Snapshots of a Life

As a child, I often went to my bedroom at the end of the hall and heard the pounding of typewriter keys in the kitchen or dining room into the late-night hours. I had four siblings, and my mother was the last of the stay-at-home generation of Moms but worked for a small, local New Jersey newspaper, reporting on local town council meetings in the evenings, after my father returned from work, and writing a weekly column. (She did not work a daytime job until I was in middle school.) The clickety-clack of that typewriter meant a number of things to me.

First, there were the very creative letters from Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny typed on that typewriter. (Santa claimed his typos were due to wearing mittens!) Aware of my younger brother's and my concern for endangered and unusual species, Santa, who usually left the unwrapped presents under the Christmas tree, had written a note about a special wrapped package containing a plush Walrus from the North Pole. Then the Easter Bunny, instead of leaving the usual soft bunnies and lambs in our baskets, had typed these notes instructing us to check Mom and Dad's bedroom. There we found a special plush gray seal and a black panther, endangered species that he knew we would be sure to give extra care. (Funny thing, Mom also told us that, if my sister Elizabeth helped us print out our Christmas lists, we could burn the papers in the fireplace and Santa Claus would know what we wanted by reading the smoke signals!)

Second, my mother eventually stopped writing her articles about the local council meetings on that typewriter. She decided to run for a seat on that town council instead! She drew the independent voters and became the second woman ever to be elected to the borough council. (They had not yet invented gender-neutral terms like "council member" and had to carefully print councilwoman on her desk sign.) None of my siblings appreciated going grocery shopping with “Mom the Councilwoman” as she was frequently stopped by towns people to discuss such lively topics as septic tanks vs. sewers, zoning laws, truck traffic, etc. In the campaign literature (that I imagine she typed on that old typewriter) she boasted about being available 24/7 to address concerns. To us as children, this meant her snapping her fingers and giving us dirty looks when we squabbled during her long telephone conversations. Yet, she was a good public servant, known for being compassionate and doing her homework. She was made for the role.

I was especially proud of her efforts to get permission for a group of parents of individuals with disabilities to build a cluster home for their sons and daughters as they grew into adulthood. Small suburban towns could give a lot of pushback in such matters in 1980, and Mom was in the minority when the measure failed in a 4-3 vote. A parent of a person with disabilities began to tear up at the decision, and Mom left the meeting to follow and console that person. She was quoted in a local paper as saying, “I am ashamed of us all,” and someone criticized for being dramatic. In her eulogy I teased that, although we sons and daughters were all familiar with her flair for the dramatic, sometimes drama is helpful in the service of a good cause. Mom continued, with the aid of the telephone and possibly that typewriter, to secure connections to help build the facility in a neighboring town, leaving a present legacy of group homes and assistance that even my cousin accesses today. She also exemplified compassion and inclusion, values that were important to me as I later worked with individuals with disabilities in Pennsylvania.

Back to the typewriter...Third, nothing better exemplified the undeserved spiritual gift of grace to me more than my Mom offering to type one of my creative writing assignments or a term paper for middle school when I was up into the wee hours of the morning, bleary-eyed, hunting and pecking the keys. I knew I did not deserve her help nor would I ever have asked. You might say she was enabling me, but I knew she would never alter the work or attempt to correct my grammar...just mechanically type my hardly legible handwritten draft.

Fourth, in the early 70’s my mother had typed a manuscript for a children’s story about a Christmas tree that never stopped growing and asked my then first-grade teacher, Mrs. Nielson, to illustrate it. When they submitted it for publication, the rejection letter indicated that one does not start with a new author and a new illustrator. Nothing more was said. (My teacher went on to become a well-established illustrator of children’s books.) Years later my uncle, a C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien scholar who had published a lot of more academic books and a few pieces of fiction, added his name to the manuscript and finally had it published at my mother’s prompting. Mom was eighty-three at the time. I was so happy she lived to see that happen, even if she received less than fifty dollars in royalties.

Over the years, Mom also had collected information for about three other non-fiction books and joked about moving away and writing an expose’ called “Borough Hall” about the not-so-pretty realities behind small town life. When she moved to Pennsylvania in the new era of personal computers, I searched for a company to get her electric typewriter up and running again. However, her ability to sit upright and type became severely compromised as she no longer walked and her arthritic trunk bent to one side. I tried having her dictate to me but was too exhausted from trying to work and care for her, and Mom’s memory was beginning to fail. Sadly, she never wrote all the books still within her heart. The last night I spoke with her, as she lay dying in a hospital bed, she scrawled across the title page of her children’s book a note to me...”to my writer...” hoping I might continue where she left off. So, my chapter begins....maybe not on my grandfather's manual typewriter nor my Mom's electric but on my computer....yet it begins none-the-less...

TO BE CONTINUED.....