Mama Jo-1940s
An adapted excerpt from the chapter “Watching a Photograph Slowly Fade” from When I Married My Mother
“Are we putting up a Christmas tree this year?” Mama Jo asked when our third Thanksgiving as roommates rolled around.
I groaned and was sorry I did.
The first year we lived together, after uncovering the ornaments of my childhood, I had effortlessly lassoed people to help me move furniture, get the tree in the house, string the lights, and do it all in reverse a month later. Now I was weary of cajoling or hiring people to help me out. Arthur and Janet had bronchitis, and the idea of directing my young inexperienced niece and nephew as to what to do made me more exhausted. I’d stopped wrapping presents for Mama Jo because it was too hard for her to unwrap them. Instead, I just put them in a decorative bag with colorful tissue paper. Now I was doing that for everyone’s presents because it made life easier on me.
The next time she asked me about a tree, I said, “Let me just finish with the Christmas shopping and cards.” I had a long list of my friends, her friends, business associates, family, and extended family to honor in one form or another.
The third time she asked, I said, “I’m too tired, Mama Jo. We’ll do it next year. I promise.” She’ll be here then. She will.
I placed a small artificial tree on a table that had white lights and Aunt Gladys’s wax cherubs on it. “How’s that?”
“That’s fine,” she said with a weak smile.
I never stopped to think how it made her feel to know there was nothing she could do to make that tree happen. Or how watching me do everything was probably tiring her out as much as it was me, maybe even more so. Or maybe I did. I knew I was losing her and was in deep denial.
Three times she asked.
“Hey,” I said cheerily one day, “let’s go to the Festival of Lights, Mama Jo! Let’s have an adventure!”
She smiled that big broad grin of hers I’ll never forget. “Okay!”
This was an annual event Arthur had suggested as an enticement for me to come down from New York City for the holidays many years before, and I’d had no interest. Now I’d be happy to do it with my mother. I invited her granddaughter to join us. On our way there, we turned on the radio station playing continuous holiday music and sang along, easily falling into the Christmas spirit. When we saw the entrance to Tanglewood Park lit up like the Vegas Strip with a grand archway inviting us to drive under it, we all let out a “Wow!” I hoped it made up for the lack of Christmas cheer at home.
We slowly drove through the park in Mama Jo’s thirteen year-old red wagon, oohing and aahing at more than a hundred displays and nearly a million lights. Even with my mother’s failing eyesight she was able to make out most of the mammoth animals, stars, and Santas that blinked and moved. Sometimes she was mistaken.
“Is that a cat?” she asked.
Chris, thinking it was funny, said, “No, Mama Jo! That’s a snowman!”
I turned around to give her a nasty look and then did the same thing myself a few minutes later when she thought Santa and his reindeer was a train. She stopped making comments, and I felt bad. What was wrong with letting her think it was a train? I described the things we saw and tried not to choke up over her loss of vision.
I also found myself imagining the army of people it took to put up these lights and how they would feel when it was time to tear them down. I could at least put up one tree.
We stopped at the Gift Village, and I waited in the car with Mama Jo while Chris went in to investigate. As the Christmas music continued, I held my mother’s hand, which was in a bright pink glove that matched her beret. We sang along to “Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland” and other holiday favorites, her soft voice giving out at the end of most lines.
When it was my turn to gift shop, I zipped through and returned with a few things, including something I’d been on the lookout for for months: a slim wooden table that was the perfect size and color for my brother’s guest bathroom. At last, when Mama Jo visited there she’d have something to grab onto. Even though someone was always at her side, the instability of the situation unnerved her.
I wedged the gifts into the back of the car around Mama Jo’s wheelchair, and excitedly told her about the table as we pulled out of the space. I reached for her hand and gave her a reassuring squeeze before we went off to cruise through the rest of the park and ooh and aah some more.
The table would never make it to Arthur’s house. Nor would she ever leave our house again. By Christmas she was in home hospice care.
She was gone by the following spring. Slowly I’ve been sorting through the family mementos, the hundreds if not thousands of photographs she took. Many are of Christmas trees throughout my childhood. For our family, it obliterated what was missing the rest of the year in a home that would eventually be shattered by divorce.
I still look back now, especially at that artificial silver tree that had the multi-colored device that rotated and bathed the tree in various colors, and kick myself for not putting up a bigger tree for my mother when she asked. I probably could have found one just like that silver one on eBay. What a smile it would have put on her face. In fact, I might just go look for one right now.
MAY YOUR HOLIDAY SEASON BE FILLED WITH MANY GOOD MEMORIES AND THE NEW YEAR WITH LAUGHTER AND COUNTLESS BLESSINGS.
Jo