Kid learned Mom’s lessons the hard way

 

Thelma at her 98th birthday party, January 11, 2020. She passed away on July 10.

(In any other year of my life, we'd be celebrating Thelma's birthday this weekend. She was born January 9 or 10, depending on the source; she passed away last July 10 at age 98.
(The thought of Mom's birthday this week prompted me to resurrect this Mother's Day column I wrote for her almost 22 years ago. It examines mother-son relationships in a few ways, focusing on two brief moments from my childhood that show how they can, and do, change with time and maturity.
(I bet you can relate. Please share the link if you think others can relate, too. Thanks. DF)

When you’re a kid, you really don’t have all the answers. You don’t understand the sacrifices people make for you, and you sure don’t see what it means for other, older people to have you around.

Essentially, you think of yourself. First, last and in-between. Not really because you’re self-centered and vain and egotistical, but more because you just don’t know any better. You’re a kid.

I remember such a kid from about 30 or so years ago. Thinking about himself, bothered by anyone who wasn’t him or by any task he didn’t want to do.

On this particular day — a gray, somber day like the past few we’ve had around here — his mother wanted him to help pile some wood, or maybe pick some tomatoes from the garden, or pump some water. That part doesn’t matter.

What matters is that this didn’t fit into his plans. At all.

He screamed. He yelled. He sulked. He dawdled, in that sullen, you-can’t-make-me way that kids often protest.

His mother scolded him, as firmly as she could without screaming. It was his part of the jobs around the house, she explained, and he needed to understand that everyone had jobs.

Well, he didn’t understand, and furthermore, he didn’t want to understand. This was his life, he would run it the way he wanted and he would let her know just exactly how unbearable life was in this hell-hole of a home.

He hesitated a few seconds before he made his stand, before he put her in her place. He wasn’t quite sure he should say it — he’d never said anything this strong before — but it throbbed in his mind and pushed its way to his mouth.

“I wish I’d never been born,” he screamed, stomping alongside his mother on the way back to the house. “I wish I’d never been born.”

Tears flowed, like the nearby Wolf River, down his still-pudgy cheeks. This was no way for a child to live. He knew it, but no one else seemed to care.

He was about to find out differently.

She dropped the kid in his tracks. Then. There. By the grab of his arm. Wheeled his pre-pubescent butt around and got his attention.

“Listen, don’t you EVER let me hear you say that again! EVER! That’s not a very nice thing to say. You don’t know how lucky you are to have the things you have.”

He looked at her, and saw her in a way he’d never seen before. There was hurt in her eyes, pain in her voice. The hands that gently gave him a bath or cut his hair every so often gripped his upper arm like a vice.

He got the message. He had messed up, hurt her feelings and said something he never should have said. Would she ever see him in the same way? Would she ever let him play ball with the neighbors in the pasture again? Would she make him chop kindling every night after school?

No, she didn’t make him pay for that cruel statement. She knew he was a kid, and that his words came from some place that hadn’t experienced much of life. He, he had seldom been out of the yard, hadn’t seen much of the real world except for the stuff he saw on TV.

He was a kid. Her kid. It was her job to set him straight.

After that brief battle — she might not even remember it today — they got along just fine, for the most part. He didn’t suddenly grow up and mature that evening, but her 15-second lecture made an impression on him that he never forgot.

That’s not to say they never argued. They did, and there were other times through the years that he lived with her that he made her feel small and in the way. “You never let me make decisions for myself,” he yelled at her. “You must think I’m really stupid. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

He hated himself when he said those mean things, but he couldn’t hold them back. He was still a kid. A punk, really. Snot-nosed, belligerent punk. No regard for anyone else but himself.

And she straightened him out as often as he needed it.

There came a day — it doesn’t seem that long ago, but it’s been 24 years now — that the kid got his wish. He was moving out. Going to college. The big city, two hours down the road. He’d come back every so often to visit, but for all intents and purposes, his life with his mother was about to change. For the better, he thought.

She didn’t see it that way.

He dumped his meager belongings into the back of a borrowed pickup truck, pulled on his favorite John Deere baseball cap, and waited behind the wheel. Ready to move on with life.

She walked, slowly, to the door of the truck. After the kid left, it would be just her and her husband to share the house for the rest of their lives together.

She was wearing a house dress and a sad face.

“I guess this is it,” she told him.

“I guess so,” he said. Where was his bravura now when he needed it?

“Well, you drive careful. Take it easy on the way down there.”

“I will.”

He looked at her again. This time, the tears tracked down her cheeks. She couldn’t look at him, didn’t want to see what was about to happen. He was getting his wish, but she was losing a kid.

And suddenly — he knew he couldn’t call off his plans, but he wanted to desperately — he didn’t want to go to college anymore. Didn’t want to leave her there, to sew her quilts and bake her cornbread in silence. Didn’t want to wake up without the smell of bacon on the stove. Didn’t want to not come home to the one true friend in his life.

But he had to. He had a life to live, and so did she.

“I’ll see you later,” he said.

He put the truck in reverse, and slowly backed away from her, her head still bowed, tears still dripping.

He drove away, knowing that she was so right a few years back. She had told him that he was lucky to have what he had.

He had her.

Happy Mother’s Day.

(Originally published in The Post-Crescent, Appleton-Fox Cities, Wisconsin, May 9, 1999.)