My Mother Made Life Fun

My mother made life fun. We didn’t have a lot of money, but wherever we lived it was a place of enchantment. My earliest memory is of a smooth shiny floor in a narrow room. I was a very young child and my siblings and I took turns sliding across it on socks. Sometimes we’d take a towel, lay on it and ride it like a sleigh. It was a typical cleaning day, and after Mother had waxed the long, narrow living room floor, we helped her polish it by sliding across it. It was characteristic of Mother that she made a chore fun for us to share in and made our simple life amusing.

Our home in Monroe, Utah

 Mother made chores entertaining and work engaging, even in my earliest memories. There are photos of us in the front yard of the house in Monroe, Utah where we lived when I was three years old—with a big garden next door, with friends and relatives nearby.  I remember helping in the house and in the garden, but I don’t remember it being work.

 I do remember the house—the big living room, with the kitchen in the other end of the house. Next to the kitchen were stairs leading down to a dark, earthen-floored cellar which terrified me. I remember the rectangular hanging fluorescent light in the stairwell leading down to the fruit cellar—it reeked of a butcher’s store, a laboratory, or some clinical, unsafe inhospitable utilitarian place—not a portion of someone’s house. I’m sure Mother must have told stories about the fruit cellar to keep me out of it and those stories made the cellar such a scary place, just as her games made the living room a fun place.

Our yard with garden, me 2nd from right in front

My parent’s room led off the back of the kitchen, but I have no idea where my older brothers’ room was. My room was a tiny alcove off the living room with sunlight waking me up and mother’s bedtime stories wrapping me up in comfort. I remember setting the table, cleaning up after dinner, taking out trash, making my bed, all the common childhood chores, but they were done with Mother, singing and laughing. She made life fun, telling stories of her working during the depression, racing her sisters to the end of the row of crops they were weeding or picking.

Another memory of the living room in that house is of it darkened, and quiet. My brothers and I had measles and we were kept all together in that room so Mother could nurse us together. The windows were draped to protect our eyes and noise was shut out so it wouldn’t hurt our ears. I can’t remember how long we were sick, but I remember being excited to be included with my brothers instead of being kept apart as a younger sister. I must have not have been too sick, because I recall Mother having a difficult time keeping me still. I didn’t want to lie in bed. I wanted to do things, to play with my toys, but Mother insisted I couldn’t; I must lie still like my brothers.

My oldest brother was especially sick; I know he lost his hearing in one ear. I don’t think my other brother being harmed as much by the measles, but I doubt he was such a trial to mother as I was as an active three-year-old. There was not much you could do for measles in 1947 except isolate them and encourage them to rest, although most were probably so sick they probably just wanted to sleep.

Finally I remember Mother came up with a plan to entertain me; she decided to paint a picture of me. So I tried to hold still while she painted my portrait and told me stories. She only had a piece of particle board to paint on, but she painted me as long as I could keep quiet. Finally we got well and got on with our lives.

Years later I found that old scrap of a painting. It had never been finished, but was just a face painted on part of an uneven board. But as I looked at the toddler in the painting, I realized Mother had not painted me with the measles that I had suffered with. She had refused to scar my face with them, but painted me as she wanted to see me— happy and free from illness. She captured me as an eternally happy child in a home where we shined floors by sliding on them, and listened to stories that took the pain away.

Bryan & I

I thought I was too old to have any other children, and then one night Bryan appeared to me. With my eyes closed, I sensed a tall spirit with light brown hair standing beside me who told me that he was coming to earth to be our son. He seemed very excited and I knew he belonged to us. I was thrilled to have such a special spirit join our family, and knew he would add a lot to our lives. However, I was surprised that he was announcing his arrival. I didn’t realize that he was warning me!

Bryan has always been a tease. He loves to joke about everything, and his wit is priceless. He is especially talented in Improv—Improvisation, which requires creative thinking, clarity in communication, confidence, and humor. He has always used that wit with razor-sharp effect.

Even as a child, Bryan knew how to find my weaknesses and pull my leg. I remember how we’d be sitting in church and he’d walk his fingers up my arm; I’d cringe and whisper to him to stop before I went out of my mind. He’d look at me with pity and do it again. One Sunday after church I told him how sensitive my skin on my arms were and how that action of just tinkling the skin really made my skin crawl. I explained how when I was a child my younger sister had sat beside me in church and done exactly the same thing as he did—just walk her fingers up and done my skin, and I’d about go crazy. I’d start to squirm and wiggle until my parents would get after me. I’d try to tell them it was my sister’s fault for annoying me, but she’d sit there with an innocent smile on her face, glowing like an angel, and I’d end up sent to my room without dinner after church for misbehaving. BIG MISTAKE TO TELL BRYAN. Now he always tries to make my skin crawl by running his fingers up my arms!

Bryan always likes to tease me. Usually when I say something to him, he pretends he has mis-heard me; I say, “Are you on your way to school?” and he’ll say, “No, I’m not a fool.” And it goes on and on until I don’t know what I’ve said. Then he’ll laugh, wink at me and disappear before I can hit him.

Another problem is that I have OCB Obsession Compulsive Behavior—especially about always doing everything early, and to the best of my ability. Whether it is a simple school assignment or a favor for a friend—as soon as I’m asked to do something, I do it. Ask me to notify all the neighbors of an Emergency Preparedness Drill, and I type up a reminder, list all the information, decorate it with graphics, and even put some audio file on it that plays music. Then I’ll deliver it to everyone in the neighborhood by that afternoon with cookies.

Bryan has Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. This means he can’t complete an assignment if his life depended on it; if I sat on him until he did finish it, he would never turn it in—EVER! This means we had 12 years of cooperative frustration! I drove him senseless; he drove me insane. Everything I did to help him irritated him, and everything he did exasperated me. It is a miracle he survived high school and I lived through it. Maybe it was despite each other.    

But now, even while Bryan is attending college, he continues to exasperate me. He is very intelligent, but he does things in his own unique way. For the past three years Bryan has been performing at the Desert Star Theater, which does parody musical theater, and been performing with several improv troupes, as well as attending school full time. Last Christmas he went to Chicago to attend an Improv workshop at Second City, the quintessential improv comedy enterprise. Afterwards, he was tempted to quit college and move out to Chicago and try to make it big in theater there, EXCEPT for the fact that as Ed’s dependent he has a grant that pays for his college tuition. He told me he was sorry that he had that grant as it MADE him HAVE to go to college and get his education. If he didn’t have the grant, he could quit school, go to Chicago and make it big in the theater! I just shook my head! Poor Bryan, what a shame that he HAD to get his education! How sad that we had deprived him of his opportunity to struggle and wait tables while he waited for his big break!

This semester he completes his Associates Degree and is trying to decide where he will go to college to complete his bachelor’s degree. He also had to decide what he will get his bachelor’s degree in. He has maintained that all he wants to do is get a performing arts degree, no matter how difficult it is in that field.  We had suggested getting a bachelor’s degree in education and teaching in high school as a backup while he tried to make it big in the theater, but he ignored us. So as he was looking at and applying for colleges with performing art programs, we didn’t say a word. After the deadline for admissions passed, he came home one night all excited.

“Mom, in our English class tonight we wrote a memory of someone who made a difference in our life and I remembered Mr. Johansen. He was my Jr. High School teacher and the one that introduced me to Improv! I realized, after I wrote that paper, I would really like to be a high school teacher, teaching Creative Writing and Drama.”

I looked at Bryan, and my eyes rolled into the back of my head; I thought I would pass out. Then I stopped and quickly looked at Bryan as he started to walk out the room. He looked back at me and winked!