Getting On With It — Week Thirteen
Saying Good-bye to My Mom
My journey to buying a townhome. Below are links to previous stories.
Week Twenty of 52-Week Writing Challenge.
My mom — technically, my stepmother but the only mother I ever knew — was one of the first female bicycle racers. She raced for the Washington (DC) Cycle Club in the 1950’s. When she passed four years ago, the executor of her estate, a friend of hers in the town where she lived two states away from me, gave me a box of her bicycle-racing memorabilia. I put it in a closet. I was not ready to examine a part of my mom’s life that was foreign to me. Yes, I knew she raced and there was one of her racing photos in her house but she rarely spoke about those racing days. She certainly assumed I wasn’t interested, and I honestly wasn’t or at least not to the degree she would want me to be. I admired her pioneering spirit to excel in a male-dominated sport during a time when women were usually house-bound. But, that is where my interest ended. I find bicycle racing to be unbelievably dull, only surpassed in dullness by golf.
The box of musty memorabilia sat untouched for four years until today when I was forced to brush away dust and pry open the cardboard flaps. I am moving and downsizing and that box was not going with me. My mom’s executor even gave me the address of a bike racing museum that was willing to take the whole box — all I had to do was send it. I didn’t because I knew I could not send away all her memories without looking at them first, and I wasn’t ready for that.
Today, ready or not, I sifted through yellowed newspaper clippings about races in 1954 before I was born, and in 1955, 1956, and 1957. I looked at race pamphlets, hotel receipts, minutes from meetings of the Washington Cycle Club, old bicycle catalogs, and dozens of photographs. Some photos of my mom, especially when she was receiving a winning trophy, I kept. I saved a couple of her in the heat of a race, barreling around a curve, looking determined, looking like a winner. It is difficult to see my mother in those photos — the woman on the bike or holding the trophy looks like her but doesn’t seem like her — certainly not the mother who was an ardent opponent of the women’s right movement or who spent her free time crocheting, knitting and making ceramics. What ever happened to that determined bicycle racer who forced her way into men-only clubs and beat them at their own game?
Other photos were of racers I don’t know; people she did not bother to identify with names and dates on the backs of the pictures. Maybe someone at the museum will know who they are — maybe not. There is even a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt and some of her family but I see no signs of bikes or racers and have no idea if the photo has anything to do with bicycling or why it’s in the box.
My husband’s daughter is married to bicycle racer who also works for a bike equipment company. I set aside some old catalogs and one photo of a 1950’s bike repair shop for him. The stack I kept for myself was small but enough. Once settled in our new home, I plan to frame photos and articles and make a memorial to her on a wall. It is not much but the most I can do. The rest I will box and mail away to someone who will sort through it and decide what is worth keeping for bike racing history and what is not.
This week has been rough. Taking an out-of-town break last weekend broke my packing momentum, and I just could not seem to get up-to-speed again. Of course, working until 8 pm most days didn’t allow me time to accomplish much anyway. Friday night I tackled Christmas decorations. Another tough duty for me. Christmas decorations hold so many memories and are difficult to set free — the decorations and the memories. But, I had to. Of course, I kept many but some had to be donated. My bike-racing mom used to make ceramics, and she showered me with her creations, most of which were Christmas-themed. My current home is large enough and has enough surfaces on which to display them during the holidays but the new place does not. I kept the ones I like the most and sent the others to find new homes.
And, I cried.
Yesterday and today, I felt like I was saying the good-bye to my mother that I didn’t get to say when she had a heart attack and died alone on the floor of her bedroom two states away. This was a hard week.
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