My sister and I were sure our widowed mother wasn’t crazy, but I think that there were times she wanted us to think so. She couldn’t resist keeping us wondering.
My mom was left with a nine-year-old daughter who had been pummeled by a one-two of spina bifida and polio and who required a ridiculous number of surgeries even before graduating from high school. A two-year-old rambunctious and strong-willed son balanced the other end of her yoke. Maybe that’s why she always a seemed a bit “different.’
Besides the usual “clean up your room” and “please don’t start fires in the house,” mom always did the excruciatingly unexpected. When I was about four or five, mom dropped the hammer on me for dropping toys on the floor. One day she sat me down with “that look” on her face that said I may not be sitting down again for a while.
“Look, I work all day to put food on the table and to keep a roof over our heads,” said Mom. “Your Nana keeps an eye on you and your sister every day to make sure that you both eat and that you don’t burn the house down.” (Oh, oh, she found the burned spot on the floor beneath the hassock.) I don’t have the time or energy to always pick up after you. If you don’t put your toys away, we’ll figure out a better solution.”
A few weeks later, with toys still on the floor, one of our neighbor’s husband carried in an old wood army footlocker and put it my room. I liked army stuff and thought this to be pretty cool. Mom came in and sat me down on the footlocker. She snapped a small padlock on the hasp. She looked me in the eye and said,
“Every toy that you leave on the floor goes
into the footlocker and remains there ensconced for two weeks. If it winds up on the floor again, it will stay
in the footlocker until just before Christmas.
We will take the footlocker to the Ottilie Orphan Home and you will give
one toy to each orphan until all of your toys have been given away.”
I knew that Mom could be stern, but not THAT crazy. I remained a recidivist. The memory of an unlearned lesson quickly vaporized.
A couple of weeks before Christmas Mom and I drove up to the Ottilie Orphan Home in “Becky,” our pea green 1939 Dodge sedan with a footlocker sticking out of the trunk. Even then, I held out hope that this was just some drama meant to teach me a lesson. It was not. In all-too-few minutes I was raining tears as I clutched each toy before hesitantly handing it to a child who clasped the toy to his or her chest and said a very appreciative “Thank you!”
The next day, Mom helped me to write a letter to Santa. I asked for a small, rideable delivery truck, a panda bear, and a wind-up roller coaster. Mom walked me to the post office to mail the letter. A few days before Christmas, a big box with a North Pole return address was delivered to our house. Inside were wrapped packages addressed to my sister and me. They remained unopened until Christmas Day.
Sixty-plus years later, inside a yellowing photo album in our basement is a picture of a very smiley five-year-old riding a small truck and clutching a very fat panda bear. Mom always stuck to her story that she had nothing to do with the package that came by truck. She said that she was struggling to make a Christmas for my sister and me. Money was tight and she was working two jobs. There was little left for presents. On Christmas day, she was a lot more surprised than I was when we opened those gifts plus a letter from Santa wising us all a very, merry Christmas.
When I went to my room that night to go to sleep, the footlocker was gone and I was clutching my new bear. I still wonder about Mom to this day.
