Mother and I were as different as we could possibly have been. She was methodical, neat and tidy. I am more than a little chaotic. I find it hard to complete a thought without another one breaking in. Phyllis had an abundance of patience and was able to stay the course no mater how trying. When she set a weight goal, she outlined a diet plan, stuck to it without cheating, and kept the pounds off through self-discipline. Me? Well, let us just admit that I have never once succeeded in shaving off even a pound.

At times, I felt misunderstood by my mother. I always knew she loved me, but she had a hard time comprehending my tomboy ways, my love of science and math, and my almost complete disregard for housekeeping or making myself attractive. As I got older and reflected on my mother’s beginnings, her need for a tidy house and to always “look one’s best” became clearer.

Mother was born on a ranch—a thin-soiled, windswept, rattlesnake-invested, dirt-poor piece of high desert near Helena, Montana. Her Swedish immigrant mother had married a mean, drunken, and lazy man who meagerly provided for their growing family. Shortly after birthing her ninth child, she died leaving my mother, as the oldest daughter at nine years old, to cook and clean for her sisters and brothers. Her father would disappear for weeks at a time. The older brothers contributed by working on neighboring ranches or walking to Helena for odd jobs, to scavenge, or, when desperate, to steal.

Mom found solace outside, finding places to hide along Bird’s Eye Creek. Within three years, the state intervened and broke the family up. Mother was sent to the Montana Children’s Home in Twin Bridges. Their welcoming act to this frightened, 12-year-old child with long blond hair was to shave her head in the name of controlling lice. There she endured an institutionally lonely and at time horrific existence until she was 17. In later years she would show me the scares on her knees from scrubbing dormitory floors with lye soap. When Mother graduated from high school, she remained a ward of the state which then sent her to work in a hotel in Butte—a hotel with upper floors that included several rooms for prostitutes. Mother made friends with the bouncer to keep her honor intact and earned extra money by ironing and cleaning to put herself through secretary school. Upon turning of age, she worked four jobs at one time: she made welcome mats from used tires, did secretarial duties at a music store, cooked for a group of miners, and continued to clean at the hotel each night.  Her childhood experiences made her fear men and long for a home. She also acquired an uncanny talent for finding the best in any miserable situation. She led me to understand that happiness comes only when expectations are broad enough to encompass reality.

Luckily, Mother met and married the right man. Father was also born on a ranch. His father died when he was five and he was raised by his mother, his grandmother, his older sister, and a bevy of eccentric aunts who patched together his relatively comfortable life through various enterprises. Reunions with my father’s extended family brought me to know the likes of Aunt Nell with her silver dollar pistol tricks. Dad believed that everyone—men and women—could do, in his words, “whatever they damned well pleased” if they worked hard enough.

Not a man to fear, my father was grateful to have a wife who knew how to work as hard as he did and who shared his need to be outside.

Mother’s homemaking ambitions extended to flower gardening in Butte, Montana, which is over a mile high in elevation and experiences snowstorms virtually every month of the year. The hearty lilac bushes became her passion. The pungent and sweet perfumes of lilacs take me right back to my childhood home in Butte. Many were the days that my mother and I would hike the foothills to gather wild baby’s breath blooms so she could add them to the numerous vases of lilacs that filled our home.

My mother’s birthday, June 26, 1917, coincides with the blooming of an incredible lilac bush that graces the front of Dunrovin. It takes me to her every year to feel again the warmth of her love. When she died in 2004, I wrote this goodbye poem to her, which, of course, starts with a reference to lilacs.

 

Goodbye Dear Mother

To Phyllis from SuzAnne

 

When the lilacs bloom

 Sending sweet perfume

Wafting in the air

When the robins sing

To announce it’s Spring

I know that you are there

When darkness falls

And the lone wolf calls

To frighten my inner child

Your love reappears

To quiet my fears

And shelter me from the wild

You’re with me always

Through all of my days

In both this world and that of the other

To which you have crossed

My love is not lost

It goes with you now, Dear Mother