Personal Reflection: Evelyn Henderson (Mom)

When you are young, your Mom is your Mom. Where she has come from, who she has known and what she has done is not relevant. That comes later in life. My mom, our mom, our stay-at-home mother, was just there, and as children we accept that. It is beyond the scope of childhood, the fleeting interests of growing up where more important issues demanded our attention: playing outside, riding your bike, bugging your sisters.

What we could not see was the work being done to be a good mother, that framework she set in place in which her children had places to attach their young lives, a net strung not too tight to control but one which provided the safety in which to explore, experiment and grow. Part of this net lay in the consistent and predictable expectations we saw in our mother: porridge at breakfast - oatmeal porridge that "stuck to your ribs" - lunch on the table every school day, supper at supper time - and woe to the person who called between 6:00 and 6:30. "Really," she would say, "who has not got better sense than to call at suppertime. Tell them to call back later."

Mom, standing beside you during those childhood illnesses of measles and mumps, or nursing you through injuries from hands or knees cut on glass (Jay & Mark), legs broken while riding a bicycle (Alastaire), or a mouth full of braces (Hildegarde); the same Mom who fed us cod-liver oil in the winter, or nursed an infected ear with cold-compresses throughout a painful night, and then found the time to help us with a school project, due the next day of course, laying it out on the dining room table as we witnessed her doing so often for her many projects. On that same table, she spent endless hours putting together photograph albums, one for each child and one for the family, done in an era of film and reprints labouriously ordered and organized.

We had no T.V. to provide her relief. Both our parents were voracious readers. She showed us how to do "stuff" and often encouraged us to use the outside as our tutor. And in these moments of our distraction, she found time to read, carry out her numerous projects, and keep the house tidy and scrupulously clean. The latter was aided by her insistence on the kids making beds, tidying rooms, and following the ever-present duty list taped to the kitchen door.

Summer would arrive. As May turned to June Dad would head out to do his field. Mom was on her own. There were trips to Delhi in the family station wagon to visit her parents and twice, 1959 and 1961, a month in Newfoundland, stressful events that I only appreciate now as a father of two, not four.

When we allow all of these memories to flood our consciousness, we are reminded how tied we are to our younger lives, our parents lives. How infused we are, with their mannerisms, their feelings, their values.

What does a mother leave besides these memories, these feelings? What do we see, as adults, looking through the lens of time and those wonderful photograph albums? What so we see when we close our eyes?

Laughter and patience, perseverance and self-sacrifice, organization and thrift, moral persuasion and determination. I see a person who lived a life on her terms, accomplishing tasks which she felt were important not only for her well-being but the well-being of all those with whom she shared this earth.

Jay