ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 25, 1997 TAG: 9702250037
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
A lot has been said, written and spewed about mothers-in-law, most of it negative.
You've heard about the mother-in-law who shows up regularly, uninvited, with her son's favorite tuna-rice casserole and a new package of boxer shorts. (``They were on sale half-price. - Days-of-the-week were always his favorites in junior high!'')
Or maybe you have a mother-in-law who never gets you a gift unless it's a new Dirt Devil, a cookbook labeled ``for beginners'' or a flannel nightgown - size XL.
No wonder that spiny, in-your-face houseplant is called the Mother-in-law's Tongue.
You won't find one of those plants in Mary Jane Flippo's North Roanoke County town house. Mary Jane, who's 76 and retired, couldn't think of a single cross exchange she's ever had with her mother-in-law, Sallie Charlton.
In fact, Flippo took time out last month to write me about Sallie's recent 100th birthday - and the remarkable relationship she has shared with her late husband's mom.
Among the practical things Mary Jane has learned from her mother-in-law:
How to cut up and fry a chicken.
How to make a brown-sugar pie.
How to spoil your grandchildren by letting them do things at your house they can't do at home, such as bang pots and pans, or spray shaving cream all over the bathtub.
But Mary Jane has learned a lot more than homemaking tips from observing the life of Sallie Charlton.
As a teen-ager growing up in Oriskany, Sallie once sewed a dress for a little girl to be buried in. As a young adult, she helped Dr. Mitchell deliver dozens of babies up and down the hollows surrounding Craig's Creek. When someone died - and the creek was too swollen to get across - Sallie volunteered to hold the wake at her farmhouse.
``Birth, death, anything like that - she was always there,'' Mary Jane says.
Widowed while she was six months pregnant with her first child, Sallie was a single mom to John Lawrence Flippo Jr., Mary Jane's late husband. When John was 16, Sallie married Everett Charlton and the couple had two sons, who eventually went on to make her a mother-in-law three times over.
The first time John took his wife-to-be home to meet his mom, Mary Jane recalls, ``It was like I'd known her for years. She had me peeling potatoes, beating the eggs and brown sugar up for her pie.''
The second time they met, Sallie was sick - and asked Mary Jane to take her cracked dentures to the dentist for repair. ``She just handed me her upper plates like it was nothing. So you can tell we were real close right off.''
Later, when Mary Jane was having babies of her own, Sallie was always there to baby-sit and lend support. When their 22-year-old son, Jeff, was dying of leukemia, the Flippos bought a trailer, gutted it and plunked it down on their front lawn in Oriskany, turning it into a country store - to give Jeff something to do.
When Jeff got too sick to work there, Grandma Sallie ran it for him. She was in her mid-80s.
In her late 80s, Sallie took care of a Covington woman who was 10 years her junior. In her 90s, when she was first admitted to a nursing home, she asked her son, Don Charlton: ``I wish you could find me some more old ladies to take care of.''
Mary Jane has tried to follow Sallie's example in her dealings with her own two daughters-in-law. Asked to reveal the nature of a good mother-in-law, Mary Jane lists these qualities:
``Doing what you can do to help - without interfering.''
``If they ask for your opinion, give it. But I always say, `That's me, not you. You need to make up your own mind.'''
``And the most important: Be a good listener.''
Last week I accompanied Mary Jane during her weekly visit to the Brian Center nursing home in Fincastle, where Sallie spends most of her time reading her Bible and Daily Guideposts, and rereading her mail. Although her mind wanders and she repeats herself at times, she's sharp enough to know she's being funny when she says: ``I don't look 100, do I?!''
Her opinions are also crystal clear when it comes to revealing the secret to being a good mother-in-law: Being a good mother.
``She is my daughter,'' Sallie insists. ``Why, I couldn't do without her.''
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshots) Charlton. color.by CNB