Long before "Steel Magnolias" became a hit movie, Holly Ridge, North Carolina had produced its own vigorous southern flower, Lena Shepard Morris Bird. In this memoir of her mother, author Patricia A. Bird narrates how Lena inherited all the best of her traditional world while developing the gifts that allowed her to unconsciously model a newer one.Through nineteen vignettes, Lena’s story shows how she applied her motto, "If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right," in her home as mother of three and wife of fifty-four years, at her church, and in her workplace. Raised in this environment, Patricia Bird became one of the earliest women Episcopal priests in the United States.From childhood on, Rev. Bird shares the memorable recollections of her mother’s ninety-three years that helped shape her growth. More than All Right portrays Lena as a woman of great energy, great humor, and unconditional love. It presents an evocative portrait of family life in the forties and fifties.

More Than All Right

A Daughter's "Momoir"By Patricia A. Bird

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Patricia A. Bird
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-7142-4

Contents

Chapter 1 In the Kitchen at Green Fields Village............................................5Chapter 2 Mom and Dad.......................................................................9Chapter 3 Mom and My Big Mouth..............................................................21Chapter 4 Mom and the Gift of Music.........................................................25Chapter 5 Mom, the Mail, and My Piano.......................................................31Chapter 6 The Lecture, or Selfishness and the Real Meaning of Christmas.....................35Chapter 7 Mom and the Blue Willow China.....................................................39Chapter 8 Mom and the Three R's: Romance, Radio, and Reading................................43Chapter 9 No Pets in the House..............................................................49Chapter 10 Something New to Wear............................................................53Chapter 11 Momisms..........................................................................59Chapter 12 Mom and the Divine Fire..........................................................65Chapter 13 Pedestals Are for the Perfect....................................................71Chapter 14 Mom's Craftiness.................................................................75Chapter 15 Give Them Wings..................................................................79Chapter 16 The Hallmark of Relationships....................................................83Chapter 17 Mothers and Daughters............................................................85Chapter 18 Mom Always Loved Us Best.........................................................91Chapter 19 Moving Right Along...............................................................93

Chapter One

In the Kitchen at Green Fields Village

The kitchen was probably the largest room in our 1950s-style rancher in Green Fields Village; even if it wasn't, it holds the largest place in my memory. It featured a checkered linoleum floor made up of large alternating red and white square tiles and Formica countertops that were probably meant to be a coordinating red but looked as if they suffered from severe anemia. The working part of the kitchen, reading from left to right, included a spacious counter containing the toaster, various canisters, the dish rack, and assorted impedimenta of family life. Then came the sink, another short counter space, and, finally, the large gas stove on which my mother taught me to cook. There was a window over the sink, perfect for daydreaming when it was my turn to do the dishes.

On the short wall, between the archway to the living room and the doorway to the utility room, the refrigerator jutted out like a large white rhinoceros—or perhaps polar bear would be a more apt image—challenging our freedom of movement and requiring that we describe a wide arc in walking around it. It must have had distinctive sounds, too, because no matter how stealthily I tried to open it, securely screened by its bulk from my mother's line of vision, a voice would issue from the living room, "Get out of that refrigerator!" or "Don't start eating now; you'll spoil your supper."

On the opposite short wall, to the right of the entryway to the den, hung a birdcage, which housed our parakeet, Lucky. Housed is only a relative term, however, as the door to her cage stood open most of the time and she pretty much had the run of the house. Most of the time, Lucky preferred riding around on Mom's shoulder, keeping Mom company as she cooked or worked at the sink.

The focal point of the kitchen, though, was the table, which ranged along the other long wall. Showing up for supper—unless invited to a friend's house (and Mom had better know about it in advance!)—was non-negotiable, and it was a rare suppertime that Mom, Dad, my two brothers, and I—and my great-uncle on most weekends—were not all together around it. The highlight of family meals was Sunday dinner following church attendance (which was also non-negotiable). Long after the food was gone, the stories and jokes and laughter might go on. On some occasions it would be almost time for supper when we'd be getting up from dinner.

And speaking of getting up from dinner, my mother was of that tribe that said you didn't get up from the table unless you'd finished everything on your plate. The words, "There are millions of starving children in China who would love to have what you have to eat," became a family joke for years. It was no problem for our older brother, Lee—who'd been nicknamed by Dad The Bottomless Pit because he ate everything in sight. But I hated most meat and my younger brother hated all vegetables, so he and I frequently endured extended mealtimes, glumping in front of the congealed remains while Mom cleared away everyone else's dishes. Like enemies who've survived the same shipwreck and are drawn into temporary alliance by the need to fill basic human requirements, Jim and I often became desperate enough to work in unfamiliar collaboration. As soon as Mom would leave the room for a moment, we'd exchange plates, and I'd happily eat his hated vegetables while he disposed of my despised meat.

But eating wasn't the only act of life that took place in that kitchen. It was the setting for many mother-daughter conversations that ranged from cooking to relationships to manners to life's more difficult questions. One especially poignant scene holds a deeply etched place in my memory.

Mom is standing at the stove preparing supper and I'm standing next to her, watching. I don't remember what we are talking about but it prompts me to ask a question that has troubled me for much of my twelve years of living. "Mom, why doesn't Daddy love me?" A feeling of remorse grips me as I see her face register consternation and doubt as to how to respond. For an anxious moment, I'm afraid she might be angry with me for asking. Then she says, "He does love you, honey. He just doesn't know how to show it," and I can sense the tears she doesn't want me to see. Then she tells me Dad's story—of which I've heard snatches from time to time—how his own mother died when he was five years old. How he and his siblings were shuttled from relative to relative—none of whom wanted them. She explains, "No one ever showed him love until I came along, and so he never learned how to show it to others."

It would be many years before my mind was grown-up enough to understand. At twelve, I assumed that if you loved someone, you couldn't help showing it. Mom, from whom love flowed like an endless string of pearls, was an ongoing example that I experienced daily.

Looking back on that scene in our red-and-white tiled, frequently chaotic kitchen, I've often thought two things. One, she was right. Dad did love me, though it was a very long time before I truly saw and believed it. And second, how lucky Dad was—and, as a result, all of us—to have found her.

Chapter Two

Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad were married on December 13, 1940—Friday the thirteenth. Mom had been married once before. "He could charm the birds out of the trees," she once said to me of her first spouse, but he was poor husband and father material, and they were divorced when my older brother, Lee, the only child of the marriage, was about two years old. Despite the inauspicious date of their nuptials, Mom and Dad had a solid marriage, lasting fifty-four years. To me it was a somewhat unusual one, from my vantage point as their daughter. Mom was so gregarious, while Dad was almost taciturn much of the time. Among the adjectives one might have used to describe him, romantic would not have made the list, and I often wondered how someone like Mom, who was so open and lavish with her love, could have been attracted to a man who had to be teased and cajoled into even putting his arm around her.

In all my years with them I don't remember ever seeing Dad spontaneously hug or kiss her; it was always she who initiated tactile expressions of affection, and these were many. He didn't object to her displays of warmth and might even make a somewhat self-conscious and sheepish effort to respond, but it was obvious that he found it very difficult to express his feelings openly.

After they'd retired and were living in Grandy, North Carolina, I remember asking to take a photo of them together in the backyard. Dad's response to having his picture taken was always the same: he immediately turned into a facsimile of one of the faces on Mount Rushmore. On this occasion, while Mom cheerfully stood with smile at the ready, Dad stood a full three feet distant from her with his arms crossed in front of him, looking as if he'd bitten into a bad oyster, to borrow a P.G. Wodehouse image. Glancing over at him, after my plea that they at least look as if they knew each other, Mom reached over, grabbed his arm and put it around her own shoulder, and said in the laughing-loving-commanding voice that only she dared use with him, "Get over here next to me! Put your arm around me and act like you love me!" He could seldom hold out against these tactics, and as she laughingly snuggled next to him, he, too, began to laugh. Result—delightful, if rare, photograph of loving spouses!

Handling Dad must have been almost a full-time job in itself for Mom. Sometimes even her love and humor couldn't penetrate the cloud of dejection and gloom in which he could wrap himself in the conviction that life was a raw deal. When he was in this mood, we kids tiptoed around him as if through a minefield, lest we trigger an explosion. An outburst from Dad at full throttle was not a pretty sight. Those were the times we stayed clear of the battlefield and left him to her, if we could. Mom was not a temperamental woman, and her basic approach to life was one of cheerful practicality—most of the time. But when Dad had pushed her button just a little too hard or often, she could give as good as she got. There was nothing timid about her, and though he sometimes could drive her to tears of frustration, she was never cowed by him. It was one of the things I admired about her, especially since his angry moods often frightened me.

He was not a bad man. In fact, he was a good one. But he was an extremely difficult man to live with, and I had been an adult for many years before I felt I had a good relationship with him. Once, when Mom and Dad were visiting me in the Buffalo area where I was then living, Mom said something about it. Dad, by then, in addition to his chronic arthritis, had been diagnosed with diabetes and had suffered a couple of heart attacks and mini-strokes. She now did most of the driving and Dad was pretty much relegated to the sidelines. One afternoon when he'd been in one of his difficult moods, she and I left him to sleep it off, and while he napped, we went for a walk. She seemed to feel that she needed to explain his ill-temper to me, as if I hadn't been intimately acquainted with it all these years, or maybe she needed to explain why she endured it as she did. She told me that his diabetes had restricted his diet in ways that depressed him and also that he'd "lost his manhood," to use her phrase. She said that he felt the two things that made life worth living for a man were food and sex and, if a man couldn't have either of those, what was the point?

"I know it's hard for him, and it makes him very difficult to live with, but I love him and I want to do whatever I can for him."

From appearances, it might have been difficult to tell that Dad loved her, but I think he must have loved her a lot. Several years after his death, while Mom was living in the retirement community and I was visiting her, she handed me some old letters one evening and said, "I thought you might like to see these." They were letters Dad had written to her during World War II, after he'd been drafted into the army and sent to Germany. I'd never seen them before and hadn't known they existed. In all my life, my father had never written me a letter, and I hardly even knew what his handwriting looked like.

I found the letters astounding. They were openly loving in ways I'd never perceived in my dad, and I could hardly believe they'd been written by him. This was not the man I'd known. I couldn't help asking, "What made him change, Mom?"

Apparently there had been a promise made that when he returned from the war there would be a house available for him and us—which then would have been Mom, Lee, and me. It seemed there were three houses belonging to the family, and he was to have his choice of them. But when he came back, the family reneged and none of the houses were available. Dad felt betrayed. This blow came on top of having been severely wounded in Germany. He'd stepped on a mine, shattering both legs. He'd been hospitalized for months and had come home to face several more months in a wheelchair. He'd been told he'd never walk again. Small wonder that he felt that life, for him, had fallen apart!

He did walk again, thanks to his father's unremitting urging and assistance. He did find work. We did find housing, but like so many men who experienced World War II and its aftermath, he carried a load of bitterness inside him that never completely went away. We all paid a price for that in our impaired relationships with him. But Mom never gave up on him, and toward the end of his life when she had to do almost everything for him, one day he broke from his often irritable resignation to say, "I don't know what I would have done without you."

Dad's customary response to any extracurricular family festivity, such as birthdays, Christmas, or guests for dinner, was to sit stolidly in his recliner and ignore the preparations going on around him, or possibly comment unfavorably on how much such an activity was going to cost him! But once the occasion arrived, he—often adjured by Mom—would make an attempt at joining in the spirit of things.

Due to his emotional inhibitions, it was not only difficult for him to display warmth or affection openly, but he seemed acutely embarrassed to be observed enjoying himself. Any show of pleasure might, in his mind, have revealed his softer self and made him vulnerable to getting wounded. I can only speculate, because I doubt that he was capable of articulating this idea, even to himself. Whatever the circumstances that made him as he was, there were occasional glimpses of another, deeply hidden part of him that was in stark contrast to the man who lived with us every day and whom we called Dad. These were so infrequent that when they did appear, it was often hard to believe they were authentic or trustworthy. But the glimpses I remember best of Dad's other self usually were manifested at Christmastime.

Mom and Dad were not exactly a stand-up comedy act, but sometimes there could be a certain Bert and Ernie quality to some of their exchanges. Mom always tried to get Dad to tell her what he wanted for Christmas. He never seemed to want anything, and it was a challenge for her to get him to express a wish for something she could give him. One Christmas, she'd asked him repeatedly what he wanted without getting a satisfactory answer, until he finally declared, "All I want is $100,000 and a wagonload of spending money."

She looked at him in humorous disgust and said something to the effect of "Well, you can just go on wanting it!"

After that, thinking that he'd finally stumped her, it became a fixed tradition, as predictable as Christmas trees in store windows at Halloween, that as soon as Mom would ask Dad what he wanted for Christmas, he would jokingly bellow, "I want $100,000 and a wagonload of spending money!"

They'd gone through this pre-Christmas cross talk act several times, when Mom decided to put an end to it once and for all. Swearing the rest of us to secrecy, she showed us a stack of play money, totaling $100,000, and a toy model of a farm wagon drawn by a team of horses, in which was stuffed more play money and some chocolate "coins" wrapped in gold foil. This she gift-wrapped and put under the tree for Dad.

When he opened it on Christmas morning, he looked bewildered and not especially thrilled. "What's this?"

"That's your $100,000 and a wagonload of spending money," Mom said, while the rest of us grinned. "And I don't want to hear you say any more that all you want is $100,000 and a wagonload of spending money because now you've got it!"

In 1951, Alistair Sim starred in what would become one of the best-loved Christmas movies of all time, A Christmas Carol, based on Charles Dickens's story. To this day, it doesn't feel like Christmas if I, and any other family members who are present, don't watch it on Christmas Eve. Dad, unfortunately, shared a certain kinship with the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, with his tight-fisted attitude toward money and his bitter outlook on life. Possibly that's why Scrooge's opinion of Christmas appealed to Dad, though—unlike Dickens's crusty curmudgeon—Dad would usually try to lighten up a bit when Christmas came. But it was also Dad's practice to stay in character, even when he was in a cheerful mood, so he started to respond to anyone wishing him a Merry Christmas with a loud, "Humbug!" But if one was very observant, one might just notice a trace of a smile in his eyes when he said it. For us kids, it became a sort of barometer of Dad's mood at Christmas and we'd often test his level of cheerfulness by saying, "Merry Christmas, Dad!" just for the relief it gave us when he came back with a pseudo-grumpy, "Humbug!" And many years after his death, at family Christmas gatherings, one may still hear someone snarling, "Humbug!" in fond mockery of our own Ebenezer Scrooge.

Dad's willingness to let his lighter side be seen at Christmas also revealed itself in an incident when Lee was in high school. Lee's overriding Christmas wish was to own a varsity school sweater in Haddon Heights High School colors of garnet and gold. In the fall of that year, Mom took him to pick out the one he wanted, making sure it was the best quality they could afford. When the deal was done, she took the sweater and put it away to be wrapped and given to him at Christmas.

(Continues...)

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