Mothers: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Let's start with the Bad.  Our Spring in the Balkans last year (see July 24th, below) introduced me to Rebecca West; I had never before read her.  I found Black Lamb, Grey Dove mesmerizing: what wonderful writing and engaging story-telling.  What a critical, discerning and prescient eye for the lives around her as she traveled Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia in 1938 and '39.

I had become an acolyte.  Until yesterday -- when came in the NY Review of Books Mother's Day reprints, Anthony West's diatribe against her, his mother, Rebecca West, of whom he documented a life-long crusade to destroy his career, his marriage and his reputation.  Goodness! What a mother/son relationship!  She must have been a tumultuous personality, indeed -- Nieztschean feminist; mistress to H G Wells and and, according to her son (H G Wells' bastard),the Journalist, John Gunther. Rebecca it turns out was vengeful, volatile and manipulative despite being a gifted journalist, critic, and novelist whose last book was published at age 89. I'm still a fan of her writing, but . . . .What trauma Anthony West dealt with!

Mothers leave legacies; what did mine leave?  The Good. Eleanor Taylor would have disdained a Rebecca West-type as a self-centered shrew. Eleanor Taylor was anything but.



Eleanor Taylor Waller was forever in love with Fletcher C. Waller.  He passed on at age 72 in 1983; she, 28 years later at age 98, in 2011.  Her purpose was to make him -- and the rest of us -- whole.  She was the rock our family is built upon.

Fletch: struggling to support a family during the '30s; all in, answering the call to public service during WWII and the early Cold War; corporate maverick in the later '50s and '60s; adult drop-out and scrambling entrepreneur in the '70's. 

Eleanor made it work, supporting him though frustrations, sharing the pressures, encouraging him to dream.  As a kid, I was jealous, classically Oedipal.

They ventured together: Door County Sailing, then Beaver Flags. She was his sea anchor -- and our
foundation.

Eleanor Waller personifies loyalty, tolerance, patience, strength, compassion, self-reliance (especially after Dad died,) and humor.  She is my Mom -- still.                   













And the Ugly? There are no ugly mothers.

Memo from Lucifer

MEMORANDUM

To: Donald 

       at Mar-a-Lago

From: Lucifer

Subject: Role Model

Donald, my friend: pay close attention to the work Viktor Orban and I have been doing in Hungary.  It might be a model for the rest of your year.

Viktor and I have cooked a fragrant stew of nationalism, populism, xenophobia and resentment of globalization.  It has allowed him to razor wire his borders, neuter the courts, emasculate parliamentary oversight, stiff the EU, declare a state of national emergency and suspend elections.

You and I are nicely along on this path.  You've successfully misappropriated funds for your border bluster, stiffed House subpoenas, cowed Inspectors General, emasculated the Senate, packed the courts, and wounded the WHO.  Our latest ploy, blaming Chinese -- Chinese-Americans are already feeling the heat.

For the next step: I guarantee that in October and November I will stir up a COVID 19 outbreak again giving you the cover to suspend elections in the name of public safety.  To those states that vote by mail, tell them that unless all can do so, it would be unfair.  By timing it right, you can make it impossible for states to set up an all-mail system by November 3rd.  After that, you will be able to set the date for voting again by Executive Order, at your whim. 

Give my best to Melania; I know, she detests me, but she made her bed and has to lie in it. (Or is it lay?)

Regards,


PS What do you want your handicap to become next season?

May Day (and maybe mayday?)

Last evening, first of May, we found on our doorstep a bouquet of fragrant Wisteria blooms and homemade decorated cookie birds -- or maybe bees?  A May Basket in effect.  From a neighbor.  Wonderful!

"What's a May Basket" Ann asked.

When I was a kid in Ohio, in the late thirties, I made paper May Baskets with Mom, filled them with some blossoms and left them anonymously on neighbor's porches.  We had real porches in our neighborhood in Akron.  Porches seem to be going the way May Baskets have.

Our first grade class in 1941 made May Baskets out of construction paper and mucilage (anyone remember mucilage? You know -- in the brown, squat bottle with the rubber nipple that got all sticky and yucky?  Yes?: welcome ag'ed person.) We took the baskets home and gave them to our mothers.  I picked flowers from a neighbor's garden to put in my basket on the way home; my Mom, asking where I got them, made me go back and apologize to the neighbor.  Always a lesson, even in a May Basket.

By May 1st of '42, it was a different world.  We lived in a rented crackerbox of a house in St. Pete, on an unpaved road in the middle of a palmetto lot. The War Dept. had assigned Dad to the construction project turning Tampa's MacDill Field into a US Army Air Force base. May Baskets a thing of the past.

They never came back after the war, probably because of the nations' bug-a-boos about socialism and communism.  May 1st, after all, was International Labor Day, adopted in the 1890's as a day commemorating Haymarket Square and celebrated throughout Europe, especially in the USSR, as a day of international socialist and unionist anti-capitalist solidarity. You weren't supposed to be dancing but singing  L'Internationale.

(Ann knew about Haymarket Square from her labor history courses in UW's Access Program. She knows the important stuff; I know the frivolous. )

May Day celebrations were common throughout Europe -- maypoles, May Queens -- post-Easter celebrations of Spring. 1930's Akron was a salad bowl of foreign-born and first generation European Americans from nearly every country; their homeland traditions on display at any opportunity. I wonder if maypoles are still danced around and baskets delivered anonymously and May Queens blushing on the village greens of Europe? Probably not.

Here in Seattle yesterday, the annual May Day parade of anti-WTO'ers, socialists, unionists, solidarity- ists against something or other was turned into a motorcade, everyone in their auto-bubble.  The novel-virus triumphs at a time we need international solidarity for somethings more than ever. Mayday! mayday! mayday!*

The virus-induced social isolation certainly gave Jen and her kids time to bake, pick and deliver May welcomes to their neighbors.  We were delighted to have one.  Thanks -- for the gesture of solidarity, for the goodies, for the memories.

Happy Spring, everyone!  Stay safe; stay well; we'll be able to dance around a maypole together one day.



* About mayday, the international call for help: it comes from the air transport days of the early 1920's (Wikipedia tells me), an Anglicized version of the French m'aider.