Binderama60for60

Happy Mothers Day!

Today’s post is all about Mom. Mom, Maw, Moomaw, Mauzy Broadway. You’ll read plenty about Margery, Marge and Margie elsewhere in 60|60. Today: Maw.

I’ll dispatch with the basics: Maw was loving, she cared for me when I was sick, stayed up with me when I was scared, comforted me always. Every school day, she got up extra early, made Sanka for herself and breakfast for her boys before going to teach high school, and when she got home she started dinner. She bought me shoes and clothes, ferried me to doctors and dentists, shuttled me wherever for whatever, cheered me on at weekend soccer games, gawd-awful middle school band concerts and well-intentioned high school theater. She took interest and pride in my school work and celebrated my creative endeavors. She made me birthday cakes (German chocolate) and my annual birthday feast of her famous mac’n’cheese.

Maw aced MOM101 with flying colors. That’s just the beginning.

As I opined in her eulogy in 2020, Maw was a champion. Not of anything involving a trophy, but of people, especially of me. I sensed her pride in me, her hopes for me, her protection of me. In a way, maybe I was a trophy to her, in the proudest and purest sense.

Trying to distill the story of a Mom down to a few hundred words is impossible. Yet, here I go.

She Loved to Travel

Mom was immensely curious. A few years back I scribed a blog series dedicated to Mom’s grandest, greatest and most audacious endeavor: the 1969 roadtrip across the country and back.

Check it out: https://margebindersepicadventure.blog/

It epitomizes Mom’s spirit and grit: you can do anything, you just have to find a way to do it. In this case, she said: “I wanted to go to California.” To do it, she had to pack three boys into a Chevy station wagon and drive 6,000 miles over two months, sleeping in a tent most every night. Plus, she had to find campgrounds, doctors and groceries in order to prepare three squares every day, because there were no Taco Bells or Wendy’s at every interstate exit. Heck, there weren’t that many miles of interstates back then!

Because of Maw, I got to experience the world beyond Virginia, and not just California but everywhere in between. I inherited her passion for travel and exploration. I know she admired my own wanderlust when I got to travel the world later in life, though I came to prefer less driving and camping and more flying and hotels.

She Loved to Walk

Anywhere. But especially around my hometown of Vienna, VA and later on the shores of Lake Michigan. She clocked thousands of miles walking with my Dad. In Vienna, they’d walk most evenings to the Roy Rogers for coffee and maybe a dessert.

In summers, Mom and I would walk downtown most mornings for breakfast. We’d head north on Lewis Street to Locust, hiking up to Windover Avenue, then past the big abandoned mansion on Ayr Hill and down to Lawyers Road and Church Street before crossing Maple Avenue. Sometimes we’d stop at the Rexall food counter, but usually we’d trek another half mile to Bob’s Big Boy or the Virginian or maybe Vienna Donuts. Mom would walk to anywhere the coffee was good and hot.

As she and Dad grew older, the walking became more strenuous. They slowed down, took fewer steps, eventually resorting to a treadmill in the bedroom.

After Dad passed, Mom eagerly adopted a walker — the Rollator — to get around. When I visited her at the retirement community, I’d watch as she geared herself up for the trek to the “Big House” for lunch: puffy coat with hood, scarf and mittens, and of course her lanyard badge that got her into the place. As years went on, she’d take a breather halfway; she’d sit on the Rollator, head bowed, and collect the strength to move on. Even when it was cold and pouring rain, even snowing, she’d take a seat, put up her hood, catch her breath and muster through, in order to treat me to lunch.

She Loved Disney

I think it was a Tuesday, sitting in my first grade classroom in the spring of 1972 when the PA squawked and requested my presence in the office. I was going to Disney World!

The place had only been open a few months and none of the other kids had been. Thus began a lifelong love of Disney World. We stayed at Fort Wilderness in our 18-foot trailer. On what must have been the first morning there, we were walking through the fog on our way to the boat launch to the Magic Kingdom when I looked around and thought, I want to live here one day.

Just about every other Christmas after that we returned. Mom would call or write to request a brochure in the mail; she’d fill out the specifics of tickets, dates and campsite, enclose a check and mail it in. Anticipation would build for months and then, at the break of dawn, we’d be locked, loaded, hitched up and on the road headed 900 miles south.

Once there, Mom would map out each day with military precision. We’d be the first into the park, ride the majors and get out. Take the monorail (conductor’s car preferred) for lunch and swimming at the Polynesian, Contemporary or River Country, then change and get back to the park for the evening parade and fireworks. Back at Fort Wilderness at the Trail’s End near midnight, we’d make our own pizzas and sing along with the piano player; Mom and Dad had some beers. Repeat.

Christmas at Disney, there is nothing like it for a kid. And the best part of Mom’s plan? Get out of there before Christmas Day when the crowds and spectacle are overwhelming. Spoiler: I did live and work at Disney 15 years later; I’ll share some stories from those days, including my own experience of a Christmas morning in the Magic Kingdom.

She Knew Me

In my awkward years between ages 12 and 15 (give or take 30 years), Mom knew what I was going through, having been a teacher and also raising my two older brothers (now they were awkward). I know she regretted trying to console me in a moment of angst by explaining that most kids my age were unattractive; don’t fret over the braces, acne, thick glasses, b.o., etc. You’ll grow out of it. That didn’t sit well, but she was right, for the most part.

I was the most outgoing of the three boys, and Mom encouraged me to socialize and be social. I attended a few after-school dances at Henry David Thoreau Junior High School. Mom would pick me up and sense just how miserable I was, though I tried to shine her on. I lied about how much fun I’d had and who I danced with — always two different girls. In reality I’d danced with no one and probably only talked to any kids even more awkward than me. (See earlier post regarding poseurs and impostors.)

Her solution: hot fudge sundaes at the Big Boy. It worked. It always worked.

Two years later, I had the reckless temerity to tell her that I was old enough to be independent, that I needed my space. It made her cry. It made me cry. Ever since, the thought of that night still makes me wince and well up.

She Loved Culture and the Arts

Mom made the most of our geography in Northern Virginia. We spent weekends and holidays at the Smithsonian (National History, Air & Space, Natural History, The East Wing), the Capitol, the White House for Christmas (including the always underwhelming National Christmas Tree), the memorials and sacred sites, and the battlefields of the Civil War all over the mid-Atlantic.

She loved theater, booking us for performances at the Kennedy Center, Wolf Trap and for several seasons at the University of Maryland. The season tickets were for Thursdays, so we’d go to the Rustler Steakhouse near Fairfax Circle, and then, when I was just 15 with a learner’s permit, she’d let me pilot the car along 495, the Beltway, around DC to College Park, in rush hour traffic.

Mom would come to all of my school performances. She’d even record my junior high “symphonic” band concerts. When I played them back, I was sure there was a defect in the tape recorder: it sounded AWFUL! Maw said it sounded like music to her ears.

She Loved Life

Maw was humble and often meek. Her life was not easy, she sacrificed, lost family and friends early on, and she never made a peep about it. She thrived in a household of chauvinistic men and boys in a time when that was the norm. Even so, and as I mentioned before, she was a champion for me, my Family, her students and many others.

As I write this, it occurs to me that she was also a champion for herself too: she was proud of what she’d accomplished, all that she’d experienced and what she left as a legacy. She did life right.

In that way, she played all of us, masterfully. In her many sacrifices, she was doing all the things that she wanted to do and loved to do. She loved hot fudge sundaes, Disney, culture, travel, walking. She inspired me and empowered me to love all of those things too.

Check and mate, Maw. Nicely played. Thanks for everything, especially the love, curiosity and mac’n’cheese.

My Mom: My Champion.