Let Me Tell You a Secret About a Mother's Love

I never had friends later on like the ones I had when I was 30. Jesus, does anyone? Do you think I could get Richard Dreyfuss to narrate this tale for me? Even though I'm not headed out with two feebs and a thief to look for a dead body on Back Harlow Road, there's a lesson here. And that lesson is:

A mother will do anything to protect her daughter.

This would be the perfect opportunity to pay tribute to my mother, who passed away on February 4th. But I'm not ready yet. So instead, I will glom onto my old teaching buddy Kellie's mom, and share a touching story of a mother's love.

****************************************************************

I met Kellie when I taught at a school in a town which was then the U.S. Population Center. We had a little gang, all at the same place in our careers, just getting married, commuting to work from three different directions. One thing you discover when you travel the state, teaching at various schools, it that there are places where everybody is one big happy family, and other places where the locals have had their friends since kindergarten, and are not looking for any more. That's okay. Kellie, Cindy, and I were fine with it. We had somebody to save us a seat at the faculty meetings, someone to eat lunch with, someone to gossip with, and somebody to roll eyes with us when outrageous statements were made in the teachers' lounge.

Kellie looked like Sally Field, back in her Sister Bertrille flying days. And we liked her. We really liked her. She was no-nonsense, a sixth grade science teacher, relegated to the downstairs level of our middle school building, while Cindy and I taught the older kids upstairs. Kellie lived down I-44 from the school district, Cindy lived up I-44, and I had a meandering hour drive to the east. Yet every day we converged to shape the youthful citizens of tomorrow, and catch up on each other's lives.

One weekend we took a trip to have lunch at the home of Kellie's parents. They were retired school teachers. We dined on the screen porch overlooking the spacious back yard. We didn't see much of Kellie's dad because, as her mother explained, he was busy riding The Tractor. The Tractor. Which was just a riding lawnmower, but he fancied himself a farmer, and called it The Tractor.

Kellie's mom was a proper southern lady. I'm not sure of her geographical origin, but she was the kind of woman whose shoes always matched her purse, whose outfit was carefully coordinated, whose hair was tastefully styled, and who never left the house or entertained visitors without full makeup. We had a wonderful visit. On the way back, Kellie said, "Isn't my mom a trip?" Because, you know, Cindy and I were a bit rough around the edges compared to her.

Kellie lived in a two-bedroom townhouse in the college town where her husband was finishing up his engineering degree. I stayed overnight one evening in order to get up early to attend a science teacher function that our school had enrolled us in. Let the record show that it was not furnished like a frat house, nor with concrete-block bookshelves. It was a nice first home for a newly married couple.

After three years of working together, we three musketeers headed our separate ways. Cindy had given birth to a son, Kellie was pregnant with her first child, and I was ready to find work closer to home. Kellie's husband had accepted a job in a town far away, and had gone there to set up their new home. Kellie's mom went to stay a few days with her. They spent two days scrubbing that townhouse from top to bottom until it sparkled. Kellie had given notice that she was moving out when her lease was up, and on the weekend, she and her mom went to the real estate office that handled the rental property to turn in the keys and get her security deposit. We still had a week of school left due to snow days, so Kellie came to live in the basement of my $17,000 house, and rode to school with me for a week. It was on one of those rides that she told me the story of her mother's love.

"Thanks for letting me stay with you and Hick this week. I did not want to have to sign another lease. I can't afford that now, with the baby coming. Mom and I worked so hard cleaning up the townhouse. When I went to see how long it would be before I got my deposit back, the lady at the real estate office said I wasn't getting it back. Mom was mad! 'What do you mean, she's not getting it back? That place is spotless. There is no damage whatsoever.' And that lady said, 'We never give back the deposit. We use it for a cleaning service to get the unit ready for the next renter to move in.' And Mom said, 'There is nothing to clean. We did it all. Mopped the floors, cleaned the oven, scrubbed the bathrooms, rented a carpet steamer. That place couldn't be any cleaner!' But still, the lady would not give back the deposit. Mom said, 'Then you will be hearing from our lawyer.' And the lady said, 'That's fine. Other people have tried that, but they never win. We clean all the apartments so they are in move-in shape, just like when we rented to you. Nobody told you to clean the apartment.' Mom smiled and thanked her for her time. Then she said, 'Do you have a restroom I can use? We have a long ride ahead of us.' And the lady pointed her to a bathroom that said it was for employees. After a while, Mom came out, and we left."

"Mom said, 'They must have had a decorator design that bathroom for them. It was very tasteful.' And I said, 'Really, Mom? They are keeping my deposit, and all you can talk about is how nice their bathroom was?' Mom smiled like she wasn't even mad anymore. I couldn't believe what she told me next!"

"While I was in the bathroom, Kellie, I saw that a corner of their wallpaper had come loose. I grabbed that corner and pulled, and ripped the whole panel off the wall, and wadded it up and stuffed it in the wastebasket."

"MOM! They'll know who did it, and they'll try to charge me for it!"

"Let them take it out of your security deposit."

************************************************************

That, my blog friends, is an example of a mother's love.