In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in. We’re here at 7 pm on Sunday nights.
Happy Mother’s Day! In this extra special Mother’s Day edition of Medium Cool, tell us how your mother influenced you in some artistic way. It could be pushing you to read, taking you to movies, an art gallery, or making art herself. Give us what you got.
BGinCHI
The image is from Bong Joon-ho’s terrific film, “Mother.”
Ruckus ??
Mother artistic? Doesn’t compute other than cooking. Which as I’ve had to do a fair amount of over the decades, being a bit artistic does seem to help. But artistic? One of her daughters was an amazing artist both in actual painting and in creating art out of nature, she was a very artistic prize winning landscape architect and a teacher of same. I’ve learned the art of making things out of metal, many processes machining, welding, design, industrial and bicycles. Some say that is art. Mom absolutely had a part in that.
lollipopguild
My mother was a HS teacher. She made it very clear to myself and my sister(4 years older) that we were going to school every day and learn something and stay out of trouble. She also told us very early on that we were both going to college. We both graduated college. We also went to Sunday School and church service every sunday. My mom and dad were very good parents, I count myself lucky. I have seen some very bad parents just in my own in laws, I felt sorry for some of my nieces and nephews.
AM in NC
My mom read to me constantly when I was little and turned me into a reader and writer. She does all kinds of fiber arts as hobbies (she spins, weaves, knits and quilts) and has shown me that art can be done anywhere at anytime, and that creating something beautiful and useful, or beautiful with no “useful” purpose at all is soul-filling. And she has encouraged me in every creative endeavor I’ve ever tried. She is dying of cancer, and today is really really hard. I won the lottery with her and my heart is breaking.
Alison Rose ???
I’m a voracious reader, but I mostly got that from my Dad. Mom doesn’t read a lot–but what she does read, and always has, is mysteries. She’s read her Complete Book of Sherlock Holmes stories probably about 10 times, and when I was a kid, she also loved Agatha Christie, Robert Parker, and others. Since my Dad read mostly sci-fi/fantasy and historical fiction, it was Mom who gave me a love for a good mystery story. I loved watching the old Poirot and Sherlock Holmes TV series with her (in our house Jeremy Brett is the best and only Holmes, do not even think of talking to my Mom about any more modern adaptations, she will have a conniption).
BGinCHI
@AM in NC: So sorry to hear that. It’s great she taught you so much craft and you have all those memories.
BGinCHI
@Alison Rose ???:
My mom was always a big Miss Marple fan.
Sheila in nc
My mother taught me piano, sang with me, gave me the gift of music which has enriched my life from childhood until the present. Church choir, school choir, orchestra, major choral works during grad school and beyond. Never a career but a constant and treasured avocation.
kalakal
I will always be grateful to my mother for how much she encouraged my reading. I grew up in the 60s in a range of countries in South East Asia and the Middle East where English language books were not easily available and from about the age of 4 was a voracious reader. Any chance she could get to get books for me she took. She signed me (at quite a cost ) to international book clubs, if we were out and saw a book she’d buy it. I found out later it was an affectionate joke amongst my parents friends that they didn’t dare put a bóok down if they hadn’t finished it because she’d borrow it for me. She never censored anything, I was reading Ian Fleming at 8. I really wish I’d realised at the time just how much she did.
I was very lucky with my parents, I’d love to be able to tell them that today
Dangerman
Artistic? My Mother was gifted musically (my Father as well)…
…a skill that didn’t pass to me. Perhaps my eclectic taste in music came from them. I like everything.
This is outside the lines but what my Parents gave me (particularly my Mother) was a love for puzzles.
Scout211
My mother was an avid reader and she very enthusiastically encouraged us to read. We all hopped into the family station wagon every week to borrow books from the local library. We all would check out a pile of books, my mother included. She also signed us up for the library summer reading program every summer, which was fun.
As we got older, she quietly accompanied us to the adult stacks to check out books in that forbidden section. Back then you had to be a certain age to even be allowed to browse in the adult section, let alone check out those books. It was all kinds of daring and fun to go with her to that section of the library and pick out books to read. She had to check them out on her own card and pretend that those were her books. But she thoroughly supported our interest in reading books that were written for adults. Back then there was no separate YA section so many of the books that teens have easy access to now were shelved in the adult section and deemed not suitable or appropriate for young teens. My mother didn’t agree with those rules so helped us get around those silly rules so we could have access to books that were far more interesting than the ones in the children’s section.
What a rebel. ?
eddie blake
my mom and i don’t get along at all, we’re not friends by any stretch of the imagination, but she’s definitely affected me in profound and fundamental ways. she was a big reader, our house was full of books, thousands of them and they were all hers. (i got around to reading most of them)
…also, she was a HUGE trekkie and a film freak. my lifelong love of trek and sci fi, films and storytelling is a direct result of her influence.
BGinCHI
@eddie blake: Similarly, my old man was not great (understatement), but he was an avid reader, especially of history. I got a lot of shit from him, but also a lot of curiosity.
zhena gogolia
My mother was an excellent artist. She had wanted to be a commercial illustrator. She got to raise three kids instead. Her artistic impulses flowed out into all sorts of projects, some beautiful, some strange, like towers of Michelob bottles painted gold that served as candlesticks. She could hang wallpaper and upholster furniture. I inherited none of her practical skills, but the respect and love for art came through.
ETA: I forgot music, she loved music and insisted I have piano lessons. After two years I begged my father to get her to let me stop. I stopped, but rediscovered piano when I was 13 and have been playing ever since.
zhena gogolia
@AM in NC: Oh, I’m so sorry.
zhena gogolia
This is a great topic.
WaterGirl
@AM in NC: I am so sorry. At this point, when the end is certain, it’s all about no regrets. Don’t leave anything unsaid, though I suspect from what you’ve said that you have not.
When I knew my dad was dying, I didn’t think I could handle it. We were very close, and I was daddy’s girl, and i really didn’t know how I could go on when he was gone. But of course we do, because we have too. My heart goes out to you. ?
Ben Cisco
Mama Cisco was in education for over 30 years, read to me as a baby. Story goes that she and Papa Cisco heard me repeating a story from another room, turns out I was actually reading the book. I was 4.
Thanks, Mom.
Elizabelle
@AM in NC: What a wonderful mom. It is so hard to lose her. You are in my thoughts.
Kelly
My Mom refused to accept a TV in our home until all us kids had grown. She wanted us to read. She fit all the used paperbacks we wanted into a sometimes tight budget. Mom and I were mostly sci/fi fans. Dad and my brother liked westerns. My sisters were into mysteries. “Historical” novels were popular all around, Mitchener, Uris and the like. I considered my history textbooks fascinating. Read them cover to cover in the first few weeks of school each year.
She had Dad buy a piano and we all took lessons in grade school. The lessons were wasted on me. I learned to read music in about six months but my playing was terrible. My older sister played well. My brother has a natural ear for music. After a year of lessons our teacher realized he couldn’t read music at all. Play a song for him once and he has it. He went on be a key voice in our high school choir. Mastered 6 and 12 string guitar. The piano burned up with his home in the Beachie fire of September 2020.
AM in NC
@WaterGirl: Thank you (and thanks Zhena and BG and Elizabelle) for your kind words and the message that I will be able to get through this, because it just is life and life must go on.
I feel so lucky that I get to be (with my sister and brother) her caregiver during this time. So many great conversations and things to laugh about and remember. This is going to be one of the greatest gifts of my life, I suspect.
kalakal
@Scout211: I love this story. How great of her
Ben Cisco
@eddie blake: Have you seen “Strange New Worlds” yet? Thoughts?
Orange is the New Red
My parents are both gone now. Mom was a poet, would give me poetry books and encouragement. I still read and write poetry.
Kim Walker
My mom was an artist of sorts. She made beautiful, unique ceramic objects. At one time, she owned an art shop and taught classes in our small town. I recall that once my mom took my reluctant father to an amphitheater in Washington Park to have a picnic dinner while they watched a Shakespearean play. She loved theater and tried to get me interested as a small child. At that point, I was not a fan – I liked movies. But in my teens, I became an avid theater goer and volunteered in community productions. Mom was very supportive of my voracious reading habit and encouraged me to read anything I wanted to try. She was also an amazing and adventurous cook, which is something I try to emulate to this day.
kalakal
@AM in NC: I’m so sorry to hear that. It is so hard. I hope in the future your memories of her bring you as much joy as mine of my parents do.
Brachiator
Hmmm. Let’s see. My mother never took me to museums or art galleries. But she signed off on school field trips to concerts, the natural history museum and other cultural destinations.
But the biggest thing was that she encouraged reading and literary discovery. This was following a family tradition. In my mother’s family, reading was hugely supported. In the house of a couple of my great aunts, there was a basket in the bathroom with a couple of magazines and the latest edition of Readers Digest, which you could easily hold in your hand.
My mother never censored by reading choices. After a certain point, she jumped through some official hoops and paperwork and got me a library card that let me check out most adult level books. As a result, I bypassed most of the juvenile and young adult genre material. But I had a serious thing for mystery and science fiction.
I also sought out novels that dealt with or depicted sex, because…curiosity. And here in my city some library books were marked “mature” and could not even be checked out with my special library card. But I discovered that some genre fiction was assumed to be sex free, so I had fun looking for those few science fiction novels which were a little freaky.
I would sometimes watch some of my mother’s favorite TV shows along with her and I recently talked with my younger sister about how I think my sense of justice was shaped not only by family example and discussion, but by some of these TV shows. One of these was an early 60s TV series, The Defenders, about a father and son team played by EG Marshall and Robert Reed. It was created by Reginald Rose, who also wrote the courtroom drama Twelve Angry Men.
To this day, I still have an impressionistic memory of one of the episodes which featured an intense performance by a young Robert Duvall. I also remembered that the episode was about the necessity to fight for justice and mercy, even in seemingly hard cases. A plot summary of the episode “Metamorphosis.”
Amazingly, the episode is currently available and worth a watch.
Still powerful, especially in these times.
Kelly
@AM in NC: Much sympathy.
Friday was another small step in my Mom’s aging. She’s 86. She asked me to start mowing her yard at least until summer. Wrestling the mower with wet grass is too much. Gardening and keeping a nice yard has been a joy to her my entire life. I’ve been doing the heavy pruning at her direction for 10 years.
She was very active. Backpacking the Cascades in the 1970s. Rafted Grand Canyon with me 3 times. Cross country skiing.
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator: that was an excellent series
FelonyGovt
My mom was a big reader, often had 2 or 3 different books on the go at once. She was also a good artist, although she never pursued it, and I remember a drawing class we took together. She’s been gone for over 40 years now.
@AM in NC: My heart is breaking for you. Fuck cancer (which took my mom as well).
Salty Sam
Did you see the Netflix series “Julia”? There was a scene where Julia Child was joyfully breaking down a chicken, slapping it around on the cutting board and showing how to dismember it.
My mom and I have a treasured memory of watching that episode (the original “The French Chef”) together in 1964- she recalls that ten-year-old me was open-mouthed in amazement. It sparked something in me then, and she nurtured it. My first career was in food service- worked my way up from pot washer to Exec. Chef. Mom was a good cook (as long as she had a recipe to follow), but she instilled a love for food and cooking that is my super-power today.
Thanks Mom!
Ruckus ??
@AM in NC:
So very sorry.
My sister died of cancer, I’ve had cancer, mom had cancer.
Cancer is the just about the only word in the dictionary that I hate with the heat of the sun.
Once again, so very sorry about your mom.
Ruckus ??
@Scout211:
I was an avid reader when I was young. I asked mom to sign me up for an adult library card and the librarian told her I was too young. Mom told her to sign the blank, blank card. She did. I half expected mom to vault over the counter and beat the woman senseless. I think the librarian thought that as well. We lived in SoCal but it was a rather republican state at the time. For the most part it has grown the hell up and is pretty damn solid democratic now.
UncleEbeneezer
My Mom loved music and especially Musicals. So I grew up with a lot of West Side Story, Sound Of Music, Man of La Mancha, Les Mis, Phantom of the Opera etc. She also loved cheesy pop from the 70’s-80’s. Stuff like The Bee Gees, Carpenters, Donna Summer, ELO and then later Kenny Rogers, Juice Newton and the pop-country from the 80’s. She played piano but really didn’t have much talent beyond her ability to read music. I got the musical gifts in my family being able to pick up multiple instruments by ear. Unfortunately most of my musical development and then gig playing was done despite her as she never really encouraged me. She was always just too worried about me getting a regular job and settling down. But the music she loved, I loved too and it heavily informed my own tastes and song-writing. While my style went into funk, hard-rock, grunge and jazz fusion (shit she never would’ve liked) the way I structure songs still has alot of those early show tunes and radio pop sensibilities, regardless of the genre I’m playing. My Dad loves music too, but I think I get my deep passion and emotional connection to music from my Mom, who had that too. So I will always be grateful for that.
UncleEbeneezer
@AM in NC: Sorry to hear that. Lost mine to cancer in 2012. Try and enjoy the time you have left with her, for those of us who didn’t have that chance (I lived on the other side of the country and by the time I reached the ICU she was already unconscious). Sounds like you have a great relationship with yours. Cherish it. And be good to yourself.
NotMax
@Brachiator
DVD set of The Defenders was released several years go. It mostly holds up well.
Incidentally, learned only last evening from someone whose grandfather was a movie screenwriter and later wrote multiple episodes of the original Perry Mason series that the writers for that series were issued a timesheet to which they were expected to strictly adhere.
At X minutes and Y seconds in, this revelation/information/plot point/interaction occurs, at A minutes and B seconds in, this other one occurs, and so on. The details of what said info or reveal may have been left up to the writers to invent but it was required they unfold story by the clock.
Alison Rose ???
@AM in NC: I’m so sorry. My father is about to begin chemo after a few months of immunotherapy which haven’t worked. It’s awful and scary and I’m sorry you are dealing with this. Sending love and support to you and your family <3
Almost Retired
My Mom grew up without indoor plumbing on a farm in what was one day to become Steve King’s district. She married into my Dad’s big-fish-small-pond “townie” family.
By age 29, the townspeople were gossiping and criticizing her for not having children. When she was pregnant with me, she was forced out of her teaching job before she “showed,” as if these rural kids who watched pigs fucking every Spring would be scandalized.
She was widowed at 48 with a 16 year old daughter and a 21 year old self-absorbed son who had moved to Los Angeles and had no intention of coming back (ahem..cough).
She ran the family business for three years until my sister graduated – its three most profitable years because even the local good old boys had to pay promptly for the first time. Sold it for a profit, got an undergrad and then a graduate degree and specialized in counseling rural women about educational and financial opportunities.
We had books, music, travel and culture shoved down our throats so we wouldn’t become….well….Steve King voters.
At age 85, she knitted her own pussy hat and flew to DC to join my sister at the original women’s march.
She’s on her third husband (she outlived the first two), but wisely married a younger guy this time (her 82 year old boy toy). I wonder if I would be commenting on Red State this evening instead of this blog without her influence.
Ruckus ??
@AM in NC:
My sister and I used to fight all the time and she once stuck a fork in my arm – didn’t actually hurt anything that I know of – but as we got older we grew closer. She would talk to me when she was dying of cancer and we would discuss a lot of things. I was the last person to talk to her in the hospital and I think, and hope that I made it just a bit easier for her. We all get to that point in life at some time. It’s never easy but I think our part is to make the entire process as best as it can be. I sat with my father in his hospital bed and he passed in my arms. Not a good day but I feel that was one of the best things I’ve ever been able to do for someone else. That was 21 yrs ago and it still feels like yesterday.
debbie
@Almost Retired:
She sounds like a great lady.
eclare
While I was in elementary school, my mom volunteered with an art museum to go to classes and teach kids about famous paintings.
Years later, kids would come up and say “you’re the art lady!” I still love art museums.
AliceBlue
My late mother started sewing when she was 5–clothes for her dolls at first, then moving on to dresses for herself, her mother and sisters as the years passed. She made just about all of my clothes when I was in school. People would always ask me “where did you get that?” No one believed me when I said “My mom made it.” She was that good.
Then there are the quilts. I have no idea how many she made during her lifetime for family and friends. I have over a dozen of them, all hand pieced and hand quilted.
She survived cancer, a stroke and two heart attacks, leaving us three years ago at the age of 97.
eddie blake
@Ben Cisco: just re-loaded paramount+. will get to it. mz blake and i had it before, watched the first season of picard and the beginnings of discovery. i really liked anson mount and rebecca romijn when they were guesting. thought they had very good chemistry.
BGinCHI
@Ben Cisco: Was wondering about this too.
eclare
@AM in NC: I’m so sorry about your mom.
eddie blake
@BGinCHI: yeah, like i said. we set up paramount+ this afternoon. i will totally get to it in a bit. picard season 2 first.
BGinCHI
@eddie blake: Giro d’Italia started, so I got plenty to watch.
Kristine Pennington
My mom started pouring ceramics back in the early 70’s at the Air Force base where were stationed. Once she started she couldn’t stop ?. She was very artistic in her choice of colors and finishes she would give each piece. I also remember her listening to a new group called the stone ponies and a young singer named Linda ronstadt. As we were standing in the kitchen listening to ‘different drum” I remember my mom saying that gal has a great set of pipes….
Brachiator
@Ben Cisco:
Please allow me to throw in a brief spoiler free review. I have enjoyed most of the Trek shows and Strange New Worlds gives me what I most love about Trek: fun and thoughtful science fiction stories featuring an interesting cast of characters. We saw this version of Pike, along with young Spock and Number One in some episodes of Star Trek: Discovery and the series seems to be in great hands with these characters and the actors who portray them. But the other cast members we meet in the season premiere are also solid. I love Baby Cadet Uhura. And although I didn’t think I needed to see Nurse Chapel, I like her feistiness. The show runners had to do a lot in the first episode and maybe they crammed in a little to much, but I liked how they took some time to show that this was a well trained and capable crew. The didn’t just have someone say that someone was great and leave it at that.
The first adventure is imaginative, suspenseful and resolved with creativity and imagination and is well grounded in Trek lore. Even has nice bits of humor.
My one reservation is that the show creators are bad about adding in little details that make it feel that the characters actually inhabit a future universe. From some things I have read, I think this is a deliberate choice. Maybe some producer thinks you have to do this to bring in new viewers and the casual fan. Quick example. They get the Enterprise right and even honor the 60s retro look of the original series, but Pike appears to have a fireplace in his strangely spaces personal quarters. A fireplace on a spaceship? I don’t get it. Even if they later come up with an explanation, it still feels wrong. But even though this is annoying, it’s minor. So far, they are getting the main stuff right.
ETA. To give a bit of my perspective on new Trek, I was lukewarm on Discovery, mainly because I personally did not like the idea that the main character was initially depicted as being disgraced. I liked most of the first season of Picard, but not the current season. I think the animated Lower Decks is a hoot. Prodigy is much more enjoyable than I expected it to be. And more mature even though it is aimed at younger viewers.
NotMax
Was tutored when but a sprat, Pavlov style, in appreciating reading by being walked (Walked! And it wasn’t a short trek.) to the library at regular intervals on weekends by Mom in order to return books and check out new ones, invariably followed by a trip to a soda fountain for ice cream on the way back home.
Too, taken to a spate of Broadway shows, whether on the Great White Way or in regional productions. Can almost still taste the watered down orangeade (in waxed cartons) sold during intermissions.
Also introduced to comics books, years before being permitted to buy them myself. Mom would purchase them and read through them first before passing those which met her standards on to li’l me.
And every Sunday in the house would appear every possible newspaper available at the local newsstand, the majority of which were not ones regularly subscribed to, simply for the variety in the comics section of each.
Sure Lurkalot
My mom told us kids that she was barely graduated high school. She also had no hobbies, like art, gardening or sewing. Not a bit of intellectual curiosity. I was the youngest and very independent, so she had kind of checked out.
Despite that, she was a good mom, made sure I did my school work and cared for me and my siblings well. Loved us in her own way.
She was known for her cooking and by today’s standards, she overcooked just about everything. But she prepared grand meals for big get togethers until she was unable to in her 80’s. Those were the best times for her, regardless of the work, and some of the fondest memories I have. My love of cooking came from her.
I admit to being jealous of those of you who had incredibly close relationships with your moms. My experience was not that, but I honor her just the same.
Dan B
My mother got a degree in music from Oberlin College Conservatiry of Music and a Masters from Ann Arbor, as she called the University of Michigan. Although we lived outside a small town in Ohio we were off to the Cleveland Art Institute, Cleveland Symphony, and toured famous modern architecture as far afield as Taliesen East. Our house was full of books on art and architecture. She wanted a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright but my 6 foot tall father put his foot down after visiting several homes, including Fallingwater. Wright was short in stature and refused to design to accommodate anyone taller. I pursued a career in architecture until I was kicked out of school. But I managed a career in landscape design inspired by my parents, especially my mother
This childhood seemed normal in the same way fish don’t see water.
Ben Cisco
@eddie blake:
@BGinCHI:
The chemistry is real and extends to the rest of the crew. I believe you’ll enjoy it.
BGinCHI
@Brachiator: Thanks for this.
Another Scott
My mom had a tough time with lots of things, but did her best. She was very talented in sewing and various kinds of needlework. Like many women back in those days, she made dresses and things from various patterns. She was amazing at knitting and crocheting (and made things like a lace crown for a niece who was getting married). She made me some amazing knitted Irish-style sweaters over the years. She taught me how to knit when I briefly was interested in it. It’s a good skill to have! But I didn’t keep with it enough to remember how to get started or how to do fancy things like making the edges to attach sweater sleeves. She could do it all.
RIP Mom, and thanks for everything.
Cheers,
Scott.
Craig
My mum is not artistic. She reads a lot and passed that to me. She encouraged me to read a lot early on. She always was ready to take me to the library and that was where I really discovered the Art World. Travel was another thing to open up the artistic world. We’re immigrants so I took it for granted at first, going to London and going to the British Museum, or seeing all the paintings in Edinburgh Castle seemed normal. Hell, I was the only kid in school who’d been out of the country, and it wasn’t till I was a junior in HS before I met another kid at school who’d been across the Atlantic. Whenever relatives from the old country came over my folks made sure we went to DC and went to all the museums on The Mall.
kalakal
I’d like to do a shout out to my Mother-in-law. She was, quite simply, one of the kindest and nicest people I’ve ever met. She was also ferociously independent eg it took being T-boned by an idiot running a red light when she was 97 to stop her driving.
My wife was a professional artist and her parents backed her to the hilt.
She suffered a broken neck in the car crash and came to live with us for the last year of her life and I feel so privileged that she did, this was in the first year of Covid, so we didn’t really see anybody else.
I didn’t get anything artistic from her ( I didn’t meet her until I was 50) but I learnt an awful lot about how to live
Brachiator
@NotMax:
I don’t do physical media anymore. I have been able to catch episodes of three of my favorite series on YouTube. The Defenders, Route 66 and Have Gun, Will Travel. I was a bit young when Route 66 was on, but I am amazed at some of the mature themes the show handled and how often guest characters were working class or lower class.
KNX radio in Los Angeles used to broadcast episodes of the radio version of Have Gun, Will Travel.
Perry Mason was probably my mom’s all time favorite show.
This doesn’t surprise me. I didn’t really care for the show and I couldn’t articulate it when I was a kid, but the show did feel mechanical. I don’t watch much regular TV these days, but I get a sense that a lot of current TV comedy seems to be built on some rigid template.
BTW, I like the new Perry Mason series, but hate that Mason is initially depicted as a sad sack and loser. There seems to be a thing that all major characters on a TV series must have a tragic back story or terrible parents.
AJ
My mom told me about a time when she and my dad “didn’t have two pennies to rub together.” She said their sense of humor was the only thing that got them through that time. I remember it so clearly.
Really important words for life. Left a huge impression on me.
RaflW
My mother was a prolific painter. We have framed art of hers in many spots around our homes. She encouraged us to enjoy symphonic music, visit museums, and go to plays. But for me, the way she taught me creative expression the most was cooking.
I took an interest while still in high school. By college I’d always drift into the kitchen on visits and we’d sip wine and she’d be cooking and I’d do a combo of watching closely and asking, can I help? Can I do that part?
I cook a lot like she did. I’ll eat something at a restaurant that I like, and I’ll go home and think about what was in it and why I liked it and I’ll sort of bang it out. It often isn’t great the first time (with the advent of the internet, or just over time having more cookbooks, I’d also reference recipes, but rarely follow them closely). But I figure it out and have a quiver of skills now as a good home cook.
She was a cook who used her skill, experience, willingness to experiment a bit, and worked by smell, taste, appearance etc and not measuring devices or adherence to the written plan. I love cooking that way! (And yes, I do use recipes. But usually just once or twice, unless it’s baking.)
Thanks Mom!
Ruckus ??
@kalakal:
…I learnt an awful lot about how to live.
No matter what a parent teaches their kids, art, reading, etc, learning how to live is the best thing to teach anyone. Some of us have to figure it out in our own way and time and some get extremely lucky to have someone to show them when it has the most impact. I got that when I was 12-13 yrs old by a gentleman that worked for my dad. Richard was a middle aged black man who looked like he’d never have to worry about protecting himself and family and he treated this child like everyone else and like he wanted to be treated. Fairly and equally. I think of Richard often, as sort of a second father and have been eternally grateful for meeting and knowing him and learning from him.
StringOnAStick
I was the product of failed birth control as were all my siblings, and our mom was aggressive and angry about pointing that out. Let’s just say that not all moms were wonderful and I envy you folks who had/have moms who were. You probably know how lucky you are; enjoy it, revel in it, and I tip my hat to you.
Brachiator
@StringOnAStick:
That’s unfortunate. I hope you had other people in your life who were your champions.
AM in NC
Thank you Ballon Juice peeps (somehow Jackals seems wrong in this context) for all of your kind words and thoughts and wise advice during this time. I have been mostly a lurker here for nearly two decades (wow), but I just love this community and felt totally comfortable sharing my mom’s story because I know there are very good, kind people here. I value you all.
Tazj
@AM in NC: I wish you strength in this difficult time. It’s very hard and I was very close to my mother too, she was my rock and always knew what to say to encourage me and make me feel better. Of course, I still miss her but I try to remember how she wanted me and the rest of my siblings to be happy and enjoy life whenever possible.
My mom, similar to Zhena’s mom, wanted to be a commercial artist. Although she did have a few commercial jobs, she became an art teacher, something she vowed she would never do while in college. When she found it difficult to find a teaching job after having children, she got a job as a teaching assistant at a preschool and then went on to become a social worker.
My mom always encouraged us in our artistic endeavors and I’m sorry she didn’t have more of a chance to work on hers. Just today while doing the dishes I was thinking that I should have done the dishes more for my mom.
Ruckus ??
@StringOnAStick:
I was just thinking about my mom. The mom that had an idea of what we should be and do when we grew up and who knew more about that then any of us kids did or ever would. When I was in my mid 50s mom, being her normal self, was trying to set me up with someone. The fact that I was engaged and living with a woman and her 5 yr old never entered into mom’s plans for my life. When I’d call or was in town and went to see her she’d never say hello, it was always “You need to date my friend’s daughter.” This went on for about 8 months. And I was living 2500 miles away. Pfft, details. After about a month I’d ask questions or remind her about my engagement and living arrangements. Never an acknowledgement, just a repeat of the same sentence. After about 8 months of this I was in town and went to see her. Walked in the door, “Hi mom.” Same response. So I asked her, “Does she fuck?” Mom – “I don’t know you’ll have to ask her yourself.” The entire concept was never mentioned again and she lived for 11 more years. So yeah, some parents are wonderful and some want to run your entire life for you, like it or not. She did worse for my sisters. She wasn’t hateful, she just knew better than we did, about everything – she didn’t respect us as the humans she’d raised.
Mike E
@Ben Cisco: It’s the best pilot I’ve seen. It’s got to be the longest wait for a pitched TV series — damn near 60 years — from The Cage to ST: SNW. No wonder they’ve already been picked up for season two.
Barbara
@StringOnAStick: My mother was angry and frustrated a lot of the time probably for reasons similar to your mother. She did however try to promote and enable our interests so that we could achieve professionally in a way that had been denied to her.
My sisterand I still disagree over which of our parents had a more baleful impact on us or would have been happy in a less toxic combination. I still feel like it is an emotional burden to have had parents who were living out their own unhappy drama.
Barbara
@AM in NC: Oh gosh, I’m sorry. I hope you are able to spend some meaningful time with your mom.
Yutsano
My mother made one decision for me when I turned 16 that I’m now grateful for: she refused to let me get a job. Instead, she demanded that I focus on music and band. Although I ultimately didn’t pursue a career in music, being in music and band (and later choir) in my college years is what got me through that time in my life.
And cooking. From the time I was 10 my mom was working late shifts as a server. She asked my older brother to prepare dinner for the four of us. He, however, pawned it off on me. As soon as she found out she showed me how to make basic stuff, then more advanced things. Cooking is both art and science, and she instilled that love for me.
Tazj
@StringOnAStick: I’m sorry. I had a much more complicated relationship with my dad. He had a tough childhood and difficult life experiences, being in WWII for example, and hard job. I think he struggled with depression for a good deal of his life and blamed himself for many things that weren’t his fault.
Brachiator
My mother could not cook well and was not strongly domestic. I obliquely thank her for instilling in me a love of restaurants and dining out.
She was also decidedly feminist before the official movement came on the scene. For example, even though there was a family friend who was a respected pediatrician, my mother found a woman doctor with a small practice. My mother didn’t explain her decision to me and today doesn’t explicitly recall how she picked this doctor, but she clearly did not believe that a doctor had to be a man. Looking back, I think this doctor’s nurse may also have been her domestic partner. Maybe not, but I like to think it was a possibility. Anyway, this doctor was kind, professional and good hearted.
Mike E
Mom survived the Holocaust and a shitty husband, a rare nervous disorder, five children and a number of abortions. She divorced my Dad, had the nerve deadened, got steady work and allowed me to be a confidant when I finally grew up. She died of cancer around my 24th birthday. I owe her a great deal.
NotMax
Just for fun, a mother song (in the loosest definition of vocalizing).
:)
Brachiator
O/T. The next Doctor has been revealed. From BBC News.
I love this slap down to all the idiots who insisted that a woman Doctor was not “canon.”
Alison Rose ???
@Brachiator: I don’t even watch the show and I love that, too. They were like “Oh you didn’t like the woman Doctor? Well, we will INCREASE doing the things you do not like.”
Original Lee
My mom was a semi-professional accompanist. She at one point considered turning pro, but unless you work for a star, the pay sucks. (Her piano teacher, later also mine, was formerly the rehearsal pianist for Carmen Miranda.) She encouraged my two sisters and me to develop our musical talents, and willingly paid for piano lessons and also lessons for one other instrument. She wanted us to have a creative and social outlet that would last all our lives. At least for me, it has so far. I continue to play the piano and the clarinet for pleasure and relaxation, although I’m also saving up for a bassoon someday. And I continue her legacy and the legacy of our piano teacher by accompanying high school students at Solo & Ensemble and by giving my own children the opportunity to learn to play an instrument well.
prostratedragon
My mother and I had a diffficult [sic, I’ve decided] and complicated relationship, but there is no question that I owe her a lot for fostering a love of reading and music, and respect for all the arts. From reading and being read to aloud (my father also participated in this) and using the library and at-home encyclopedias to music lessons and choir-singing, she encouraged a range of artistic activities. Some of these followed her own interests, like choral singing. She had been involved in choirs and glee clubs since before her own high school days, having a nice soprano voice; an amusing n-degree thing from her experience is that her City College women’s chorus was led one year by a young musician named Margaret Hillis, under whom she said they had a terrific time. Our own church choir was small but heroic, and gave me an additional view of many classics beside what I learned in school band.
And though my father was both the cinephile and the ironist of the two of them, it was Mom who introduced me to All About Eve and, years later, The Far Side. So I own her a lot.
Ruckus ??
@Original Lee:
My mom tried to do the same for me. We found out that the sum total of my musical abilities are listening to others perform. I’m real good at that…..
Mel
My mother was a damaged, extremely destructive person (extroverted, narcissistic former pageant queen who was not shy about how disappointing it was to have a nerdy bookworm for a child), but my paternal grandmother was my saving grace.
My grandmother was amazing. She could do just about anything she put her mind to, from patching a roof to making root beer to learning to disco dance in her late 60s.
When I was a little girl, she cleared out a hallway closet and made a “secret room” for me to have as a hideaway, complete with a beanbag chair, a bookshelf, and a lap desk for drawing. Every time I came to visit, I’d find new goodies tucked away in there: books, new markers, a stuffed animal, fuzzy socks, a craft kit, etc. As I got older, she taught me how to quilt, on the quilt frame that her grandmother and her grt grandmother had used.
She loved books as much as I did, and we spent hours together reading and telling stories. When I was thirteen, she got me my first typewriter, and I used it to write my first short story.
She was my shelter and my strength, and I miss her every day.
Happy Momma’s Day, Grandma Birdie.
Steeplejack
@Mel:
Thank you for this story.
AM in NC
@Mel: That was just lovely. Thank you for sharing.
WaterGirl
@Almost Retired: What a lovely tribute to your mom.
WaterGirl
@Mel: Thank you so much for sharing that story. Grandma Birdie. Love that.
UncleEbeneezer
@Brachiator: Also Gatwa is an amazing talent on Sex Education. So thrilled for him! I’m not a Dr. Who fan (just not my thing) but he will be great for the franchise.
UncleEbeneezer
@Yutsano: Wow. That’s awesome. The exact opposite of my Mom who always thought music was just a phase I would grow out of. So much so that even up until her last years, I would frequently hang up on her when she would start nagging me that way. She had no idea how important playing music is to me. Until Covid, there was never a time when I wasn’t in bands/gigging for the past 20 years.