Post #93 – Women’s Memoir Writing, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Women’s Memoirs is pleased to present the third winner in our May memoir contest – ALL ABOUT MOTHERS. Earlier today we published the two first place winners in our Mother’s Day category. Below, we are pleased to publish the first of another pair of winning entries in our Mothers and Mothering category.
Kathleen Hewitt’s story, Because of You, takes a tie for first place in our Mothers and Mothering category. This is a warm and touching story about love, understanding, and mothering a mother.
Later today, we’ll publish the remaining winning memoir entry in the Mothers and Mothering category. Be sure to check back later this afternoon for that story.
BECAUSE OF YOU
by Kathleen Hewitt
The youngest of seven children, my mother was the baby no one had time for. The death of the oldest sibling in her family, the pilot shot down in World War II, had left my mother’s mother in a permanent state of silent mourning. Pasty, half dead, Nana hardly moved in her rocking chair facing the window, feeling nothing, in her worn apron.
I imagined how it must have been for my mother to have any love from this woman who didn’t even look at her. It must have looked a lot like me, when my mother was in her depressions. Nothing I did, cartwheels, songs I had written, played on a toy guitar with plastic yielding strings, jokes I remembered from the Jackie Gleason show, drew a response. I understood now why my mother could hurt so much.
I saw her as a teenager fighting with her father, crying over a boy. I saw her falling in love. I felt the hope she must have held as a young bride and mother.
On the table in the corner of a dark and dusty room in Nana’s house, I recall the black and white crinkled photo. It was of my mother as a young girl, standing alone, off to the side, as if she can’t get far enough away from the camera. She was a shadow of herself, in camouflage against a nondescript background. I was angry that no one even bothered to frame it. It was propped against nothing important. My eyes were wet with the stinging remembrance of a secret she told me about the neighbor down the street that was ‘touching’ her. When she trusted her mother with the story, hoping for an ally from the one who gave her life, she only heard, “Don’t tell lies, don’t be a liar, Joanie.”
My mother, Joan O'Leary. She was 21 when she married my father.
But today, I could see how the years of not coping had caught up with her, left her looking like someone else. In spite of that, as the morning light lifted into a soft, sunny illumination, her eyes, brilliant cornflower blue, belied the pain of all those years.
I could almost taste her salty cries when my father died. She was too broken to help her own children, losing the only man she had ever loved. I saw it all, scene after scene, frame after frame, the movie of us. Me, the supporting actress. The rare times she had mothered me flooded my senses, filled my heart. Her palm on my head checking for fever; the Christmases when she went crazy decorating the house, made me want to scream, “Thank you, Mama, I understand, I really do.”
It was my mother who taught me how to pray. I prayed all the time, “Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death,” over and over, at my desk in school, thinking not of decimals but of getting home to make sure she was there. As though I had any power to avert another hospital stay, to avoid the treatments for her sadness that would leave her numb and without memory of her prayers or of me.
On this day, one of her last, she held my baby daughter, her hand cupped around Kathryn’s downy blonde curls. I found myself touching the back of my own head as I watched her, pretending that I was back in a time like this.
Her smile was warm, her eyes crinkled and true hope and happiness looked at me.
It was then that I felt honored to have mothered her.
After she was gone, for good this time, I cleaned out her room, saving some of her cheap, mismatched rhinestone earrings. I made a final swipe along the inside of the lipstick-stained drawer and pulled out a yellow and creased piece of parchment. On one side was the imprint of my mother’s lips, probably her favorite lipstick, “Pucker Up” and on the other side was a prayer to the Blessed Mother. It was a novena for desperate times. It was the one she clutched in her hands to ease her pain when she packed her vinyl suitcase for another stay, so many weeks away from us. So many weeks away from me.
The prayer always came back with her. It was what led her home, led her back to me.
I understand, Mom. I really understand. I’m grateful for all that you could give and for the times that you tried, but just couldn’t. I took it all. Mom, you’d be proud. It helped me make a beautiful life. It’s not one without sadness, Mom, but I stand tall and strong. Because of you.
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You might want to read two of our other Mother’s Day stories:
Pink Pearls of Wisdom by Sara Etgen-Baker
What Was I Going Back To? by Irene Kessler
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