My Mom—Part I

Friday, May 4, was the 50^th anniversary of my mother’s death in 1968, at age fifty-eight. Today I’d like to share her with you so you will understand why I consider her the greatest blessing of my life.

Mom had nine siblings. The older children—Mom included—were born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri; the younger on a farm outside Anderson, Missouri. Mom left school after seventh grade as did most young people at that time. She was 13; the year was 1923.

The Depression weighed heavily on the minds of both my parents; they never wanted to revisit the years of the 1920s and ‘30s. As I grew up, Mom talked little about the past, and I was too young to ask the questions that might have drawn forth a history. Thus, I know only that she held down a job from the time she was 13 to when she married at 18 in 1928.

She met my dad earlier that year when she came into the grocery store where he worked. He was 23 when they married. Mom was beautiful. (Dad said she reminded him of a movie star.) Dad was handsome. (He reminded me of Gary Cooper, another movie star!)

Mom was a devout Roman Catholic; Dad had just joined the Church because his best friend had entered a seminary to become a priest. Dad was so impressed with this that he and his family converted. So there were no impediments to the marriage: both were Catholics.

They settled in an apartment in Kansas City. Both wanted children, but Mom didn’t conceive for several years. Finally, she had some sort of operation and got pregnant with me. I was born in 1936—some seven-and-a-half years after they married. Three years later my brother was born.

One thing Mom did tell me is that during those years before I was born, Dad began to gamble. When Mom had enough of strange men coming to the door demanding payment because of Dad’s gambling IOUs, she gave him an ultimatum: If you don’t stop gambling, I’ve leave you.

That was no small thing for a woman to say back in the early 1930s when divorce was rare. It was also no small thing for a Catholic woman because the Church prohibited divorce. She’d never be able to marry again or receive Holy Communion each Sunday at Mass.

Dad stopped gambling before I was born. When WWII began in 1941, my dad couldn’t serve because he was blind in one eye. It was then he began to drink. He did so for the rest of his life.

His drinking made Mom’s life difficult. He drank away the money he’d once gambled. His behavior when drunk scared me. When I begged Mom to take my brother and me and to walk out of the house and away from the scary scenes, Mom always said, “Dolores, your father doesn’t chase after other women. He doesn’t gamble. And he loves us.”

None of that made sense to me. Why would he chase other women when he had Mom? What did gambling have to do with it? (I found that out only when Mom finally explained.) And did he really love us when he drank away the rent and food money three times a week and acted so strange when he came home?

That’s enough background for this posting. Next week, I want to explain why Mom didn’t leave Dad and why she was such a blessing in my life. Peace.

PS: A fellow blogger, Penny O’Neill, who is a prolific reader and perceptive reviewer of books, posted a review of Prayer Wasn’t Enough on her blog nearly two weeks ago. If you have the time and the inclination, please click here to read what Penny said. Perhaps you’ll also want to look at some of her other postings. She has a gentle touch when she writes. Peace.