We’re coming up to one of the most important holidays on the annual calendar. No, it’s not the one celebrating the birth of our nation, or even the birth of God, but rather the birth of each of us and the people responsible for those births: our Mothers. Notice that I am capitalizing Mothers here, because they are certainly as important as George Washington or the Easter Bunny, and actually for most of us the only flesh and blood God we’ve ever known. Tell me you don’t still hear that Voice of Mom whenever you’re about to do something that she always warned you not to do? (“What do you mean you’re going to the beach without suntan lotion on! Do you think I’m going to be around to rub aloe all over your back tomorrow morning when you wake up in misery. Well, you sure have another think coming!”)
Without our Moms’ Labor Days, we wouldn’t even exist. Supposedly God created the universe in seven days, but it took our Moms a full nine months to create and expel us into this world, and then many more years of toil before she finally got us to move out of the cushy, all-expense-paid bed and breakfast that she supervised, into the unforgiving universe. Where was God during all those months and years of our Moms’ labors? According to my Mom, “I think I hear Him every once in a while, during a bad storm, bowling with the angels. But mostly He seems preoccupied with talking to TV preachers and helping sport stars make the winning score.”
My Mom was a real-life superstar. She was in complete charge of our house, raising four kids, plus my dad and Grandpa. She did all the shopping, cooking, gardening and cleaning. We had a washing machine, but not a dryer, so she hung our clothes out to dry on lines in the backyard in good weather, or down in the basement when God decided he wanted to bowl another game. Dad was the main breadwinner, and Grandpa the handyman in the family, but Mom also worked part time, first as the Avon Lady (a kind of door-to-door beauty store), and then for many years selling World Book Encyclopedias.
For those younger readers who may be unfamiliar with World Book Encyclopedias, let me explain. World Books were the go-to reference guide back in pre-internet days. All libraries and many classrooms had a set available for kids to look up the basic facts of almost anything that students typically needed to know. Nowadays this would never work, since most people no longer agree on facts. But back then the biggest problem teachers had was trying to make sure that when they assigned a paper students didn’t just go to the encyclopedia and copy exactly what it said. They preferred that we use some of the facts we read and then supplement them with our own interpretations of what those facts meant to us. For instance: “An atom is one of the basic units of matter. Everything around us is made of atoms. An atom is incredibly tiny. For example, the tiniest speck of spit that was on the spitball that Howard shot at me when you weren’t looking contains over 10 billion of his disgusting spit atoms! That is why I blew my nose on his math workbook.”
In the 1960s which was my Mom’s World Book selling heyday, a complete set of 22 volumes sold for around $400, which is the equivalent of about $4000 in today’s dollars, a solid chunk of change. Mom would diligently work on her leads every night after cooking and feeding us dinner. Many of her best prospects were other parents who were members of our school’s PTA. I could regularly overhear her trying to convince Mrs. Smith or Mr. Jones that “Johnny could be doing so much better in class if he had access to the thousands of articles, photographs, and charts right there in your home, instead of you having to take him all the way to the library every time he needs to look something up for school.” And of course this comprehensive compendium of factual delight was available on the 36 month payment plan.
I’m not sure Mom made much money as a salesperson, but she was good enough at it to win a number of prizes including a world atlas, a globe, a two-volume seven language dictionary and a complete set of 1972 World Books which she had monogrammed in my name. I still have that set, and sometimes when the Wi-Fi goes down (wait, did I forget to make a payment on my every-month-forever internet payment plan?) I’ll break it out to look something up and remember Mom, out watering her garden after making her nightly sales calls.
“Gardening is the cultivation of plants, usually in or near the home as a hobby. People have gardens for many reasons. Numerous gardeners grow flowers and other ornamental plants to beautify their homes and yards. Many others raise vegetables, fruits, and herbs. They find that home-grown produce is cheaper, fresher, and tastier than that sold in grocery stores. People also like gardening because it provides exercise, relaxation, and the joy of working with living things.” I couldn’t have described Mom’s favorite pastime better myself. Except possibly to add, “Dammit the rabbits ate all my lettuce again! Dad, where’s that fence you promised you’d build me?”
Happy Mother’s Day!
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