My mother grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. Her mother supported the family by working at the local VA hospital because her father was disabled by a series of heart attacks. Money was scarce, and she talked about an impoverished childhood where clothing was made from flour sacks. Before graduating from high school, she had never stepped outside the county line of Buncombe Co., NC. Somehow she put herself through college by waiting tables at the university club of Berea College in Kentucky, where poor Appalachian students could work their way to a college education that was otherwise out of reach. Education opened doors to the world, and she appreciated this opportunity her entire life.
After college, she headed north to Boston University to obtain a degree in social work. where she met my father who was then a student in the BU School of Theology. He was a few years behind a distinguished young doctoral student named Martin Luther King, Jr., whom he admired greatly and who inspired in my father a lifelong commitment to civil rights. The Yankee theologian and the Southern social worker married and started a family in Boston, but soon they moved back to my father’s hometown of Pittsburgh where they settled to raise a family.
Mom set aside her social work career to raise a family and fulfill the duties expected of a minister’s wife. We lived a nomadic life, moving every three years to a new community and a new church. For the most part, it was a warm and welcoming environment, though being the pastor’s family is a bit like living in a glass house where everyone scrutinizes what the pastor and his family are doing; everyone knew his salary and what the utility bills in the parsonage were. But my mother embraced this public life with grace and dignity.
She returned to work as a public school teacher, the kind of Kindergarten teacher that everyone requested for their child. Her classroom was filled with colorful artwork and music. Each year she accompanied her 5-year olds on the piano as they put on elaborate musical productions of Cinderella or the Wizard of Oz, complete with costumes and cardboard sets. One particularly vivid lesson that she taught her students involved dumping a wastepaper basket on a table. Then she would strategically place a few pieces of fruit or a candy bar amidst the crumpled papers. Turning to her students, she would ask them to describe what they saw. “Mrs. M, I see good things to eat surrounded by a bunch of trash, ” they would say. “Good for you!” she would reply, “This is what television is like: there is a lot of trash but if you look closely, you will find good things.”
Despite her humble beginnings, my mother loved to travel and explore new places. Before getting married, she and her roommate saved their money and travelled across Europe in a final bachelorette fling. She allowed herself to be dragged on my father’s camping adventures and down narrow dirt roads while my father stalked elusive railroad trains. Later, after her children were grown, she and my father traveled extensively across the US, to Israel and Egypt (the Holy Land), and to Europe. They rode a train across Canada, paddled kayaks in Kauai, and she even took a trip down the Mississippi River on a paddleboat. She never lost her sense of adventure.
Mom indulged herself with liberal doses of retail therapy (always rationalized by department store coupons and sales rack bargains). The strains of “Eva, how much did you spend?!” were legendary throughout the house. It was important to her that her son and daughters had nice outfits for special occasions such as Easter, and that my father had what she termed a proper “marrying and burying” suit befitting the numerous weddings and funerals at which he officiated. Even after beginning my own family, if I called to tell her about a special occasion, the first thing she would usually ask is, “What did you wear?”
There was a lot of love and laughter in our house. But Mom could be tough. When we misbehaved, she would brandish the Wooden Spoon, a much-feared instrument of corporal punishment usually applied to our backsides. It was an ordinary wooden cooking spoon used to bring the misbehaving minister’s children back into line. The Wooden Spoon was not just limited to the house; a second wooden spoon resided under the front seat of the family car. If we began arguing while she was driving down the road, she would slam on the brakes, pull off to the side of the road, and brandish the Wooden Spoon, which struck fear into our little hearts because we knew she would not hesitate to employ it. Another favored form of punishment was her technique of Divide and Conquer, where she would separate squabbling children and send each to a different room. A short time later, we would forget why we were arguing with each other and direct our anger at a new common enemy, our mother. We communicated with each other through the walls with a series of Morse code taps or scraps of paper slipped under the doors. Meanwhile, Public Enemy #1 (Mom), would be downstairs chortling at her successful strategy to peacefully quash a sibling rebellion.
Mom passed away on January 19, just a day before the first anniversary of my father’s death on January 20. She had just begun to put her life back together after his two-year battle with cancer when her own cancer diagnosis struck like a bolt of lightening out of the blue. Yet she retained her grace and dignity up until the end. When we held a family conference to discuss her diagnosis and treatment options, she quoted a line from the Kenny Rogers tune, The Gambler, “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,” and firmly stated her intention to not seek treatment but preserve her quality of life. It was a wise decision: she passed away two weeks later surrounded by family and friends. Always the teacher, in the very end Mother knew best.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom, I miss you.
I must admit that it has been entertaining, and there have been times during the past week when life in the Bird’s Nest resembled “Spy vs. Spy,” a popular comic strip that appeared in 
