CONTRIBUTOR’S PAGE

Juanita 

 MOTHER

I trim the meat and prepare          
It for the pan, 
And I think of my mother.
Since this meal of braised round steak
Was a Father favorite, she made it often.
I did not get the chance 
To learn the recipe from her fifty years ago
Before she died.
She was too busy trying to stay alive.
But somewhere in my daughter consciousness
It must have resided,
Waiting for me to grow up into it.

There are so many things
I didn’t get to learn from her,
Twelve years wasn’t enough time.
There are so many things
That I wish she’d had time to teach me,
About her, about life.
There are so many ways
In which I miss her every day.

In Roman mythology,
I have recently read,
A genius was a guardian spirit
Who guided and protected
A person throughout his or her life
And who was responsible for the accomplishments
Of that person.

I have often felt that
My mother was my guardian angel,
Perched on my shoulder,
Steering me down so many paths in my life,
Helping me make so many choices.
My genius.

If I have made the right choices,
I’ll say it was from my genius, (Mother).
Somehow I think that was a better recipe
Than the one she didn’t teach me
For braised round steak.

Juanita

WAITING

Two girls sit in the car, waiting.
Afraid to talk about what might be happening
Inside the building, upstairs in her room.
One of them picks up the book they’ve brought
And starts reading to her sister.

They don’t know that they will never
See their mother alive again.
She’s fought her fight for over two years
And her time on Earth is almost done.

So the sisters wait in the car
Because they are too young
To go into the hospital
When their father goes in, again.

Mostly they feel anxious and scared
But it’s also an adventure,
Sitting in the car, in the parking lot
Instead of at home doing laundry or homework.

So they eat their snacks and lose themselves
In the story of another girl in another place,
Hoping that when their father comes out
He’ll have good news this time about Mom.

Laura contributed this quote from Agatha Christie:

"A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world.  It knows no law, no pity, it dates all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path." 
Agatha Christie, "The Last Seance"

Joan wrote this to her mother:

                        PROFILE IN COURAGE-by Joan Brooks, daughter of Petronella.

  Recently I was inspired to write my mother the following letter:

 Dear Mother, I miss you so much. You were with us in Hillside for only six years of my life. How I try so hard to remember you or what you said to me. All I have are a few images and memories of your activities in the kitchen, making custard in glass cups; of deftly separating the egg whites for the yolks; of fixing turnips with potatoes and mashing them together to get us to eat them; of hanging out clothes in the backyard from a wicker laundry basket; of holding the edge of the bed pillow in your teeth as you put on the pillow slip; of sewing with the foot-operated sewing machine; of using the carpet sweeper; beating small rugs on the clothesline. Such simple memories. You were the ideal housewife and mother as I look back now. But what you said to me or if you hugged or kissed me, I can’t remember. I took so much for granted.

When you went to Bonnie Burn Sanatorium with tuberculosis we had to move to Madison to live with Dad’s mother and his sisters. The move distracted me with new places and people to adjust to, so you were not always in my thoughts. One day after we had moved back to Hillside , Dad came to St. Catherine’s School when I was in third grade and told Bob and me that you had died. I don’t remember much more than that, or how I felt at the time. I do remember the visit to Guenther’s Funeral Home to see you lying in your coffin and me wearing my First Communion dress to your funeral. I had one dream of seeing your face in the center of an oval shaped, ruffled lavender decorative pillow like one that had been on your bed. I think you might remember it. How I wish I had that pillow today. I would hug it closely to my heart.

Then in the next school year I was at Bonnie Burn Preventorium. Sometimes I would look longingly at the window nearby that had once identified your room at the Sanatorium. For our own protection the Health Department never allowed children to visit patients there, so I had not seen you since I was six. You must know that in those days we didn’t know much about the process of grieving and the effects of mother loss on children. References to counseling, psychologists, therapists or the grief process were never made. Psychiatrists were strictly for persons “running down the street naked with a bloody knife in their hands.” It’s not even that people would say as some do now: “Well, get over it and move on.” The closest they would get to some kind of indirect sympathy was when hearing of your death and my loss, they might say: “Well, you still have your father.” I didn’t let them know how little involvement he had. When my Aunt Marie became my guardian, they would say: “Well, you’ve got your aunt.” They didn’t know how reluctant I was about relating to her as a surrogate mother. I lied about the cause of your death as the stigma of tuberculosis was still prevalent in the culture and I felt ashamed. I would respond: “Oh, she had pneumonia or something.” No one spoke about you or your death except on rare occasions by Aunt Mildred who mentioned you as being so pretty as a young woman, (with a little tinge of envy I think, as she was more plain than you, her older sister.) I also had an innate dislike of sentimental comments of pity, so I avoided speaking of you as much as possible.

During so many years it was my defense to suppress or repress thoughts of you and my loss. Even when I had a close friend in the Medical Mission Sisters, it was a big struggle for me even to tell her that you had died of tuberculosis, with no mention of how much I missed  you, but in a way that I didn’t recognize at the time.

It was much later in life, in the late seventies, after I left the Medical Mission Sisters that I wanted to know more about you and wrote to Bob and Mildred asking them to fill in more details. During those years the publishing of the popular book Roots followed by the TV show was much discussed and caused an increased interest in genealogy and family stories. Actually, I had never read the book or watched the TV show, but it gave me the pretext to find our more about you. They both gave me a few tidbits, but Bob spoke mostly about Pop. It wasn’t until about 1995 that the whole issue of mother loss came to dominate my thinking. As a result of my reading Hope Edelman’s book, Motherless Daughters, and my subsequent becoming a member of a support group of the same name that I came to open up a whole new way of thinking. I am eternally grateful to the group. In heaven you may be able to meet some of these mothers and be able to share your story as well---perhaps at another Circle of Remembrance where all you mothers can join hands and you can say: “I am Petronella, mother of Joan.”

I hate to admit this now, but once I began think of mother loss, I selfishly focused on MY feelings and loss, but only after a few years of these reflections, I finally began to think more of how YOU felt. What was it like to be separated from your beloved husband, your father, your younger sister and y our three young children? Were you angry at God because of this illness and how did you manage to keep on hoping that you might get better? You had already lost your own mother and your two brothers to the disease and you knew that Pop and Mildred were also sick, so it must have felt like death was inevitable. Unfortunately, at that time the only cure or remedy was good food, fresh air and rest. What were your prayers like? Did you have to reassure Dad sometimes and console him? How did you manage your pain? Did the doctors and nurses treat you well and help you in your last days? Now that you and Dad are together in heaven, are you still able to talk about us kids and about our lives and how we have turned out? All three of us kids are now in our eighties and relatively healthy and leading satisfying productive lives.

I am full of questions now, dear Mother. How would you have told me of what I needed to know about being a woman, my changing body, about menstruation, sexuality, relationships with the opposite sex and much more? Just being with  you from day to day, what would you have told me or shown me by you own behavior, regarding my appearance, my hair, use of cosmetics, clothes, good hygiene, exercise, polite behavior and good manners? How would you have taught me about household tasks, cooking and being a good wife and homemaker? What kind of encouragement would you have given me to do well in my studies? How would you have taught me the best use of money without being stingy or wasteful?

Would you have reminded me to be obedient to Dad and love him as you did? How did you feel when after you died you discovered that Dad was so overwhelmed by your death that a few years later he was not very involved in his children’s lives? Was it sometimes difficult to live with Dad? What would you have told me about your own personal religious views, your way of praying and being a good Catholic? What would your reaction have been to find out that I wanted to be a missionary Sister? Or would you have hoped that I would have married a good young man and have given you grandchildren to spoil and love? Would you have remembered my birthdays with gifts that showed you understood my special like and needs? The last birthday party I remember having was when I was five or six with gifts, “Poppers” and a cake with my friends. Would I have had at least a simple party each year or a birthday card if I had left home? A million more questions are in my mind, dear Mother, but I never got to express them

It is finally time to thank you for so much, besides ordinary chores of keeping a house and family. You sewed some of my clothes, including beautiful warm chinchilla coat; you took care of me when I had measles, chicken pox, and scrapes from falls while roller skating; you took me shopping to Bamberger’s in Newark where I enjoyed running up the escalator to the toy department; you taught me my night prayers and checked that I said them every night. So much more, Mother. THANK YOU!

You know that I had to leave all possessions behind when I entered the Convent in 1945. I left in 1971 and returned from the missions to the U.S. two years later. Some years after, Aunt Mildred gave me a photo of you as a young woman, and one of you about aged two, along with two child-size teacups---one blue with gold inside she said was one you had received on a birthday and the other white with flowers on it, probably part of a child’s tea set. Only recently Herb sent me a photo taken of you in 1919 with your sibling, Mildred, Frank and Edward. You were so pretty in this picture and I had it reproduced and cut out your picture and put it in a tiny pin that had been given each of us at one of the annual Mother’s Day luncheons. That is all I have to remember you by now. Please watch over me and bless this life story.

Love, your daughter, Joan.