memories of my mother on Mother's Day

Here is the picture I found of my great-grandmother, Dehlia Curtis, and her baby, Johnny.

Jonah and Jill know about their great-grandmother even though they never met her. They think the "great" in great-grandma refers to the quality of her grandmothering rather than her generational relationship to them. They are sure she was a great grandma because their parents remember her with such reverance and love. My son has often accused me of not being loyal to him as compared with my mother who was always on his side no matter what. I was on his side, too, but I felt that included pointing out the error of his ways.
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My mother died shortly after "seeing" a sonogram of her first great-grandchild. I'm sure she couldn't really see that blurry thing especially with her eyes clouded with cataracs, but she told her roommate at the nursing home that she had seen her great-grandson and then she died a few days later.
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My mother suggested Jonah's name since his mother was Jaime and his dad was Jeremy. After her death, that is the name they gave him.
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I remember my mother and my aunt Nellie laughing hysterically because a truck had gone by with a sign that said, "CHICKEN FERT".
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I once gave my mother and my aunt matching robes for Christmas. I remember them sitting around my Aunt Nellie's kitchen table drinking coffee and wearing their robes.
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My mother was a very good cook. She often made calf's liver with onions and gravy which I loved. I was grown before I found out she actually hated liver and never ate it herself.
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My mother loved to cook turkey and dressing and my father loved to eat it but she didn't like it when he pestered her in the kitchen, hugging her from behind and tasting the food before it was done. I always accused her of torturing us because it took so long to cook. Many years later after my father's death, her second husband earned her wrath by making himself a bologna sandwich about 1/2 hour before her elaborate Thanksgiving dinner was ready.
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My mother was always pretty and slim. She didn't drive. She was trying to drive a car on my grandfather's (on my father's side) farm when she ran into a pole and that was it. She never drove again. So she walked everywhere for years taking a bus into the city and walking for blocks in high heels in all kinds of weather.
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They always made fun of my mother because she saw some baby pigs on her first visit to the farm and said, "Oh, what cute little kittens!"
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When my parents lived in North Carolina, my mother cooked fried fish every Friday night. Their neighbor was the brother of either David Brinkley or Chet Huntley (the famous television news team). I can't remember which one he was related to but he loved my mother's fried fish and always came to dinner on that night.
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That reminds me that once I was watching television on April Fool's day and I got the idea of switching the salt and the sugar. I started feeling guilty so I told my mother what I had done. She thought I was joking until she tasted the fried fish and french fries she had made for dinner. She had to throw the whole thing in the trash. I escaped punishment because I had tried to tell her the truth.
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I have never tasted a french fry that is as good as the ones my mother made. Wendy's comes close. My husband says my homemade french fries are pretty good, though. I cut them big like my mother did and roast them in the oven with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. Tasty and much easier than deep frying the way she did.
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I remember trying to make "gravy" on my toy stove when I was little. I sprinkled salt and pepper into the little saucepan full of water. I stirred and stirred but it would not get thick and brown like my mother's gravy.
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When Jaime was born prematurely my mother came to stay for a while. We stopped on my way home from the hospital (Jaime had to stay behind for a while) so mom could buy a pressure cooker and a new rocking chair. The pressure cooker was to make my favorite dinner -- beef stew.
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My mother was a medical record librarian. She was very good at her profession and became a manager and was active in the Medical Record Librarian Association. Her employees loved her. She was a notary as a part of her job and performed three wedding ceremonies at different times. A few of her ex-employees saw her obituary and attended her memorial service. One lady told me my mother had performed her marriage ceremony. I told her that my mom always said she performed three ceremonies but only one took. The lady said, "Well, actually none of them took but she doesn't have to know.
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My mother taught me to love old movies like Casablance, Rebecca, Gone With the Wind and all of Alfred Hichcock's films such as Rear Window and Vertigo. She liked to read movie magazines. She also loved the sweet music from the 40's and 50's -- Perry Como, Gayle Storm and Nat King Cole. I spent my rather lonely summers reading her Book of the Month club selections. I got quite an education from that. When she got older we had a large collection of beloved movies that she would watch over and over just like a young child. I often watched them with her and I still have them.
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I never wanted so much to talk to my mother as when my bachelor brother announced his marriage to a friend of ours from our teenage years. I just wanted to call her up in heaven and say, "GUESS WHAT!" Of course I wish she could know my grandchildren. She would have loved them so much. And I wish she could meet Roger. She always got along with my boyfriends (better than I did sometimes). I feel that somehow she knows. Especially these sweet children.

I love you, Mom. Happy Mother's Day.

Mary's Story, my mother

My great-grandmother, Dehila Curtis, and her baby, Johnny - approximately 1921

Banner Elk, NC Presbyterian Church

I have been inspired to write about my mother by Ruth who wrote a wonderful tribute to her mother at sync-ro-ni-zing. I always wanted this blog to be a family history for my grandchildren to read someday and my mother's story is very special. I also want to mention Willow's fascinating historical photos and stories on her blog Willow Manor. (Blog links are listed to the right.) I regret not having pictures for this blog yet. My mother was slim and pretty all her life. I will scan some pictures in soon.

I did not know my mother's story until I was about 17 and became curious at her lack of relatives and family hisory. She seemed to be completely open and outgoing, but I gradually discovered that she was actually a very private and secretive person. My father, who died at 43, never knew that she was raised in an orphanage. She didn't want anyone to feel sorry for her. The story that emerged was amazing. Mom did have a sister, my aunt Nellie, who was an amazing person herself. Thankfully she was not so secretive and my cousins and I were able to piece the story together in their later years. My cousin Nancy even found a book written by my mother's English teacher about the orphanage, school and hospital which were founded by her grandfather, Edgar Tufts, a presbyterian minister in a very remote part of North Carolina in the 1800's. The book is called A Sacred Flame by Margaret Tufts Neals but more about that later.

My mother was born in Johnson City, Tennessee in 1918. (I didn't even know her birth year for a long time since she was always secretive about her age.) Her mother was Dehlia Curtis. I think my mother's father was Dehlia's second or third husband. Mother had an older sister and a baby brother. The family was very poor. The father, Robert Zell, was a veteran of the Spanish American War and was quite a bit older than Dehlia. One day when my mother was about 5 years old, her sister was 7 or 8 and her baby brother was 3, her mother suddenly fell to the floor and her dress caught fire from the stove. We think she had a heart attack or stroke but the fire is what my mother remembers. My mother was sitting on the porch swing crying when her baby brother came up and said, "I'll give you my pennies if you stop crying."

All three children were taken to a nearby children's home in Banner Elk, NC. The girls were together in the little girls' cottage, but Johnny was separated in the little boys' cottage. He cried for so long that he was finally taken to live with some aunts, but the little girls grew up together at the Grandfather Childrens' Home near Grandfather mountain.

My mother said it was a good childhood. She remembered making maple syrup, churning butter, canning vegetables and doing other chores. People donated canned goods for the home and she said they sometimes didn't know what they were having for supper when the labels came off the cans. There were church services every morning and school. There was always a big Christmas tree and Christmas presents for everyone. She loved making snow ice cream in the winter. While getting butter from the basement one day a mouse bit her, fueling a lifelong terror of rodents.

My mother was a good student, especially reading and spelling, but she grew up being compared to her sister, Nellie, who was an even better student. Since they did have some relatives, the girls were taken once a year down a steep mountain road to Johnson City to shop for clothes. Mom said she always got car sick which I could understand when I made the same trip many years later.

Thank God for Edgar Tufts who came to the mountains as a young Presbyterian ministry student in 1895 and decided to stay. He spent the summer working to build his church out of local stone and sand. He returned the following year as the minister. It is a beautiful church even today on the campus of Lees McRae College which he also founded. He brought his beautiful bride, Bessie Hall Tufts, from a privileged life in Virginia to start his ministry in Banner Elk. Bessie somehow brought her piano and began a music ministry in the mountains, playing for services, weddings and funerals and teaching piano lessons and eventually helping Edgar start a school for girls in their home. Their ministry eventually founded Grace Hospital as well. My mother was in the first class to learn to be a medical record librarian at Lees McRae College and interned at Grace Hospital. She was fortunate to have a (Jr.) College degree and a rewarding career all of her life. My brother and I and all her grandchildren and great grandchildren have benefited from Edgar Tufts' generousity and my mother's hard work all of our lives.

As a child I found a yearbook from Lees McRae but all the comments inside were written to someone called Virginia and not my mother. I learned later that the yearbook had belonged to someone else since she couldn't afford one herself. She was also never able to afford a Phi Beta Kappa pin to which she was entitled. Someone donated a dress for her prom. It was the pink color of rhododendrons and she was delighted to find it on her bed one day. I also found a diary she kept at the time but she destroyed it when she found out I was reading it. I'm so sorry about that.

I have pictures of Dehlia and baby Johnny, my mother, Lees McRae and Banner Elk, NC which I look forward to sharing. If you read this post, thank you for your interest.