My Perfectly Ordinary Mother

"She's just like anybody else's Mom," I'd say whenever the fluttery ladies started telling me how wonderful my mother was. Sure, she wore a brace on her leg because of the polio she'd had when she was ten years old, but that brace had been there all my life. I didn't even notice it.

"Mama's legs may be weak from the polio," I'd tell them. "That just means her arms are stronger, so she can spank harder."

And the ladies would stand there, open-mouthed as I walked away, shocked that such a wonderful mother could have such a brat for a kid.

I was the oldest of my mother's four children, so I always had to help with the younger ones. No big deal. I mean, the job had to be done, so I did it.

But if it was no big deal that I did so much because I was the oldest, why did everybody make such a fuss because my mother wore a brace on her leg?

I knew my mother did all her own housework (except for the chores we kids were assigned) and sewed most of the clothes she and I and my sisters wore. She also worked in the office of my father's heating and air-conditioning business.

Because Dad worked such long hours, she was the one who attended all the school programs and church choir concerts we kids were involved in. But everybody's mother did that. We kids didn't see that being crippled (a word she never let us use) made her in any way different.

The only time I really noticed Mama's brace was the winter we lived in a one-room cabin in the mountains. My sister was staying with relatives and Daddy was working in town. I was nine years old, and it was my job to help Mama and carry in the wood for our potbellied stove.

On those crackling cold mornings when the snow was on the ground, I'd stay in bed as long as possible, watching my breath come out in little steamy puffs. When I finally had to get up, I'd take care of business, then shiver while I used a wooden match to light the fire Mama had laid in the stove the night before. Once the kindling caught, I scurried over to Mama's bed and snuggled in against her warm body. We'd giggle and talk, but always quietly so we wouldn't wake up my baby brother. Soon the fire would take the chill off the room. I'd hop out of bed to hold Mama's leather and metal brace near the stove to get it warm before she put it on.

After Mama got up, she cooked breakfast, then carried pots of water to the stove to heat so she could wash dishes and my brother's diapers. I dried the dishes, then shook open the washed diapers and hung them on the wooden drying rack. Later, I sat at our kitchen table writing stories while Mama fed my brother and did all the other things mamas do.

Finally, the thump-click, thump-click sound of Mama walking would stop and she'd sit in one chair with her feet propped on another while I read my stories to her. She always said they were "very interesting."

In the evenings, Mama and I listened to the radio and sang together. Later, we'd sing lullabies to my brother until he fell asleep.

On weekends, when Daddy came home, he'd help Mama down the steep wooden steps of the cabin. Mama would sigh, and say she felt like she was being let out of prison. We'd drive to the nearby country store for groceries and strawberry ice cream.

Soon, the Quonset hut Daddy was building in town would be finished. We'd move into living quarters in the back, and Mama and Daddy would open a restaurant in front. I'd go to a new school and make new friends. Mama and Daddy would work long hours in the restaurant and make adult friends. Never again would Mama and I share the quiet closeness of that one-room cabin in the  mountains with the wood fire stove.

Years later, when I was tempted to complain about the mountain of laundry beside my automatic washer and dryer, or all the dishes I had to load into my automatic dishwasher, I'd remember the thump-click, thump-click of Mama walking as she hauled pots of water from the sink, to the stove, to the sink again.

"Whatever you have to do, you just keep moving until you get it done," she told me.

That's what she always did. So that's what I try to do. Trying to follow the example set by my perfectly ordinary mother.