My mom has been gone now for a few years and I know I had the best of her.
She was an experienced mom by the time I came along as child number four. I was born January 1965 to Dorothy Marie Stallman Traylor, a strong woman of German heritage. Her grandparents were immigrants, and the Dutch-American slang with a few German curse words still slipped from my grandma. Although mom did not speak German, she understood some. She understood more than that.
Born in 1925, mom never described her childhood as lacking although by most financial standards today, she would be considered poor. She had rickets from not drinking milk and ate a lot of homemade peanut butter. She still portrayed her life as an adventure.
My mom was a knock-out in the looks department and was adored by men and women in her town. She had black brown thick hair, dark brown eyes, and petite features of 36, 26, 38 (according to her). She was described by her friends around her as she was always smiling and accepting of everyone.
Post WWII, my mother and father married in a quick ceremony at a Catholic rectory in 1948. No she was not pregnant, but were in love. They had dated for 3 years on and off. Dad decided he could not bear to see her wed to anyone else. He realized he must be hopelessly in love with her. He did not like that feeling but gave in to it (his words not mine). She was a dependable hard-working wife. She cooked in a restaurant, pumped gas, sewed her own clothing, made meals in a pressure cooker and on a hot-plate, and lived in small rooms as a new wife. Her description to me was that she was happy because she was with him and it didn’t matter where they lived. She walked to work, she had two dresses, and made leftovers last several days. Wow. I am not my mother.
I only know the stories of all of the moves before I was born. Dad was back in the service, going from base to base, and still had money making ventures of building houses and selling cars on the side. At one point, he parked in Southern Indiana with our family for several years, built his own house, and we enjoyed friends and being closer to family. His dreams never let him feel fulfilled even though mom seemed at home where ever he took us. Dad loved to make profits and keep track of his gains and losses in journals. His plan was to retire a million dollars richer, and he spoke of these plans with mom while she cooked, cleaned, or read books. She smiled and nodded a lot and learned to pack a house up to move in a day if the Army required it. A flexible and talented soldier’s wife. I am not my mom.
The role of mom seemed to come natural to her, and she excelled at being a great homemaker. One homemaker skill of the fifties she proved time and time again was to make clothing and other things needed in the house. Sewing our pajamas, shirts, pants, and even a few suits, while bringing in some extra money sewing logo patches on hats for a local company. She spent 4 hours a day sewing typically during the fall before Christmas. She sometimes made her own patterns from store bought, adding paper, adding marks, and tailoring them for our short family. She fashioned car seats, ottoman covers, protective covers for dad’s recliners, drapes for the house, and repaired a lot of things dad asked for. Her patience for ripping out seams and doing over to make it perfect surpassed my abilities in every way. I most definitely am not my mom.
I never met such an accomplished listener as Dorothy Traylor. Her ability to listen and make a face or just ‘uh-huh’ noise was sometimes all her kids or grandkids needed to understand her. Endlessly empathetic but firm when you were screwing up, she never failed at making us want to please her by trying to make her proud. Her face was easy to read for most people who knew her. Although I rarely saw her mad or really angry, if she was, that face showed it. The lips tightly pressed and eyes narrowed with head slightly tilted down, and if she was really mad, her eyes looked out above her glasses rim and her closed fists propped on each hip. Then the index finger. If one fist left its tidy perch upon the hip and formed into a pointed warning to your nose, you knew a spanking was near if you didn’t “straighten the hell up”. She rarely cursed except behind dad’s back when she was real mad and stuck her tongue out at him and whispered “ass” as she walked into the other room. My mouth was not as civil as a young wife and mother. I am not my mom.
She imparted a role of the hostess and keeper of the house by never turning away anyone who showed up by invitation or not to sit at our table for a meal. She had supper on the table at 5 pm every day, for all 53 years of their marriage unless she was in the hospital. Friends of her kids, grandkids, her husband, neighbors, all could count on a plate of food if they showed up at regular meal time. My friends called her mom Traylor as did many people who came in the door. She never demanded good manners, or denied anyone if they smelled, or if they had no appreciation.
Now as my daughter becomes a mother and I slip into the role of grandmother, I think a lot about my mom. She would know how to do this better. I hear her voice telling me these things over the years but as a speech. “You are not me. Don’t try to be me because I was not perfect. Remember what I taught you – treat others how you want to be treated. Stop trying to be something else and just be who you are. You can’t teach them everything but how you respond to their mistakes you can control.” I see her looking out over her glasses with head tilted down.
I can’t be my mom. She was a mom in the 50s.
She lived through the depression, WW II and more challenges than I will ever face as a woman. She had no conveniences as a kid and started making her own clothing at 15 so she could express some of her individuality and have nice things. She worked physically very hard by working, studying, and then she played hard with friends. My mom was taught that she should strive to be a good wife and mother over anything else. Though she achieved that goal and more, she also raised me to know I can be whatever I want to be. She taught me how to take care of myself and others.
When I said I wanted to be a firefighter when I was seven, she smiled and just said, “that sounds like something you could do but why do you want to do that job?” She let me look at myself as more than a girl. That was forward-thinking in her time. Because she didn’t raise me just like her mother had raised her, I became my own woman.
After I gave birth to my daughter, I was crying over the phone to mom on my first day at home alone with my newborn. I said, “I don’t know how to do this!” She said, “There is no instruction manual for parenting. You will figure it out as you go like everyone else. When you make a mistake, say you are sorry and you love them and move on. Love her and take it a day at a time. You will be fine. You can do this, I know you.” I believed her.
Sara cannot be me because I was a parent in the 90s. I am not my mom, and my daughter is not me. There is no instruction manual.
sherrystruthtofiction 