My mother would have been 98 this mother’s day. I am thinking about images…

My mother was directing plays in the Tucson Little Theater. They would make the sets by creating a wood frame and then stretching canvas over it. The wood was connected with little corregated fasteners. She taught me how to nail those in when I was pretty young. Then the stretching and then the painting. The painting was done to create the backgrounds for scenes. Since many of the plays were shakesperean, many of the sets were English castles. We build the sets from drawings my mother did. So she understood scale, color, imagination, depth and construction. And that was before the actors and actresses were even there. Rehersals were long and demanding. I got that before I was eight, just from watching it all. Hmmm, how to plan and create a production. Many people, many skills…sounds like Ranch <smile>.

My mother wrote plays, drama about the struggle of the human spirit, drama about history. She understood about the art of using dialogue and conversation to convey ideas. My mother, the uber introvert, could create scripts to tell a story of the deepest human struggle. One play called *shatter the dreams* I think perhaps was a story about her.  I will go and find that little play in the boxes of writings I have, read it and reflect with her in spirit about that story.

I have been doing ancestry.com to follow the mother story. A few weeks ago while I was in Vermont, I drove over to Peterboro, NH where my mother’s mother owned a farm called 4 winds farm.

The apple orchard

I stood at the top of the hill looking at the apple trees below and one huge maple that I know was there when she was. And I looked at the barn. I know it was old and designed by someone thoughtful. Perhaps my grandfather who designed barns. This one had the most artful little set of windows above the door. Handblown. I imagined my grandmother being there with the eight children and 4 servants for the summer. I just learned about the 4 servants because their names were listed in the census record for that summer of 1920. She was 46 and there alone with the kids and the farm while my grandfather was off in the city.

I imagine how I have been shaped by the DNA of these women. These stories. It is a good day for mother’s day.

One Response to “Mother’s Day 2010”

1. Jo says:

   May 11, 2010 at 10:30 am

   My mother died two weeks before Mother’s Day. I am writing her funeral service and thinking about her story. She was a very traditional woman whose life gave her a very untraditional path. Single mother in the 1950s. Female business owner in the mid-1960s. The kind of person who made a room brighter just by walking into it. She talked to everyone, and whatever she said, it ended up being the right thing to say.

   So I have that DNA — me, a fiercely independent nontraditional woman, introverted and oblivious to all things social and conversational, and given to putting my foot in my mouth on a regular basis. It’s like I’m the other side of the same coin. And I love learning the stories, as I put together what I will say about her.

   Reply