Mom

            Sshhh. Mom’s the word, I mean mum’s the word. Don’t any of you mention this column to my wife. GLW (Gorgeous Little Woman) is sick and tired (a cliche that fits) of hearing about my family. However, you are a captive audience, so here goes.

            Mother’s Day is coming, and I think it is time to talk about my mother from the view of her youngest of 14 children. (I am serious about not mentioning this to my wife. Naturally, I love her, but I also like her a lot, and I know who is boss.  She has her point, because I am a loose cannon.)

            Anyway, out of the 14 striplings, eight of us are still alive, four in their 70s (my group) and four in their 80s (the elder stateswomen).  The reason I am writing this is to reveal the part my mother played in helping a family of 14, actually 12 (two boys died before I was born), survive and flourish without any petty jealousies or disagreements. Of course, as the baby of the family, I am always the last to know anything, so there could have been some humdingers I don’t know about, but I doubt it.

            Anyway, the credit for this la la land, if you can believe it, or the credit for this affability - this willingness to treat others like you want to be treated, goes to one person – my mother Monica Caroline Schlitter Lechman.

 She was born Sept. 22, 1898, in Pfeiffer, Kansas, the oldest daughter of Michael and Appalonia Schlitter. Her father was a drunk and used to beat her. Her mother did not say much but “was a saint.” Somehow out of this turmoil came my mother’s sunny disposition which survived intact until she died in 1983 at the age of 84. She had survived four major wars, a great Depression, four sons in the military, many Republican presidents (to her dismay) and bearing 14 children with five miscarriages on the side. (“I don’t remember not being pregnant from 17 to 44,” she told me.)

            Not once during this time, I would swear on a stack of bibles, did she ever think of herself first. It was always of others – whether it would be her husband, her children, her relatives, friends or strangers.

      One famous story occurred about 1930 when a niece, my dad’s sister’s daughter, was thrown out of the house for being pregnant before she was married.  My mother heard her cries coming from a cornfield, found her niece, delivered the baby and cut the umbilical cord. Later, she royally chewed out her sister-in-law, whom, my mother laughed, “was scared to death of me.” Later, she berated her again for not taking her “shameful” daughter to have her hair done like her sisters. My aunt did whatever my mom said because she was not only afraid of her wrath but her disapproval. Everyone respected Monica.

            When I was about 6 and started to help harvest sugar beets in October, she would give us all a shot of Port wine before we went out into the cold Colorado morning. My job was to trail the beet loader, and pick up beets and throw them into the hopper to be loaded onto a truck. Some I could barely lift, but I loved being out there with the bigger kids. I never thought of it as “child labor” even when I was older. We all did what we could to help our family survive. My mother later told me, “I cried when you kids, especially you who was so little, had to go out and work in the fields.”

            When I was about 11 years old, and Thanksgiving was upon us, the “second” family of five (my six older sisters and one brother were all married by the time I was 8) was on hand along with whatever siblings and their families were visiting. That was to be expected. Not to be expected were about five people who showed up (I am still not sure who they are but some kind of relatives) about 20 minutes before dinner – which was about 1 p.m. So guess who asked them to sit down to dinner with us even though they were not only unexpected but uninvited as far as I was concerned? I remember there were two big fat women, and one took one goose (we raised geese, not turkeys)  leg, and the other one took the other. My favorite is dark meat, especially goose legs, and my mother had promised me one. But there was no way she would ever turn anyone away from the table.

            Later on, however, she apologized. “I will never do that again” she promised. And, of course, she didn’t.  She put other people first – except for her children, who were always No. 1, as far as I could tell. (However, that idea would have been sorely put to test if a hungry Pope or even a priest, arrived).  

            When I was a little older, like 10-14, I had to clean the leavings from the roosts in the chicken house. I would hoe them into a wheel barrow or wagon and haul them out into the corral where later they would be picked up with the rest of the manure to fertilize the fields. It was a disgusting job, but not to me, who was praised by my mother “for the nicest job I have ever seen.” I glowed.

            We always had to get up early in the winter and summer to do chores and then farm work. But no matter how early we arose, my mother was already up, especially in the winter, heating the stove in the kitchen with wood and coal and singing, of course.

            She was also the most organized person I ever met. Monday was for washing clothes, Tuesday for ironing, Wednesday for baking, Thursday and Friday for catching up, Saturday for cleaning and Sunday for church and for rest – except for her, of course.

            When one married sister was accused of stealing some silverware from her in-laws which, of course, she would not do, my mother charged over, and gave my sister’s  father-in-law such hell, that everyone quickly apologized to my sister. The old man also said, “I was scared to death of  her.”
            When I was a freshman in high school, she would always come to see my basketball games and give me a dime afterward for a soda. When she saw one of my friends, who she knew came from a poor family – poorer than we was pretty poor – and she gave him a dime, too. He loved my mother.  No matter how pinched we were for money, she also always came up with nine cents for a Saturday double feature and an extra dime for a drink and popcorn.

            When I was older, about 20, I was home in the summer, and she was out cutting flowers in the front yard. Then she took a flower and handed it to a person passing by, wishing them a good day.

            “That was nice, Mom. Who was that?” I asked.

            She smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know. I never saw her before.”

            When she was about 81 and asked for a ride to a nursing home one day, I asked her why.

            She seemed surprised. “Why, I am going to visit the old people.”

            Don Lechman is a former reporter, critic and editor for The Daily Breeze.