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My unfashionable, brilliant, homemaking Mum
By Dorothy Cummings McLean
May 1, 2009
Dorothy Cummings McLean
When my mother came out of her coma, my father and the doctors leaned forward to hear what she would say. She had had a stroke, and they were afraid there would be brain damage.
“How are you?” asked my father.
My mother said, “I’m in a logical cleft stick.”
“How are you?” asked my father.
My mother said, “I’m in a logical cleft stick.”
The doctors were horrified. This made no sense to them. But my father laughed with relief. He knew at once that Mum was quoting from the “Analytical Philosophy” sketch in Beyond the Fringe, a comedy album popular in their university days.
My mother was a great student. She won an Ontario Scholarship and then went to Victoria College at the University of Toronto to study modern languages and literature. She read fluently in French and German and reasonably well in Russian. She loved words and was a witty conversationalist. She was also beautiful, with big green eyes and masses of chestnut hair that fell to her waist. When my father first met her, he told a housemate about her as soon as he got home.
“Love at first sight,” the housemate told me, years later.
Mum considered an academic career and won a scholarship to study in Germany. The distance and potential expenses made her nervous, so she never went. Instead, she married my dad — her mother made her wedding dress — and she soon found herself with a baby, then two babies, then three… Twenty-four years passed before my mother went to graduate school.
In between she lived and toiled in a manner that had suddenly become unfashionable. She was a well-educated, well-read homemaker. She joined the Catholic Women’s League. She had five children. She cooked, laundered, ironed. She washed floors, dishes, children. She drove to the grocery store, the swimming pool, the hockey arena. For recreation she read books and did handiwork: sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery. She also worked in the garden and ordered her bookish or musical children outdoors to weed. She worked very hard indeed — indeed, she still does — between bouts of reading.
But, as I said, it was unfashionable. When I was younger, public women still called homemakers “parasites.” I wish my mother had laughed that off. But it hurt her, just as it must have hurt the other homemakers of her generation.
I was a teenager of my times, and I marvelled at the contrast between my mother’s academic achievements and her household tasks. I had grand ambitions, and folding laundry for seven people did not feature highly. Society told me in a thousand ways that housewives were dumb, but there is nothing dumb about Mum. She has a mind like a steel trap. She never forgets anything. She rips through The New York Times crossword puzzles and wins at Trivial Pursuit. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary pop fiction. She has a rapier wit, and her children can all thank her for their vocabulary and good grammar. So what, I wondered, could she possibly get out of all this housework? Being foolhardy, I asked her. She was folding the eternal laundry at the time, kneeling on the carpeted basement floor.
“I do it out of love,” she said.
My mother always made her daughters’ formal dresses. Other girls were limited to the mall; we got our pick of any style and any colour, made to measure. When I got engaged last year, I had two thoughts: I wanted an ivory wedding dress and I wanted Mum to make it. Alarmed, Mum refused the task. I did what any woman of my age and education would do and burst into tears. Then I began to nag.
“I could just go to the store and buy six metres of silk or satin…”
“No silk,” cried Mum. “No satin!”
I went away to sulk. After I finished sulking, I did some research. It turns out that silk and satin are expensive and hard to work with. Then I contemplated the Psychology of Mum. I’ve known her for a very long time; I should know how she thinks. And if Mum has a fault, it’s that she underestimates her own talents.
“So,” I said at dinner, “I’ll probably go to the store and buy six metres of silk or satin…”
“I told you,” said Mum. “No silk. No satin!”
I brought out the big artillery.
“Are you afraid you’re going to mess it up?”
“Yes,” cried Mum. “I’m afraid I’m going to mess it up!”
“No problem,” I said. “If you mess it up, I’ll just buy more.”
She didn’t mess it up. The ivory silk wedding dress now hanging on my bedroom door is beautiful, the dress of my dreams. And I am so proud of, and grateful for, my brainy, word-loving, homemaker Mum.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mums, but especially to mine.
My mother was a great student. She won an Ontario Scholarship and then went to Victoria College at the University of Toronto to study modern languages and literature. She read fluently in French and German and reasonably well in Russian. She loved words and was a witty conversationalist. She was also beautiful, with big green eyes and masses of chestnut hair that fell to her waist. When my father first met her, he told a housemate about her as soon as he got home.
“Love at first sight,” the housemate told me, years later.
Mum considered an academic career and won a scholarship to study in Germany. The distance and potential expenses made her nervous, so she never went. Instead, she married my dad — her mother made her wedding dress — and she soon found herself with a baby, then two babies, then three… Twenty-four years passed before my mother went to graduate school.
In between she lived and toiled in a manner that had suddenly become unfashionable. She was a well-educated, well-read homemaker. She joined the Catholic Women’s League. She had five children. She cooked, laundered, ironed. She washed floors, dishes, children. She drove to the grocery store, the swimming pool, the hockey arena. For recreation she read books and did handiwork: sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery. She also worked in the garden and ordered her bookish or musical children outdoors to weed. She worked very hard indeed — indeed, she still does — between bouts of reading.
But, as I said, it was unfashionable. When I was younger, public women still called homemakers “parasites.” I wish my mother had laughed that off. But it hurt her, just as it must have hurt the other homemakers of her generation.
I was a teenager of my times, and I marvelled at the contrast between my mother’s academic achievements and her household tasks. I had grand ambitions, and folding laundry for seven people did not feature highly. Society told me in a thousand ways that housewives were dumb, but there is nothing dumb about Mum. She has a mind like a steel trap. She never forgets anything. She rips through The New York Times crossword puzzles and wins at Trivial Pursuit. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary pop fiction. She has a rapier wit, and her children can all thank her for their vocabulary and good grammar. So what, I wondered, could she possibly get out of all this housework? Being foolhardy, I asked her. She was folding the eternal laundry at the time, kneeling on the carpeted basement floor.
“I do it out of love,” she said.
My mother always made her daughters’ formal dresses. Other girls were limited to the mall; we got our pick of any style and any colour, made to measure. When I got engaged last year, I had two thoughts: I wanted an ivory wedding dress and I wanted Mum to make it. Alarmed, Mum refused the task. I did what any woman of my age and education would do and burst into tears. Then I began to nag.
“I could just go to the store and buy six metres of silk or satin…”
“No silk,” cried Mum. “No satin!”
I went away to sulk. After I finished sulking, I did some research. It turns out that silk and satin are expensive and hard to work with. Then I contemplated the Psychology of Mum. I’ve known her for a very long time; I should know how she thinks. And if Mum has a fault, it’s that she underestimates her own talents.
“So,” I said at dinner, “I’ll probably go to the store and buy six metres of silk or satin…”
“I told you,” said Mum. “No silk. No satin!”
I brought out the big artillery.
“Are you afraid you’re going to mess it up?”
“Yes,” cried Mum. “I’m afraid I’m going to mess it up!”
“No problem,” I said. “If you mess it up, I’ll just buy more.”
She didn’t mess it up. The ivory silk wedding dress now hanging on my bedroom door is beautiful, the dress of my dreams. And I am so proud of, and grateful for, my brainy, word-loving, homemaker Mum.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mums, but especially to mine.
Dorothy Cummings McLean