My Mennonite Mom...

A Tribute to My Mennonite Mom

As a child my mother, a loving and caring mother, did everything for me.  Naturally, I enjoyed this treatment without fully appreciating what was being done for me and in some ways against me.  I grew up a pleasant enough boy, tall and thin like a weed and a very picky eater because if there was something I didn’t like mom would make me something else. I grew up with options and without realizing it my mom had begun, at an early stage in my life cycle, to cater to me.  I let her do it. I still am, a picky eater although now I eat Indian and Thai dishes, but not olives, or sliced tomatoes. It’s something about texture.

Allow me one a few anecdotes which best illustrate the mother son relationship as I remember it.  My older brother Marvin owned a 55 cc motorcycle and later, I think we shared a 100 cc Yamaha. Human nature being what it is I soon craved something larger, as we all know bigger is better. Ask me later what my brother drives today.  I wanted a 350-cc Honda the next step in the exciting, macho escalation, road safety process. 

My mom being the loving protective Mennonite lady who she was, was emphatically  against my wish to purchase a larger motorcycle.  For once in her life, and to my utter amazement, she spoke out strongly against my potential purchase.  I had never seen this fiercely protective and somewhat angry side of my mom since that day that lives in infamy (not Pearl Harbour) when she quite deliberately picked up the formidable stick that she used to stir her laundry with before the days of automatic washers.  She once threatened to hit me with it, but never ever struck me, ever, even when I deserved it. But, in terms of the bike, she may have threatened me in a veiled sort of way such that if I bought the bike I would certainly have to leave home, what a fearsome specter I faced. 

I clearly knew that a life living on the street, friendless, eating only Kentucky fried chicken would not be a fulfilling one, so I had to weigh my options: bike and a meager, homeless existence, or stay at home, be loved (with the occasional bodily threat), well fed, pampered, but bike-less in a highly mobile world, clearly a moral/transportational dilemma of great proportions.

I bought a beautifully and gloriously seductively smooth riding, well tuned, purring Honda against my mother’s wishes and parked it in front of our house with my two VW bugs the Honda 55 and the Yamaha 100.  In addition to my several vehicles all the yard needed was a gnome, a tire swing and maybe a used washing machine.  Clearly, I was demonstrating elements of white trash in a passive aggressive way and all this to my own mother who made me grilled cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off with a side of tomato soup, sometimes with pickles.  Did I mention I was breast fed.  

Being essentially a moral individual in the broadest sense of the word I lived with that level of guilt to the time of my first accident and then it just got worse.  That first accident, meaning there was a second one, happened in the early Spring shortly after the purchase of what I often and affectionately refer to as my first love.  During the winter months city crews in temperate climates such as that found in Waterloo County pile salt and sand mixtures on the road, ironically for road safety.  However, as the snow melts and sand is left on the road for quite some time before Spring clean up begins.  Enter, stage left, the first bikers of the season eager to be out and experiencing the joy and freedom of that initiating and liberating Spring ride.  I was one of those guys.

I was driving somewhere in the Doon area near the Pioneer Tower.  I was making a left turn when my rear tire lost traction in the remnants of winter sand and I proceeded to fall to the road surface while still making my turn and firmly seated on my bike.  My leg was pinned under the bike and with the momentum of the turn the now horizontal bike began a series of revolutions pivoting on my foot, and ankle.  When all motion finally stopped and I found myself moments later lying on the road in mid intersection I couldn’t help to notice my shredded pant leg, the blood and the grit embedded firmly into my skinless ankle.  It started to hurt.

Oddly, before I did anything I looked around to see if anyone had been witness to my little accident.  Momentarily, I was more concerned with humility and losing face then potential scar tissue and future mutilation.  Slowly and painfully I righted my bike and made a mental note to weep for the useless crash bar and collapsible foot pegs that did almost nothing to protect me.  I drove on with no plan, but with growing pain I realized I had to do something.  Cell phones had not been invented yet so I had no means and no one to call.

Now I envisioned my mom with the wooden paddle and the emerging specter of living on the streets began to loom large.  I did the right thing and drove to Saint Mary’s hospital where I hoped my sister, a nurse, would not see me and report back to mom as to the nature of my injuries.  I was ready to explain that it was a hunting accident, but then there’s the whole issue of Mennonites and guns, because my brother and I did have a small arsenal, but again another story.

I parked my bike and did a mental inventory of the damage, other then a few cosmetic scratches and a broken mirror my baby was going to pull through. It was me I worried about.  As I walked toward the emergency room, I realized I was limping.  Rather badly.

In an efficient manner and with no wait (this was in the 70’s you know, waiting in hospitals, like cell phones had not yet been invented) my rather minor injuries were attended to.  Deep in thought and mindful of sandy road conditions, I drove home to mom. Does that sound pathetic or what? I was 22.

In all of this activity please notice that, I never mentioned my Dad.  Dad was always good with anything I did, in fact he often really had no opinion at all about things in my life.  I never really knew if this meant tacit agreement, loving approval or gross indifference to my life’s many choices.  I could, for example, say, “Dad I want to pimp for Puerto Rican illegal immigrant women on Yonge Street on Saturday, can I borrow the car?”  He probably would have thought that was fine. That is also an unfair exaggeration as he had never, to my knowledge, met a Puerto Rican, but the point was he, for whatever reason was not very engaged in my life.  Whereas, mom was, so what to say to mom when I got home from my fiasco on my bike.  

I opted for subterfuge, deceit and a decidedly clandestine approach. The beauty of my dishonesty is that I actually got away with it for almost 7 seconds.  My mom was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes, her back to me and without turning or even looking at me simply asked, “What’s wrong with your foot?”

What the hell?  How did she know?

She lovingly, but with brisk efficiency ran me a bath.  Dumped in some epsom salts and told me to soak. After all this I recall one poignant comment I made to my mom while soaking in the tub and quietly and soberly reflecting on the events of the day.

“Mom, could you bring me a wash cloth.”

A dish exploded on the kitchen floor.

I admit I did take my mother and the myriad of small and big things she did for me in my life for granted and in that way, as I look at it now, I was a bad son on so many levels.  I know that I wasn’t the perfect son, but was the perfect storm really perfect, which makes no sense at all but its a lame diversion for my guilt.

Now let me tell you about the time when I tried to tell my loving Mennonite mom that I was going to marry an Anglican.

Marty