The route to school went past the city pool, where Mom would turn our rickety, silver Chevette onto a winding, uphill climb. Each morning, as we made our way up that hill, my brother, sister and I would beg Mom to take the “shortcut.”
At the last curve, there was a dirt path – wide enough for a car – just off the road. In no cryptic form of geometry was this a “shortcut.” It was a semicircle that took us off the main road and back on again.
One perfect morning, worn into surrender, Mom turned onto that dirt trail where her car came to a sudden stop.
There are moments of childhood we never forget. For some odd reason, I always watched the fuel gauge of Mom’s car when she finished pumping gas. In the years following my first father’s death, the gauge never passed the quarter-tank mark. It was on Empty the day we took the shortcut.
This weekend, as we celebrate Mother’s Day, I can’t help but tell you about mine. She deserves a million words, though I’m not sure she’d have the energy to read them these days. A lifetime juggling joy and sorrow will do that to the strongest among us.
Eleanor Anne Croft grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., the only child of parents who worked federal jobs by day and downed liquor by night. She never had friends stay the night; she told me her father was too volatile.
After high-school graduation, she bolted for Boston University, a soprano with sights on the opera. She also had her sights on an olive-skinned, handsome man in the university’s music school – a composer named Paul, whose Swedish father and Armenian mother lived in nearby Connecticut.
In those days, once a couple was engaged, states required a physical exam, an attempt to stop the spread of syphilis. Paul didn’t have syphilis, but doctors did find inoperable cancer in his stomach and told him he had six months to live.
With their wedding on hold, Paul and Eleanor prayed – a lot. They skipped chemotherapy because it only made things worse. Miraculously, the prayers worked, and the cancer went into remission. The two married in the company of friends, but not Eleanor’s parents. The Crofts did not approve of their daughter marrying someone with foreign (Armenian) blood, and they skipped the ceremony.
Paul and Eleanor finished graduate school at the University of Southern California and moved to Tuscaloosa, Ala., where Paul earned a Ph.D. and a spot as a music professor at the University of Alabama. They had three children, of which I am the middle, and helped start a church near campus.
In August 1979, cancer won, leaving three young children and little money in the care of my Mom. She taught voice at the local community college and worked as a typist for friends, but those were secondary jobs to being our mother. Years later, when I asked her about that time, she said a counselor suggested she take the first year after Paul’s death, live off the life insurance money, and spend every possible moment with her children – 7, 5 and 3 at the time.
I wish I could tell you what a struggle it was for our family in those years after my father’s death. I wish I could tell you we suffered and cried and lost our way. Not a chance. Not with a woman as commanding as Eleanor leading our way.
We didn’t miss a single baseball or soccer practice. Never skipped a piano lesson. We spent summer afternoons at the city pool learning how to swim. We ate perfect meals with less-than-perfect means. We were at church every Sunday, surrounded by friends who knew and loved Paul and adored our mother. And how could you not?
This glamorous woman, even in her darkest hours, found strength through prayers I can’t fathom having to pray. She laughed constantly – usually at herself. When she raised her voice, it was only to sing us a good-morning song in her beautiful voice. If she cried – how could she have not? – it must have been in private.
If ever a woman deserved something perfect to happen in her life, it did nearly four years after Paul’s death. Douglas McElvy, my second father and a dear friend to my first father, married Mom and gave her the world. He provided for us in ways we never knew possible. He and Mom brought two more children into our family, the last when Mom was 47. And earlier this year, Mom and Dad celebrated their 40th anniversary.
These days, my mother isn’t able to care for her family the way she did her entire life. In fact, she’s reliant on her family taking care of her, and deep down, I know that makes her ache. From her days as a daughter of alcoholics, to tending to a sick husband, to raising children on her own, to spending the last four decades living through the joys and sorrows of her five children, she’s tired. Her back and knees hurt. Her hands shake. She doesn’t hear well.
She’s on that shortcut, scraping together enough gas for each day.
Even still, all I can imagine each time I hear her voice or see her face is that glamorous, powerful woman who has beared all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things. She has never failed.
In the early 1990s, a band fittingly called “Alabama” released a song that brought me to tears the first time I heard it. The song wasn’t written about a mother, but I’m almost certain it was written about mine.
Oh, I believe there are angels among us
Sent down to us from somewhere up above
They come to you and me in our darkest hours
To show us how to live, to teach us how to give
To guide us with the light of love.
Jonathan, I am so proud to read this tribute to you sweet Mom💯🥰 I have quite a path I have traveled in my years as well raising children as a single parent but with trusting in God, my friends and knowing God always knows our needs, I am doing good🤗😍. Carolyn
Thank you, Jonathan. Such a beautiful tribute to a beautiful woman. Our family was blessed the day your mother joined us.