PREDICTABILITY WAS NEVER HER FORTE

PREDICTABILITY WAS NEVER HER FORTE

But surprises were

+++++?????+++++

One of my earliest memories of my mom happened on a cool summer afternoon when she took my brother and me to Winthrop Park. I was four years old and my brother was six.

We lived in a four-story apartment house that was located half a block away from the park. My brother and I loved these afternoons, whenever they happened. I say that because our adventures in the park were never a planned event. They were always spontaneous. I can remember mom saying, “Put on your sweaters. We’re going across the street.” Talk about having two youngsters climbing over themselves to race to the bedroom and grab their sweaters!

Our apartment was small. Very small! The kitchen was only about five feet wide, but about ten feet long. There were only two bedrooms, no dining room, and an equally small living room. It was fine for a couple with one child, or perhaps none at all. Add that second child (hello, me!) and the inches of each room shrunk drastically.

For a family with two young children, climbing three flights of stairs was tiring. It’s no wonder that our outside adventures were limited. Yet, mom did her best, but as I said, very little was planned.

One Saturday afternoon when my father had to work, my brother was eight and I was six. Mom said, “Let’s go on an adventure.” She refused to tell us where we were going, only that we needed to take a few buses. That caught our attention! A bus ride!

We arrived at Fairyland in the early afternoon. Before being allowed to enjoy any of the rides, mom ushered us to a bench where she unpacked the few sandwiches she brought. She purchased a soft drink that we all shared and then, the real fun began. While we were still small, there were many rides with height restrictions but that didn’t matter. The rides we were allowed on provided us with hours of fun.

I still remember my brother on one side of mom and me on the other as she held our hands while walking to the bus stop for the journey home.

That was the year we moved around the corner to a somewhat larger apartment. The kitchen was still tiny, but we had a dining room, a larger living room and – holy cow! THREE BEDROOMS!

We were to find out a few months later that mom and dad were about to need that other bedroom.

Fast forward to my high school prom. We still didn’t have much money, but mom naturally insisted that I have a new dress. One afternoon after I walked home from school, there, hanging on the drapery rod was a beautiful white and pink dress! Each stitch was carefully sewn with love and care. Yes, mom made my prom dress. She also made a pale blue graduation dress for me for the following year.

She never said a word, just did what she did best – unpredictably surprising us all.

Fast forward again. After school, I began working. Mom and I agreed that I’d give her so much a week to help with expenses. What she didn’t tell me was that she was putting that money away for a wedding - my wedding. I wasn’t dating anyone, but mom knew it was inevitable.

Back then, it was normal, maybe not completely customary, but normal for the bride’s mother to handle most of the arrangements. Mom outdid herself but never told me that she took out a loan to pay for that day. She never used the money I’d given her each week, either. At the end of each month, she’d take what I’d given her and put it in the bank. She handed me that bank book on my wedding day.

Fast forward – many years.

Mom, now retired and widowed, was, because of health reasons, moving in with my husband and me.

As we were clearing out her house, I’d find a folded twenty-dollar bill hidden under a shelf ornament. Then, there were a few tens rolled up to look like a straw hidden in her old jewelry box. Her hiding places were many and, in the end, I thought I’d found them all which totaled about six hundred dollars. The surprise came when I vacuumed the floors. Under her bed was a black pouch and in it was a batch of ones – totaling $925.00!!

Talk about being unpredictable!

But it gets even weirder.

During our last two days in New York, we needed to close out mom’s checking account.

With her checkbook in her purse, she walked to the dining room and pulled out a drawer from the bureau. On the underside, she had taped an envelope which we didn’t open until we arrived at the bank.

There, in that envelope, she had three bank passbooks with a grand total of a few hundred-thousand dollars.

I was flabbergasted and jokingly asked her if she’d robbed a bank sometime in the past.

“No, just prepared for my health in my later years. Healthcare isn’t cheap and I don’t plan on being a burden. These are to help you with my care for as long as I live. Whatever might be left is yours to keep.”

Who on earth could have ever predicted mom would squirrel away coins and dollar bills each week and yet, that’s what she did.

While normal predictability wasn’t her forte, she was always full of surprises.