May 12, 2013 by Sylvia Garcia of the Webhuckster Group

Mother’s Day is tough for me because my mother passed away in 2006.  But I like to focus on all the great things she did and was, as opposed to the fact that she is no longer among us.  On this day I’ve chosen to share a story I wrote about her many years ago.

MY WONDER MOM

I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood on the south side of San Antonio.  My father Raymond was a World War II veteran who was one of the first in his family to graduate from college.  He earned his BA in journalism, with a minor in music, from Trinity University here in San Antonio after he returned from the war.  He was severely injured while stationed somewhere in Europe, hit by shrapnel, and earned a Purple Heart.  Dad was a traditional man who loved his family, God, and country, and was proud to have served in the military.

My mother, Gloria, was a beautiful young woman with a small, straight nose, full lips and huge, almond-shaped, bole-colored eyes.  My grandmother placed her in a convent at the age of five, and then abandoned her altogether at the age of 15, when Grandma ran off to California with her new husband, my grandfather Adam.  My father’s older sister, Aunt Ernestine, was a friend of Grandma’s and took Mom in on the pretense that Mom would serve as nanny/housekeeper to help my aunt tend to her children, but my aunt had really taken pity on her and treated her like a daughter.   And that is how my parents met.  Several years later they went on a few chocolate soda and movie dates before Dad proposed and Mom readily accepted.

I think that because she had been abandoned, Mom was eager to finally belong to a real family unit.  When she began to give birth to us children, who she called her little chickens, she made a promise to herself to never let any of her children experience the pain of abandonment she’d experienced as a child.  When my brother Toby was five years old, one of my uncles, whose wife couldn’t have children, asked my father if he could raise Toby as his own.  Dad gingerly approached Mom about it and her response was to fight tooth, fang and claw to keep Toby.  She adamantly refused to give him up.  That, in a nutshell, was my mother.  In spite of her past, or possibly because of it, she was inherently intent on providing a warm, loving environment for her family, and was not about to give up any of her little chicks.

Mom was a stay-at-home mom, as most wives were in the 50s, but she was also one of the few wives on the block who could drive a car.  Dad worked at the local Air Force Base and Mom would drive him to work every morning so that she could then drive us to school.

Our childhood was pretty wholesome, especially by today’s standards.  There were backyard barbeques, street stickball, and games of hide-n-go-seek, a version that involved all of the kids on the block.  There were also many road trips on weekends, drives to the country or, during the holiday season, to Windcrest, an upper middle class community in Northeast San Antonio famous for its Christmas light displays, and we traveled to California every other summer to visit my grandparents and uncles.  My maternal grandparents lived on a farm in Buena Park, California.  They had several horses on the property, a few goats and pigs, and some chickens.  Their neighbor, a woman named Bobbie, owned a dairy farm and taught us how to milk cows and churn butter.  And my uncles, Mom’s younger half-brothers, Danny and Joe, taught us to ride horses and took us to Knott’s Berry Farm, Disneyland, the beach and Pacific Ocean Park, which has since been shut down.  We loved spending our summers in California.  On alternate summers Grandma and my uncles came to Texas to stay with us.

Although we didn’t have a lot of money during our flypaper childhoods, Mom and Dad provided the basics.  We had a somewhat reliable vehicle to get us to where we needed to go, a warm, loving and stable environment in which to thrive, and plenty of food to eat.

Still, we younger siblings have voiced one complaint regarding our upbringing and that is that we didn’t always get to wear new clothes like the older ones did.  However, as I write this now, actually seeing the words on paper, this complaint seems pretty lame.  With six children to feed, my parents mainly bought the older children new clothes and the rest of us were forced to wear their hand-me-downs.  This was not as simple as it sounds.  There was a bit of a discrepancy in our ages, so the clothes that may have been trendy when our older siblings wore them, were handed down to us years later when the rest of the civilized world had moved on to newer, more stylish options.  That left us sporting some outdated and sometimes silly outfits to the movies and church on Sundays and such.  Still this wasn’t a huge issue when we were in grade school because we went to a Catholic school where we were required to wear uniforms.

Values like tradition, family, community, patriotism and religion were huge back then.  People were not concerned with child abductions, home invasions, car-jackings or even the issues surrounding single-parent homes to any huge degree.  I attribute this to the fact that we went to schools where we were allowed to pray without anyone lobbying to deny us that sacred right.  It was a time of salubrious nurturing and discipline, and as a result, the products of that period were mainly hard-working, God-fearing, patriotic, honorable people who were always willing to help out a neighbor in distress.  At least that was the perception from my vantage point.

Norman Lear, the American television writer and producer, warned that unless we return to the more traditional values of family and community, and find our heroes among those who work for the long-term benefit of the many, we are headed for moral and cultural extinction.  Anyone who scoffs at that should watch the news.

But, back to grade school…

When I was in the second grade my class presented a play.  All of the girls needed flower costumes for the main scene.  The costumes were supposed to have bright, white daisy petals that fanned out from ear to ear across our heads, with brilliant yellow fabric framing our faces, along with a green, knee-length dress to simulate the stem of the flower.  I excitedly described the costume to my Mom, in detail, and asked her if we could go purchase a green dress.

“Let’s just get some green material and I’ll make the dress for you.”

“What?   Nooooooo… all the other girls are getting new dresses.”

“I’m sorry but we can’t afford to get you a new dress.  I’m going to make you one.  You’ll see, you are going to love it.”

With that we headed to the fabric store.  Mom went to look at fabric while I searched through the patterns, looking for something that even slightly resembled the pictures of the costumes the Nuns had shown us.  After a few minutes Mom came toward me sporting a brilliant smile, one she often wore when excited.

“I found the perfect fabric.  It is a bit heavy but it’ll look great for the stem of the flower.  I also got some yellow fabric for the flower.”

“Don’t you need a pattern?  What about the white petals?”

“No, I don’t need a pattern.  Patterns are for beginners.  Don’t worry!  C’mon, let’s go.”  She smiled again and led me out of the store.

Her enthusiasm was contagious, plus I was eight years old and had no reason to doubt her, so we happily left the store, packages in hand.  Before she could get started on my costume we had to prepare dinner.

After dinner, as my sister Mary Eleanor and I were washing dishes, Mom took my measurements.

“Lift your arms…no, don’t hold in your stomach, I want it to fit comfortably.”

As soon as we were done with the dishes we washed up and went to bed.  Mom stayed up to work on my costume.  The next day was Friday, and the play was to be held that evening.  I couldn’t wait to get home to see my costume.  Some of the other girls had brought theirs to school and were showing them off to everyone.  They were gorgeous.  Bright, beautiful, white daisy petals with lemon-drop or mustard-colored fabric surrounding their faces, just like the pictures the Nuns had shown us.

Mom continued to work diligently on my costume that entire day and had it hanging on my closet door, wrapped in gray plastic, when I got home.

“Are you ready to see it?  Here…hurry, try it on!”  I could tell she was really eager to see my reaction.  Her enthusiasm was contagious.

“Yes…let me see it!”

The costume was almost entirely green.  It was basically a long rectangle with short sleeves.  The hem fell way below my knees and a green hood that she’d attached to the back bodice tightly encased my head.  On the top of the hood stood a huge, foot-long protrusion that was meant to be a flower stem, with a small yellow bud attached at the top.  I felt and looked ridiculous in it.

To say that I was disappointed was a huge oversimplification because disappointment was only one of the emotions I was feeling.  Still I tried really hard to disguise my displeasure because I knew how excited she’d been, and how diligently she’d worked on it.

“I love it!”

“Really…I was hoping you would.”

“Yes…it’s beautiful.”  I smiled largely as I said it.

I showered then Mom carefully brushed my hair and helped me put on my costume, which was no easy task because aside from being way too tight it didn’t have buttons or a zipper.  I looked like a chunky green sausage stuffed in a cramped, too-small casing with a huge horn on top.  My brothers couldn’t stop laughing when they saw me in it but Dad told them to hush and we all settled into the car and headed to the school.

“Psst…you look like a big fat, green moco!  And what’s that thing poking out of your head?”  That was my older brother, Raymond.  Dad turned around and gave him ‘the look’.  After that the ride was a somewhat uneventful affair.

When I got to the school the other kids took one glimpse at my costume and burst out laughing.  The Nuns told them to behave and be still but didn’t give them ‘the look’ so they kept on laughing.  I remember thinking that I was glad my Mom wasn’t in the room to see their reaction to her creation.  Then I began to cry and one of the Nuns took me aside and asked me what was wrong.  I told her that I felt bad because I was ashamed of the costume my mother had made for me and that she’d worked very hard on it and had seemed so proud when I put it on.  She studied me carefully for a moment.

“Do not worry your little heart.  I have a special part for you.  How good are you at memorizing?”

“Memorizing?”

“Yes, dear…if I teach you the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish, do you think you can memorize it in a few minutes?”

“Yes…I…think so.”

“Juro fidelidad a la bandera
de los Estados Unidos de América,
y a la república que representa
una nación bajo Dios,
indivisible cón libertad
y justicía para todós.”

That was so many years ago.  I was able to memorize the Pledge of Allegiance so instead of having to perform with the other children in their beautiful costumes, I was offered a solo performance that earned me a standing ovation from the entire audience made up of our parents.  Well…okay…at the time I was so overcome by the applause that I didn’t realize that they stood because I’d cited the Pledge of Allegiance.  Still, as I scanned the sea of faces, there was one that radiated the most.  It was my dear mother’s.  To this day I’ve never witnessed an expression of pride that could mirror my Mother’s on that day.  But then that very possibly could be because hers was positioned at me.

In hindsight I believe that Mom had an agenda when she created that costume.  I’d carefully given her the details of how the costumes were supposed to look.  And I know that Mom was creative enough to come up with a garment that at the very least resembled the others.  Mom clearly wanted mine to be different.  She wanted mine to stand out.  All she ever wanted was for us to be happy and successful, but she wasn’t the type to be in our faces about it.  As I grew older I noticed that she mainly took a backseat to Dad and let him be the one to push us about getting an education, or give us advice as far as career paths and such.

Still in her own discriminating manner, and by example, she taught me so much.  She taught me unconditional love in its purest form, diligence and patience.  She taught me to have inner strength and compassion that extended beyond our inner circle, because her circle of compassion had been widened enough to embrace everyone with whom she came into contact.  She’d been through so much in her life, not the least of which was being abandoned by her mother, yet her love for her children, family and people in general was constant, over-flowing and sometimes even overwhelming.

Mom’s method of rearing us children had been a bit unorthodox.  There are many who certainly think so.  But when I became an adult that’s exactly what I loved about her.  I loved that she wasn’t afraid to think outside the box, color outside the lines, or dance to the beat of a different drummer.  I loved that she instinctively fought hard to keep her family together even when she was young and impressionable and hadn’t been taught to fight that fight, certainly not by example.  I loved that she questioned things she didn’t understand and fought tooth, fang and claw to protect the underdog.  When I read the passage by Norman Lear, I believe he had someone exactly like my mother in mind when he wrote it.  Mom wasn’t the celebrity or sports figure type of hero.  Those things would’ve seemed superficial to her.  She was the everyday, unassuming, common hero who didn’t need or want applause or recognition.  She was content to take a backseat, to let others, and especially her children, shine.  She was ahead of her time in that she was outspoken, yet she didn’t speak out for the sake of taking a position or because she liked the sound of her voice, she just simply couldn’t sit quiet when she thought someone was being treated unfairly.  I loved that about her.  And if I had to pick the one thing that I loved about her the most, not by any means an easy task as there are many things that stand out, I guess it is that she was never, ever afraid to stand out from the crowd if it meant that she could help someone in the process.  And that is now, as it certainly was back in the 50s, a true measure of courage and heroism.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the great mothers out there.  Your 24-hour jobs are not easy by any means.  But you do it because you realize that nothing in the world is more important than raising decent human beings.  So to all of you, and to all of the mothers who are smiling down at us from heaven on this special day, I want to say thank you and God bless.

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