Remembering Mom on her 99th Birthday
She’s still here, in my heart
Yesterday would’ve been Mom’s 99th birthday. Her birthday and Mother’s Day were two of the things that always made May cool. Of course, since she’s been gone, going on 11 years now, I still always think about her in May. I always wind up feeling pretty damn grateful that I had her for a Mom.
Granted, she wasn’t a touchy-feely type of Mom — I can only remember actually hugging her a few times in all those years, she wasn’t big on hugs — and she wasn’t a nurturing mom, not in the classic sense. What Mom did nurture was a sense of life, and what she modeled was living in the moment. She did both of those things exceptionally well. She was a real “can-do” kind of gal.
She didn’t have much tolerance for self-pity, or for self-promotion. She did believe that if one door didn’t open, there were plenty of others to try. She taught me to just go out and find something in life that worked.
I tried borrowing twenty dollars from her once when I was 15. She just looked at me and said, “Damnit, Pete, why don’t you go out and find a job?” When I said, “Who’s going to hire a 15 year-old with no experience?”, she shot right back, “Pete, you have more experience than most 15 year-olds I know! You started delivering newspapers for your brother Ken when you were 5; you got your own paper route of 70 customers when you were 8; you worked two jobs, the paper route in the morning and cleaning up in the bakery in the evening, when you were 10 and 11 years old. You’ve done a lot!”
So, out I went, up and down Brookline Boulevard, going door to door for 3 blocks of stores, asking for job applications, filling them out, and moving on to the next establishment. There were drug stores, hardware stores, taverns, barber shops, bakeries, grocery stores, bowling alleys, movie theaters, sporting goods stores, news shops, state stores, beer distributors, a library, a post office and restaurants. I applied at them all.
After exhausting all the stores on the boulevard, I went down to West Liberty Avenue and applied to a dozen or so establishments down there. If nothing else, I figured I’d prove Mom wrong, and make her see that no one really wanted to hire a stupid 15 year old kid like me. Maybe then she’d give me that twenty bucks!
Of course, that’s not what happened. Locante’s Fine Italian Gourmet Restaurant needed a dishwasher, and I had plenty of experience washing dishes at home for a family of 9, so they hired me. Despite all of my previous experience, it was my first real job. I punched in and out at a time clock, and I received a real paycheck at the end of my second week. That felt great! Much better than owing my Mom 20 bucks! I finally had my own income! By then, I had already been promoted to a Bus Boy position!
Mom had taught me to look for opportunity. Friday night of my first week, a couple of Bus Boys called out sick and the waitresses were bitching in the kitchen about having to bus their own tables. I told Juanita, a big mouthy-but-way-cool waitress, that I’d do it. She said, “come with me”, and together we marched right up to Frank Locante’s office by the bar, where she told him “Pete said he could bus tables. We’re short busboys and customers are waiting too long to be seated. Whaddya say, Frank?” She wasn’t easy to say no to. Frank agreed.
That night, I washed dishes and bussed tables. That’s when I learned about tips! Each waitress whose station I helped bus gave me a portion of her tips. Then it got even better — Juanita lobbied to keep me in the dining room bussing tables from that point on, so I got permanently promoted. I was on my way! All thanks to Mom, opportunity and Juanita!
This is just one of many examples I could give about the things Mom taught me. I feel like I am still learning from her. Whenever I get a little down about the state of things in my life, or feel like I’m stuck, I think to myself, “What would Mom do/say in this situation?” Then I go about the business of looking for the opportunity, or considering my options. In little to no time, I am unstuck and back into the adventure of really living.
That’s the other thing that Mom gave to me — the sense of life as an adventure. I’ve written before about how, after really screwing up and throwing a huge party in the family house (unauthorized) where nearly 150 high schoolers invaded their home and turned it into the biggest, best keg party of the year, instead of grounding me and lecturing me forever (like Dad would’ve done), Mom invited me to an adventure. She showed me an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, start all over again, and to clean up my act. I jumped on it, and it changed my life.
After a 4 year hitch in the Navy, in which I defied the odds and made it through a program (Nuclear Power) they said I didn’t have the aptitude to make it through, finding success and a promising career, my burgeoning substance abuse problem caught up with me. I found myself back home at age 22, on my ass, out of work and, for the first time in my life, unemployable.
Mom was who I turned to when I was ready to admit I had a problem. She immediately went into action and found me an alcohol rehabilitation program for veterans up near Trenton, NJ, which she drove me up to. When I called after two days and said I couldn’t stay there, she came and got me, then enrolled me in an outpatient rehab program in Burlington, NJ.
I didn’t have a car, and Mom worked in the other direction, but I could get there hitchhiking, so I did. Nothing really clicked for me there either, but I gave it a shot, because I knew Mom was trying to help me.
One of the great pleasures in life for me was when I had the opportunity to return the favors to Mom. After all she’d done for me, when I was trying to find my way in the world, I was delighted to be in a position to be there for her when she needed some help. A few years after Dad passed, she was ready to retire and to find a place close to the beach. That had been a lifelong dream. When she found a place near the beach in South Carolina, I was able to help her make that move from New Jersey. One of my fondest memories of her is when we took that first walk together on her new “home beach” in Pawley’s Island. As we walked together, I looked over at her, and her face had the look of satisfaction of someone who was finally living their dream. It was such an honor to be there with her in that moment.
I also got to spend a lot of time with her in her final months on this earth, and those are some of my most cherished memories of her. She was still so very much alive, and full of life, despite her deteriorating physical condition. She talked about a father that she had loved much more than I had ever realized, the one who I was named after. Sadly, his life had been deeply marred by an alcohol addiction, but she described him as “the most educated man I ever knew”. He had dropped out of school in the 6th grade to work to support his family, but he read voraciously, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of just about everything.
She was like that, as well. However, she far exceeded my namesake in her efforts to apply that knowledge in practical ways throughout her life. She also overcame a similar health condition she had inherited from her father when she found recovery at the age of 40. She was also instrumental in passing that discovered recovery on, not only to me, but to 3 of my siblings, and countless others in the large relationship. She was able to demonstrate that, while addiction and alcoholism can be a family disease, recovery from it can also be a family thing. She was a game-changer in that regard.
My final two memories of her are truly sublime. Ten days before she passed, we were visiting her and Dorothy, my (then) new sister-in-law who was staying with her that week, when she came out one morning and said, “Let’s go out to eat!” It was a surprise, since she had been feeling worse then usual just before that. We went to her favorite place to eat down there, Landolfi’s Italian Pizzaria Ristorante in Pawley’s. After a fabulous lunch, she announced “Let’s go to the beach!” Another surprise — she’d only been to the beach one time that whole summer, when she and I had gone together and gotten drenched when a thunderstorm rolled right on top of us. This time, the weather was perfect, and all was right with the world for the next three hours as we sat there with her, on the beach in all her glory, enjoying every moment.
Ten days later, I drove down to South Carolina on Labor Day to spend her final 11 hours at her side, holding her hand as she drew her final breath. I felt like I could feel her spirit as it rose out of her body, and it felt like freedom. Again, I felt most humbled and honored to be with her at the end. While my grief over losing her physical presence in my life was profound — it took about a year until I felt like I could come up for air and really breathe again — I also felt happy that she no longer suffered, and so blessed to have been in her life, and she in mine.
