Raising My Mother

Stories of the Women
Who Raised Us

Do you have an extraordinary story about your mother?  Did she navigate her passages in a way that taught you something?  Was she funny, earthy, mystical, tough, challenging?

My mom raised three children pretty much on her own, relocating the family every 1-3 years to do it.  She passed a few years ago, but is still very much present to me.   She's here in the way I toughen up during trouble, and in the way I cannot throw away a rubber band.  I want to honor her, and other mothers whose sons or daughters have stories to tell!  Please contact me if you'd like to make a submission to this collection.  The deadline has been extended.  I'm expecting this volume to come out some time in 2007 but am willing to work with folks who want to get something to me and already have several full time employments (like me).  Most important to me is the quality of stories and the overall feel and beauty of the book.   :)

Thank you to those who have submitted or are working on stories. 

Scroll down for one excerpt...
Excerpt from Elizabeth by Adrienne Jones

    The summer after I graduated from high school we went to Europe, just Mom and I. Three weeks trying to cram in as many major cities as possible. After visiting my brother for a while, who was still in Germany, we were ready to move on to Italy. We couldn’t go to Florence because they were having earthquakes, so we settled for Venice. At the train station in Munich she asked for tickets; we boarded a night train, and when we awoke in our tiny berths and looked out the window it was cold, and overcast, and did not look like Italy at all. We got off the train and managed to find someone who spoke enough English to unravel our mystery: We had travelled to the north of Sweden, to a sweet little village called Vannas.

     They were very happy to have two American tourists in Vannas! There was a market in the street and we bought postcards and fruit and wrote to everyone of our funny mistake. It took us two days to get south again to Venice. My mother wasn’t fazed for a moment; she loved that we had discovered something new. Even as I write this I realize what a love of life she had, the surprise of its unfolding, that I could not possibly have understood then. Of course, I’d had very little trouble; perhaps it’s the refining fire of trouble that gives the rest of life its loveliness.

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   ...During the fifteen months she spent at my sister’s house she was much changed, of course. Prednisone had fattened her cheeks; her fragile skin was mottled with the easy bruises that resulted from the slightest bumps. A cane became a walker, the portable O2 canister became the large, droning unit in the living room with the long, snaking tubes that would reach to wherever she was in her diminishing world. She fought and succumbed to depression. She never talked about regretting her choice to smoke, perhaps because it was too obvious and too painful to articulate.

     But from her bed she’d tell me stories of family, our past, the lives to which I’ve always been connected but about which, because of our so transitional and itinerant lifestyle, I have known almost nothing. We’ve been a family separated as long as I can remember. I barely knew any of my grandparents, and that only when I was very young. My brother, six years older than I, stayed in Germany when we returned home (I was 12 then) and never lived with us again. His life has been darkened by shifty, even sociopathic behavior; I haven’t seen him for twenty-three years. I’ve met my Aunt perhaps twice or three times in my adult life (the longest visit just before Mom died), and don’t know any cousins or more distant relatives. I would strain to connect all the dots, all the names, as Mom recalled funny incidents or pulled skeletons out of the family closet. I had a Great-Uncle who was a ventriloquist. He wasn’t very good, apparently, in his later years performing to disgruntled audiences at the local Elk’s Club. I have a photo of him, with one foot up on a chair, obviously holding a dummy on his knee – but the dummy has been cut out of the picture, like an old flame one is embarrassed to remember. Another relative had a wonderful voice and fervently aspired to be an entertainer, except she fell in love with a ne’er-do-well, married and had children by him, and ended up drunk and miserable by 40. Also on my mother’s side I am descended from a president, John Tyler.

     These conversations were illuminating, even against the stormy backdrop of her dissipating health. Now, of course, I wish I could make a list of questions and go back and ask her all over again. Who were all these people? How did they come and go without my ever knowing them?