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!

I Recognized Death's Shadow

My life changed when I was nine years old. I learned about death and suddenly my life was no longer secure, but frightening and uneasy. I realized how easily death could change the rhythms of my life; forever afterwards I waited for death’s scythe to strike. 

Mom & Will 1953

In February of that year—1953—my mother gave birth to my youngest brother, Bill. During her pregnancy she had had strange unsettling, prophetic dreams that the baby would not be able to speak, but quack like a duck. This bothered her and she prayed continually that the baby would be all right. She felt that something was wrong with his mouth and that he wouldn’t be able to speak correctly. One night after she had prayed for weeks that he’d be all right, she suddenly had a feeling of peace come over her and she knew he would be okay. When he was born, he was “tongue-tied” and the doctor had to cut the tissue that constricted his tongue. Afterwards he was fine. My mother felt that her dreams had warned her of difficulties in his development that her prayers had prevented, and that his “tongue-tied” problems were all that were left of these developmental abnormalities. [i]

Beth & Darl in Monticello 1949

Afterwards, my mother started having prophetic “warnings” that something was going to happen to people. She would be doing something and suddenly look down and she would see a coffin; soon after she would hear of someone’s death. Mother had always had a special sense of ESP, but previously it was always to help others. When I was five years old we were living on a dry farm 12 miles out of Monticello, Utah. One day I was playing out in the fields with my older brothers when I cut my foot deeply on a metal corner of a farm cart. Even though Mother was at the house somehow she knew I was hurt, where I was and reached us almost immediately after it happened. She was able to stop the bleeding, and carried me back to the house. She quickly drove us to Monticello to the doctor for stitches, but he was in Colorado for the day, so the nurse wrapped up the deep cut so it looked like I had a club foot; I still have a scar.

Ingeborg & sons

Another time in Monticello my mother’s older sister Ingeborg was dying of breast cancer in Brigham City. Because there was no telephone out on the farm where we lived, Mother was worried we wouldn’t get word of Ingeborg’s death in time to drive to Brigham City. But right after Ingeborg died, she appeared to Mother and told mother that she had died; Mother got up and had everything ready so they could leave immediately when they received the telegram from Monticello later that day.[ii]

However, these “warnings” of death that mother foresaw after Bill’s birth were disturbing. She told me about them, and said that because they served no purpose, but only upset her, she prayed and prayed they would go away.

But a foreshadowing—an unease that something was wrong—never left her. During her pregnancy she had noticed a lump in her breast, but she ignored it. She did not want to consider the implication that it might be cancer because her older sister Ingeborg had died of breast cancer, and her younger sister Ruth had also lost a breast to cancer. Just the thought that she, too, might have the disease was too frightening.

However, as much as she wanted to deny it, in the beginning of the summer she finally gave in to my father’s plea to go to the doctor to see about the lump in her breast. At that time the standard procedure was to do a biopsy and if the biopsy showed cancer, they would do a mastectomy immediately, without bringing the patient out of anesthesia. I hadn’t even known my mother was going in for a biopsy that morning, but that afternoon my father told me she had breast cancer and they were afraid she was going to die.

At first I thought Dad was just exaggerating as he usually did. Aunt Ruth, who was closest to Mother in age and who had lived with us a few times, had had breast cancer, but she was still alive—in fact she was presently serving a mission in Denmark. Yet I also remembered Aunt Ingeborg, who had died of breast cancer a few years earlier. My grandmother Hendrickson, mother’s mother, had just died, but they had said she had heart problems as well as cancer. I couldn’t see why mother had to die right away like Dad was saying.

But late that evening our neighbor Mrs. Mann came by after Dad had gone back to the hospital. She hugged me tightly as she told us how she had been sitting with mother in the hospital after the surgery. She said Mother had suddenly stopped breathing and turned gray. She said Mother had died! Mrs. Mann had panicked, screamed and called for the nurses. Just then one of the general authorities walked in the room. He said he felt that someone in that room needed a blessing and he immediately administered to Mother. Mother gasped and began to breathe just as the nurse came rushing in.

The nurse yelled for help as she said mother was having a problem with the after-effects of the anesthesia because of her asthma. Mrs. Mann said a bunch of nurses and doctors surrounded mom and worked on her and she recovered consciousness. During that time the general authority quietly left. I don’t know who the general authority was who administered to mom was, but Mrs. Mann and others told me later of the veracity of the miracle that brought mother back to life. Mrs. Mann also said the general authority promised Mother that she would have one more child, (and she did, Ann, born three and a half years later, a year before she had a second recurrence of the breast cancer—in the other breast.)[iii]

Mother was in the hospital for several weeks, and we couldn’t visit her. I worried, imagining what had happened to her—what she looked like. What did a person look like who had died? Was her skin still white and ghostly? Why wouldn’t they let us see her? Was she deformed and sick? Would she ever be well again? Would she always be in bed?

When Mom finally came home, Dad was always telling us not to bother her—to stay away from her because she was too weak, too sick. He was always reminding me to work extra hard to help mother, or she would get sicker and die. I would look at Mom as she lay sleeping and wonder if my real mother had died and this frail ghost had taken her place.

Mother never really recovered from that first radical mastectomy. Because the cancer was so large, they had removed a lot of muscle and breast tissue and her chest was concave. For a long time she was so weak and her “spirit” was gone. She laughed and smiled, but she was different. She was very self-conscious of her body and felt she was deformed.

More than that, I think she accepted the realization of her eventual death. She didn’t say it; she didn’t need to. I saw it in her face and in the quiet acceptance of her sorrow and pain.

Mother didn’t die for 11 more years after much more suffering and pain. But at nine years of age, I recognized the spirit of death that had entered my life that summer. I always remembered that time as when I recognized death’s shadow

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[i] “History of Mary Jennie Hendrickson,” by Coleen Hansen Baird, July 1994, page 58

[ii] “History of Mary Jennie Hendrickson,” by Coleen Hansen Baird, July 1994, page 53

[iii] “History of Mary Jennie Hendrickson,” by Coleen Hansen Baird, July 1994, page 55