(Note: I wrote the following three years ago when my mother was still alive. It was in my first book. I felt it was worth posting here and since it's my blog, I make the rules :) )
My mother is the
most amazing person I know.
I always say she was born one
generation too early. Had she been born in my generation, there is no doubt she
would be the head of an accounting firm, or CFO of a Fortune 500 company. Great
mind, sharp as a tack, a whiz with numbers. Since she wasn’t born in my
generation, she instead did what women of her generation were expected to do –
she got married and raised a family. After her fourth and final child was born
(me), she went back to work as a bookkeeper. She likes to use that title in an
attempt to remain humble, but she was far more than the gal who balanced the
company checkbook. She ran whatever office she worked in. She was the
confidante to her various bosses, knew where all the bodies were buried.
When she got home, she would
quickly cook supper before dad got home from his job as a plumber. We would
have dinner, she would clean up, relax for like thirty seconds, then would help
me with mine or my sibling’s homework. She would then retire to her chair and
crochet afghans. Constant motion. Selfless. Always put the needs of the family
ahead of her own.
In 1974, at the age of
forty-seven, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was 16 at the time. The
prognosis was not good, and the treatment plan, given the comparable stone-age
era of cancer treatment that existed at the time, was a radical mastectomy -
surgery to remove not only her right breast, but also most of the muscles in
her upper right arm. We, of course, were horrified. The age I was at, I could
not process this. Was my mom going to die?
Yes, that was a very real
possibility.
The night before the surgery was
surreal. It was a steady stream of well-wishers – family, friends, and
neighbors. You could see the fear in each of their eyes. Mom was not scared, or
at least she didn’t let on that she was…I am sure she was, but in typical mom
fashion, there was no hint of it. Each person came up to her, tears in their
eyes, telling her it is going to be okay. Mom’s reply, over and over, was
twofold. First she would say “Hey look. I am going to be fine. I’m going to get
this taken care of and I will see you next week.” Then she would ask how THEY
were doing. Amazing. That’s my mom.
The surgery was difficult. Mom
was in the hospital for almost two weeks. The follow-up care involved
radiation, which sapped her seemingly unlimited supply of strength. Things were
done for her once she got home which she did not like in the least. It took a
few months until she was back to where she was physically before the surgery,
but the bottom line was, she was alive and cancer-free.
Up next was physical therapy. A
regimen was laid out to her that that included; yes you guessed it – taking up
golf. Mom had never touched a golf club in her life. The doctor said that it
would be perfect for her – a low-impact, healthy activity that would strengthen
her decimated right arm. The walking would be good for her circulation. Since
she had most of the muscles in her upper right arm removed, golf would help
getting that area of her body into condition.
For the two years preceding this
scare, I was a typical teenager. Translation: I was a lazy slacker that had to
be cajoled into doing the most mundane of tasks. I was in the process of
‘separation’ from my parents. My own personality was developing, and part of
that development was to begin rejecting whatever my parents stood for. There
were almost daily arguments as I was being, well, recalcitrant.
But now, mom needed to learn to
play golf. Whatever rebellion was fomenting inside my brain evaporated. She
bought a set of Lynx Lady Tigress clubs and this hideous pink & white golf
bag. She bought golf shoes, balls, tees, training aids, hats, skirts, socks,
tee holders, headcovers, charms and gloves. She then turned to me and said,
let’s go.
And we went. In an odd turnaround
of the traditional dynamic, instead of mom helping me with my math homework, I
was helping her to learn a game I had embraced years earlier.
This was difficult for me. For
one, I did not like to tell my mom to do anything. For two, I did not have a
real good grasp of how to communicate in a teaching manner the mechanics of a
golf swing. And for three, my first student was a 48-year-old breast cancer
survivor with no muscles in her upper right arm. It was a challenge. Much of my
so-called instruction was, “Mom, watch me.” And her reply was usually, “Yes I
see what you are doing son…but I can’t do that.”
In short order it became clear
that mom needed professional instruction. She enrolled for a set of lessons
with a local pro, and ate it up. Every Wednesday, 6p to 8p. She would bounce
home and come straight up to me, all enthused, “Jerry, look at what I learned!”
I had to admit I had to fight the urge to say uh, I don’t think that’s right
mom, but the look in her eye dissuaded me from doing so. She had that same look
in her eye that I did when I first fell in love with the game years earlier,
and I was not about to dampen that enthusiasm with my opinion on what a pro was
telling her.
My dad, who never liked to be
left out of anything, started joining us. I kind of hate to admit it, but mom
really did not like playing with dad, as he was wont to point out anything my
mom was doing incorrectly. “Charlie, worry about your own damn game” was one of
her common replies. But if I had something to say about her swing, she was all
ears. See, I am more similar in personality to my mom. We are both analytical,
introspective. My dad was an impulsive extrovert. If you were going to have a
party, mom would plan it & dad would crash it. Dad would befriend anyone,
then make mom tell them to leave. They worked well together as a parenting
team, but when it came to golf, mom preferred her advice from me.
During the summer we would play
at least three times a week, usually at Sycamore Valley, a short course perfect
for beginners. We usually walked, and we always talked about anything and
everything. Every time we played golf, I got smarter. Know how teenagers seem
to think their parents are dumb as rocks? I was starting to adopt that attitude
when mom’s cancer struck, and the resulting dynamic turned this traumatic event
into something beautiful. At an age when most kids are moving away from their
parents, I was getting closer to mine. My older siblings were gone – Barb was
married, Kenny was in Florida and Patty had her own apartment in nearby Stow.
The household was mom and dad…and me. There may have been some animosity of how
close mom and I were becoming, but either I was not aware of it or it did not
exist. In either case, it was irrelevant in my mind. I had mom’s attention now.
They had their time. This was mine.
When we golfed, mom would work on
what the pro was imparting to her. I would steer clear of that and help her
with other aspects of the game – reading greens, playing the wind, club
selection. In other words, I left her swing in the hands of the pro but I took
care of everything else. The mechanics of the golf swing are just a fraction of
what is entailed in “learning” how to play this crazy game. ‘Mom, see that sand
trap over there? I don’t think you can clear that, so why don’t you aim to the
right so your next shot is a simple pitch shot onto the green?’ That kind of
stuff.
We took golf trips. Myrtle Beach,
Ft. Lauderdale, Las Vegas. We would discuss the game at the dinner table –
“Look what Jerry showed me today”…”Lemme tell you what mom did on the course
yesterday”…
Mom’s swing was very slow and
methodical, much as you would expect from a bookkeeper, a person who makes a
living making sure things are correct, would be. She would stand over the ball
for an inordinate amount of time, going through her mental check list – (ball
off left instep…hands ahead…weight evenly balanced…) – and once she was
satisfied that everything was how it should be, she would take the club back
slowly. She would pause at the top, but with the lack of upper-arm muscles, she
could not control the club at the top – the weight of the club and momentum of
the backswing would cause the club to slide out of her grip – she would then
re-grip it as her first move down. This action caused her right hand to roll
over too quickly on the downswing and shut the clubface at impact. The result
was usually a pull-hook – the ball would start left of the target and
curve/hook farther to the left.
The standard joke was, ‘My mother
the hooker.’
We became inseparably close. A
bond was formed that was impenetrable. For all of dad’s attempts at infiltration
or my sibling’s perceived animosity, those forces were moot. Golfers know this
bond. Now, mix in that it is a mother and her youngest child, and further that
it was a ‘man-bites-dog’ story line, that the child was teaching the mother,
and you had something that was unique, wonderful and beautiful.
Cancer is a horrible disease. It
robs us of loved ones. But in the case, it reunited us.
Mom is now 83 years old, a
forty-six-year (and counting) breast cancer survivor. A few years back, she
contracted Reynaud’s Disease, a circulatory ailment that resulted in the
amputation of two fingers on her right hand and half a finger on her left. That
ended her golf, though she still crochets like mad, cranking out an afghan a
week. She then donates her hand-made afghans to Project Linus, an organization
that gives sick children free blankets. Recently, she completed her 300th
donated afghan.
Once her golfing days were done,
she gave away her clubs to a friend of my sister’s who was taking up the game.
That she gave her clubs away is typical for the most selfless person I
have ever known.
