Riding with Mom
We have heard, my brothers and I—now wives, even grandchildren—those stories a thousand times.
First, let me address myself directly to my mother, who keeps a scrapbook (more like a folder) of all these postcards, plus my newspaper columns that have run bi-weekly in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript for three years, ignoring that my website—which you may be on right now, certainly if you are listening to, rather than reading this installment—is a warehouse of those writings. Occasionally, she will ask for a copy of such and such an essay and I will send it by email. She is rounding third for age ninety this fall and is of the scrapbook era, which came before Pinterest and the Cloud, and experienced as its last, great, technical improvement, self-pasting pages, patented in 1873 by none other than Mark Twain.
Hello, Mom. This is about your recent battle with cancer, but not the cancer, or the chemo or radiation, and their debilitating side effects, which you endured with strength and patience. This is about the immersive experience my brothers and I enjoyed riding with you to and from treatment, five days a week, for seven, or so, weeks. Call it two months, not including the preliminary appointments for examinations and second opinions, which were, let’s say, another two months. It is about those miles, over six hundred, give or take, and those hours, two hundred, at least, including wait times and trips to CVS and the markets.
This is my story about that. Don’t try to stop me.
We were raised by stories, my brothers and I. Parables, in response to life’s recurring questions. There were the formative stories touching on duty, honor, integrity, personal aspiration, disappointment, manners. The normative stories concerning honesty, kindness, charity, sportsmanship, sharing. And the impeditive ones, the quick fixes to help navigate the obstacles—the bumps in the road—resulting from the friction caused by such things as love, joy, anxiety, and heartbreak. Point to any of them, and there is a likelihood I can pull from my mind’s repository an applicable narrative, a teachable moment that I can rehydrate and bring to life.
Regarding life’s disappointments, I can open to the story about the parachute doll my mother left behind at a roadside gas station, dropped to her while she waited eagerly on the beach, from an F7F by Marine pilots training for World War II near Cherry Point, North Carolina. It was too late, and too far down the road, to go back and recover it. There was a war on. Gasoline was at a premium. My grandfather had orders to get to California ahead of shipping out for the anticipated invasion of Japan, and the family had to get home. Mother was nine, and all seemed lost.
And the cautionary tales. As a young man, I never climbed into the seat of a vehicle when I was not mindful of the story of the two brothers, one just out of college, destined for law school, contemporaries of my parents, who died together in a car going too fast around a curve, someone else behind the wheel who was chasing thrills, showing off, possibly laughing all the way. And survived. Or of the offending driver’s father, who put on a suit to appear at the home of the dead boys’ family to . . . to what? To gather up a few pieces of everyone’s broken world by offering his presence. He said at the door, “I’m not sure I’ll be welcome here.” How else to begin?
Mamie Small was my occasional nurse as a baby. Or nanny, if you prefer. My father’s nanny before me. Experienced as they come, she, nevertheless, allowed the edge of a glass she was holding at a relaxed moment, with me cuddled in her lap, to come where my teeth, just showing and sharp as razors, could bite off the rim. Into my mouth went the swollen knuckle of her arthritic finger, so I could not swallow or chew (except her knuckle, which I mauled), while a finger from her other hand, her glass dropped to the floor, fished out the dangerous shard. I have never been tempted to offer a sip to any infant from a glass, as a consequence. But I have known what to do if that sort of trouble arose in my presence.
I do not have any personal memory of Mamie Small. But the sense of her countenance was with me all through my years of child-rearing thanks to the stories. On the occasions when she would arrive to take charge of me, I would cry—I’d wail—following her around my parents’ apartment, as if I might succeed chasing her away. And I would stand at her side, still carrying on, gradually resigning myself to her presence as she changed into her uniform until, finally, my sobbing over, she would look down with tender indignation, to say in her Scottish brogue, Shame on, you. Shame on, you, Jarvie Coffin. I would be glad to hug Mamie today as one from whom I inherited good guidance, who never let me take some things too seriously.
We have heard, my brothers and I—now wives, even grandchildren—those stories a thousand times. We have waited, not always patiently, through them for ages, standing in the doorway, hats, and coats on, ready to leave. Smiling. Thinking of our next appointment. Worrying about the callback number, letting the dog out, getting the groceries home.
I’ve probably told you this before . . .
Yes, you have, a thousand times.
Civilizations have stood for centuries, grown wise and prosperous by rehearsing experiences from their past. In some cases, it would have been good for them to write it all down. I guess I’m thinking about that. Six hundred miles, two hundred hours, not all of it mine, but all of it from the same storybook, without distractions. So many, many wonderful stories. Riding with Mom.
Lucky are we.