Lois Myer-Boyer |
Mother’s Day 1998 |
| Lately I have noticed my
mother’s hands.... They have somehow become my hands. Because it was Mother’s day I was thinking .... about my mother, me as a mother and my daughters both natural and step and the mothers the have become. Then my thoughts returned to these hands.... hands that remind me of the times I watched those hands of my mother’s that seem to be mine now. |
| As a child watching her trying to comfort my brother who
seemed to cry a lot and was never to be normal due to the cerebral palsy he was born with.
This problem made her sad and I remember her hands with handkerchiefs as she tried to wipe
tears away and not show that she had been crying.... but I knew. When she first tried to earn money after Billy was born and the bills were piling up she decided to design extra large cookie cutters that she convinced my father he could make. They were made out of strips of tin cans, bent to the correct shapes to allow her to cut the special shapes she had drawn and designed. Then she baked and baked and each was carefully iced with royal icing and then each was carefully hand painted with tiny fine brushes and food colorings. She sold these through the PTA for what was then a lot of money for each individually decorated and wrapped cookie. I can see the hands still painting the cookies, with me wanting to taste them and being told they had to be saved for selling. |
| Next when I must have been around five or six, she was still trying to help with the finances. She felt she needed to be at home with me and needed to help with the finances in a time when women did not work outside the home when they had children and it was hard to deal with the two needs. She was tired and became stressed nearing the edge of a nervous breakdown before she realized Billy, my brother, truly needed to be placed in another home with people that could deal with the constant care needs his condition brought about. Her search for a good home to place him had shown her there was a real need for help in this process. She would have to travel in order to help place children like my brother who's parents could no longer care for them and needed help with the process. When she was able to place children at Mrs.Lightower’s with Billy she helped with the cost of his care and made a difference in the family finances. |
| I remember over the years Momma sitting and holding drawing pencils while she sketched things that caught her interest, me, plants that she wanted to be able to look up in the library when she got time, people with interesting costumes or expressions, designs she saw in nature that she thought she might incorporate in future art projects. |
| I remember when I realized that
momma’s hands were growing older. I am not sure it was a one time oh my look.... I
watched her as she drove the family car, clutching the wheel and concentrating so as to
drive safely and with accuracy. I watched as she taught me how to sew as a new teenager who had to budget my money and wanted to make it go farther by sewing my own clothes. I watched her as she worked with my father to begin their art advertising business, The Boyer’s. She would draw the illustrations needed for various jobs they were doing. She also did the writing of copy that was needed, typing away on the then fairly up to date typewriter. She would love a computer and all the things one can do with it! |
| I remember Momma’s engagement ring. I don’t remember why or quite when she had her mother’s diamond set into her engagement ring.... or where her old diamond went to. I know that this diamond is now in my engagement ring and so when I look at my ring now I am reminded of my mother and my grandmother. Strange how a diamond can tie generations together. I also have a diamond from my father’s father that he used as collateral for holding large orders of tobacco for his Tobacco store in New Haven Connecticut. |
| Earlier today I made a list of times I remembered Momma’s hands.....now I can’t find the list....this memory thing oh well. |
| I can see Momma’s hands making
puppets. When I was a young and in Girl Scouts she taught us how to make puppets, then
later she did puppet making with my girls when they were young and wanted to have puppet
shows out on our covered patio. She even helped my father to build a wooden puppet stage
that the girls could use and would work well over the years. Years later she spent weeks making table center pieces of figures in poses with costumes for the Camera club Annual dinner. They were really good and she so enjoyed fussing over the process. I find myself doing things in these quests to do something... sometimes crazy things but something that drives me to think about it all and then begin to gather the needed supplies, a quest in itself, and then the actual doing of the project till completion..... |
| I can remember Momma cooking....regular cooking was not
momma’s ‘thing’ but gourmet picturesque cooking that required gathering of
weird ingredients, strange recipes that one slaved over for lots of time and then served
at gatherings of people who would appreciate the whole process was her real love. I can see her hands arranging these special edibles on trays or plates chosen to show the food off to its best advantage. I confess I rarely liked the taste of many of these specialties but many others did like them and approved of them and momma’s fancy cooking skills. |
| Well I have been trying to get use to having Moms’s hands now living on the ends of my arms...... next I am going to try and get use to my hair brush ....which seems to have only white and grey hairs when I go to comb out the extra hairs....weird. |
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