LeftExchange
Listen, can you hear that echo
- Steve Hopkins
........We were poor when I hit my teens. Imagine launching into the most exciting part of ones young life and being on the bottom side. It was something to rail against. So the 60’s seemed right to me. Lots of protest. Lots of new causes. Lots of new ideas. I was lost wonderfully and mercifully in the chaos of the times. Dad wasn’t around.
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........Through all of that my mother worked hard to make sure I was never left out of anything for any reason. I had new clothes and shoes and sneakers. I had a drum set and a stereo system. I had food on the table and lunch at school everyday. A lot of times those clothes were the specials from the Spiegel catalog and sometimes my lunch was peanut butter on Ritz crackers. But I was dressed nice and never hungry. I don’t know exactly how she did it. I think she must have borrowed from relatives and friends. I know a lot of people cared that we were ok and that she could make ends meet. I also know that she’s a proud woman who must have suffered tremendously to do what she did.
........Mom went back to college and got her degree in education. Got a job teaching and things got progressively better. Until, my younger brother came down with cancer. His right leg was removed at about mid thigh. Mom, and all the rest of us were pretty devastated. She never cried in front of any of us. But I heard her at night. I felt helpless. She worked harder.
........Sometimes I’d go to a dance at the high school on Friday night. Mom would give me her last quarter for the bus home. I’d walk to the dance and bum enough dimes to get in and use the quarter on the last bus home around 11:30.
........I was in Boy Scouts since I was about nine years old. Back then, the scouts were really active in everything. We went camping all the time. Learned a lot of survival and woodsman skills. One weekend campout I was really sick, but I stuck it out because I was a patrol leader and felt it was important. By the time I got home that Sunday I was in really bad shape. I lay down for about an hour and then asked Mom to take me to the hospital. We didn’t have a car so Mom called a cab. On the ride to the hospital as I was about to pass out I told Mom I was going to die. Next thing I knew I was rolling into surgery for a burst appendix. It was a close call.
........Sometimes when Mom felt particularly loaded she’d send me over to the Butchers shop on the corner and I’d buy Rib steaks for dinner. Those were meals we really looked forward to.
........I learned to cook late at night. I’d wake up and be starving as teens are apt to do and would go to the kitchen and cook what ever I could find that I thought I could manage. My favorites were boiled potatoes and hot dogs if we had any. I mention this, because one night Mom, (who always slept on the couch, so that we could all have our own bedrooms) woke up to the sounds of someone she thought was me, in the kitchen. Not unusual, but awful noisy that night. She yelled at me and finally got up to give me “what for”. When she charged into the kitchen she was shocked to find a total stranger cleaning out the fridge. Mom, being who she is, grabbed the man by the back of the neck and launched him out the back door. At the time I was the oldest at home and she came and woke me up, told me what had happened and we kept watch the rest of the night. Why didn’t we think of calling the police? I have no idea, but the thought never even entered my mind. In the morning we could see the footprints in the snow coming into the house but still none leading away, so we knew he was still in the house. I was assigned to go into the cellar and flush the culprit out. Turned out to be a homeless gent who had previously been using the empty apartment as a stopping place when he was in town. He didn’t realize that it had been occupied since his last visit. So I ushered him out. Of course, Mom sent him along with some sandwiches.
........I had a fight with a neighborhood boy one day (not unusual for me) and his very much larger brother came after me. He pulled up in his car as I was sitting on my bike talking to a friend. He was in my face really quick and walloped me good. Knowing when I couldn’t win, I went running for the house with him in pursuit and we both burst through the back door (also not very unusual) almost simultaneously. Mom was cooking dinner and as I flew by with the brother close behind she reached out and grabbed him, pinning him to the refrigerator. She had a hold of him so tight he was paralyzed. She proceeded to show him the error of his ways and before he left he was in tears and full of apologies. Then unfortunately she turned on me. When Mom came at you, the instinctive response was to put your arms out to try to keep her away. She lived for that moment. She has possibly the most powerful hands of anyone alive and would grab your hand in an instant and bend it back till you were on the floor. There you would stay until you had heard every word she had to say and repeated it back to her with full understanding.
........One winter, Mom bought me a coat from the Spiegel catalog. It was corduroy, had a big furry collar and was three quarter length. It was so un-cool. It was what I had to wear and I hated it. I hated it until the winter got going full bore and turned into one of the worst we’d had in many years. I hated it until I was standing downtown in a blizzard waiting for a bus that was late and watching all the cool kids freeze their butts off. I hated it until I felt the warm furry lined collar on my neck and the furry lined pockets keeping my hands cozy. Then I loved that coat. And I thank Mom, who made sure I had a warm winter coat no matter what it cost her.