The Women Who Raised Me

I was privileged to hear Wisconsin Author Michael Perry , Population 465, at an author appearance at Harry W Schwartz Bookstore in Brookfield. Perry is a gifted writer and a magnificent storyteller. He follows the precept that you write about what you know and Michael writes, with love and caring, about his hometown in Western Wisconsin.

He told so many stories worth remembering and repeating, but all of them are from his book, so I would recommend just buying them at you local independent bookstore, or go to his website sneezingcow.com.

What resonated with me most directly was a comment he made when he was talking about the "strong" women in his life. He referred to them as the "women who raised me and continue to raise me". Men don't often admit the debt we owe to the women in our lives and it was particularly timely for me to be reminded of that debt.

My mother passed away this year. I've written about this before, but, as we say, time has passed". I told you that my mother suffered from extreme dementia and was gone from us years ago. The nice little old lady that I visited at the rest home passed away on March 24, 2007. She was loved and beloved by many that knew her right up until the time of her death. She had her detractors and they did not relent nor forgive her even in her death. Unlike me who saw her faults along with her many good traits, they couldn't get past a perception of a mistake or slight even after death, but the Blaylock's are like that and you have to have been raised by one of them to know how to handle that situation.

Like many parents, after the game is over it easy to look at the scorecard and see where they might have done a better job. God knows, I'd love to have a few dozen do overs. but it's the little things parents do that never make it to the statistic's that can make such a difference.

While we never talked about "things" in our family, we always had hot meals, clean clothing, a comfortable place to sleep and a safe neighborhood to play in and I must say a sense of why that was important and why we were lucky not better because we had such benefits.

And it's true that the smallest slights were never truly forgiven or forgotten, there wasn't a stray human or animal that couldn't get sympathy and comfort from my mother. She was as I like to say. "A good Catholic girl who wouldn't go to Doctors because she felt you never took your clothes off for any body but your husband and than only rarely and certainly not after your forty." But she had a pat on the head for a kid that did a god thing and a hand on the backside of the kid that got out of line. She seemed to discipline, not in anger, but the frustration of personal failing as to how she could ever brought into the world children that didn't obey her without question.

Typical of the Irish stock she came from, Mary Jane always questioned authority unless it wore "the collar". She voted as a democrat, because the other guys no matter how nice they seemed wore suits and somehow didn't get their hands dirty at work. I never could understand how my dad got by her scrutiny as he was a businessmen all of his life.

I think she passed away oblivious to the fact that she was on the "dole". She wasn't, in her mind, in a rest home. She was in a hospital trying to get better so she could go home to an apartment she vaguely remembered. Mary Jane lived in a world where decades came and went in seconds and reality was whatever she thought it was. Unless... unless she woke up one morning and reality came back to her in a rush. Maybe seeing the condition of her life and the hopelessness of it all she decided it was time to let go. We'll never know.