A Letter to Her Mother by Rev. Lillie Mae Henley
Mother, it has been fifteen years since you died. I read a poem by Lucille Clifton the other day. She was twenty-three when her mother died. I guess it doesn’t matter when our mother dies, we forever feel this way.
February 13, 1980
twenty-one years of my life you have been
the lost color in my eye. My secret blindness,
all my seeing turned grey with your going.
mother, I have worn your name like a shield.
it has torn but protected me all these years,
now even your absence comes of age.
i put on a dress called woman for this day
but I am not grown away from you
whatever I say.
I never doubted that you loved me. But, for most of my life, I wondered how you could love me. I knew you loved me because you made me tuna sandwiches for my school lunch as often as you could; if it had been left up to me, I would have had them every day. Oh, how boring for you. I once met a man who said he had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day of his school life. He said, “My mother made them for me every day, until high school. Then she said, ‘I’ve had it, I’m not making another one.’ So, then every day in high school I made my own lunch, peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
I suppose tuna fish sandwiches are slightly more bothersome to make than peanut butter and jelly. Especially, since you made them so well, celery, chopped dill pickles, boiled eggs, sometimes cheese, sometimes apple, sometimes pecans. I know I said thank you then, mother for making them, because you and daddy taught us to be polite and say thank you when people did something for us. You especially said, thank your mother and father for things, it makes them feel good. So we all did.
I wish I could thank you one more time.
You used to say I was the “crazy” one in the family. I would forget things, loose stuff, and sometimes washed clothes that should have been sent to the dry cleaners. Oh, I am sure I drove you crazy. You said, I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached;” and perhaps you were right. The only thing I have never forgotten is to bring my sermon to church on Sunday, and I hope I never do. Why, I’d have to have a forum that Sunday, and get everyone to share stories. Huh, that might not be a bad idea.
Today, after this letter, I am going to ask everyone, who is willing, to share a story of their mother, and if they do, they get a rose to take home. Then, after we share these stories, we will have a chocolate candy communion--honoring our mothers.
Roses, daddy made sure we had a dozen roses for you every Mother’s Day. We were poor people, daddy was a refinery worker, and you stayed home with us when we were young. How did he afford it? And candy—you always got a box of Whitman’s Sampler. And you wouldn’t let us have any until you had eaten all your favorites. That was fair, I thought, it was your mother’s day present.
And after all of us were grown and gone, dad used to buy you jewelry for every special occasion. He would ask “us girls” to go with him, and we would pick out the most expensive thing he could afford. It was nice seeing you two in retirement.
Yes, I know you and dad bought a very nice trailer home for you, and moved it less than two miles from our family home. You were right. It really was for the best. And we could see you and dad become closer. He came courting every day. Now, maybe that was because he was hungry, and wanted a decent meal, but I don’t believe that.
I know you were in the last generation of women who were expected to stay home, subjugate yourself to your husband, and live without dreams. His retirement freed you more than his death freed you.
I know that during the war, you and many women of your generation found yourselves well-employed, making your own money, and feeling pretty good about yourselves. Advertising and public relations firms convinced you that you had to support the war and work while your husbands and sons were away. When the war was over, the same advertising and public relations firms convinced you that you had to give up work, stay home, and use all the new, modern appliances that were being produced.
Mother, the reason I know the effect of our culture on you and your relationship with, not only our dad, but us—your children—is because of something you said to me when you were seventy-five years old, just two years before you died. You were spending a few weeks with me and I took you to the Sunday morning women’s group at the First Unitarian Church in Houston. That day, there was a woman physician who told us “How the Aids Virus Works.” You sat there the whole time, fascinated.
When we left, walking to the car, you said, “Lillie Mae, my life would have been so different if I had had half of the information you young women have today!”
I felt as though I had given you a gift that day. Not so much could I make up for the cultural traditions that trapped you in a prescribed life, but a gift of hope, hope for all young women who would grow up to become mothers and anything else they wanted to be.
I never doubted your love, but I often wondered how you could love me. I judged you, a lot, sometimes I even thought you the “Bad Mother”
The bad mother wakes from dreams
of imperfection trying to be perfection.
All night she’s engineered a train
too heavy with supplies
to the interior. She fails. [Susan Griffin]
I, wanted you to be perfect, like most daughters of my generation who wanted their mothers to be perfect. Of course, you weren’t. It is a phenomenon that is common about your generation’s daughters. I didn’t make this up, Alice Walker and Barbara Kingsolver, to name only two women, who have written about this phenomenon. It is in poetry and novels and academic studies.
Being of the first generation of birth control pills, women’s liberation, and southern women with a college degree that was more important than an M. R. S. degree, I did not realize until dad died how oppressed you were. You gave me a clue though,
Comment to Congregation: Do you remember or know Roman Meal bread? It was introduced in our local grocery stores when I was a young teen. My dad, who was a health fanatic, He told mother that it was the best bread on the market and that we had to start eating it. He insisted there were no options for bread except Roman Meal.
The clue… When we were in the family limousine on the way home from dad’s funeral—that’s the way you do it in our family—you had the limo driver stop at the seven-eleven convenience store close to the house and you asked me to go in and buy you a loaf of white bread. A loaf of white bread. Puzzled, I did, and when I came out with it and gave it to you, you said, with utmost joy, “Oh, deeeelicious white bread, I’ll never have to eat another slice of Roman Meal bread again!”
I never doubted that you loved me, I only wondered how, I was so very smart-mouthed, but I managed to talk back as I was walking away and you managed to ignore me. Until I was fifteen…that is not a pulpit story!
Oh I never did anything really “ bad,” I was a very compliant daughter, but you never knew that when you trusted me with the car a year before I got my driver’s license and told me not to go outside the city limits, I did. I would driver across the big Rainbow Bridge, the tallest bridge in the South at that time, with my girlfriends and make the drag in Orange County, thirty-five miles from home.
Sometimes, my friends and I would drive 55 miles to the beach, and we would go swimming in the Gulf. We sure were lucky. Not one time did any of us get stung by a jelly fish, which usually happened to me when we would take a family vacation to the beach. When I graduated, mother, you and daddy thought I was old enough to drive down to the beach alone, with my girlfriends and have a senior trip all by ourselves. I never told you I had been there many times in the car.
As I age, I become more like you, and I will not swear in this pulpit, but I will tell those here younger than me, which is most of you, that no matter how hard you fight it, you will in your “growing-older” years of your life find yourself very similar to your mother and father.
For example, I have always tried to eat “healthy,” just as my father taught us. But you know what they say, Krispy Kreme donuts, chocolate fudge covered brownies, Dr. Pepper, Cheerwine—that is a soft drink you can only buy in the South—but can now order it online. …as they say, these foods are not so healthy, so I have given them up. But, mother, getting on with my confession of how I am more similar to you than I care to admit, I eat cereal for breakfast every day. Good cereal, hearty and whole grain, with Greek yogurt—which I know you would never try—and soy milk—which I know you would never try. I remember all those times, all of us offspring would say, “Mother, you can’t live on cereal; it can’t be that good for you.” When you died, Jean [my youngest sister] and I swore you moved in to Blanche’s body – my older sister – and now that she’s gone – I am wonder if you’ve moved in to mine?
Considering you smoked most of your life, rarely exercised, and played Bingo in every Bingo Hall you could drive to within two hours, you made it to seventy-seven, almost seven-eight. We were lucky to have you that long.
The day you said, “Lillie Mae, my life would have been so different if I had had half of the information you young women have today!” A light came on. It was an epiphany. I realized that you loved me, you loved us all despite your pain and despite what Life had served you.
You loved me because I was the crazy one, the one who dared to jump out of the neighbor’s two-story garage just to see what would happen. You loved me despite my brave face and sad inner being. I was sad because Life had made you sad, and you never had the strength to change anything. But you taught me to. You said two things that have helped me live the life I’ve lived, for the better, I know. You said, “Lillie Mae, always keep putting one foot in front of the other, no matter what Life gives you.” And then you told me all my life to “Follow my heart.”
When I read Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” I knew what you had taught me. It was my third year in seminary and I was doing my internship in Raleigh, NC, a place you had always thought was so pretty.
And the moment I read her poem, I knew that I had done what Oliver said we all must do, and what you had taught me,
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began, ...
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
…
It was already late
...
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
…
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly recognized
as your own,
that kept you company
…
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Your own--that is what you did mother, and that is what you taught me.
Mother you loved me with hope. Hope in your heart that my life would be better for me, that all women’s lives would be better than your generation’s lives. You died on the first Sunday in September 1993 and you were not dead two weeks when a voice within said, “Are you going to die too and not answer your call to the ministry?”
Thank you mother for all my life.
[To the Congregation]
Today I see so many great and wonderful young women reared by women of the generation after you. They are friends with their mothers. They know what their mothers are like as individuals, as people. We never had that opportunity, and I know we were both less for it. I admire the mothers of today, I admire the young women who know who they are and what they want in life. I am grateful for the information they have.
Mother’s day is a time when all mothers deserve flowers and candy. It doesn’t happen everywhere in the world, and it doesn’t happen in every home where there is a mother. So, we, all of us here today, need to help young girls and young boys grow up healthy and secure. We need to do whatever we can to ensure that our families of the future will have the healthy, and safety, and relationships they need. We need to help them have families in which they can honor their mothers. Mothers who have choices, and lives that allow them to be all they can be, in love and gratitude.
Reading I
The Bad Mother by Susan Griffin
The bad mother wakes from dreams
of imperfection trying to be perfection.
All night she’s engineered a train
too heavy with supplies
to the interior. She fails.
The child she loves
has taken on bad habits, cigarettes
maybe even drugs. She
recognizes lies. You don’t
fool me, she wants to say,
the bad mother, ready to play
and win.
This lamb who’s gone—
this infant she is
pinioned to—does not listen,
she drives with all her magic down a
different route to darkness where
all life begins.
Reading II
The Journey by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations—
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly recognized
as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.