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HOLLENBECK: Mother’s Day brings memories of another time, place |
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Tuesday, 13 May 2008 |
The first bloom on Mamma’s lilies was visible Friday morning, just in time for Mother’s Day.
The lilies, which are planted in our front yard, are some the family received from Doyle, Barbara and Candy Webb when my mother died seven years ago.
Usually, they bloom earlier in the spring, but some things have been slower coming up this year. Also, they were disturbed in recent weeks when a nearby 100-foot pine tree that died had to be removed (the ONLY reason we ever have a tree cut down) and everything in the yard was pretty much rearranged in the process.
These flowers are a rich, unusual orange color — similar to a Tropicana rose —and they keep multiplying. Initially, there were five or six plants in a pot. I haven’t counted the number now, but there are more each year.
Mamma would have liked them. Unlike her daughter, she was a gardener extraordinaire and could grow anything and everything from tomatoes to hibiscus and whatever might come between. If it’s something I start with on my own, I can be the quick kiss of death for green, growing things. (Give it some fur and a tail and I can make it thrive, but that’s another story.)
The flower beds at Mamma’s house in Cotton Plant easily could have been part of the setting for the garden in the old film “The Secret Garden” after Mary Lennox, Dickon and Colin had reworked the boarded-up site.
Mamma was so talented in growing dahlias that she developed a variety of her own. It was a variegated version of a burgundy and a white and was unlike any I ever saw anywhere else.
To her there was nothing to making things grow — flowers, shrubs, corn, beans, squash. It wasn’t work. No matter how tired she was, she could always muster the energy to dabble in her yard or vegetable garden.
Of course, I’m thinking of her today — after all, it is Mother’s Day — but she usually crosses my thoughts most days. And I also remember my dear mother-in-law, Winnie Hollenbeck. The two were great friends, which was a really nice thing for our families.
Mamma’s health declined before Winnie’s, but Mamma outlived her. Both were the glue that held the families together and it’s been a real struggle to do that successfully since their passing.
Winnie also was talented in the horticulture line. Near where Mamma’s lilies are planted are some of Winnie’s irises, which didn’t bloom for years but did suddenly one year as if it had all been supposed to happen that way.
When her son complained about the “duds” we had gotten from her yard, she shamed him and told him he was simply being impatient. “They’ll bloom eventually, Edward,” she declared.
They truly fit the term “late bloomers,” because when they got started, they thrived and have done so year after year. We transplanted only a purple variety, which I could kick myself for now. Winnie also had gorgeous yellow and rust-colored ones, and I assume they still flourish on the lawn of the residence she occupied across the street from Ed’s sister in Pine Bluff. Sometimes we get in too big a hurry and punish ourselves in the process.
The dogwood tree that Mamma had her yard people plant in our front yard didn’t produce as many blossoms this year as it normally does, but we had a wet, cold spring, often with turbulent weather which probably took its toll. But it holds the promise of another spring that will trigger wonderful memories of the day it became part of our lawn.
Mamma had brought Akie and Lucille to do some landscaping. The yard, of course, needed attention. Yard work is not my forte. Akie and Lucille worked for hours under Lillie White Parnell’s tutelage and at one time just about sent her into a screaming fit. They had raked up piles of pine straw resulting from the 26 trees on our lot and had started multiple fires as a means of disposing of the residue.
Mamma got the situation under control just before we were ready to call the fire department. I can remember that day as if it were yesterday.
How I wish it were possible to see that strong-willed woman barking out the orders that rolled effortlessly over her tongue. You just didn’t want to be on the receiving end if she was really disturbed. Those were not the best of times.
But I’d gladly take one of her lectures now just to have her back again. It’s been seven years since her death, which followed eight years of mostly senility at the Arkansas Health Center, so a lot of time has passed since I’ve had a real visit with the woman who shaped my life.
One of the things I miss most is being able to pick up the phone and call her. Friend Brenda, who lost her 60-year-old mom before Mamma’s health began to decline, told me years ago that the hardest thing about losing your mother is not being able to call home.
She was so right.
Hanging on my bedroom wall is a small pewter plaque I gave to Mamma years ago and reclaimed when we closed up her house. It says: “A mother is all the things you never outgrow your need for.”
Ain’t it the truth.
Lynda Hollenbeck is associate editor of the Courier
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