Today, Mother would have been 101 years old! Now, my dad I can imagine that old. He was robust and active to the last hour. But mother, she was shy, graceful, retiring, Dad's port in the storm. I can't imagine her being any older than she was when she passed away at 83.
My first memory ever is of mother feeding me. I was in a highchair so I must have been a toddler. She was smiling, I threw food on the floor, and she laughed. She thought I was funny. I felt so accepted. Other memories are of watching her bake, clean, do wash, iron, hang the wash, set the table, bring out the food and set it in front of Dad first. She hung wallpaper, gardened, sewed all our clothes, read everything she could get her hands on. The neighbors would get together and give one another permanent waves. And I didn't only watch from my perch under the table or in the corner of the kitchen. She would invite me, rather than make me, come and help so I was doing adult activities at a very young age.
I loved going visiting with her. Mother would put on her hat and gloves, fill a basket with fresh baked goods and tea bags. We would get on the trolley or bus and "call" on a sick or elderly woman. I would sit at her feet while they chatted, either coloring or playing with a doll, then mother would pray with the woman and on the way home, she would stop at the playground and let me play as a reward for being good.
Mother was the consummate storyteller. Every experience was a cause for drama and she would regale us with these little plays, we children acting them out. She was a writer also. Carried a pen and paper everywhere she went and one would see her pull out her little pad and jot down notes. It would later appear as a story. She was never published, rather she did it because the stories were in her and had to come out. Mother would often turn to me and invite my input. We had this plan o write a book together - life from the old and young point of view. We never got to write the whole thing but worked on it throughout our lives together.
Mother honored her husband. Yes, they were human, fought and disagreed vigorously. But when it came down to it, Dad was every bit the head of the home. It enabled him to be the leader and protector a husband is supposed to be. She was adored and supported by him and was able to be much more than many other women in the 50s because of his respect for her. She was progressive because my dad had her back.
Never in my life was I sent to bed, even as a teenager. At bath time mother would sit on the toilet seat and sing Jesus songs and we'd talk. She would lead me to bed and open our current book and spend a good hour reading to me, praying over me, rubbing my back. When I would wake, I would hear the old rocker squeaking back and forth and see her in the corner of the room watching over me.
Mother seldom spanked me. (that was Dad's job). She didn't have the temperament for it. As bad as I was and insistent on my own way, she would talk to me. When mother said that she was disappointed in me because she knew that misdeed wasn't who I really was, my heart melted, more than any strap could do.
As a young mother and wife, I would come over, Dad would pour endless cups of tea while she would whip up spetzle, my favorite. When I was very pregnant and sick the whole time, she suddenly flew out the door, stopped the ice cream man and bought me a cone.
I feel so fortunate that I had that week to say goodbye, especially since Dad took a flying leap into heaven. We talked about everything, she solved the mysteries of our family life, passed on family secrets that I was supposed to hold. I apologized for being such a difficult kid and she said, "I thought you were cute and funny. I loved being your mother." I will take those words to my grave.
She made me write down the whole dying experience - a writer to the end. We sang hymns and prayed together. I was writing, in fact, at the moment she passed. I had been singing the hymn, Face to Face with Christ my Savior, and sat down to rest, picking up my yellow legal pad to write the things she had told me I needed to remember, when her breathing just stopped and she was gone.
And yet, not gone. She's with me in my dreams, in this house where she spent 50 years, the old Philadelphia house for the first 8 years of my life, the rose gardens, grape arbor, upholstery, the box of hundreds of buttons in a Whitman Sampler box because you never know when you'll need a button, her thread collection which I'm still using, her Singer which is working well, and in the people who come up to me and tell me how much they loved my mother.
So happy birthday Mother! Love you and miss you but glad that you're enjoying eternity.
Eunice Macdonald was kind, gracious, non judgmental, loving, respectful of other people's journeys in life, progressive in thinking, a deep thinker about God and open to learning something new, not a religious party line thinker. Counselor, children's minister, prayer warrior, artist, Bible teacher, true Christian and friend.
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