Remembering Mama

My Mama: Ruth Lovette

So this Mother’s Day I want to tell you a story or two from my own Mother’s life. Hoping, maybe that something in the words will trigger something in your own memory of your mother and how you still feel about her.

My Mother was a Baptist through and through. In fact, she found it hard to believe that anybody could be anything besides a Baptist. She was visiting us and she wandered downstairs to the Den where my son sat drinking something and watching TV. She looked down at him and asked: “What are you drinking?” And he said, “I’m drinking a beer.” Things got very quiet. Then she said: “Could I taste it?” She did. And there was another long pause. And then she said, “I believe I’ll get me some when I get home.” And that story captures my mother. She never went further than the eighth grade. She started working in the mill when  she was sixteen and worked there until she retired last age 65. During the war she worked six and sometimes seven days a week. I never remember hearing her complain about her job, her life. She read books. She kept up with what was going on. She loved her two boys fiercely. And she did everything she could to make our lives meaningful.

As I moved further away and had experiences she could even imagine—that did not stop her from trying to understand. Always. I never doubted her love for me for a single day. She loved flowers even though her tiny yard couldn’t hold many plants. She was a marvelous cook, and came home from work at 3:00 every afternoon and began to cook supper. Sunday dinners were something. Table cloth. Nice dishes. And ham and potato salad and maybe green beans and peas and biscuits and some kind of dessert which, of course, was homemade. 

Both my father and Mother grew up during the Depression and food was scarce many times. So—food became a big-time event in our lives. Christmas she decorated our little four-room mill house as best she could. We sprayed silver paint on fronds from green bushes with berries. And they donned the mantles. We had a Christmas tree almost always for blue lights. And the food at Christmas was a a mighty big deal. We had several different cakes. And at least two pies. We had two hams—cured and fresh. We had chicken and dressing. After all I was told that you couldn’t make good dressing with “one of them old turkeys.” Christmas demanded a great big fat hen. 

The morning I went off to college she stood on the porch and waved goodbye. She wouldn’t come down to my friend’s car. She didn’t want me to see her cry. But that must have been one of her hardest times—to see her oldest just pack a foot locker and leave. But she let me go. She did not hold me back. And every week as long as I was in college there would come three crumpled up five dollar bills for “my expenses.” It took me a long time to fathom the hard sacrifice those fifteen dollars took out of her life. Never once did she complain. But what also happened was that about every two or three weeks there would come a box of homemade cookies or a cake that she had made and wrapped up and sent me through the mail. 

Both my father and mother were there that day I graduated from college. We had no car and so met Mother talked a cousin into driving her and my father up to the big city where I graduated. 

My Mother at my college graduation.

So when I read a book or dig in the yard or plant flowers or put up a Christmas tree or just sit down some evening for a meal—I remember Mama.  

A little boy was told by his mother that it was God who makes people good. And he said, “Yes, I know it is God, but Mothers help a lot.” And the little boy was right.  

So if we want to honor our mothers let’s pay women the same as we do men for the same work. Let’s be hard on all those—including the President—who treat women as second class citizens. Let’s raise our voices when the government separates children at the border from their parents, particularly their mothers. My God, what kind a people are we? Let us hound politicians—mostly male of course who are writing laws continually about abortion and lately not even considering those who were victims of rape or incest. Let us remind everyone that without Planned Parenthood many poor women would not have birth control for physical check-ups. Let us make sure that those little ones—and sometimes big ones—who go to school hungry still have breakfasts and lunches. And let us raise up all women until they know that to be female is not a curse but a blessing. 

Funny story. In the first church I served on Mother’s Day we always honored the woman who has just had the latest baby. Oh, we would clap and give her flowers and make that her day. But we cut that out after a while. There was a family in the church with a whole row of children. And almost every year we would pin a flower and applaud some young mother in that family who was not even married.  Even the Deacons quietly murmured about promoting promiscuity by honoring all these unwed mothers. 

On this Day I must bow my head and thank God for the woman who birthed me and loved me and opened doors to rooms she would never enter. The little boy was right—God makes people good but I wonder where we would be without the woman called Mother.

 Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.net