My Mother's Voice

My mom died before we had computers, cell phones or any other high tech miracle. I have no selfies of us sitting together smiling, laughing, frowning. Not even a video of her at Christmas. But, I do have photographs. There’s one of her as a little girl wearing her cropped Buster Brown haircut, standing on the sideboard of a 1928 Plymouth. And another of her, in 1978, sitting in her 16 foot motor home heading out for Mexico. What I had left of my mother’s voice – the voice that loved me, raised me and sometimes hurt me – it was minuscule. It's only 30 seconds on a tiny micro-cassette tape.

Mom was in the hospital getting half of a lung removed. She had lung cancer. I knew she was going to die eventually, so I bought a recorder. I wanted her voice on tape. All I got was 30 seconds worth. It was just chatter. Could I bring her anything from home? Did she need a toothbrush? Where did she put her jewelry? They were all just simple everyday questions – no wisdom – no advice – no big deal. The voice I recorded was frail and weak and scared. This was not the mother I grew up with.

The mother I grew up with had the voice of a champion. She was never afraid to let you know where she stood. She had opinions and beliefs and they were strong. That particular “voice” took hold one year when she decided to fight City Hall. We lived in the country on five acres of glacial till prairie surrounded by more acres upon acres of the same rocky glacial till, which, by the way, is terrible for gardening. She voiced her thoughts about that and planted an enormous garden anyway. One day Little League Baseball entered our life and my mother’s mission became to make life hell for them. They wanted to build a huge baseball park next to and behind our house. We would be surrounded on all fronts by cars coming and going, screaming kids in the evenings and weekends. The park became the family enemy.

One of my most vivid memories of my mother is her sitting at the dining room table scribbling on a yellow legal pad. We’d always joke that she kept the yellow pad company flush with all the paper she’d go through. This time it was a letter to the editor of our local newspaper. It was all about fudged zoning regulations, property values dropping and noise abatement issues. My mom was a smart, persistent woman who always took a fight to the end. She even enlisted me and my brothers to paint protest signs and tape them to the construction equipment. “Go Home Little League Baseball.” Mom eventually lost the baseball battle, but not without tormenting the city, the county and the baseball folks. As we watched the bulldozers and backhoes move the earth around our house we knew our life in the country would never be the same – and it wasn’t. But Mom never gave up the good fight. Her voice WAS heard.

One of my mom’s other voices was much more beautiful than the voice she used to fight City Hall. It was her singing voice. It was rich and deep. My mom and dad were high school sweethearts who loved music. So much so, my dad formed a jazz trio – piano, string bass and drums. He played the piano and mom sang. As soon as America entered the war everything changed for my parents. While dad was on a destroyer heading to the  Philippines, Mom was studying music at Berkley. When the war ended life changed for her again. Dad came home broken and she stopped singing. That’s the way it was back then. In the 40s it was understood that when you got married you got to keep some of your voices, but others were expected to be “put away”. Mom gave up her dream of being a professional singer in order to raise three children. I think it bothered her for the rest of her life, but she found a way to pass her creative voice on to me. She taught me that music could be my voice in good times and bad.

One evening in 1966, she took me downtown to the Olympic Theater to see Pearl Bailey perform live. Mom knew music - from the Big Bands in the 1940s to Pearl, Dave Brubeck, Tony Bennett and all the rest in the1960s. It was my mom who taught me how to play the piano. And, it was my mom who bought me Judy Garland’s MGM Golden Collection of songs when I was sick in bed with the flu. The two-record album became my anthem. I knew every song by heart and sang each song with a passion my mom would be proud of.

My fondest memory of my mother is her opening up a cupboard, reaching for the salt and shaking it out onto our linoleum kitchen floor. That was the day she taught me how to tap dance. She spread the salt around a bit with her shoe, shook a little more out onto the floor and she began singing and tapping, "East Side, West Side, all around the town ..." Her feet moved in perfect unison - shuffle tap, step, hop with the right foot – shuffle tap, step, hop with the left foot … and so on. When it was my turn she sang and I tapped, but my tapping was not in unison. It was more of a shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, tap, tap, shuffle, shuffle. But it didn’t matter, my mom was teaching me to tap just like Judy Garland.

Mom used her many voices to live her life the best way she knew how. I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t mention she sometimes used her voice to hurt me and others. It was a wounded voice. It was a voice that couldn’t help but lash out at others in a desperate attempt to quell her own pain. I don’t hear that voice much anymore. It’s worth remembering, but not worth reliving. I made my peace with that voice about five months before she died. In hindsight, that voice that hurt so long ago - has helped me live a better life than if I'd never heard it.

I realize now – I don’t need a recording to remember my mom’s voice. Her voices live inside of me all day – everyday. I don’t know what I would do without them. The older I get the stronger they become and the more I understand – I am my mother’s daughter.