A look back at mothering

Until recently, I had never considered what should have been an obvious to me: my mother never really had a mother she could remember and treasure, no tender stories of a loving mom to teach and cherish her. That odd fact shaped who she was and how she lived for more than 80 years. First, a few basic facts. Mother was born in 1911, the daughter of an engineer/plant manager and a beautiful young woman who gave up teaching to raise a family. They had social status in Anderson, South Carolina, where they relocated for a promotion, and lived a comfortable life. My mother, Dorothy Rebecca Strickland, was the third of what would become five children. But when she was three years old her mother died shortly after childbirth with my uncle Bill. Everything changed.

The family was devastated. My grandfather, obviously doing the best he could, leaned on his eldest -- my Aunt Sara was 12 -- and hired a succession of housekeepers to help with the children. He was by all accounts smart, hard working, loving, stern and the kind of father who sent the children off to the kitchen for dinner if they did not behave to his standards. My mother adored him. But there was no mother in the home. About the time Sara left for nursing school at 17, grandfather went to Atlanta to hire a new housekeeper. He came home with a young wife named Irene. It was a shock, and not welcomed. The children did not like Irene, and she soon had two small children of her own to care for. The first batch of children were a separate family. My mother would have been eight years old, raised mostly by her sister and a succession of housekeepers she later could not remember. It is hard to image a child from three to teenage never having a mother, but from her talks with family in later years she only spoke of her father and siblings, never of any woman who influenced her young life, or nurtured her. She learned to be self-reliant. Her stepmother Irene lived for several decades as a widow, including when I was growing up, but I never met her, mother never visited her, and she never came to see us. Mother became friends later with her half-sisters, but Irene was just a woman who lived in another town. I'll never know why. The five siblings were all raised as one family, with housekeepers, and the latter two as another family. The brothers went off to Georgia Tech to become engineers like their father. The girls all became nurses. At 16 my mother went to live with her aunt in Georgia in a town where there was a better high school. She was happy to be away from her step mother. It wasn't that she was bad to the children, she just was not connected. As soon as my mother graduated she followed her older sisters to a Catholic nursing school in Atlanta for training. It seems an odd choice given that my grandfather's family were strict Southern Baptist, but he was not particularly religious and wanted a safe place, a decent education and discipline for his girls. Catholic school offered that. My mother loved life in Atlanta. She made friends, and went to work as soon as she graduated, living in a boarding house for "young ladies," sharing a room with a classmate who remained a close friend for another 60 years. They were 18-20 years old, attractive single young women, enjoying independence and dating dashing young men. The landlord's husband ran a detective agency, and the young women occasionally did jobs for him -- nothing dangerous but exciting stuff. It was the late 1920s. The Roaring 20s. Mother's roommate married an young Italian man and then mother met my father. She was 20 and he was 40, a bachelor. She later admitted she thought he was rich, which he wasn't, but he was exciting and they had lots of friends. Atlanta was a fun place to live, and they could vacation at Daytona Beach. The Depression came but as a nurse she was never unemployed. She ended up working fulltime for the next 45 years. She became a mother in 1937 and I came along in 1940. I do not know how she managed when we were small, but I know she had help at home. We never felt neglected, just trusted. She was mom, a working mom, Cub Scout leader, and the one who helped us through our years. The marriage did not last, but even as a single mom she perservered. She worked the wards and emergency room at local hospitals, tried running a non profit charity, and eventually came back to nursing. As an empty nest parent she always managed to help her children. We were both encouraged and supported bb constant letters, visits and sometimes money. If my sister moved to a new house, mother would send her a check for living room furniture. If I passed through town on asignments she had a bottle of Wild Turkey and a good steak waiting. I do not know where she learned to be a mother.