05/11/2001

A Tribute to Mothers

Sunny MacMillan, fellow writer, sent me an "ode in prose" to her mother, who has passed away. It is a story in honor of mothers everywhere.

Yellow Roses
by Sunny MacMillan

The Mother's Day hype to buy something wonderful to honor our mothers never quite reaches me -- my mother died long, long ago. I thought I was a good enough daughter, but once she died, I realized there were many things about her hopes and disappointments and dreams and nightmares that I would never know about her.

Does any woman ever really know her mother? I knew how hard she worked, and she reminded me regularly, lest I forget, of double shifts worked at hospitals as a registered nurse and miles walked home late at night to save bus fare -- always working, never playing.

It was only in her garden that she exhibited some pleasure. She was always digging, weeding and moving plants around. Long before it was politically correct to do so, she composted. I remember feeling embarrassed because she cast eggshells liberally all over the large garden. To the neighbors and me, it looked like garbage even if such calcium was good for plants.

She exulted in her roses, especially the Peace roses. Each flower was an event. There were huge blossoms the size of small plates, creamy yellows edged with pink.

"Just look at them, aren't they beautiful?" she would say over and over.

I would look up from reading a comic and dutifully join her in praise. Now I have become something of a rose fancier myself. I am attracted to white roses. The only color I didn't have was yellow. Seduced by the prose in a garden catalog, I bought a yellow rambler -- and then thoughts flooded in of my mother. Yellow roses. This memory from my long-ago childhood still overcomes me. It wraps up in a neat package the quality of my relationship with my mother, exhausted by her hard life but still someone I loved and yearned to please.

When I was in about the fifth grade, I decided to climb up a hill rather than stick to the pavement on my way home from grade school. All those school years I had dutifully walked the straight and narrow between school and our little bungalow. I carried my book bag and banged my green and gray lunch box noisily. I had hardly ever looked up the hillside. Neat suburban bungalows marched decorously along the other side of the broad street. But there seemed to be nothing but weeds and earth and straggling grass on the hillside.

I scrambled up and up and finally reached the broad, flat hilltop. I found myself in an old pasture or lawn. The remains of fallen buildings spoke silently of other lives, older lives lived long, long ago when that part of Long Island was real "country." Grass grew lush and high -- I felt like I was wading through a green sea, as the blades surged around my legs.

Around the periphery of what had been a farmhouse was an old fence defiantly protecting the now-fallen structure. And atop and around that dilapidated fence grew roses. They had been ignored for so long that they flourished unrestrained in any way except as they clung here and there to that old warrior fence.

I could hardly believe my eyes. True, my mother grew some roses, mostly large specimen blooms like her Peace roses. Now before my eyes was a jungle of roses like Rousseau might have painted, a waterfall and a river of gold. The blossoms were a pale tender yellow and they cried out to be picked -- if I could brave their thorns. Their rich fragrance floated in the warm air and hugged against me. I had never seen such a wild, wanton luxuriousness of beauty.

And it was all there for the taking! There were no houses in sight. I felt almost hysterical with this unexpected treasure. How wonderful it was going to be when I took some home to surprise and bedazzle my mother! Ignoring the thorns as best I could, I snapped stems right and left until I had a tremendous heap of buds and blossoms.

I emptied out my book bag, then carefully fit as many roses in as I could. I stuffed the old lunchbox, too. Finally I gathered up my schoolbooks and fit them into one arm along with more yellow splendor. I half slid, half fell back down the hill and staggered the remaining long blocks to our home. My arms felt as if they were breaking and I was scratched all over, but in triumph I showed my mother the golden bounty.

"You're late, where were you?" she asked. "I was getting worried."

"Mother, I climbed up that old hill and look what I found!"

I guess I expected gratitude. Maybe I yearned for a spontaneous hug of happiness -- but in our family we didn't hug.

"What, you climbed up that hill? Whatever got into you? That's dangerous! How do you know who might be up there? Something terrible could have happened!"

In those days, "something terrible" was never spelled out like it is today, when tiny beauty queens get raped and murdered and children get stolen by stealth from pajama parties in their own homes or when they ride their bikes down to the end of their own streets.

My mother was the eternal worrier, ever vigilant, wary of all the bad things that were waiting to happen in life, especially to small, solitary girls. All she could do was admonish and scold me.

But the roses confounded her and won out in the end.

"Here," she said. "As long as you picked them, we'd better get them in water. I swear, I don't know what ever got into you ..." Her voice trailed off as she searched for vases and canning jars.

I helped her put water in them and then we filled every container with those sweet yellow roses. And for awhile, our little house wore its gold as boldly as a palace.

About the Author: Lakeville resident Sunny MacMillan has worked as a bilingual psychologist, administrator and museum educator. She wrote a regular column for the largest paper in Nova Scotia, where she has a second home. Her writing has appeared in many regional publications.

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