Remembering My Mother—Strong, Stubborn, Smart

We had a creepy basement. Our oil furnace alternately growled like a bear and clanked like Scrooge dragging his chains. The coal bin the furnace replaced seemed equally forbidding—ready to swallow you up or hide monsters in its inky recesses. What looked like hair from buried creatures mysteriously poked through nooks and crannies. Shelves lined with old Mason jars hid unidentifiable slime.

Sometimes at night when the basement began to belch a series of terrifying creaks and groans, my sister and I would freeze, certain some boogeyman was about to creep up the stairs. Mom’s reply? “It’s just Casper the Friendly Ghost. Nothing to worry about. I’ll go check.” I don’t recall if Mom grabbed any weapon (her choices would have been a baseball bat, umbrella, or cast-iron frying pan—no guns). But she would descend to the basement, check things out, and return with a smile. “Like I said, just Casper the Friendly Ghost.”

As an adult, I asked Mom about Casper, and she laughed. Mom admitted the noises often seemed as scary to her as they did to us, but she didn’t want her daughters to grow up fearful. Mom was brave.

Funny thing. I don’t ever remember seeing Mom in her bed. I’m certain I did, but it’s not among my memories. I grew up in a single-parent household, and Mom worked fulltime—our all female household’s sole support. When we were little, a great aunt stayed with us during the week. Still Mom did all the laundry, a lot of the cooking, and she cleaned the house on Saturdays (a family affair when my sisters and I were old enough to participate).

For years, if I happened to wake around five a.m., I’d find Mom either ironing clothes or studying. After she graduated high school during the Depression (early since she skipped two grades), Mom immediately went to work to help support her family so her younger brother could stay in school. Later, when we were kids, Mom took accounting correspondence courses so she could get a better job. She did. Of course, it didn’t pay the same as the man she replaced, but that’s another story. Mom was smart, determined, hard-working, and fiercely loyal to her family.

Like any teenager, I had my share of rows with my mother since I inherited her stubborn streak. But I never doubted her love, and I always, always admired her character. Though she’s been gone many years, I still miss her.  Yet I often hear what I like to think is her voice, sharing the mantra she ingrained in me when I was young—“You can do anything you set your mind to.”

I have yet to dedicate one of my books to Mom. I’ve been waiting for the perfect fit, a novel with a heroine who demonstrates all her qualities. That book is my work in progress, a 1938 romantic suspense set in my mother’s era. However, while I’ve yet to make an official dedication, every novel I write is influenced by my mother. Thank you.  

My Role Model: Mom by Paty Jager

I didn’t even have to think about this month’s subject of this blog. As soon as I saw the words "role model" a person leaped into my mind. She wasn’t famous, didn’t have a lot of money, and while not a svelte beauty, she had a glowing girl-next-door face and a fun-loving attitude that made people enjoy being around her. My role model is my mom.

Born Regina Rosalie Bohlin to two Californians of German descent, she grew up in the orchards of the Santa Clara Valley playing and working beside her older sister and two brothers, one of whom was her twin. Her mother was a nurse and her older sister became a nurse. Even though my mom really didn’t want to be a nurse, at the time it was a respected profession for women, she went to the Catholic hospital and became a registered nurse. She married my father, was a housewife and mother to my older brother and I while my dad worked for IBM. A rape happened in the park near our urban housing and my parents decided to get out of the city and California. They moved to Oregon. I was two at the time. My mom had never been out of California before, never had to deal with snow or even driving. Her brothers, uncles, or cousins had always driven her where she needed to go or she walked. Living twelve and a half miles from town, she learned to drive. But wrapped white knuckles around the steering wheel when she had to drive herself to work and back in the winter.

When my father moved us to Oregon, my mom had to put her nursing degree to use. She first worked for the county hospital and then became the nurse and office manager for a doctor’s office. She like the office work better than the hospital. Other than it got her goat when hypochondriacs came in taking up the doctor’s time when there were sick people in the waiting room suffering while they had to wait for the not sick person to get his/her time with the doctor. Because she felt this way, we had to have a 103 fever, a broken bone, or blood gushing before we were taken to the doctor. In fact, during my college exam the doctor asked me when I’d broken my collar bone. From my recollections it would have been the summer between my freshman and sophomore years. I was riding a horse in a pasture bareback and fell off twice in the same spot, under an electric pole. After the second time I tried to get back on the horse and my shoulder hurt. I told mom, and she said I probably pulled something. So I walked around for a couple of weeks cradling the arm like it was in a sling and it healed itself. Her face was red and she felt bad when the doctor mentioned the broken collar bone. Growing up my paternal grandmother lived with us. She was nosy and loved to gossip. I hated the way she was always tattling on other people. My mom could have blabbed a lot of stuff about people she learned in the doctor’s office, but she didn’t. She held to her integrity and never told anyone about pregnancies, diseases, and the like that she knew about. Not even my dad because he is like his mother, loose lips. Mom also always had a smile for others no matter who they were. She made each person who came into the doctor’s office feel important (even the hypochondriacs) and emitted the confidence they needed in tough times. What I cherish the most about mom as a role model is her empathy when we couldn’t quite meet my father’s standards in school work. She’d tell us about her middle of the road grades and that it didn’t matter how you tested on paper it was how you tested in the real world. While I emphasized good grades to my kids, I also made sure they could stand on their own feet once they left my threshold. Mom taught me to self-sufficient and I passed that on to my children. She encouraged me to follow my creative side. She had always wanted to learn to play the piano. At the age of 50 she bought a small organ and began teaching herself to play. When I started writing she told me I could do anything I set my mind to. She taught me drive and determination. Both good assets for a writer. I wish my mom could be here today to see the adults her grandchildren have become and to enjoy her great-grandchildren. She loved children and made each one feel special. But we lost mom twenty-two years ago this month to cancer. She knew something was wrong and couldn’t get the doctors to run tests. She’d retired from the doctor’s clinic and was helping my dad when she began to feel sluggish. They diagnosed her as depressed because she wasn’t working steady. It was finally the eye doctor who was adjusting her glasses and noticed the bumps behind her ears. Finally, they had a diagnosis. Lymphoma. The cancer had spread throughout her lymph glands. She didn’t want to go through the radiation or chemo. She wanted to live out her days without the side effects, but my father insisted they might be able to delay the inevitable and a cure would be found. She went through the pain and sickness of the treatments and six months later it had moved into her brain. We lost her Thanksgiving of 1990. She was a strong, smart, loving, caring, woman and one I pray every day I can live up to. And try to put her spirit into everyone of my heroines. www.patyjager.net www.patyjager.blogspot.com

A True Life Fairy Tale Wedding

Once upon a time there was a family of working-class coal miners and builders.  The grandmother, Dorothy Goldsmith, decided it was high time the family improved their financial and social standing.

Dorothy encouraged her daughter Carole to aim high, and she did.  Carole became an airline hostess with all the prestige that went with the job.  At her job Carole met a dispatcher named Michael Middleton. They fell in love and married.

By the time their first born Kate arrived, Carole had started a mail order party goods company out of the house.  With the drive that had been instilled into her by her mother, Carole was able to make enough money to send her children to private school.

The business was very successful and the family became multi-millionaires.

Neither young Kate, nor her brother or sister wanted for anything.  She did encounter bullying at not one, but two different schools, and in spite of her treatment she got outstanding grades.

She grew up and was the first girl in her family to attend college.  Kate attended the University of St. Andrews.  There she met her Prince Charming, Prince William of Wales.

After a long courtship, a break up, and reuniting all in the course of ten years, 2001 till 2011, and they were married April 29, 2011, in a spectacular fairy tale wedding.

From meager beginnings to Catherine, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge, the title bestowed on her by Queen Elizabeth, Kate’s grandmother-in-law, Kate emerged at the top of the social ladder.

The Middleton family has been embraced by the Queen.  She invited the Middleton's to ride with the royal family in the Diamond Jubilee Flotilla on June 3rd, 2012.

Kate has had strong women role models.  From Grandma Dorothy with her vision of a better future and social standing for her family to her new Grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who has ruled England for 60 years and is celebrating her Diamond Jubilee this year.

Now that’s staying power!  She is still loved and respected by her subjects.

Of course, Kate’s mom, Carole, was the one who made the private schools happen.  And where would Kate be if not for her mom’s drive and determination?

Who are your role models?  Who has made a difference in your life?