MAMA WAS A SPITFIRE

Mother, in most ways, was normal.

When my mom was young, right up until she became elderly, she was still a very attractive woman. Although her natural wavy blonde hair had turned white, her twinkling blue eyes remained young, playful, mischievous and precocious right to the end.

Most children remained with their mothers during the 1940’s, when their parents divorced but since adultery wasn’t tolerated, even though I was five years of age, I remained with my father. Although the distance between us was far, my mother never stopped being my mom. Her monthly letters arrived regularly with a nickel or a dime enclosed between the neat folded pages.

At age ten, after having just walked home from school one day, my father was waiting for me in the kitchen. I could always tell when he was serious because he always asked me to sit down at the kitchen table and as I sat across from him, I was feeling a little apprehensive, thought perhaps I had done something wrong. However, when he told me that my mother was staying at a hotel and we were going to visit her, I was elated.

During my boyhood years, I lived in Vancouver and it was a long bus ride to where she was staying in New Westminster. She was sitting on a wooden bench near the bus stop and was smiling brightly when my dad and I stepped off. Just beyond the gently undulating green closely cropped lawns and well-manicured flower beds, stood the huge hotel. Imagine my surprise years later, when I was a young man and I got off perhaps the same bus and met her sitting possibly on the same bench. She wasn’t a guest staying at a hotel; she was a patient at a mental asylum.

During my growing up years, my mother had been institutionalized on several occasions: electrical shock treatments being one of the solutions for her mental condition. She was diagnosed with a manic schizoid depressive disorder, which would explain some of her unusual behavior that occasionally surfaced. Wondering if perhaps her condition was hereditary, I remember asking her doctor as he sat in a small office, sunlight streaming through the steel barred windows, if I was going to become like her and he assured me that it was very unlikely.

Although my mother and her husband lived in Prince George and my wife and lived in Nanaimo, they often came to visit—grandchildren have an affect that way. And then, one day, her husband called and sounding very upset, told me that my mother was out of control. He thought she needed a break and perhaps if she came for a short visit, she might be fine. My wife and I agreed, and our three young girls were ecstatic when they learned grandma was coming.

When my mother arrived, after a few days had passed, I received a telephone call at work from my wife and was told to get the “bitch” out of the house; she was threatening the kids with a big stick. I wasn’t entirely surprised by my wife’s call as my mother had been acting rather strangely.

My mother’s eyes blazed defiantly when I entered the living room and angrily tore the club out of her hands. Well past middle age, plagued with a chronic back ache, hardly able to walk up a flight of stairs, my mother yowled in defeat and with tears in her eyes, limped off to her bedroom. Minutes later, it was as if she had been miraculously transformed; she suddenly appeared in the kitchen, wearing a low-cut, body-clinging white dress. Twirling around the room like a young woman; her limp unbelievably vanished, she began speaking like a southern belle, telling me that when she died, she was leaving the big manor house and all the oil wells to me. Not till then, did I realize that more than one woman lived within my mom, which also explained much of her puzzling behavior over the years; mama could certainly be a spitfire when she was off her meds.

Since my mother seemed more like the grandma from hell, the next morning, I accompanied her back to Prince George. I could tell she was agitated and when she began cursing at some of the nearby passengers on the ferry, I cringed and couldn’t wait for the boat to dock. She didn’t want to leave. However, when only a few straggling passengers remained, I managed to coax her below decks to her car. I can remember holding my breath when the car in front of us began to move forward and we just sat there. I don’t know if she was teasing me or not when she glanced over at me and smiled that devilish smile but after a few moments passed, she put the car in gear and drove off the ferry.

As we drove through Vancouver and then onto the freeway, my mother seemed fine. Even when we stopped at Chilliwack to top up the gas tank and she handed me a chocolate bar to munch on, everything seemed copacetic, the mother I used to know had returned. As I relaxed, enjoying the view of the approaching Rocky Mountains, my mother and I chit-chatted. Little did I know that I was in the eye of the hurricane.

When we were nearing Hope, and boy, did I hope everything would remain fine, she pulled into the Smitty’s Pancake House parking lot. Since we hadn’t eaten anything on the ferry, she wanted to buy breakfast. I reluctantly agreed. The diner was packed but we managed to find a table and had barely sat down when the waitress took our order. By the time our pancakes had arrived, my mother had switched back to the “bitch”. She cursed the waitress, and not in a low voice, for bringing us plates of slop and I remember rolling my eyes and reassuring the worried young woman that the food was fine. My mother didn’t so much as take a bite, her hateful eyes piercing the nearby customers like daggers as she began taking her anger out on them. It was no surprise to see the diner emptying quite quickly as I went up to pay the bill. I thought my mom was behind me as I headed towards the door but when I looked back over my shoulder, she was still seated in her chair and wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I tried to gently coax her.

I remember getting very angry then and I felt like just picking her up and dragging her out of Smitty’s but one belligerent customer was I’m sure more than enough. We’d already caused a scene that I’m certain the waitress and some of the customers would remember for years. Not knowing what to do, I left her and waited in the car. When the last car pulled out of the parking lot, I walked over to one of the big windows. My mom was still sitting where I’d left her, except now, rather then being hostile, tears were flowing down her cheeks. When I went back inside, she held one of my hands and followed me like a little girl out the door.

My mother didn’t say a word as we drove away and I thought, Prince George is only about 400 miles away, what else could go wrong? What else indeed.

We had barely traveled any distance when a white van passed us. I have no idea what was going on in my mother’s mind when she stomped down on the gas pedal and we were soon so close to the van, the bumpers were almost touching. The Fraser Canyon highway is quite twisty and has several tunnels as it cuts through solid rock and the river flows below the steep jagged cliffs. When she swerved the car into the other lane and accelerated, she grinned at the van’s driver as we passed by and then cut directly in front of it. As we sped down the highway, passing cars like they were standing still, I remember thinking, I’m going to die and when my mother looked at me, smiled her devilish grin again and said, “How come you’re not sleeping? You usually have a nap by now,” I was positive I was on the highway to hell and at a time like this, I wished I had learned how to drive a car—only drove motorcycles.

Next stop, which of course I dreaded, was Cash Creek. At this point in time, all I wanted to do was get to Prince George as quickly as possible, but mother dearest insisted we stop for something to eat. Lunch went the same as breakfast, except after bad-mouthing the food, she left the restaurant in a huff. As I quickly began gobbling up my dinner, I could see my mother through the window as she headed towards the car. Thinking she might leave me behind, I rushed to pay the bill. I was expecting to see my mother sitting in the car but instead found her standing in the middle of the restaurant’s exit road talking to the driver of a big diesel truck that couldn’t get by her. As he blasted his horn, I remember feeling horrified as she laid down on the road. When I ran over to her, she crossed her arms across her chest and only smiled at me. The truck driver was very understanding as I tried to get her to move away. Adamant about remaining where she was, I felt I had no choice when I phoned for an ambulance to take her to the hospital. No doubt about it, my mother’s elevator was stuck on the ground floor and wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I pushed the buttons; what else could I do?

The hospital was located in the small town of Ashcroft and as the ambulance attendants and I were walking down a hallway, she suddenly leaped into an old man’s lap who was sitting in his wheelchair minding his own business. He probably thought he was in heaven when my mother wrapped her arms around him and planted a big smacker on his lips. I can still see the sad expression on her face after they extracted her bodily and injected a sedative into her arm.

The next day, her husband arrived, and we packed my docile mom into the front seat of her car. When whatever medication she had been given began to wear off, it wasn’t long before she was beginning to act up. Her husband was worried and didn’t know what to do and when a gas station came into view, I told him to pull over and I would get us some coffee. Mother had an impish grin when I handed her the coffee and her husband looked confused. However, in a short while, when my mother’s head began nodding, I winked at him and said, “Mom’s coffee was special. I crushed a couple of sedatives into it. She’ll most likely sleep the rest of the way.”

Not long after her memorable visit and the horrifying drive, her husband died and my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I had since separated, had moved onto a sailboat and while she was nearing the end, for six months, I looked after her at her home. She hardly ever spoke during that time, except mostly to ask for cigarettes. And then, one hot summer afternoon, my brother and sister, three of her siblings and I watched my mom take her last breath. Since she had seen me open my eyes for the very first time, I thought it fitting to shut hers for the very last time, which I did, after the spark in her twinkling blue eyes went out forever.