Just what I thought – Mom!

It’s that time of year again. The greeting card companies let us know it’s a day to celebrate mothers. I prefer to celebrate my mother most any time I feel like it. Many of us think our mother was special and I’m one of them. She raised six kids without much hands on help from my father and loved each of us although I think she secretly liked my younger, next in succession, brother the best.

She was a hard worker all her life just slowing down the last ten years of her life after her “retirement.” She was a stay at home mom during my pre and early teen years. She grew up on a farm in Corinna and farm life is certainly no easy going. When my folks moved to Connecticut in the early forties, she worked making parachute cords. I don’t remember much about that but do recall going by the factory once and her showing me that’s where she worked. She worked at other places I have forgotten I’m sure. Later, during another war, she worked at Colt and Pratt and Whitney in the small arms departments. Somewhere during all this she had time to manufacture and deliver five boys and a girl.

My parents separated for a while and we, mom and six kids from three to seventeen, all moved back to Maine. She could have separated us, she could have given up but she didn’t. She raised her brood under adverse conditions. From a modern house to a small two-bedroom place two miles from town with a hand pump on the sink, very little heat, no indoor toilet, an old ringer washer and a clothesline stretching from the house to a tree.

My oldest brother lived with his Uncle Earl on the farm but having five of us remain at home still made things difficult. During those seven years of separation, she juggled day and night shift work Eastland, not less than three illnesses (one requiring hospitalization), and bringing up her less than angelic children. You don’t often realize what parents go through raising you and dealing with life at the same time. I know what she went through and apologized once for not helping as much as I should have.

After moving back to Connecticut, she went right back to work finishing her years of mostly tiring physical labor at as manager of a Battiston’s Dry Cleaning branch. Father retired from his job of 40 plus years and she officially retired from hers. They moved back home. He, born in Franklin and she, a Canadian born naturalized citizen, and former resident of Corinna, settled in beautiful downtown Pittsfield. A short ten years later, father left us and she followed a little over a year later. Being the neat freak she was, I’m sure where ever she is, it’s pretty clean by now.

This coming Sunday, families will gather, restaurants will be booked, cookouts will be arranged, and churches will be filled all in celebration of moms everywhere. I will celebrate the terrific mother of my two children, my grandson’s really good mommy and I will also use this official day to remember my mother and all she did for us. But, each day can bring a memory or two. I miss her great cooking, her patience, her work ethic, her annoying constant cleaning and just her love and caring. I still miss her and no card could ever say what she meant to me.

About the Author

Norman Hartley Clarke

Norman lives in Pittsfield and always seems to get a bad shopping cart. If you’d like to contact him, send us an e-mail to infos@pvexplorer.com and we will pass it along for you.