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Health & Fitness

Country Gal/City Woman Reflects on "Mom"

"Mayme" was holding on to a big secret back in 1925, and this Country Gal/City Woman is ready to spill the beans.

This past Mother's Day, daughters Mary and Dana and I enjoyed scrumptious meals at the before going to the movies at the local Mall. Thinking back a bit, very few other women have made such an imprint on my mind and years as my mom, definitely not your normal "cookie-cutter" type of mother, not even one you would see "hyped by Hallmark" on a card or in a made-for-television movie. I did see "bits and pieces" of her heart in her two granddaughters sitting across the booth from me...

Why this God-fearing, sometimes obstinate, always level-headed, seldom wrong, Canasta-and-Bingo playing addict (there is that word again!) chose to keep "The Secret" for as long as she did has puzzled her family from 1925 until the day she passed away in 1980, at the rather remarkable age of 97 years, the result of a car accident on the slippery, black-icy road just three miles from 210 Birch, home. 

What ulterior motive was behind her thinking...her secretiveness? Only Heaven knows. There was no apparent change in Mayme's daily schedule in late 1924 and early 1925. She ran her household of 12 kids (some on and some off the premises), she ran the Grant School PTA, the GAR, the American Legion and VFW Auxiliaries, she ran the Neighborhood Potlucks (winter and summer). My sister, Trudy (one of those married and off the premises) years later agreed with me she could very well have coined the phrase: "Get out of my way or there will be "h - - l" to pay!" (I must mention here that she was also somewhat outspoken...but always with a smile...when a project put in her trust was marked by someone's lack of diligence or incompetence.)

Now, about her "Secret." Not even her closest confidants suspected, the neighborhood wives twenty-strong, nor did her kids, nor the Grant/Jackson/High School Teachers and Principals, UNTIL...the day that Trudy was about to present Mayme and George, husband and father, with their second grandchild. Usually expectant mothers are surrounded by family and friends, anxiously awaiting the results, collecting bets and offering congratulations to the new parents.

Not Mom! George prodded and cajoled Mayme to go (next door!) if only to boil water, if necessary, and did not readily understand her reticence about playing a more active midwife role, assisting Dr. Greenleaf, family doctor and frequent caller at 210 Birch Street prior to this current call. All of the Cranston children had been born at home and so the birthing of this new babe was not, at all, of an unusual nature. What could possibly be more important than personally greeting this babe?

Well, 42-year-old Mayme gave 53-year-old George an answer that will stand with the years and be told over and over to future generations...much like I am doing now! "I am having a baby of our own in a couple of weeks!"

I hear tell that little piece of news set George back on his heels in no time flat, and he promptly withdrew to his Haven of Peace, the Woodshed erected on the far side of the family home. I, also, hear tell that when he finally emerged from The Woodshed, he told a fellow fisherman, "Oh, shoot, Vern, what is one more mouth to feed, and No. 13 has always been a good number for the Cranston family!" (These are tidbits one picks up in researching family genealogy.) (How true, I know naught!)

So, when the day of April 21st finally arrived, and Mayme's "Secret" became known to the townspeople of Atlantic, Iowa, via the Atlantic News Telegraph, everyone cheered for it was a good thing! BUT, be it known far and wide, there were NO MORE "Secrets" in our household from that day forward. Family folklore has it that George chopped kindling wood all the while Mayme was laboring, and there was enough stacked wood to last the following typical cold and blustery Iowa winter!

Oh, yes, Trudy and her hubby, Bill,  had their firstborn, a son named Edmund LeRoy (Bus) who was my nephew before I entered this world, thoroughly making his world  a more "troublesome" one. It was my pleasure, as I used to tell him at family reunions. 

You have probably guessed by now that I had as my Mom and Dad two of the most wonderful, giving and caring parents who doted but did not spoil, who loved but did not smother, and who gave me principles to live by for lo these many years. 

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Soon you will meet George (Dad) ... a young man who buried the mother of his first three sons following the birth of their infant son, an "uncommon common" man. Something that makes me chuckle, just a little bit:  Mom kept my imminent birth a secret for the required gestational period. And, now, here I sit, ready and willing and happy, to share more about my family and me than you might possibly want to know...but that is what "addiction" is all about, right? Recognizing the problem and doing something about it!

'Til the next time...

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