Mom’s Tattered Dresses

Dear TSJ Friends,

Greetings! I was reminded this morning that God’s Love and Mercies are new everyday.  So I hope you are enjoying it!

The parent journey is one of love and learning from being parented to being parents.  This musing reflects a shift of perspective with age and understanding. 

 

MOM’S TATTERED DRESSES

HOW I SAW IT THEN

For a few years my mother often wore tattered house dresses. I mean sometimes they had such large ragged holes under each arm her undergarments showed.  The holes were most unattractive in my child mind.

My mother was a busy, hard working farmer’s wife on a growing farm that always seemed to be on the margins of success.  

And one does get dirty helping out with chickens, cows, and vegetable gardening while caring for kids and keeping husband and hired hands happily fed!  So her cotton dresses were well worn with washed out, faded designs and pockets stuffed with wads of kleenex (she seemed to have a lot of allergies). 

But the image of her tattered house dresses lingers on in my memory. I was between seven and twelve years old when this image was almost daily imprinted on my brain. And I wondered why she wore tattered dresses when she had bought new ones at Kmart and stuffed them in the back of her closet! 

During that time period she birthed three children (fraternal twins and two years later, the youngest child). 

Seeing my mother carry twins in her growing womb was most unsettling as a seven year old. She grew very, very large. After all the twins were born past their due date and weighed 7lbs .each! A short, petite woman weighing 95 pounds at the start of pregnancy ballooned into 195 lbs. by delivery time! 

And the image of those house dresses coincides with another unforgettable memory that added to my feelings of vulnerability and fear. I heard her moaning in the bathroom one morning, calling out for my dad. When dad saw her, in a strongly alarmed voice he called me to come. He apologetically asked me to clean up the bathroom. She was bleeding badly. What I saw was a lot of blood on the floor. 

I was frightened and did not know what happened. My father had to whisk her off to the hospital. She was there for two or three days (I think). She had almost miscarried my brother. I felt scared and alone and was put in charge of the twins until the baby-sitter could arrive.

So her tattered dresses stand out in my mind as representing a tough period in my childhood. I remember busily trying to please and win approval from a mom who had no approval to give. I was sure I was inferior and a bad daughter.  In fact I was told so.  Tattered hearts can bleed be it the parent or the child or usually both. 

But remember ~ this was how I saw it then. 

HOW I SEE IT NOW 

Of course now I can see my mom from a different perspective. I have more life experience to contextualize the events and imagine what it was like to be her.  

I have long since forgiven my mom for her human flaws. I am a grown woman with grown children of my own and make my own mistakes. But stories live on and we are meant to learn from them!

So as I see it now. . . 

~ Mom was already familiar with poverty and hard work. She was born in 1919 and grew up in a large family.They were vegetable farmers and she was the youngest of six children who became successful adults.  

~And I am aware that she longed for an easier life like her sisters whose husbands were professionals and lived well while she struggled on a farm.  I can imagine she had hoped to not live in poverty herself.

~ A fear of lack  could make her save her new dresses “just in case” things got worse.

~  She had good looks, brains and many hopes. She graduated valedictorian of her high school class and Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University.  Also in her college and young adult years she was beautiful –  so much so that her picture was one on the cover of a campus magazine.

~When she married dad she agreed to support his dream to own a dairy farm. She set aside her dreams.  I am sure being in tattered dresses was not one of her personal dreams.

~I can now only imagine her losses beyond what I have shared.   I did not know until years later that she also had experienced several miscarriages in the seven years between my birth and her conception of twins. In her day people kept things to themselves. I have not experienced this personally but my heart responds.

~I now understand more and more that mother was an intelligent, industrious woman tattered by troubles. 

She was also resourceful and demanding and those qualities served to help her gradually throw away the tattered dresses and claim a new life.  

After dad had a heart attack and sold the farm, he earned his masters degree and became a high school science teacher. Mom also earned her master’s degree and  became a school librarian and enjoyed it very much.  She lived to be 75 years old and saw all of us graduate from college and grad school. She had became a widow at 52 but nothing stopped her from moving forward. 

And when she left this world she was a very well loved “Grammie ” as well she deserved.

********* 

Parenting is a journey of love and learning! Perspectives change as we are willing to change. (Forgiveness is sometimes difficult to swallow but is a laxative for bitterness and victim thinking.)  

So Solomon says,  “Embrace the learning process! Parents and teachers are shepherds and Shepherded by God.  So you are safe in His Love. It is okay to falter in wisdom and learn from it!

With love and gratitude,

Margie and our faithful muse ~ Solomon