They said it would get easier, and it has. Mom died Sept. 27. That was 7½ months ago. It gets easier.
But it would get easier if she’d stop, I don’t know … showing up. But that was Martha Lee Boynton, let me tell you. She showed up.
Her church in downtown Columbia, S.C., needed a volunteer? She showed up in person. My birthday was approaching? She showed up in the form of a birthday card and a check for $100 – always a few days early. Heard that great saying by Packers coaching legend Vince Lombard? Something like: “If you’re not early, you’re late.”
My mom could’ve played for Vince Lombardi.
She always signed her card the same way. From memory, here goes:
“My little son. I can’t believe you’re (birthday age). I can still see your sweet little face when the nurses brought you to me after you were born…”
And I can still see her angry little face when something wasn’t happening fast enough. Where? Anywhere. On the road, at a restaurant, at the checkout line in a store.
Mom always used full-serve checkout lines, by the way. You couldn’t IMAGINE how much she loathed those self-checkout lines. Ever seen one of those folks in the checkout line at Food Lion, holding only a jar of jelly or can of soup, waiting behind two people with full shopping carts – while the self-checkout line 10 feet away is empty?
That was Mom.
She didn’t like technology. Who was the last person to get a smart phone? Around here in Indianapolis, we like to joke that it was Andrew Luck, the former Colts quarterback infamous for hanging onto his flip phone.
Well, my mom never got a flip phone. Didn’t get her first cell phone until all the flip phones were gone. She HATED technology. A smart television? She couldn’t STAND those things. She’d be in her living room, staring at the TV, aiming the remote control at the screen and mashing a button harder and harder, nothing happening on screen, until she wanted to THROW the remote control against the wall.
That’s how she talked, by the way. Lots of words in ALL CAPS, spoken through gritted teeth.
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Mom could insult you and make you LOVE her
My mom was the sweetest woman ever. But she was different, sweet in her way, saying things with unbelievable bluntness but getting away with it – not losing her audience, but winning it over – because, well, I don’t know how she did it. (My sister can do it, too.) Lord knows I’ve tried and failed at it my whole life, saying something bluntly and meaning it lovingly but failing to duplicate my mom’s combination of hyperbole, honesty and empathy.
She’d say something like, “Now tell me, Gregg, how you’re NOT going to forget to call me the MOMENT you get home.” I’d roll my eyes at her and start giggling. Because it was so preposterous that my 80-something mom could talk to her adult son like he was a moron – and I’d want to hug her.
She’s everywhere these days. Let me tell you, she shows up all OVER the place, like in my pantry, when I’m reaching for a new jar of peanut butter and having to choose from among four. They were on sale the other day at Kroger, so I bought two more, even though I had two waiting at home. I’ll get through them eventually, so why not save 35 cents on two jars now?
My mom was thrifty like that, logical, overly prepared. Peculiar, you’d call her. My mom was me, multiplied by 10, I told my fiancé (now wife) before they met last year in South Carolina. My wife knows how, shall we say, peculiar I am. So she understood what she was looking at when she opened one of my mom’s cupboards for a box of pasta and was staring at six or eight identical boxes.
When my mom was dying last year, and I was visiting, it kind of scared me to open her cupboards or drawers or refrigerator and see my future. Am I going to be THAT peculiar when I get older? Will I have eight bottles of salad dressing on standby? Because currently, my pantry has … let me see … four bottles. And will I really have five boxes of matches, just in case the power goes out?
My mom was logical, an overthinker if we’re being honest. She was a minimalist – well stocked with the things she needed, yes, but not holding onto a DARN thing she didn’t need. Her garage was almost empty, other than her car, which was 18 years old and had maybe 60,000 miles because she didn’t enjoy driving. She stocked up on things so she wouldn’t have to go out very often, and planned her trips around getting done all her errands for the week – at stores close to one another.
Her only concession to comfort over efficiency were left turns. She HATED making left turns. One, you couldn’t turn left at a red light, so she’d find routes heavy on right turns. Two, some busy intersections didn’t have a left turn arrow, and she’d warn me NOT to go that route because people had been known to sit at that stoplight UNTIL THEY DIED OF OLD AGE waiting for an opening to turn left.
Back to her garage. She had shelves, because a prepared person needed shelves, but they were almost empty because she didn’t need the kinds of things most people stored in a garage – especially if it was useless junk. Mom didn’t hang onto useless junk. Even so, with all the available room on all those shelves, she’d still leave her yard gloves on the handle of her lawnmower. Why? So she’d know where to find them, DUH.
How many matches does a person need?
My mom was a piece of work. So it’s with a pang of sadness – she’s gone? – but also love I’ll feel when she shows up in my linen closet, where I’ll shove the six-pack of Kleenex boxes I just bought behind the six-pack of Kleenex boxes already there. Or the pantry, where the canned vegetables, enough for my wife and I to survive a power outage of six weeks, are lined up, labels out, so we can find them quickly if needed.
Matches will help, if the power’s out. The other day I came home with one of those 200-count boxes of matches, opened the drawer where I’ll know to find them in a power outage – with the spare candles, obviously – and saw my mom in there. Well, sort of. What I saw was that I had already a 200-count of boxes. Hey, can a person have TOO MANY matches?
No, but a person can have too much technology. A few weeks ago I had to purchase airfare for a family trip, and asked my wife to do it for me. Yes, there’s a Delta app on my phone – American, United and Southwest as well – but if I’m flying, I need the cheapest ticket. And to do that, I need to check all the apps, which means studying a lot of times and fares and seats and JUST THINKING ABOUT IT makes me want to throw my phone against the wall.
This Mother’s Day weekend, the first since she died, I’ll think of Mom and smile. Maybe I’ll cry a little, but more from gratitude. Martha Lee Boynton was my mother? I hit no triples – I was born on third base.
I’ll honor her with a drive full of right turns, by reading something – a library book, not a Kindle or whatever you call those STUPID things – and by cutting the grass. My garage is mostly empty, except for our two cars, but I know where to find the yard gloves. On the mower, DUH.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Doyel: I keep seeing my mom everywhere, even though she died in September
Reporting by Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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