There she is--Miss Carolyn, new mother of the first grandchild on both sides of the family. And there I am, all hair and bright eyes, bushy tail carefully concealed in a blanket. I posted this picture on Facebook and was astonished at how many people swore I looked just like my mother. The joke in our family is how much of a carbon copy of my Daddy I happen to be, so hearing from a fairly diverse group that I take after Mama was a surprise.
My mother never finished college--she left after two years at Queens to marry Daddy. Two years later I arrived, followed by a sister and a brother. She stayed at home with us. Despite her lack of degree, she managed to teach us all so much. Once Mama gets interested in something, look out. She can relate the provenance of every antique in her house and turn it into a history lesson or an explanation of furniture-making or restoring technique. She learned enough about drug interactions and anatomy while managing my younger sister’s serious asthma to sound like a walking PDR and impress seasoned doctors in the process. She’s an amazing cook and an accomplished tailor and dressmaker. She designed and sewed my wedding dress, cutting and hand-stitching lace medallions onto the raw silk so perfectly each side of the dress was a perfect mirror of the other (the same technique everyone went gaga over on the new Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding gown, I’ll have you know). She has a self-trained eye for design that’s never wrong--her work puts half the people on HGTV to shame, and she can do it on a real budget. And she mixes a mean bourbon eggnog.
In one favorite story from my childhood, Miss Carolyn schooled the dismissive manager of a Firestone tire center on the inner steel of the Southern woman. He wasn’t planning to replace her three separated tires--yes, they were Firestone 500s--without a hefty check first. Daddy took a crack at him while we three children and Mama lunched on some fried chicken and tried to ignore the 100+ degree heat (we were just outside of Columbia, SC, the town Daddy says in the summertime is a “direct pipeline to Hell”). Ten minutes later, Daddy stalks back, madder than the aforementioned Hell at the obdurate Firestone man. Mama wiped off her hands and sallied forth. Firestone man essentially rolled his eyes at her and told her to go fetch her husband again since menfolks handled that kind of thing.
Big mistake. Miss Carolyn is the elder daughter of a traveling salesman who taught both of his girls how engines worked and should be maintained. She coolly asked to speak with his district manager, burned up a chunk of change explaining the problem over long distance, and watched the color drain from Firestone man’s face when the “big cheese” got back on the line.
“Here,” Firestone man said, handing the phone back to my mother. “He wants to talk to you.” Big cheese told Mama that store manager would replace all four tires for the sum of $100 and have us all back on the road within the hour. “Thank you very much,” she said in that born-in-Florida, seasoned-in-Atlanta accent that has reduced men to mush for more than half a century, and hung up the phone. “Now,” she said, turning to Firestone man with a brilliant smile and putting on her sunglasses, “if you’ll just get my broom ready, I’ll get out of your hair.”
I tell you what--if I do resemble my Mama, I won’t want it to be for looks (although she has always been gorgeous). I’ll want it to be for her style. Happy Mother’s Day, Miss Carolyn.
11:31 AM
mimi
