I Learned Mothering from Them: Part One

This week I'm writing about women in my life who have helped shape me into who I am today. On Friday, I invite you to join me in a little Mother's Day writing challenge. It seems that most women detest Mother's Day because of the guilt it conjures. We are all too hard on ourselves as women. We have faults, but we also have strengths. So:
What is one weakness you have when it comes to mothering (only one)? And now that you've identified it, how are you going to improve?
What is one of your strengths? Feel free to brag yourself up, either seriously or with humor.
On Friday, I will attempt a link post (we'll see if I'm that technically adept or not), so all can be edified thereby. Think about it. You have time. I look forward to Friday!

Thaola Humphrey Tucker

In June 1989, I became Jennifer Tucker Denton.
In January 1990, I stepped into my Grandma Tucker’s life.

I don’t remember when her dementia began, or even when it became noticeable. She couldn’t carry on a conversation for long without repeating herself. She would leave her “Meals on Wheels” on the front step or feed it to stray cats. She lost weight and could no longer care for herself. That’s when her five sons made the hardest decision children make—it was time for a rest home. The complication in this decision was what to do with her home, since its equity would be financing her care. Luckily for all concerned, Brad and I were attending BYU, just down the hill from her home in Orem, and we would willingly take care of the house and yard, pay the utilities and taxes, then we’d see what would happen next.

I was thrilled to be out of apartment living and be in a real house. Not just any house. This was the house that my grandparents had bought when they were first married in 1940. This place housed memories, and I was about to become part of them.

All of Grandma’s stuff had been moved into a basement corner, out of the way. And it would call to me. I didn’t want to cross some sacred privacy boundary, but I wanted to know Grandma, and her things would be able to tell me stories she no longer could. One day when I really had nothing better to do, I opened the lid of her cedar chest, feeling simultaneously voyeur and detective.

I had always known certain facts about Grandma’s life. She had given birth to six children—five sons and a daughter, Karen, who died at nine months of age from pneumonia. My Grandpa was killed in a car accident in June of 1959 when my dad was twelve, and she had never remarried. It was fact to me, but it never seemed real until I lifted that lid. I found treasures immeasurable: Her wedding dress that fitted me perfectly (why couldn’t I have found it eight months earlier? I would have been married in it?). A lone pink baby rattle, split down the seams from the effects age with the beans precariously balanced inside. Beside the rattle were two sweet baby dresses, one white and one pink, tucked safely inside the chest, preserved perhaps for a second daughter that never came. Numerous photos of family times with boys and Dad and Mom. Then, newspaper articles detailing a tragic car accident and a posthumous Eagle Scout award. Suddenly, her life story came alive to me. Suddenly, it was real, not fact--REAL. And I learned so much about her from its contents and living within the walls of her house—Thaola Humphrey Tucker was beautiful. She was talented. But most of all, she was resilient and strong. Strong enough to raise five rowdy, hard boys on her own, with help from stalwart neighbors and devoted uncles. Strong in her faith and in her resolve to play the hand dealt to her with grace.

Grandma T died five days after my own precious Tucker Christian was born--May 22, 1992. Brad had been accepted to law school in Chicago so we were preparing to leave Utah, and the profit from the sale of the family home were now needed to fund the last few years of her care. Coincidental? I’ve never thought so.

The house was sold, later remodeled, then demolished and replaced with condominiums. Gone is the cherry tree that generations of Tuckers raided every July until our stomachs ached. Gone are the white and purple lilac bushes just outside the back door. Gone are the race tracks carved in the dirt under the house, where her boys would play cars for hours. But I won’t ever forget lessons I learned while we lived there.

In 2002 I lost my own precious daughter. I too have a trunk protecting memories of unrealized dreams. But now I look to her as an example of endurance—endurance with a smile. And if she could do it, so could I.

Some of her earthly possessions will stay with me forever—two dressers, a small end table, and a set of china cups and saucers we rescued from the trash.

And I like to think that some of her lives on in me:

Some of her resolve to make the best of what life hands out
Some of her dedication to family and God.
And her knowledge that life is temporary, but families are forever.

Thanks, Grandma.