Alice Remembers Martha
May 8, 2011
A friend sent an e-mail to Alice asking her to describe her mother. This is a copy of the e-mail Alice sent back. She wanted me to correct any typos; there weren’t many. After she sent the e-mail, she told me a few details about some aspects of her memories, and I’ve added them to her original.
So many of us are remembering our mothers today or creating new memories with them (or wishing we could). Martha died forty-eight years ago. Alice is still in awe of her.
There are no words to tell you about my mother. She was one of a kind. I did not appreciate her until I grew up and was a mother myself and had to wonder how she did all she did for me.
She was alone the night my sister LaRue was born, except for Marie who was three years old. There was a blizzard and they were in a farmhouse on the prairie. My father was a mail carrier (at that time) and of course could not get home because of the weather. So she gave birth to LaRue all by herself with my sister Marie on the bed with her.
Another time Mama was alone with Marie and LaRue. They were tiny children. She went out to the well, which was quite a way from the house. It had been snowing. She slipped and fell into the icy water and somehow, after several tries, she got herself out and back to the house. She lost the baby she was carrying.
When I was about six my father got her a new burner for her cooking stove. It was intended to burn coal but he got some kind of gas burner for it and the burner exploded. She picked up the stove and carried it outside so it wouldn’t burn the house down.
Poor Papa! He tried to do something nice. Poor Mama! Her hands and arms and chin were scarred. Also her throat. Just a little and not bad, but it was a terrible thing to happen.
The stove was beautiful. It was blue with chrome and it had a window so we could see the fire. We kept using it. We went back to burning coal. I wonder whatever happened to that stove.
We were SOOO poor and Mama and I went down to the railroad tracks to pick up coal that had fallen from the coal cars and we were so afraid someone was going to see us.
Oh I could go on and on about her. We girls grew up and all worked different hours but there was always a good meal (waiting) for each of us. She took care of Bruce when I worked at the telephone office, and she had roomers and boarders at the time. How did she do all that? I do not know.
I was there in Bismarck visiting her with my daughter Marla. Mattie was out in the yard. Mama and Marla and I were sitting in the living room when Mama’s head went back and I rushed over to her and put my hands on her face and her face was already cold. I called for Mattie to come in and we called a doctor, but she was gone.
She looked so peaceful. I sat and looked at her and thought about the bad times she had gone through in her life. She was seventy-nine years old when she died.
Well I wonder what you will think of me writing all of this, but you wanted to know about her. She was my mother.
Martha
May 8, 2011 at 10:30 am
She’s beautiful, Andrea. I can see some of her gifts to your gene pool.
May 10, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Thanks for that, Bonnie. Much appreciated.
May 8, 2011 at 10:34 am
This is so powerful and moving. I am abashed, really, at hearing of this woman’s travails and life and probable joys, abashed at the ease in which we live today. Thank you for sharing it with us.
May 10, 2011 at 5:13 pm
I agree, Elizabeth. We do live in ease. It astonishes me when I think of all Alice had to do to keep our family going, and only four children–not seven. (And no births with just the help of a three year old.)
May 8, 2011 at 11:14 am
Alice’s tale as told by Alice … the blog now has a co-author !!!
That Martha really WAS one of a kind and so was Alice and so are you.
Throughout your stories (and, now, through Alice’s) I’ve been struck by the mettle of the women who raised children and tended households on the prairie. Thank you for introducing us to this powerful chapter of women’s history.
May 10, 2011 at 5:14 pm
I’m learning so much myself as I go along. Thank you for the encouragement.
May 8, 2011 at 11:34 am
I am moved to tears. Thank you, Andrea. Thank you, Alice. Thank you, Martha, for your spirit that imbues your daughters and their children.
Such a good reminder on Mother’s Day.
May 10, 2011 at 5:16 pm
Thanks, Teresa. I do hope I’ve got at least a few drops of that spirit. Maybe just the vapors will be enough to suffice.
May 8, 2011 at 5:05 pm
Tears here, too. Such love, such active love. Then tired and done. I’m always intrigued by the idea of a hard life, because life is just life, different for each of us, but just life, that’s how it is. I’m not sure that it really feels hard from the inside when being lived, even if it appears hard from outside looking in.
Martha was an adventuress, and I love her too. Plus she is gorgeous. She could have been a Brooke Shields!
Happy Mother’s Day, Alice and Martha and Andrea and all the rest of the mother celebrating people who love this blog.
May 10, 2011 at 5:30 pm
Interesting about hardship, Cheryl. I’ve been thinking about it for several days now because of this post.
I have heard these stories not only from Alice, but from all of her sisters. I believe Martha told each of her daughters about these events not to let them know how great she was but to give them hope that they could come through pretty much anything. Alice certainly took away that message anyway, and I do too.
I laughed about the Brooke Shields comparison. Martha was tiny as a young woman, about a size two or four. Her wedding dress looks as if it might fit over one of Brooke’s legs.
May 8, 2011 at 7:53 pm
Thank you for sharing. Your grandmother sounds like a remarkable woman. I can’t think of many women nowadays who’d give birth at home on the bed, with just a 3 year-old for support. Amazing!
May 10, 2011 at 5:30 pm
Yep. Very small support team, in all ways.
May 8, 2011 at 9:29 pm
So beautiful, Andrea. Alice’s straightforward storytelling style (and yours) feels so right here. Such a moving story needs no embellishment to affect us deeply.
Happy Mother’s Day to Alice!
May 10, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Thank you, Joanne.
May 9, 2011 at 8:00 am
This made me cry. And it made me miss my own mother.
With you as a daughter, I know Alice must have had a wonderful Mother’s Day.
May 10, 2011 at 5:32 pm
I’m sorry, Chris. Mother’s Day can be a hurdle. Father’s Day is coming up and I will be yearning too.
May 9, 2011 at 10:03 am
What a beautiful tribute, Andrea. A celebration of two generations of mothers.
May 10, 2011 at 5:35 pm
Thanks, Katie. I sometimes wish I had at least one daughter to pass these stories on to. But I do have you all, and reading your responses to Martha and Alice is so fulfilling.
May 9, 2011 at 6:22 pm
Such a touching gift for mother’s day, Andrea! Thank you. You come from a formidable lineage.
May 10, 2011 at 5:36 pm
Formidable is right, Dana. Martha and Alice are a tough act to follow.
May 10, 2011 at 1:52 pm
When I was little I thought my grandma was an old woman who made us hot dogs to eat while we watched Bozo the Clown. Year later I learned that she, like Martha, had babies alone on the prairie while her husband was away – what strong women we come from!
May 10, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Oh, I know, Kerry. Bozo had nothing on all those women tucked away in all those kitchens baking and cooking, and yet Bozo seemed so important!
But at least some of us get to find out, sooner or later, who our grandmothers really were and are. Lucky us.
May 30, 2011 at 3:44 pm
[...] poor old Mr. Fickle is failing,” she said. Failing is a word, she explained, that her mother, Martha, used about elderly people who were not in any obvious way ill but were running out of [...]
October 2, 2011 at 5:59 pm
[...] the dark. Traffic was light. It had stopped raining. Alice began remembering the day her mother, Martha, had died. “LaRue thought Mama had been in pain, but I was there with her. LaRue wasn’t [...]