

The moon was out that particular night and we saw the smoke curling upward in the lighted darkness from Daddy’s outstretched hand that rested on the arm of one of the two metal lawn chairs. These all-metal lawn chairs moved in minute degrees as the natural bend in the metal gave way to the rocking movements of its occupant. 

Daddy’s other arm, free from a cigarette, appeared suspended in space as his arm encircled the top of the lawn chair seated next to him—Mother’s chair. She wasn’t smoking these days because the new baby was due in October. It was 1957 and even though many pregnant women continued to smoke and drink, Mother had given up the habit. Instead of a cigarette she held the ever present tea glass, properly laced with ice, lemon and sugar against her rounded belly. 

In the shadows, we watched her hand move up to her mouth as the liquid quickly disappeared from the glass. Straining to listen to what our parents were saying, now and then we the heard the faint sound of ice being shaken in the glass, rattling against the other pieces of ice as well as the glass itself. Occasionally, we saw Daddy lean over and kiss Mother on the lips. My sister and I, embarrassed by the intimacy of such activity by our parents, buried our heads into the fluffy, feather pillows, and giggled uncontrollably in hushed strains of laughter. 

We never heard the exact topics of these nocturnal conversations between our parents even though we were always able to distinguish between the two voices. Both voices had a touch of a Southern accent, which was different from the Midwestern tone of most of our friends and neighbors. The words nine, five and fine were always pronounced with a change in the vowel sound which gave charm and character to their expression. Both parents were born and raised in Kentucky and most everyone in our family sounded similarly to them, yet it was my father’s voice, so deep and melodious, I always cherished. Even as an adult I found his voice beautiful. 

As the two conversations continued simultaneously, one from the bedroom and the other from outside on the lawn, my sister and I eventually drifted off to sleep never knowing exactly how long our parents remained outside talking. 

During the fall and winter months when the weather turned cold, a similar nightly ritual of conversation occurred in their bedroom next to ours. We lived in a small house and the sounds of their conversations drifted easily across the narrow hallway that separated the two bedrooms. These exchanges were different in that on occasion when my parents retired early my sister and I were included in the conversation. 

“Sudy?” Mother would call out from the bedroom, “Did you go to the bathroom?” She asked this question every night as I suffered from enuresis and almost nightly wet the bed. My parents never punished me for these nocturnal releases and never made me feel ashamed for my lack of control when sleeping. I rarely awakened from the cold dampness emanating from my pajamas and the sheets, and my parents believed I slept so deeply that even a full bladder would not arouse me from my semiconscious state. 

“Yes, Mommy,” I responded, silently praying I would make it through the night dry. At age six, I was embarrassed about the bed wetting and very much wanted the accidents to stop. They finally did, but not until I was ten years old. It was difficult enough being the second child of the eventual four, but being the only child who wet the bed, was a burden I didn’t wish to carry. 

Bedwetting aside my greatest childhood battle revolved around the sibling rivalry typical in most families. The competition came from my older sister. The red headed goddess, or so she seemed to me. The freckles and the curls and the rarity of it all, played havoc with my psyche for years. 

As toddlers only twenty-two months apart, Mother told us that people always noticed my sister first when she pushed our stroller down the street. 

“Look at that red hair,” people said, according to Mother. “Isn’t she adorable?” 

Being just the plain, dark headed child, I piped in with a cry or approximated word, begging to be noticed, “Look at me, look at me.”

I fought gallantly for recognition. Mother frequently declared that was the reason I was more social and extroverted than the redhead. 

I agreed with Mother’s astute observation, particularly when watching the old 8mm movies Daddy used to take of our family adventures. I was always front and center when the camera rolled while my sister would often hide behind her arms covering her face and rush out of the room escaping the humiliation she apparently felt at being photographed.

Santa brought the camera and projector around my eighth or ninth Christmas, and during that holiday my sister didn’t seem to mind the rolling camera. We hammed it up in amateurish style kissing each other under the mistletoe, dancing to Elvis Presley and showing off our new baby brother. The sounds of his crying and Elvis’ crooning were not heard by the audience at hand during the eventual development of the film and its later showing. There was no audio in that day, yet the laughter in our eyes illustrated the happiness in our family and the projections of love that flourished in our home. 

In the first clip we saw I remembered how Mother stood with one hip jutted out to the side with her opposite hand rested strategically on her waist. Her other arm hung at her side holding a beer can she tried to conceal from the camera’s view. She posed, she grinned, she saluted the audience. Mother rarely drank anything other than coffee or tea, so we stood and watched enchanted by this silly behavior and her funny poses. 

Mother was tall and thin and had long brown hair that highlighted the attractive grin that complimented her features. Her somewhat oddly shaped nose detracted slightly from her looks while that great smile gave her character and grace. Her teeth were straight except for the left lateral incisor which rotated slightly away from the front teeth and appeared crooked; actually it was crooked. My grandmother and my aunt, both on my mother’s side of the family, all touted that one crooked tooth; it was considered a treasured family trait. 

As I recalled Mother’s infectious grin and dramatic poses Daddy filmed on that Christmas,  I thought about the summer breezes again and remembered how we spent nights out on the back lawn watching old movies as we grew older and gained yet another addition to our family, rounding us out to four. 

As teenagers with two younger siblings, our father often sought ways to entertain the youngest of the four children. During those warm, summer nights when the steam off of the Ohio River drove everyone without air conditioning to the outdoors, Daddy invited the entire gang of neighborhood kids to watch the old movies. Silent and reminiscent of our childhoods, the actors were not the Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy stars of the forties and fifties, but rather the four Strange kids and their loving parents, acting silly, ridiculous and dramatic for the translation of a happy family to celluloid film. 

Daddy showed all the movies, embarrassing us unmercifully and added insult to injury by serving popcorn and Kool-Aid to gain more viewers. Everyone camped out on our lawn bringing their chairs and blankets to enjoy the antics on the screen. The kids laughed uproariously and threw popcorn at each other. The parents chatted quietly with each other, and the smallest children soon fell asleep on their parents’ laps while the evening entertainment continued. 

Daddy continued to show the old movies each summer as the crowds eventually grew smaller, and my sister and I left for college, and the old camera and projector went out to pasture leaving the responsibility of summer entertainment for the kids to each family. 

Prior to the retirement of the cameraman and his crew, those post-adolescent and pre-collegiate years brought the death of innocence to my sister and me. We realized our parents were not perfect and were even quite embarrassing at times. I thought Daddy smoked too much and Mother was never around when I needed her. She rarely came to watch me cheer my high school football and basketball teams on to victory, and she never gave me any good advice about boys. We fought and argued and generally made nasty, irretrievable comments to each other. Mother slapped me in the face once, and I told her I hated her. I had obviously hurt her feelings or reminded her of her own difficult mother-daughter relationship, but I didn’t care. She never loved me quite the same as she loved my older sister or younger brother. My older sister and the male heir apparent were her favorites, not to mention my baby sister who came later. I was just the second child—the one in the middle. 

I didn’t care that Mother had to work with four children at home to help support the family when Daddy was injured at work requiring surgery and a long painful rehabilitation. I didn’t care that she came home at night and cried herself to sleep. I didn’t care that she was in emotional pain. I was eighteen, and I was angry she wasn’t the kind of mother I wanted or needed. I went to college to find my own way and leave this life forever. I never wanted to be like my mother, and I certainly didn’t want to look like her even though everyone always said I did. I angrily told myself there was nothing about her I admired, while knowing privately those sentiments were not true. For the time being I was on my own and off to college. I enjoyed and explored my newfound independence from Mother. 

That was more than twenty years ago. It is January 1990. I have two children of my own, and I have finally realized the difficulties of being a good parent. My older sister and I talk frequently on the phone and analyze our childhood and wonder if it really was that strange growing up. She always says, “Do you remember…?” and when I say no, she gets annoyed and tells me I have forgotten everything. I just laugh and tell her I’ve blocked all the painful memories and only remember the very best moments. She reminds me it’s time to forgive Mother and love her for herself. I tell her I already have. The conversations continue and we finally tell each other “I love you” and say “Goodbye.” We go back to our very different worlds and I don’t think about Mother for a while. 

Today, I am back home in this house I left years ago, and I am home for a very important reason. 

As I sit in this small room filled with memories and pictures of laughing children, the whirring sound of the old projector fills the silence of the room. The solitary light on the top of this metal relic displays a cone-shaped beam from the projector as the visible flecks of dust move upward through the air, reminding me of smoke curling upwards from the cigarette held by hands so familiar to me.  

Images appear on the portable white screen positioned in front of me and the projector. I remember that day. Surrounded by the near silence of the moment, two little girls, one about ten years of age and the other about eight, step out of the house holding the hand of a small boy between the two of them. One of the girls has red hair and the other has dark brown hair. The boy, with his impish grin is blond. They are beautiful children. The girls are wearing matching dresses with pink tops settled below the waist, finished off with pink and white striped skirts. The girls’ hair, pulled back into curled ponytails, are tied into a bow by a pink and white striped ribbon. 

I remember those dresses. Mother made them for us that Easter as she had done many years before and after. My sister had hated the color of the fabric because of her red hair, and even so, Mother used that fabric because I had liked the color pink. 

On the screen, I see Mother come out of the house dressed for church. She stands behind the three of us waving and smiling with that special grin of hers. The four of us wave simultaneously  as though cued by the invisible cameraman; it is Daddy of course. 

My sister, in her usual fashion, turns her head away from the camera and puts her hand to her face and runs back into the house. Laughing, I think to myself, she always did that when she didn’t want her picture taken. I, on the other hand, stand there smiling widely, begging to be noticed. Look at me! Look at me!

In that moment, I gulp in shame for all the times I said I hated my mother as I see in my own smile a very familiar face. 

“What are you doing honey?” Mother’s voice interrupts my private thoughts as she turns on the lights and enters the room. Flipping off the switch to the projector, the light goes off and I stand up and look very closely at this face I have known for almost forty years. Mother is sixty-four years old and to me she looks much the same as always. She is heavier now and the skin on her face has started to age, yet she is still here with us—my Mother. 

“Are you ready to change the dressing?” I ask, composing myself for this arduous task I have been mentally preparing to tackle. 

“I don’t know,” she replies nervously. “I don’t know if I can look.”

“Mother, you don’t have to look if you are not ready, but I think we should do this before Daddy gets home. He’ll just upset both of us, and then we’ll be in a fine mess,” I laugh hesitantly trying to remain calm. “Come on,” I continue encouragingly. “It won’t be so bad. I promise.”

I escort Mother back to her bedroom, and I pray for total control. I have seen the ravages of a mastectomy before, but this is my Mother. I steel myself for the next moments and again call upon every bit of strength I have to get through this without falling apart. 

With her back to the mirror, I carefully slip the robe from her shoulder and chest. The bruised and swollen area on her chest where the surgeon had done his deed lay before me. I gather my courage. “Mother, really, it’s not so bad. Do you want to look?” I ask softly. 

She slowly lifts her face as I turn her toward the mirror. Inspecting herself in the mirror, she flashes a grin and bravely states, “You know, I never planned on winning a beauty contest, but I guess I’m out of the running now.” 

Her somber courage and usual sense of humor makes me laugh quietly. With tears in my eyes the two of us look lovingly at each other in the mirror. As I continue to look at her image, I finally realize her greatest gift to me, her second daughter; the one with the dark hair; the extroverted middle child; the one who thought she loved me less than all of my siblings. 

The two expressions in the mirror are almost identical. Both sets of teeth are straight except for the left lateral incisor at the top of the smile. The tooth rotates slightly away from the front teeth and appears to be pointing in the opposite direction. In the reflection, now blurred by tears, I see this wondrous pair of crooked, beautiful grins. 

With love, I hug the unassaulted side of her chest and say quite simply, “Thank you for my smile Mother. Thank you for my beautiful smile.” 

Dedicated to the woman who gave me this life and taught me how to be brave, smart, loving and funny.

Jean Proctor Quirey Strange-My Mother

April 29, 1925 to November 22, 1990