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Three Stories of Strong, Tough Mothers

We asked readers to send us memories and tributes to their moms. Here are three beauties.

Jenn Iskiw, Ellen McDonnell and Penny Poole 8 May 2020TheTyee.ca

What’s something you’ll always remember about your mother? We asked readers that last week when we published April Buchanan’s essay remembering her incredible mom, entitled “No Mother Like Frances.”

Several Tyee readers replied, and we’re sharing three of their stories below, including one in poem form. Thanks to all who wrote in.

‘My strength came from my mother’: On growing up with a widowed mom
By Jenn Iskiw

My mother is a single mother by situation and not by choice. She married the love of her life, my father, when they were young, and they had both me and my older sister. My father was diagnosed with melanoma in the 1970s, which was a death sentence back then. He succumbed to the disease and passed away within the year, leaving my mother in her late 20s and a single mother of two.

My mother worked hard throughout our childhood to make sure we had everything we needed, and she often went without. It was unfashionable back then to be a single mother, and many assumed without asking that she was a wayward woman, not a devoted widow and mother with two children to raise. She was often ostracized by people living in our apartment building and community, but she always held her head high and knew her worth.

She taught us how to be strong, independent women and to never doubt our abilities. We always managed to have a car to get around, although I don’t know how, as the most she ever earned was $15,000 a year. She supported any sport or school event we were in, even if it was just to drop off at practice in the wee hours of the morning, or to pick up after the event ended. She never let on how challenging things were sometimes. We were sheltered from the day to day and always felt safe.

She is an avid reader and the house was always packed with books, and she instilled the love of reading in us. One of my favourite memories was in Grade 6 when I wrote my speech about single parents and included many details about our life. I was chosen to compete in the regional event and was going to have to recite this very personal speech to the entire community and local judges. I remember getting ready that night and telling her how nervous I was to stand before so many people and tell such a personal story, telling her “I don’t think I can do it.”

She held me by the shoulders and looked straight into my eyes and said, “Don’t you worry, we’ll all be there cheering you on. We’ll sit in the back row right in front of the judges, and you just look right at me and ignore everyone else in the room. You can do this.” And I did. As I spoke the words and looked right into my mother’s eyes welling with tears of pride, it made it easy. Just like always, my strength came from my mother, and still does to this very day.

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Doolee (Merry) McDonnell, 1927-2014. Photo submitted.

‘When I opened the oven door there was a painting drying!’ On growing up with an artist mom
By Ellen McDonnell

When my mother Doolee McDonnell’s birth was imminent, her dad, Bilson Merry, flagged down the train heading west to Grand Forks, B.C. He had a logging operation at Paulson in the 1920s, and the only transport in or out was by train. My mother came into the world on May 15, 1927 and spent her first years in the logging camp. The family moved to Trail in 1929 and settled in the Merry family home in Annabel.

There, Doolee and her three siblings lived right next to Trail Creek. When the creek became too polluted for swimming, Grandpa built a swimming pool for the neighbourhood. The pool was a square hole with the walls lined by concrete, which is still used to this day and became a source of great fun for many generations.

Doolee was drawing and painting from an early age. She always talked about a summer session in Banff with A.Y. Jackson. After a year at the University of Manitoba studying interior design, she became terribly homesick for the Kootenays, and sometime after her return Doolee met and married Basil McDonnell.

Five children followed from 1951 to 1963. This seriously cramped her work as an artist, however, and Basil converted the carport into a studio for Doolee to continue her art. She had a booming business as a portrait painter, and many families in the Trail area probably have one of her portraits on their wall. The family encouraged her in this endeavour, however, we all agreed that the subject should be a still living one, as any deceased family member always looked different in memory than in reality.

Doolee was active in the East Trail United Church and formed a puppet group. She designed and created hand puppets for children’s shows. Basil was co-opted to build the stage and manage lighting.

Painting and drawing were her true passions her entire life, not so much cooking and monitoring children. My earliest memory involves coming home from school, noticing the oven light was on and thinking “hurray,” something good for supper. When I opened the oven door there was a painting drying!

A friend visiting recalls mom sticking her head into the kitchen when supper was approaching, seeing only my youngest brother, who was 10 at the time, and suggesting he make supper for the family.

Mom knew a lot about art and was a superb drawer. Her watercolours, delicate and precise, are marvellous representations of the Kootenays: the mountains, rivers and vegetation. Her oils and later her acrylic paintings are bold and so unlike her watercolours, abstract and rich in colour.

I recently got an email from a friend, stuck at home like everyone else, with time to get in touch. She said that she still had a painting by mom on her wall that I had given her 45 years ago as a wedding present.

My walls and the walls of my siblings are covered with mom’s work. Everywhere in my house I see her wonderful representations and remember a tenacious person, very shy in most respects, but confident about her art. My family is so fortunate to have such a legacy.

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Mia Poole, 1918-2018. Photo submitted.

‘Précis Mom’s Philosophy’: A poem for one tough mother
By Penny Poole

‘Rail. Never can abuse denigrate your essential personhood. You’re. Inalienable. Right?’

‘Risk all. Imagine a good way. Forward.’

She became of age surviving poverty, WW1, trauma, violence. Dirty Thirties.
An intelligent misplace.
A poorly planted. Roots through gravel shards. Blindly. Through inconsistency. Searched for firm soil. Just left of bedrock.

Not all is beautiful. Do what it takes. Make life true: happy. Every mother. Eventually. Flowers. That’s how we are born.

Requisite for survival:

Transcend reality.
Refuse opinion.
Claim wildness.
Wear your beauty.
Be unapologetic, deliberate, unabridged.
Proud.
Flaunt difference.
Fecund.
Wise.

Set the world on edge.

All are guilty of denigration.
Still.
Refuse superiority.

Live life.
Like a gift.
A reverence.
Stand your ground.

She was Hollywood on our block. She redefined style. Had silky orange curtains sewn into a form fitting gown. Made dandelion wine, drank it. ‘Try a glass?’ Delighting the spluttered, ‘not bad.’

Make so many mistakes.

Have dislocated Christmases.
Laugh. Stand your ground.
The rush and joy of life intact.

At times I understood, pitied, was thoroughly annoyed. Disliked her. Bore her sins, questioned her verity.

Came to have her back. Honoured her life.

All of us. Terribly imperfect. Salty, loving mothers! Equally wilful, spiteful and lovely children. Take heart.

Our children will disregard us. Me too. Despair having a beautiful, charming, caring, normal mother.

Be strong.

Despite our wild wilful needs, still lead forward unrealistically high hopes for your kids. But. You cannot ask to be loved. A freely celebrated gift. Even. Especially by your children. And.

And. One rare life-moments with her. Seconds of eternity. I’d stroke her veined hand. Look into soft-blinded eyes. Whisper my love for all she weathered. Endured. Achieved.  [Tyee]

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