The Meaning of It All
by ANN ULRICH MILLER
© 2013 (all rights reserved)
An article from the April 2013 issue of THE STAR BEACON.
My Remarkable Mom
On March 13, 2013, around midnight, my mother passed
from this world. She had suffered for many years with Alzheimers and was in a
special care home in Stoughton, Wisconsin.
Close by were
three of my siblings, who visited her from time to time. Mom had forgotten who I
was when I last visited her, in July 2010. But it didn’t matter. She was still
my mother.
She is finally at peace at age 92, and after this issue of The Star Beacon
has been printed and mailed out on the first of April, I will travel to
Madison for the gathering of my family for our mother’s funeral.
Mom, whose name
was Marion Schumacher, was remarkable in many ways. She raised six kids and was
a stay-at-home mom who held many interests and was talented in several ways. She
was musical (played violin, piano and trumpet) and had been a dancer in her
youth.
She met my dad,
Marv Schumacher, when she became his dance instructor at Kehl’s School of Dance
in Madison in the early 1940s. Although they weren’t supposed to fraternize in
those days, my two parents began dating each other. Then the Japanese bombed
Pearl Harbor and, just after my dad turned 21, he signed up with the Marine
Corps as our country entered World War II.
My mother went to
Washington, DC to work as a secretary, doing her part to help the war effort. In
August 1943 she took a train all the way from Washington to San Diego, where she
met my dad, and they got married on the afternoon of Friday, the 13th. My mom’s
wedding dress was the black traveling dress she had worn on the train. It is
remarkable that my parents were married on Friday the 13th -- Mom in a black
dress -- and their marriage lasted for almost 56 years, when Dad passed away
from a stroke in June 1999.
After the war, and
the birth of my oldest brother Jon in San Diego, my parents moved back to
Wisconsin and had their second son, my brother Jim. Then the family moved into
our house in Monona, where I lived during my entire childhood. I was the first
girl and my mom always said she cried when I was born because she was so
thankful to have a little girl. Years after that, I was followed by another
brother and two baby sisters.
We had a secure,
comfortable home life. With six kids, three bedrooms and only one bathroom, you
can understand that sometimes things were a little hectic. Dad had a temper and
yelled at us a lot, to keep us in line. Mom, on the other hand, had the best
disposition and was unusually calm most of the time. She loved to sew and she
loved to socialize. Dad got involved in local politics and was mayor of our city
when I graduated from high school. We didn’t have a lot of money for luxuries
(such as a color TV), but we always had food on the table and clothes to wear,
lots of music playing, and many good friends and neighbors.
As a teenager I
loved animals. I knew that my mother was terrified of mice. She didn’t like
rodents -- period. Yet when I was 13 years old, I brought home (determined and
unannounced) a hamster and a cage. To my surprise, she let me keep it! I soon
had two hamsters, and then more… and she even put up with me the day I rode the
Greyhound bus back from East Lansing, Michigan over spring break -- after
spending Easter with my boyfriend -- with a baby duck in a box! Because I lived
in the dorm at Whitewater State University, no pets were allowed. My parents
agreed to keep the duck. Clara, as she was named, was a family pet for several
years. When I think of what my mom put up with me, my heart swells.
My mom became a
grandma when she was 45. I was 13 years old. My youngest sister, Alice, was an aunt when she
was only 5! All in all, Mom was grandma to 15 and great-grandma to 15 more.
She enjoyed having “things.” I don’t
think any of us realized how much she treasured the little material things in
her life. Sometimes when someone has grown up during the Depression, they have
had to do without.
So to compensate,
she had collections of all kinds of “things.” Yet she was never stingy. Mom
always had a hidden “gift” wrapped up that she would go and dig out of a closet
somewhere at Christmas, in case someone unexpected showed up on Christmas
morning. We may have been at the low end of prosperity for a middle class
family, but I remember all of the exhilarating Christmases to which we’d wake up
and find a mountain of presents under the tree. My parents never failed us.
My mom believed in
UFOs. When I was 13 and had my sighting on April 30, 1966, of an entity at the
front door of our home in Monona, I was talking to my mother on the telephone.
She never got mad at me or tried to talk me out of what I had insisted was
there. She admitted she’d seen a couple of UFOs herself… and so had Dad.
They allowed me to
explore the phenomenon. They never pooh-poohed my developing interest in
metaphysics. We were a spiritual family that attended regular church and Sunday
school, yet my parents were open-minded and they let me be myself. They let me
explore and they let me expand my imagination. For that I am eternally grateful
that I chose the parents I did.
Mom is with Dad
now. He’s waited a long time for her. When we get together this week for the
memorial in Monona, Wisconsin, all of us will cherish the memories and rehash
the good times, the funny episodes, and pass the heart-warming stories down to
our kids and our grandkids. How fortunate we are when we have families that love
us and parents who left an impression. I would only hope that one day my progeny
will look back and smile for the same reasons.
Photo
by Doug Elmore
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