Recollections of writer’s mother: Positive and negative

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“Holy Mother hear my cry. I need a hand to hold, safe within your arms.” Song lyrics from “Holy Mother”

My mother, Mary Ann Scherer, was born November 18, 1918 and died May 3, 2008. Her mother, Josephine, died of the influenza 1918 epidemic and my mother, Mary, was raised by her grandmother, her father, and her nine older brothers and sisters.

She was graduated from Manuel High School in Peoria June 10, 1936, which was the same day her father, Florentine, passed this life. She met Ray Fredell on a neighbor’s porch. They eloped to Davenport, Iowa. My sister, Patty, and brother, Ray, and I were born in the following six years.

Photo from 1942 of Jo Fredell Higgins’ mother, Mary Ann Scherer, taken by Uncle Emmett. The photo was carried in my father’s wallet until his death in 1987.

I have decided to make this as positive an article about my mother as I could. However, she had a highly-critical nature, a fierce temper, and very little maternal instinct.

But, I will move along to the positive aspects of her personality and let the difficult nature of my relationship with her remain in the abyss of time. As a child, she terrified me and I found solace, love, and comfort in my father’s arms and in Aunt Helen’s and Uncle Emmett’s where my name was safe in their mouths.

Mother was a strict disciplinarian and her word was law. Don’t even try to get past her stern rules because you would only end up crying in the bedroom darkness. She had to have complete control, even to the point of screaming at me because she did not like the way I hung the laundry. Told me to hang it properly. Didn’t know there were rules about how to hang sheets and towels!

Mother was immaculately-clean about her person and wore the latest fashion with shoes, hat, gloves, all matching. She was highly-organized and efficient. There was not a lazy bone in her body. Her every I was dotted and every T was crossed. She used correct English and made certain that I did, too. When I would call home as a teen, I would say, “This is me” because I knew she would correct me with “It is I” before she even said hello.

Mother went to work at Caterpillar, Inc. as a stenographer when I was four-years old. I felt abandoned and cried for a week at the Neighborhood House in Peoria. No one knew when I would stop crying and Mother said she might not be able to keep the job if I didn’t stop crying. Well, my four-year-old soul must have given up and buried the hurt and loss inside.

As adults we have to take full responsibility for our lives and actions and decisions. We no longer can blame a parent, or a toxic boss, or an awful neighbor, for our difficulties. We can choose to look on the bright side. I have asked myself through the years if I would have been better off as an orphan, which I felt anyway, or with her as a mother. I still have yet to answer that question.

Mother could be a good cook when she choose to do so. She was a working woman, not a homemaker. She couldn’t be bothered with anything that didn’t bring her money. Money meant power and power was everything to her. Her height was 5-2 and her weight was 95 pounds nearly all her life. At her death she weighed 78 pounds. She did not smoke and would enjoy a cocktail only on special occasions.

As the years passed, she became more mellow and more loving. She admitted her weaknesses, even as she hoped for her children’s forgiveness. She said that she thought her children loved Aunt Helen more than we loved her, and she was right about it. Two Peoria sisters who were so very different, one a loving kindness and one who was not.

This attempt to describe my mother may fall short, but it is the best description I can offer of a complicated, neurotic, fastidious, intelligent, woman. I remember the pleasant moments with her and try to forget all the other. It is a lifelong journey, isn’t it? We try to reconcile what we learned as children counterpoint to what we have come to accept as adults.

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