Today was Larry's mother's birthday. Dollie Mae Walls Holstein, born in a coal camp and died in a coal camp. She was a lifelong smoker, a woman born to hard work and a hard life.
I never really got to know her. Larry's parents didn't understand why he left his first wife, and so were not overly receptive of me when I showed up. I redeemed myself a little when I presented them with a grandson, but his mother died when our baby was only two, too soon to get to know him.
I met Dollie three times before she passed away unexpectedly in her sleep. At our last meeting I felt her warm to me, and that made me happy. Her health was poor; she had heart issues and Parkinson's, and her shaking was really bad. I remember her holding our baby briefly and how the love shone from her eyes--the way it did whenever she looked at Larry, her youngest son.Would that all mothers could shine such adoring eyes on their children!
We visited Larry's parents once at their mobile home. We'd been to a special event at my college, a reception for President's List students at the President's home, quite posh. We were all dressed up for the occasion, and I think Larry wanted to show his parents how his life had changed for the better.
Their trailer was small, one of those early mobile homes from the 1950's. Inside it was dingy with smoke and coal dust. It was obvious that his mother was unable to do any cleaning, as there were piled dishes, open cans of beans and Vienna sausages, piles of mail everywhere. I fretted about it after we left--shouldn't we do something to help? But Larry said no, he had tried before and they refused to let him do anything. His ex-wife still lived next door, which made him uncomfortable too. His parents still had a large picture of her on their wall.
We never saw his mother alive again. She passed away just weeks after our visit. She was only 66 1/2 years old, younger than we are now.
In her coffin, she looked beautiful and serene. Her hair was carefully styled, she was wearing makeup, and was dressed in a soft lavender dress with a pearl necklace. She looked....elegant. I saw a woman I'd never really met, a glimpse of how she once was, or how she might have been had life dealt her a better hand. For me the sadness of that was worse that the sadness of her death.
I think about her often these days. Larry tells me stories about how she was. About how she worked in a munitions factory during World War II, how she was pregnant before she was married, how she loved her roses and would shake the coal dust off the blossoms every time a coal truck passed, how she once threw a butcher knife at his Dad when he came in drunk, narrowly missing him, the knife stuck in the door frame. He tells me about how she had to carry water and coal into the Jenny Lind house, knocking ice off the buckets on cold mornings, how she cooked on a coal stove, how she loved her little twins, Larry and Mary.
I try to see her not as she was when I knew her, but how she was when she was young and strong, unafraid of standing up to a drunk husband or the truant officer (she had to go to court once--Larry's oldest sister was missing school because she had no shoes. In court the truant officer made a comment about Dollie being a bad parent, which apparently didn't sit well. Dollie lunged at the woman,breaking her arm as her brother yelled, "Break the other one, Dollie, I'll go your bail!"). I try to see her holding her babies, cleaning the trailer when it was new and bright and she was so proud of it (even had a toilet and running water!). In my mind I see her in front of her home, shaking the coal dust from her roses, watering them carefully with water hauled from the creek, or frying potatoes on her coal stove and packing her coal-mining husband's lunch bucket.
Today she'd have been 98. Happy birthday, Dollie. I hope you are resting in peace in a place where there are many roses, and no coal dust.
Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.
Larry's mom sounds like a hard working woman. WV strong...loved the story...sorry you did not get to know her better.
ReplyDeleteThat's a lovely post. A moving post. I too wish you had had the opportunity to become friends. And you have made me wish for this woman I would never have met that she could have had more of a chance to become the woman she could have become. I wish she could have had more money and a longer life. Ah, the sadness of the world.
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