ABOUT MOM

Dear Friend,

There is a picture of my mother I keep near me these days.? It is her high school graduation picture.? In it she is younger than her grand-daughters, my twins, are today.? Her eyes peering directly at the camera, she smiles into her future.? She is bright.? She is very beautiful.? She has her whole life ahead of her.?? ?

I’ve always loved this photo.? Now it seems even more precious.? Behind the mask of age, beneath the weight of years, her face is as clear and her smile as true then as now. ?

I look at my mom these days and relate to her where she is; this teenager is the person she is inside.? She gives me clues now and again.? ?

“Daddy knows how to handle Marjorie,” she’ll say when she feels her sister particularly trying.? “Daddy will take care of that.”? ?

Daddy, my mom, her mother, and her siblings haven’t lived together since 1946.? Daddy, my grandfather, died in 1970.? “We haven’t been to Aunt Doris’ in so long,” Mom’s been saying recently.? “Of course we don’t need to go to Queens for the summer; now that Mama lets us go out by ourselves while she and Daddy are at work.? But, I’ve been thinking, let’s drive over next week, just for the day.”?

Mama, my grandmother, died in 1976.? Aunt Doris, her sister, died years before.? “I didn’t know that,” Mom tells me, clear as day―a day sixty-four years ago, perhaps, when she was fresh out of high school, newly-enrolled at Hunter College, and for the first time in her life, all grown up.? ?

It’s 2005 now, I remind her.? She checks her watch, comforted by time.? She wears several watches now;?sometimes as many as five or six on her wrists and a more elaborate pocket watch dangling around her neck.???? ?

Mom has always loved clocks and watches―a love cemented, I think, the summer after high school when she was about to take a civil service exam.? It was a big thing back then as America emerged from the Great Depression into World War II.? Civil Rights activist and labor leader A. Philip Randolph had pushed for integration in the war industries.? In government, a civil service exam helped level the racial playing field. ?

Anticipating her milestone exam, one thing stood between Mom and success:? a watch.? My grandmother took her to buy one―a delicate, affordable wristwatch perfect for a seventeen-year-old honors graduate.? The store was operated by the now-legendary Father Divine’s Harlem Peace Mission. Upon learning of the watch’s special significance in the young girl’s life, the saleswoman offered a blessing:? “Don’t worry, Father will see that you pass.”? ?

And pass she did.? On July 6, 1943 Mom became a New York City civil servant by day and a college student by night. She used to mark this anniversary.? Not now.? It is, I think, out of place in her current reality;?as alien as am I, a daughter, to the scheme of things.? ?

I walk into the lobby of her assisted living complex.? She is dressed and waiting for me, adorned in her watches.? “My sister is here,” says Mom, her arms hugging my neck.? “My sister is here,” she beams.? “I tell everyone my sister is my rock.? She’s always there for me.”? ?

More and more these days I am her sister, Rubye.? Sometimes, she will even ask why my husband (my Uncle Bob), is not with me.? I used to remind her of my status as her daughter and only child―obviously more for me, than for her, since she’s quite content with having me for a sister.? ?

“So where are we going today?”? "We’re going to the doctor and then we’re going to have lunch at Cosi.”? “Hooray,” she chants, “Hooray!”? “We’re going for a ride.”? In the thirty-five minute drive from her apartment to her doctor, she will ask the same question at least six times.? ?

For her check-up, her doctor administers the standard cognitive assessments to note the progress of her dementia.? Progress is a word we use now. Where once I would have bristled at the word and its hypocrisy, I am learning what not to hear and when not to flinch.? ?

Can Mom count backwards from 100?? She graciously gives it her best, barely reaching 90.? There are three words he would like her to remember.? He will come back to them later.? When he comes back to collect the words, they are gone from her memory.? He prompts her with a little tease for each word.? In the four years since these tests began, the prompts have increased along with the frequency of her exams.? Once annual, she now sees him every other month.? The prompts are more for her self-esteem than for any hope of accuracy.? ?

Can she draw the face of a clock with the hands at 12:00 and 3:00?? The face of her clock looks more like a fried egg sprawled unevenly across its pan.? The numbers bunch up on one side; the hands outstretch the face.? Will she write a sentence for him?? Any particular sentence, she asks.? Anything she wants.? She takes the pen in her right hand then shifts it to her left. “I’m really a leftie,” she confides.? “They tried to change me, but Daddy put a stop to that.”? She writes her sentence.? Her penmanship once a perfect teacher’s handwriting is now distorted; sloping off the page. ?

The doctor compares the day’s results with those of a year ago.? Her short-term memory has declined dramatically, so too her abilities with the clock.? The change in her handwriting is obvious.? Still, I note something there distinctively Muriel, unmistakably all-Mom.? The sentence she has thought to write this year is identical to the one she wrote a year ago:? “Today is a beautiful day.”? ??

? ? ? ? *??

Last Sunday, I celebrated my family’s four-day feast of anniversaries and birthdays.? Unbelievably, not until November 1, my mother’s actual birthday, did I realize it was her centennial.? First published as a column in 2005, I eulogized her with "About Mom" at her funeral in 2011 on what would have been her 88th?birthday.

My mom, Muriel Landsmark Adams-Tuitt, was a master educator and founding Executive Director of the nation’s first educational park—a partnership of Harvard University School of Education and the New York City Board of Education located at Co-Op City in The Bronx.? ?

In 2010, as a gift for my mother, her sister (my aunt) Marjorie Landsmark-DeLewis, then 90―one of Juilliard’s first African American graduates―taped a solo piano performance of “Widmung” (Schumann/Liszt) and her own composition, after which she said simply: “Muriel, this is for you from your big sister Marjorie.”? Recorded at home with a cassette player perched atop her Steinway grand, the sound quality is poor; the performance stellar.?

To join my family and me in celebrating Mom's centennial and my aunt's artistry, download this family keepsake here. ??