My Mother

Since I didn't post about my mother on Mother's Day, I thought I'd do so know.

My mother was a very interesting person, though she appeared to be very ordinary--certainly to me.  The earnest second child in a family of eccentric siblings, she skipped two grades in school, got her teaching degree from Oregon Normal School (now Western Oregon University), and returned home to teach in a one-room school east of Tillamook.  Then, early in the Depression, she met a dashing mill worker her father didn't approve of who swept her off her feet.  Within a few weeks she was married to a man who quickly became more demanding and less charming and who was not on speaking terms with her father.  Marrying Murl Peterson would stand as the single reckless act of a ruthlessly temperate woman.

Of course I didn't learn all of this until my mother was in her late eighties and my father was dead.  But it helped me to understand why she had always insisted that our family and her marriage were perfect and why I was not allowed to turn a heating pad past "medium."

Years later I tried to talk to both of my parents about how confusing my childhood had been, with a father who didn't seem to want me around and a mother who kept telling me how wonderful our family was. My father was surprisingly gentle and responsive.  He didn't understand what I was getting at, but he tried to engage me.  My mother, with whom I had always felt infinitely safer, would have nothing of it, kept changing the subject.

Bessie Priscilla Barber Peterson was an incredibly generous person and mother who managed to reserve a part of her soul from the domineering men whom she loved so deeply.