When I was born, I was only just over 2 pounds, and everyone thought I was not long for this world. I was placed into an incubator where they continued to grow me for many weeks. From what I was told, my Mom only left her position at my side to feed and care for my twin sister. Throughout my childhood years, I was a sickly boy with many return visits to the hospital. My mom was always there, like an angel looking after me. There was something about my mom, something innocent. She emanated goodness and treated everyone with kindness. I could not have asked for a better mother.
My mom was prone to having heart attacks, which was a result of something that had happened back during the war years in England, where my mom was a wartime ambulance driver. She would go out during the nightly bombings to help those who were injured in the blitz. While doing her duties, a bomb landed fairly close to Mom, throwing her ambulance around, and it wound up on its side. The force broke her jaw and knocked out all her teeth. The blow also took one of Mom’s lungs, and this was the cause of her numerous heart attacks. After she healed, she went right back at it. My mom was a badass in her youth. My mom and dad met during the war years when my dad was stationed in England. Seems my mother loved to sing, and one evening, while she was singing in a local tavern, in walks my dad. They fell in love and married.
Mom was one of those people who loved everyone and always had a kind word or a helping hand for friends and strangers alike. She was highly respected within the community, and this was well deserved. She was always baking goods for one fundraiser or another, and she could bake all those little English cakes and tarts. I enjoyed her treats. They were always the first to go to these events. The funny thing is, she was a bad cook, and her suppers were bad, can’t believe I am saying this, but that is how it was. So during the week, we suffered through hard potatoes and leather-like liver. Potatoes mashed with turnips, god, I hated that, never understood why she did it. Her timing was always off; the meat was cooked, and the vegetables were just starting to boil. On the weekends, though, my dad took over the kitchen, and we ate like kings. We fished and hunted for most of our meat, and Dad would cook up something wild like a goose or deer roast, mashed taters, vegetables from our garden and the best gravy ever. My dad made the best baked beans, hands down. He would bake them for 9 hours, and man, were they good. I always looked forward to the weekends and always helped my dad. He taught me to cook. Mom was pretty cool in other ways; she taught me how to knit, and I would make my toques and scarves. This was something I kept to myself, though. I think my buds would find it a strange thing to be doing. Odd or not, these became cherished memories for me. Mom was always knitting blankets and outfits for all the new family members from my older brothers and sisters, and when she had time, she would make them for other families. My mom loved kids and would always break out with joy when she held a new baby in her arms. She had a soft spot for young mothers and was always helping them out. Mom had 7 children of her own, plus 22 grandkids. Somehow, she made you feel like you were her favourite one.
Mom and I did all the gardening, and she was quite capable at canning. We had a big garden, and I would help Mom look after it. She would spend weeks during harvest, jarring all kinds of stuff that would last us all winter. Mom was pretty awesome. Her jarred pickled beets were my favourite. When you walked into our larder, you would see shelves stacked high with jarred goods. There were vegetables and fruits. Plenty of dried products were included. Spices hung from racks, and containers of dried beans and onions were on a table in the middle.
Families don’t do this anymore, and I think that is a real shame. Mom and I bonded as we cared for the garden; she taught me so much about building up soil and when to plant. These lessons have been passed down through the generations. Thanks to my mother, I have always found enjoyment in gardening.
I must admit that I quite often went too far in playing tricks on Mom. I remember a time when Mom was out shopping. I decided to play one of my stupid tricks on her. I remember cutting a potato into a slab and placing it inside my T-shirt. I then stuck a knife through my shirt and put ketchup around the blade and lay on the floor in the kitchen. When mom came in, she screamed and clutched her breast right over her heart. I had to leap up so she could see it was a setup. I was afraid that Mom might have had another heart attack because of my trick.
Another time, Mom chased me out so she could scrub the floor. She always got down on her hands and knees to do this. As I was playing in the yard, I found a huge garder snake. I instantly had a thought, and I took that snake and went quietly into the house to come up behind my without her seeing me. I placed it on the floor right behind Mom and gave it a directional push to ensure it came out right under Mom’s face. The guilt I felt after Mom freaked out over this made me make a mental note never to do these stupid stunts again, and I never did.
I loved my mom with all my heart. When mom passed away, I was cowboying on a remote ranch up in the Chilcotin. There was no way to contact me for any reason, and I liked this for the most part, never realizing that if there was a family problem, I was not reachable. Mom passed on in the late fall, and getting in or out was pretty dicey. My oldest siblings tried hard to get hold of me, but they did not even know which ranch I was working on. I missed the funeral. When I would leave the ranch on a supply run. I would always phone my sister Penny to see how the family fared through the winter. She told me Mom was dead and the family wanted nothing to do with me. This was in the spring of 1979. I had been on the ranch for quite a few years.
After leaving and moving back into society, I was finding it hard to deal with people and getting myself into lots of trouble with the police for fighting. I was hurt and feeling like some kind of prick for not keeping in contact with my family. This not only stopped me from saying goodbye to my mom, but also cost me my family. I would not talk to some of my siblings ever again; they have passed away, too. Several of the others took 50 years to reconnect.