Confused? Check out Parts I and II.
III
From smaller to larger water tables…
England grew up on the north eastern edge of the Atlantic Ocean with increasingly powerful monarchs, and a plaiting of the Celtic, Viking, and French cultures, which drove through the channels and previous invaders to get there. The Celts brought the paganism we know today, the Vikings brought language we might recognize, and the French brought feudalism that we’ve twisted into democracy. As generations of British mothers raised generations of English children, the national identity took shape, and there was time for scandal, and the challenging of gender barriers.
The English monarch Henry VIII was, over the course of his reign, married to three Catherines, two Annes, and a Jane. His second daughter Elizabeth’s upbringing included four stepmothers, only one of whom, Catherine Parr, was truly effective. She was also the last, outliving Henry and remarrying to an old flame. By the time Elizabeth was queen, Catherine Parr was dead, and Elizabeth’s own mother, Anne Boleyn, was simply referred to as “that whore.” Elizabeth resurrected her father’s practice of running the country as Protestant, and kept her head until her natural death in 1603. Her reign lasted nearly fifty years. Impressive.
Since that time, the longest reigning English rulers have been female.
The Dutch-American women of West Michigan in the 1920s were not to be taken lightly. Really, they were anything but light. Plain faces and large Dutch bones capped by blond or ash-colored hair warned the men that there would be no funny business – ever. When they married these men, and had children in the 1930s, some of the humor came back, and evenings were spent darning socks and telling jokes with words like “garter” and “girdle.” Dutch mothers were always mothers, and had realistic ambitions for their children.
My mother is a twin and a remarried widow. Although these are not by far the only things that distinct her as my mother, or as a person, they are among the more notable within a character study. Being a twin was the first thing she ever accomplished, and she did it with style, and suspense.
Imagine:
My poor grandmother, in 1946 labor for the second unplanned pregnancy of her four, lay helplessly at her forty years, and heard the doctor say, “It’s a girl!” and then, “Wait, I see another nose…” I can only imagine the slap of reality. The nose turned out to be my mother, the twin always on the left, the one that never posed for the pictures. The small and identical girls grew into popular young women, then into my mother and my aunt. I think they look not very much alike, yet they are constantly being mistaken for one another. It’s strange, but always sort of satisfying in its way, to have the secret and biologically inherent information that can decipher which twin stands before me.
I’m not sure if one can use the obscure measurements of success or failure when it comes to widowhood, but it seems that some are more adept than others. Prozac and church friends are helpful tools, and my mother employed both. For six and a half years she remained alone, except for the friendship of an equally lonely neighbor. Then she started dating, and eventually remarried.
I suppose the fact of her widowhood stands so prominently in my mind because it began when I was fifteen, and didn’t really know my mother as an adult.
When I did come to know her as an adult, it was also as a widow, and that was how I thought of her. Dutch mother-widow-father, and damn good at it she was.