When I took History of the English Language in graduate
school, in introducing the concept of language, the teacher made a memorable
point. He noted that he disliked using
the same word, “love,” for spaghetti that he used to describe his feelings for his wife. Not only does this comment underscore the
vagaries of the English language, but also it illuminates the plethora of types of love,
ranging from romantic love to fraternal love to the love between parents and
children. February 15, 2014, marked the
25th anniversary of my mother’s death—a quarter of a century! In
this blog entry, I would like to depart from a discussion of words specifically
and write about the mother-child bond and about my mother’s life.
Shirley Ann Newman Prescott
27 April 1935 – 15 February 1989
My mother was a talker—not just a talker, always, but also a
storyteller. One of her stories involved
her birth. A premature baby, she fit
inside a cigar box. The doctors did not
expect her to survive, but she thrived.
Once she learned to talk, she never stopped, a trait we found
endearing--usually.
Mama was the oldest of three children and only
daughter. She wanted to go to the
Catholic school instead of the public school because the education was
better. Because of the cost of tuition,
her parents sent her to public school, saving the money in order to send their
sons to Catholic school, as they would one day have to support families. While my mother did not understand the level
of education I achieved, she still supported my endeavors. When I was completing my doctoral studies she
noted, “Donna, you have been in school all of your life.”
My mother and my father met on a blind date and fell very
quickly in love. In a recent oral
history, Daddy talked of them sitting on the doorstep at her parents’ house,
the same doorstep we climbed an infinite number of times in our childhood. The young lovers sat and talked, deciding to
get married. As Daddy related that
story, I imagined the spirits of their future children dancing around them on that doorstep.
Mama lived a very sheltered life. One day, we went out to run errands. When we got home, she realized that she had
left the door unlocked. Even though it
was day time, she asked the man next door to go through the house to make sure
no “booger” had gotten in. Yet she
thought nothing of loading a few kids in the car and heading out to Morgan City
(Louisiana) or Gulf Port (Mississippi) to visit relatives. Thankfully, I inherited that spirit of
adventure from my mother.
My mother was a kind woman.
She believed in goodness in the world.
She would welcome any friend we brought home and proceed to talk the ear
off of that person. Yet many of my
friends would come to the house just to visit Mama and hear her stories, not necessarily to see me.
My mother did not always like motherhood, but she loved her
children fiercely. She did everything
she could to make sure we were safe and happy.
That Mother Love is difficult to lose.
