A TRIBUTE TO MY MOTHER:I Really Was Paying Attention;

Part 2

I was the youngest of four until my little brother came along in 1961. It was a “gravy train” for me as the baby for seven years. The years between my younger brother and me, was the longest time between children for my mom, so I probably got the best deal as a small child. Some of my earliest memories, which start at about two years of age, are of being in church. I know I was small because I remember being passed around as people held me and had their faces close to mine. Church would be a huge part of our lives until we were grown, and for some of us children continues to be.

As a child, I remember taking vacations with four children in the car – not a one of us wearing a seatbelt. For those of us old enough to remember, this was more the norm than the exception. It was the 1950s and we also had metal dashboards. As the youngest at the time, I would spend much of the trip lying in the back window of our sedan. What a wonderful view of the stars from that space - those were the days.


[The camera never did my mother justice; I think this is the best photo of me ever taken; seriously, I love this photo of Mom and me].

Even though we lived in a small town and to my recollection, never knew of anyone “uppity”, our mother taught us impeccable manners. She taught us to set a table “properly” and to use proper manners at the table, which fork to use, etc. although at the time, I couldn’t imagine that this would ever be any more useful than algebra. Thanks Mom.

My Mom never wavered in her church attendance, – nor did ours. In the earlier years I remember my father going to church with us, but that waned and then stopped. As I grew up my Mother wore many hats at church: Sunday school teacher, Choir Director, and Youth Director. It was a small church, but very active. As a teenager, I felt it was too active. Let me just say, there was a lot of church going on. It was still my mom’s foundation for everything in
her life; I had no idea at the time how this would serve her later.

Mother was an incredible cook, and I owe my ability in the kitchen to her. It was remarkable how she could make a delicious meal when someone with less ability, would think there was nothing to cook. When she was finally an “empty nester” she went back to school for pastry studies and cake decoration. She was a working mom for my last 10 or so years at home, and continued after we were all grown to work full time, and to be very active in church. One of her great loves was teaching the young about God and encouraging them to serve Him.

As outgoing as my mother was, she was an intensely private person. It was not that she had anything to hide; it was just that she would be the one to decide how much of herself she shared with you. I got that trait from my mother. She didn’t have a particularly easy life in many ways, and I don’t believe she ever rebounded emotionally from her parent’s divorce or her protective nature toward her siblings. Her mother passed away in 1976 and she sang a beautiful song with her mother’s coffin close by her. She managed to do this while wondering – even doubting that her mother ever acknowledged the existence of God. This was crushing to her. There were no public tears. My mother was a strong woman indeed.

A TRIBUTE TO MY MOTHER:I Really Was Paying Attention

PART 1

Today I feel some guilt remembering that at times I would feel a sense of dread when talking to my mother on the telephone with that annoying sound in the background. That sound was the large oxygen machine – one of those older ones that turn the air in the room into oxygen. In the last months of my mother’s life, it was helping keep her alive. Her voice had become much weaker in the last several months, and that background noise made it difficult to hear her, especially over a telephone. Our conversations face-to-face were easier. Her mind was intact, even if her vocal cords were weakened.

What a treat for the both of us, our visits. Mother loved shoes, yet in her last years she couldn’t walk much at all, certainly not in stylish footwear. One of the first things about me she’d notice when I walked in her room was my shoes. Truth is, I bought shoes for myself that I was sure my mother would love to admire. That was my main criteria for shoe shopping…”Oh, Mom will love these” I would say to myself, usually aloud.





This is Mother and five of her siblings. She was expecting my oldest sister in this photo. Her youngest brother [not pictured] was an infant [circa 1946]

My mother was born the week of the Great Depression in 1929. She was the eldest of seven children and the age range between them substantial. At the time my mother married at age 16, [which was not unusual for the time] she had an infant brother and five other siblings. What was unusual for the time – at least compared to now, was her parents were divorced. Mother’s parents divorced in a time which divorce could be considered scandalous, and she felt protective of her brothers and sister. Mom was born in Alabama, but as a girl grew up [at least in part] in Brooklyn, New York. The move back to Alabama in her teens was quite a cultural clash. My mother was not racially prejudiced, and the Deep South in the 1940s was so different from where she had come. This is where is met my father.

My mother was beautiful - statuesque, with jet black hair, olive skin and hazel eyes. She had the body of a movie star. My father was a handsome man, and had done very well for himself, as they say. They married after a very brief courtship of two whole weeks, and were married for 63 years. It was rocky marriage, but there were also good times.

As she and my father started their own family, they did their share of parenting my mother’s brothers and sister. Most, if not all of, lived with us at one time or another. I just can’t imagine being 24 years old with four of your own children, and caring for as many of your siblings who required your care at any given time. She loved it, and she loved all of us.

Mother was not raised in a religious home; her parents were agnostic you might say. At the age of around 16, my mother became a Christian – and had found something solid for her, for the first time in her life. From then forward, she would seek the most her faith had to offer.

DON'T BLAME MOTHER NATURE

It has been affirmed [again] that we are not responsible for our own behavior. Most of us are aware of the recent incident in NYC of the man who was stabbed as he stepped in to help a woman who was being robbed. He fell onto the sidewalk and as he lay there dying from his injury, it is on video surveillance that at least 25 people walked past him, stepped over him, or ignored him. One man rolled him over a bit, at which time he most likely noticed the blood oozing from a wound, and then walked away. Another man used his cell phone to take a photo of the dying man. We have similar instances around the country in the past few years.

What is wrong with us? It seems that according to some psychologists [and other educated excuse-makers] that we are “Hard-Wired” to behave this way. You know, the “Crowd Mentality”, or “By-Stander Effect” that causes us to do what others do in a given situation. Most of us growing up [if you are over the age of 35] were asked, usually by an authority figure, when “the crowd” did something, “if they jumped off a cliff, would you do that too?” If only I had the information then that I have now to say, “of course, Dad I can’t help it, I’m hard-wired to follow the crowd.” If you are over the age of 35, you may have had what I had growing up, something called consequences. It wasn’t a matter of giving in to your “tendencies.”

A psychologist on NBC this morning stated that the reason people step over a dying man on the street, or I suppose, take a photo of him, is because: “We are motivated to fit into our social environment – we want to do what others do” so we mimic the behavior of others. He also stated that “the assumption is made that someone else is doing something to help.” We are basically not responsible for doing nothing, if we see others doing nothing. This means we are accountable for nothing, for not doing something. Got it? We aren’t responsible for anything anymore.
Nope. No accountability. We are told we cheat on our spouses because we are sex addicts; we overeat because we have a “fat gene”; we can’t control our impulses because we are ADD or ADHD and we accept this because we are full of C-R-A-P. You don’t even have to actually win anymore to get a trophy. Hey, I will hug a tree before the sun sets today, but I also believe in accountability.

What if these apathetic people were held accountable? Let’s say for criminal negligence? By definition; criminal negligence is one of 3 general classes of mens rea – Latin for “guilty mind”.

We no doubt have some wonderful stories of heroism that have been witnessed, but the questions I would ask are:

Are we virtually helpless creatures of our primal instincts? I think not.

Do we allow others to determine our behavior to choose apathy over compassion? No way.

How could a human being leave another in the street to die? I have no idea

Dog hero