Twelve years ago on this date, my mother died one day before her 70th birthday. She’d be 82 if she were alive today. In a sort of surreal moment, a group of friends called and sang happy birthday to her on the phone as she was dying.
Mom was such an interesting person. She defied the roles set for women of her time, was a hard drinker (and hard curser when she drank—which was every night) but a loving mother and good cook (she said she couldn’t boil water when she married my dad).
She had many jobs over the years and threw herself into them with a passion. She was a university secretary, but could not suffer fools, so if she worked for a department (school of social work at Florida A & M, physics and then social work again at the University of Southern Mississippi) then the dean was likely an outstanding person.
She was a direct and unflappable salesperson. Over the years she sold World Book Encyclopedias and Shaklee Vitamins door to door, following leads and making cold calls. She sold life insurance in an office full of men where she did suffer fools for a short time and was given the most rural, poorest territories. I went with her to collect premiums one time and call on new, potential customers. I was a new teenager, bored sitting in the car waiting for her at each stop. The heat and humidity of a Mississippi summer day were the only thing repressing my near irrepressible hormones. I was revived each time she came back and started the car with its air conditioner and radio playing Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” it seemed every five minutes.
“Later in life, she was an OPC in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. (“OPCs are the individuals who fill timeshare presentations with potential buyers by pitching them on the beauty of timeshare ownership and, often, offering a thank you gift for attendance”—thank you internet).
I sat with her once on the street in Gatlinburg as she pitched to tourists wondering by. Between eyeing potential customers (she only pitched to couples and had to assess whether they had “two pennies to rub together”) she sat on a stool in a little shed reading a paperback. This was her pitch:
“Hey, come here.”
First off, she established whether the couple made the minimum annual income for her to proceed. It was sort of catch and release fishing. The ones who didn’t make enough were let go quickly. I don’t know how she managed to do this without offending people. The ones who did make enough and were hooked were scheduled for a sales presentation and promised dinner at a local restaurant or $100 cash or some other enticing gift.
She travelled with this same time share company to Park City, Utah one winter and pitched to what she called “the heal and toe clickers”—people passing by in ski boots. I visited her there and watched her in action at a ski resort, sitting outside in a protected area between the lodge and ski lifts.
In the mid-70s she started an indoor house painting business. She made business cards and called it the Paint Doctors because she started it with my dad who was a PhD university professor and often did summer work not related to his teaching. We lived in a large apartment complex at the time and she ended up getting the gig of repainting every unit that was vacated. She was all about speed. I went with her once and she showed me how to cut in, then set me to doing it while she rolled out the walls.
Being her own person was what was most important to mom. If Reva Jo couldn’t do that then no job was worth it.
She had large, car-driven, newspaper routes in Denton, Texas (the Denton Record Chronicle) and in Hattiesburg, MS (the Hattiesburg American). She often rolled papers while driving at the same time, could throw papers with either hand through the passenger window or over the windshield.
While I was starting high school mom began volunteering with a group called WRANPS (pronounced ramps)…the Wildlife Rehabilitation and Nature Preservation Society. I’m not sure how my sister felt. Maybe she was already out of the house, but I know my dad and I sometimes resented the amount of time she spent with WRANPS. I think my dad didn’t like that she wasn’t earning an income. I probably didn’t like that there weren’t as many home cooked meals. Anyway, during this time mom became an expert at rehabilitating raptors and was one of the few people certified in Mississippi to handle golden eagles.
Reva Jo bred and raised mice in a cottage behind our house and I went with her a few times to watch her pitch live, frozen or euthanized (slung on a hard surface by their tail) mice to hawks and owls being rehabilitated in the WRANPS aviaries. Live mice were thrown to the birds that were almost ready to release. They’d catch it in a talon and then rip it apart with their beak. For the very sick ones I think she’d have to stick a mouse down its throat or maybe she’d chop it up. I’m not sure. I didn’t witness that, but I know she had to become the mama bird for some of the ones in bad shape.
Some of the birds didn’t make it, but some did and she got better and better at the job as time went on.
I’m not sure why I never went to a release. It’s likely that I was just a teenager not that interested in hanging out with mom. But it’s possible she never invited me. Maybe she wanted to keep that part for herself. It’s possible that letting a bird go symbolized something so personal for her that she didn’t want to risk sharing it with a kid who might break the moment and ask what’s for dinner.
I guess each of us is, or has been, a burden to someone in our life-if we are lucky. Hopefully there is enough joy to balance it all out.
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It’s been more than two months since my last blog post. I’m sending this off Sunday morning before getting back to a back patio renovation project. I’ve been trying to get a post together for the last month, but one of the things holding me back is pictures. I’ve got too many of them from a three week trip I took to Tennessee and I want to format them nicely. I need to get over that. Perfection is the enemy of progress. Also, I’ve been a little depressed. Also, I worked summer school. I don’t want to say never again…but there is a high likelihood. Lots of “also”s these days but the fact is I just haven’t made time to stick my butt in a chair and put it all together. Thanks mom for giving me a little kick today.
Spotty West Goes East 