Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 27, 1993 TAG: 9305260245
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Like a fungus, I would've added three or four years ago. For that was back in the days when a phone call home (long-distance, my bill) would invariably end in a shouting match, or tears, or both.
Always I would shout the loudest, cry the hardest while my mother - irritatingly calm on the other end of the line - would say, "Oh, Beth, you're so touchy; you have no sense of humor. I was just kidding."
Like the time I called home to tell her I won a second-place, $500 journalism award, and she said: "Why didn't you win first place?"
That was such a funny joke, I swore I'd never call again.
It wasn't until she called me three weeks later - to say her husband, my stepdad, had had a heart attack, but would be OK - that she finally apologized.
Which was a first. She said something to the effect of: "Sometimes I just say the wrong things. I didn't mean to hurt you."
Sometimes it takes an extraordinary event to bring out the best in people.
Late last summer, right before I began the Hollins College M.A. creative writing program, I met novelist Lee Smith at the Ben Franklin dime store her father ran in Grundy. I interviewed her for hours about her latest novel, "The Devil's Dream," and her life as a writer, including her beginning years as a student at Hollins.
Pleased with the story I wrote and thinking Mom might like Smith's writing, I mailed a copy of my story home to her.
Mom started with "The Devil's Dream" and worked her way back till she'd read all but Smith's first two books (which her suburban Dayton library doesn't carry). She loved every word.
In January, I told Mom that Lee Smith would be the Hollins College graduation speaker. Two weekends ago Mom and my stepdad drove from Ohio for my graduation.
As I sat there in my black polyester robe in the sweltering 80-degree sun, fanning myself with the graduation program and listening to Lee Smith talk about knowing "where your people came from and why," and about how "the only story you have to tell is - finally - your own," I imagined my heat-sensitive mom sitting somewhere in the crowd of designer-suited parents, complaining about the heat - and wondering out loud why I didn't win any awards.
I had spent the entire week leading up to graduation cleaning like an absolute fool and painting (and even wallpaper-bordering, ohmygod) the guest room.
Remembering my mom's comment on a prior visit - something about how "unsanitary" the grunge in the bottom of our dish drainer looked - I gave the sink and drainer a second scrubbing of Ajax. The house sparkled, right down to the flower boxes and porch planters outside.
As I was rolling the third coat of Rose Shadow paint on the guest room walls, I couldn't help but think that no matter how many awards I win or degrees I earn, there's still nothing more instinctively important than the approval of my mother.
Like I said, it's funny how our parents start to grow on us. And us on them.
My mom absolutely loved our new house. And thanks to my astute husband, who found the folks a place to sit in the shade at Hollins, Mom even loved graduation, especially Lee Smith's address.
It didn't hit me till a few days ago, when I was writing in my journal some of the stories Mom had told me during our Monday drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway, that I was doing just as Smith had instructed in her Sunday speech. I was finding my own story.
In the car, Mom described to me what it felt like when her first-born contracted polio in 1950, and they could only visit her two days a week. She described seeing my dad look in on my sister through the window screen of her hospital room, tears running down his face; seeing my 1-year-old sister, Terry, lying there in braces, singing baby songs, sweat dripping from her ringlet curls.
She told me about characters in my family history whom I'd never met: my wheeler-dealer Grandpa Macy, who once traded my dad's dog for a chest of drawers; my great-aunt Minnie, who married a man named - of all things - Max.
Granted, in between all these stories, my mom and I still got on each other's nerves: me, in the way I drove too fast around the parkway curves; her, in the way she slammed her foot on the imaginary brake pedal of the passenger-seat floor when I got anywhere near the 45 mph speed limit.
But all in all, I think it was our best time yet. We're starting to appreciate each other's differences with each new phone call, with each new visit.
On the way home from Mabry Mill, Mom and I stopped at the Floyd IGA to pick up the fixings for that night's supper, a celebration of Mom's and my birthdays, which both fall in May.
We even compromised on that. In a rare collaborative kitchen effort, Mom made my favorite dinner, beef pot pie with mashed potatoes, while I baked her favorite cake, chocolate.
We both mmmmm'd and ahhhhh'd till we couldn't eat another bite.
by CNB