my mom Archives - Page 8 of 16 - Ramblin' with Roger

Mom would have been 89

I suspect that it was my mom who engineered the household’s purchase of the Encyclopedia Americana.

Musing about my next birthday coming up in a few months, I was wondering how I would remember how old I was, I realized that it would be easy: two to the sixth power, or 100000 base 2.

My mom was thrilled that I was learning base 2 when I was in fifth grade. You know base 2? Unlike base 10, which has ten digits, 0-9, base 2 only has two digits, 0 and 1.
1= 1 base 2
2= 10 base 2
3= 11 base 2
4= 100 base 2
5= 101 base 2
and so on

She was excited because, I was told, base 2 is used in COMPUTERS! 1 is on, 0 is off. So this would mean I could be a computer programmer!

As it turned out, the only thing I ever learned about computers is how to turn them on and off, and not always even that.

But I loved base 2 equivalent placeholders, and I could recite them – 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384 – without even thinking about them. This seemed to please my mother.

But I have very few other recollections about her talking to me about my school work. She was a work-outside-the-home mom when most of my friends had their moms staying at home. That was time-consuming and must have been enervating.

Still, I suspect that it was she who engineered the household’s purchase of the Encyclopedia Americana. And it was her additional income that made it possible.

Since they were expensive for our family’s household income, I made sure they got well used. I’m not sure if anyone else used them much, but over two or three years, I read all 20-odd volumes all the way through. And my parents, at my urging, bought these annual updates, and I devoured them too.

Mom attended Daniel Dickinson school, as my sisters and I did; I’d written about it periodically, including here.

Anyhoo, mom would have been 89 today. And I think to call her, so I pick up the phone sometimes before I realize that I can’t. I am surprised I haven’t figured that out yet; she’s been gone nearly six years.

I have no idea where this picture was taken; she was probably single at the time.

Mother’s Day 2016

I was watching Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, talk about the book they wrote together.

In the interview, Cooper said that he “realized there were many things that neither of them actually knew about the other. We decided, on her 91st birthday, to change the conversation that we have and the way we talk to each other.”

“According to Vanderbilt, it was all done by email.”

“‘I think we’re both at a place where both of us didn’t want to leave anything unsaid,’ Cooper added.”

It struck me, HARD, that there are plenty of things that I never asked my mom, because… well, I don’t know, actually. Maybe it’s because she often spoke as though she were reading from the same script.

I’d ask her how she was doing, and invariably she’d say “busy but good.” Busy with what? Sometimes I’d get an answer, but more often than not, a response that really didn’t answer the question.

If I could ask her now, on this Mother’s Day 2016, I think I’d want to know:

*How were you punished as a child? Did they use corporal punishment?

She was an only child, surrounded by her mother, aunt, grandmother, and sometimes, an uncle, so she didn’t get away with much.

She didn’t like to give corporal punishment, that’s for sure. She was pressured by my father, who, especially when he was working nights at IBM, didn’t always want to be the disciplinarian hours after the fact.

One time, she actually struck me on the butt. But you can tell her heart wasn’t in it.

*How is it that you never learned to cook?

Your mother and aunt could cook.

*Were my sisters and I breastfed?

I suspect not, because the convention at the period was to use the bottle. And she could be very conventional.

*Did you think my father was faithful to you? Or did you have reason to believe he was not?

Then I’d get some names to fill in some genealogy holes. I’d ask her some questions about her theology, something beyond the perfunctory responses she often gave me.

Of course, that window of opportunity is more than five years past.

Mom and dad’s anniversary – would’ve been #66

They look SO young. And happy.

As usual, the youngest of the three Green children, the one who lives in the parents’ home, is pouring through old pictures, uncovering ones that, if I had ever seen, are lost to my memory.

An astonishingly large number of the photos in her possession was taken in the backyard of 13 Maple Street, Binghamton, NY, the home of my maternal grandmother, Gertrude Williams, and her sister, Adenia Yates. My mom grew up there, and my sisters and I went there every lunchtime during the school year.

The house was tiny, the backyard puny. Yet there are several pictures of well over a dozen people in that postage stamp yard.

This is my mom-to-be, Gertrude Elizabeth Williams, who later went by Trudy because she hated her first name. My father-in-waiting, Leslie Harold Green, and Trudy met at that house, when he brought flowers to 13 Maple Street, in Binghamton’s more northerly First Ward, instead of 13 Maple Avenue, on the city’s South Side.

I’m just guessing they’re not married yet, because they look SO young. And happy.

And Les has this smug look that I’m told his future mother-in-law simply did not like. I think Trudy found it appealing after being under the thumb of her mother and aunt, and for much of her life, by her grandmother and uncle.

Mom died five years ago

I felt that was operating on two levels simultaneously.

The interesting thing for me about my mother’s death five years ago today, from a strictly sociological standpoint, was the fact that it, in some fashion, took place in this blog.

I had written a post on Sunday, January 30 about my mother’s stroke two days earlier, and my need to trek down to Charlotte, NC. But I didn’t actually post it until Wednesday, February 2, the day she died. I was there when it happened.

When I finally got back to what had been my mother’s house and was/is my sister’s house, that afternoon, I eventually checked my email. There were several comments on the blog hoping for my mother’s recovery.

Then Denise Nesbitt, the doyenne of ABC Wednesday, emailed me and asked how I was. I told her that my mother had died. SHE must have contacted several others because I then got a wave of condolences from people, most of whom I knew but had never met.

If I ever find the need to cry, reading the comments to that post, quite possibly the greatest number of responses I’ve ever gotten on this blog, will turn on the sobbing.

The next day, I posted about her death, then the actual trip to Charlotte (written just before her death), then, after a Super Bowl post I’d written much earlier, mom’s obituary.

Three days later – thank goodness I write ahead – Mom’s funeral program. A week later, Random Post-Funeral Thoughts. Finally, the first part of my monthly rambling contained more musings.

What was useful in the process was the fact that my niece Alex, Marcia’s daughter, did a ton of photo scanning, some for the funeral, which I used in the posts. MANY of these pictures I had never seen, and others, not for years.

All of this was very therapeutic for me. Someone wrote, early on, that I seemed “detached.” It’s more that I felt that was operating on two levels simultaneously, one as the person grieving, and one as the journalist, for want of a better term, observing the process.

Speaking of therapeutic, a couple of months later, I recommended the book The Orphaned Adult.

When we got back to Albany, we received flowers from the aforementioned Mrs. Nesbitt, which was incredibly sweet. I went to church that last Sunday of the month when we sang Lift Every Voice and Sing, which I’ve sung for years. But I can barely get through it anymore without crying, and it started that day when I knew, profoundly, that my mom, and my last living ancestor, was gone.

Movie Review: Heart of A Dog

Heart of a Dog is a documentary by artist/musician Laurie Anderson about her very deep relationship with her canine.

It’s Tuesday, November 17, the last day that the Spectrum 8 Theatre will be under the current ownership. Come Friday, November 20, the cinema will reopen under the control of the chain, Landmark Theaters.

The current owners insist the new company will keep it just the same. Keith and Sugi Pickard gave me that message the previous Saturday at the APL Foundation Library Gala, and Keith, who’s helping with the concession stand queue repeats the message this night to the Wife and me. I’ve been going there, or to its predecessor, the 3rd Street Cinema in Rensselaer, since 1980.

There are a number of films I’d like to see. But the one playing that seemed avant-garde, least mainstream, most Spectrum-like, was Heart of a Dog, a documentary by artist/musician Laurie Anderson about her very deep relationship with her canine, but also about her late mother, post 9/11 surveillance, and memory. Her late husband Lou Reed makes a brief appearance. It’s impressionistic and meditative and contemplative and musical, and occasionally very funny. Go read some nice reviews, 97% positive on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sugi Pickard watched that single screening. So did Cathy Frank, the legendary namesake of Cathy’s Waffles in ’80s Albany, who posted her disastrous-looking but still apparently tasty waffles on her Facebook page. It was a Smallbany event of sorts, the end of an era, like the apparent demise of Metroland after 38 years, or the closing of Bob and Ron’s Fish Fry in Albany after 67 years.

Oh, and it was my mom’s birthday, and Laurie was remembering what thing her mom said to her that most sticks to her mind. And it got me thinking some more about MY mom’s words to me. And it was…soothing to contemplate.