Tag: Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day: no mother, again

There are days when everything is really going well. Then there are other days you wish you could call your mom on the phone.

trudy_at_churchHere are a couple more pictures of my mom, before she was my mom. I don’t know exactly when they were taken, if I saw them before, I don’t recall them. Funny how she has that head tilt in both, albeit in different directions. My sister Marcia is doing a yeoperson’s job of finding photos, scanning them, and putting them on Facebook.

I’m fairly sure I know where the first one was taken.

It looks like the front of Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church, 35 Sherman Place in downtown Binghamton, NY, where I would later be baptized, in August (?) of 1953.

The Sherman Street church, indeed, all of that street was razed in the late 1950s to build a playground right across from the Interracial Center at 45 Carroll Street, where my father spent a lot of time working on social justice issues.

The church congregation moved to 203 Oak Street, at the corner of Lydia Street, only two short blocks from my home at 5 Gaines Street.

Trudy_carDon’t know much about this clearly earlier picture, except that the man in the car is almost certainly her Uncle Ed Yates, her mother Gert’s brother.

The freaky weather in Albany last month (80F on one day, 27F and snow 36 hours later) reminded both of my sisters of something that happened to my mom one Mother’s Day, or perhaps before: she slipped on ice on the front porch of our house and ended up in the hospital for at least a week. I think it was 1966; the week before May 8, the low temperature was 31 to 33F, and down to 26F the night before in Binghamton, NY. Though it COULD have been 1967, when it was 33F to 35F the evenings of the week before May 14.

There are days when everything is really going well. Then there are other days you wish you could call your mom on the phone. I’ve had more than my share of the latter thus far in 2014.

My mom’s first year as a mother

“I don’t know why you kids fight. You’re so lucky! I never had a brother or sister. If *I* had had a sibling, we would have gotten along.”

Trudy and Roger Green

My sister Marcia sent me via Facebook a whole slew of photos at the end of March. I’d seen most of them at one point, but it had been years. They’re great to see.

This is a picture of my mom, with her eldest child, who is yours truly. It appears that she is filled with unbridled joy, which is lovely, of course. The thing is that I didn’t think of her in that way. I considered her a bit of a worrier.

Partly, I think this was a function of her working outside the home at a time when that was not the norm. Perhaps it was the thought of leaving her son, and, eventually, her two daughters with her somewhat crazy mother.

It was also, though, that she, as an only child, did not understand the fact that siblings have disagreements. Many times, she dragged out this particular speech: “I don’t know why you kids fight. You’re so lucky! I never had a brother or sister. If I had had a sibling, we would have gotten along.” I think she actually believed this. Of course, because she WAS an only, she had ZERO credibility with this logic. (My father was an only as well, but I never heard him say this.)

Still, I thought she was a pretty good mom, though I’m not convinced SHE thought so. She probably fretted, like many parents do (including me) about whether she had any idea about what she was doing.
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Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms, including my wife and my mother-in-law.

 

Mother’s Day: The name’s the same

Kudos to my mother-in-law, who likes to point out that I am her favorite son-in-law.

 

Before my wife and I got married, I was quite neutral about whether my bride-to-be would change her last name to mine. I wasn’t planning to change my name to hers, and it was HER name, and she had had it for a while, so whatever she decided was fine. (Although I was REALLY hoping she wouldn’t opt for the hyphenated choice; after a while, when Mary Smith-Wesson marries John Smith-Jones, and she -or they – become the Smith-Wesson=Smith-Jones family, it can get cumbersome.)

In fact, it was my future mother-in-law who counseled that her daughter take my last name. It wasn’t out of any sense of traditionalism, but more out of practicality. We were/are a mixed-race couple and she thought it would be better for the outside world to know that we were a married couple, especially if we were to have children. I didn’t get this at the time.

Fast forward to filling out all of these forms for the Daughter’s school registration each year. It is NOT assumed that the father and the mother are married, or live at the same address, or even share joint custodial arrangements. It makes me oddly happy that my daughter has two parents that, to the world, are unambiguously hers. I’m not sure why, but I do.

Maybe it’s because I know couples in my life who sometimes get static. “Is that YOUR son, YOUR daughter?” Usually, it involves the adoption of a child of a different race and/or culture.

So kudos to my mother-in-law, who likes to point out that I am her favorite son-in-law. Of course, I’m her ONLY son-in-law.
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Of course, I still miss my mom, who died 15 months ago. My wife, I should mention more often, is a great mom to the Daughter.

The new Mother’s Day reality

The running joke when I’d call or send a card is that I’d say or write that it was from her favorite son.


Someone sent me this picture some months ago. I thought it was rather funny. Specifically, it reminded me of the Paul Simon song Mother and Child Reunion, which is based on a chicken and egg dish that Simon had at a Chinese restaurant.

Then my mom died, and it’s my first Mother’s Day without her. The visual is still funny but in a more melancholy way. Melancholy humor.

I’ve discovered that Mother’s Day ads REALLY irritate me lately, more than Father’s Day ads did 10 years ago. Maybe it was because it was longer between when my father died until the next holiday (August to June) than it is for my mom (February to May). But probably it’s because I get more e-mail solicitations than I did a decade ago, and they are more difficult to ignore.

The picture above is of my mother with her favorite son many years ago in front of 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY USA; the house and the trim, BTW, were green. The running joke when I’d call or send a card is that I’d say or write that it was from her favorite son. She was generally polite enough not to mention that I was her ONLY son.

Last Sunday, there was a Mass for Mom at the Mission San Diego Basilica de Alcala in San Diego. As my sister Leslie reported, it was “beautiful. It was the regular Noon Mass, but it was announced at the beginning that this Mass was for Trudy Green, mother of Leslie Green, who is a member of the Mission Choir.” I will be getting a copy of the event. “It was a packed house on a beautiful day.”

The bottom picture is of my daughter with her favorite mother. Carol is, among other things, a good mom.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you mothers, and all of you who have or had mothers.

 

Mother’s Day 2010

I saw, with my wife and daughter, my mother last month. This is a good thing; she lives in North Carolina, so it is a sometimes thing. The previous time was June 2009, with the Daughter, not my favorite visit, let’s say.

She is doing reasonably well. All her vital signs are good. Her cholesterol is in a good range, and we wonder if she still needs her medications.

She’s losing weight, about 9 or 10 pounds, and she can afford to do so, per the Body Weight Index, but it makes her look a little gaunt to me. She’s a little dehydrated, common among people of her vintage. She was 5’7″ when I was growing up, but she looks about 5’5″ now. It’s strange.


I must say that Carol is a very good mother to Lydia. These are pictures I took on the first day of school back in September. As I probably mentioned, Lydia felt ill-prepared for kindergarten, even after having been in daycare for three years. This was a self-imposed pressure, and Carol handled the situation well.

I hear some children try to pit one parent against another, and perhaps Lydia tried that when she was about four. but we’re old/WISE enough to present a united front on most issues.

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, Lydia’s mom, Carol’s mom, Rebecca’s mom, Alex’s mom (the latter two would be my sisters) and all the moms out there.

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