MONday, MAY 13, 2002

"... together, they spell Mother"

 

I don't know if I can remember my first memory of my mother.

I was never one of those children who claim to remember things from their first year of life. I suppose they exist, but my guess is the reason most folks don't have any recollections of anything that early is that preverbal, preambulatory life tends to have a certain sameness about it.

You eat, you cry, you poop. Oh, yeah. If you're a guy, you develop the breast fixation that stays with you for the rest of your days. Aside from that, though, it isn't as if you remember great television shows -- especially if 1950 was the first full year of your life -- or amazing family vacations.

Your main job at that age is surviving -- and growing so that you ultimately won't have to depend on other people for your survival.

I have a vague recollection of a birthday cake with one candle, but I think my memory of my first birthday is from an old black-and-white snapshot and not from the actual event itself.

My first real memory -- and vague is a very good way to describe it -- is actually of one of the most traumatic events of my childhood. I remember a few things about the evening in the fall of 1952 when I saw my father for the last time.

He walked out on us that night, never to return, and I remember him leaning over me and telling me to take care of my mother. I have no idea what I said. I hope I pointed out to him that I couldn't be counted on for much, being only 2 years old at the time.

After that, there was a period of nearly four years when I had only one parent, and I'm here to tell you my mother did a wonderful job. I don't know if I ever felt more loved and valued as a child than I did during those years.

We lived in southern Ohio and my mother worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. We moved from an apartment in Dayton to a two-bedroom house in Fairborn. What I remember most about the house was the bedroom I shared with my sister Laura; I had the top bunk and she had the bottom one.

I went to school half a day in first grade and then went to a day-care center for the rest of the day. It was there that I remember watching the Mickey Mouse Club and wondering whether President Eisenhower's heart attack meant that S.O.B. Nixon would become president. Actually, I didn't even know who Nixon was, but I do remember wondering if Ike was going to die.

I was a precocious child, and my mother told me the lady who ran the day-care center told her that someday I would become president of the United States or find a cure for cancer. I don't blame her for the fact that I turned out to be ordinary, and I certainly don't blame my mother. Until I met my wife in 1992, I had never known anyone who could compare with her combination of ability and drive to accomplish her goals.

Ability and drive are such a rare combination. Plenty of people don't have either one, and most of the rest have one or the other. The folks fortunate enough to have both are the ones who change the world and make life better -- or worse -- for the rest of us.

My mother could have accomplished anything she set out to do. She was first in her class in high school and graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University back in the days when many girls went to college to get their MRS degrees. She came to Hollywood and directed radio shows at a time when women just didn't do that.

If it hadn't have been for Wesley -- dear old dad -- and his vanishing act, I'm sure she would have gone a long way. But finding a job and raising two kids as a single parent in 1953 couldn't have been easy.

She overcame, though. She always overcame. She remarried in 1956 and had three more children. She had a satisfying career as an educator and public speaker and well into middle age, she earned her doctorate in counseling.

When I struggled through my own growing pains -- among them getting through college on the 14-year plan -- she was always there to support me. When my first marriage ended badly and my second started slowly, she was there. I'll never be able to repay her for one tenth of what she has done for me.

Most men are lucky to know one extraordinary woman in their life. Counting my late grandmother -- a subject for another column -- along with my mother and my wife, I have been blessed to know three.

This isn't a blind homage for Mother's Day. I know my mother has flaws. It's called being human. But I do know one thing. In all the time I was growing up, through all those years when kids look askance at their own parents and wish they could be raised by their friends' folks, I never once thought I would be better off with a different mother than the one I had.

As I said earlier, I have been blessed to have had Yvonne Naomi Kindinger Whitcomb Rappaport as my mother.

So if my first Mother's Day column this year was for the woman who is raising my children, the second one is for the woman who raised me.

Thanks for everything. I love you -- and happy Mother's Day.