My dear Mom had this huge acrylic
painting hung at her graduation display. At that time, neither she
nor I had the money to get it properly stretched, on frames, for
hanging. Looking back,it makes me feel sad that she had to show such
a GREAT painting with the edges unfinished.
Still, it was a tremendous time of joy
and celebration though – I was so, SO proud of her and happy for
her!! She had worked so hard, and had sacrificed much, to take on a
BA degree in Studio Arts – especially as a low income, senior
citizen (who had to do things like haul her art projects [much of the
time] back and forth on the city bus [even in the Minnesota winters],
walk with a cane at times, etc). She underwent the whole “starving
artists” thing sometimes too. Plus, here was a woman, a mother, a
grandmother – who had already suffered one bout of cancer and
well-survived it; had been in a car accident; was hit as a pedestrian 3 times; survived a
very bad, long term marriage to an abusive man who had (unbeknownst
to her) cheated on her (a dedicated, stay-at-home wife and mother)
for 15 years with two other women (and so wasn't home much to help
her raise us four children [and who only delved my Mom out a sparse budget
to provide for us with]); had suffered a life-threatening birth
experience, with her little baby girl (Mary Jo) only surviving one
precious day; and suffered the loss of her beloved son, my brother
Jerry, a lovely singer, at age 17, in a car crash. All this and more.
(Suffice it to say that it is hard to be a smart,
righteousness-loving woman in a largely stupid, cruel, and wicked world.) I
came to regard my Mom as a kind of female Job. [And as time went on,
she suffered MORE, especially physically – she suffered breast
cancer and survived it; had a scary skin cancer incident; had a
stroke, WHICH LEFT HER BLIND (and additionally impaired) – and
then, in short order after that, had a heart attack, more strokes,
and lung cancer (which did her in).]
Despite all of that though, my Mom came
through it a joyous person – with a mind-blowing sense of HUMOR!!!
Even as she was slipping away, and could no longer speak, I said
something, and she would raise her finger, and make a knowing, funny
face – like she was making a joke! Okay – as a sample, before
that, after she had had a stroke, and was sitting there, an artist,
tragically newly-blinded, on a bed, as a doctor was explaining her
stroke to us, my Mom interjected this: “I just want to know one
thing. IS HE [the doctor] CUTE?”
She had also lost another child (my
younger sister), to a car accident, in 2012. That, too, was devastatingly
heart-breaking for her.
Still, I can't describe this wonderful
woman well enough, but she was amazingly optimistic; loving;
spiritual; thoughtful; empathetic; caring; hospitable; kind; compassionate;
passionate and intense about whatever cool thing she was doing;
exuberant; zealous; grateful; intelligent; wise; possessing of a love
for justice, righteousness, and truth; very “aware”; very giving;
and very encouraging to others! (She'd reach out to be friendly and
helpful to strangers, as she could. It was just in her.)
What else can I even start to say here?
She was a STELLAR, AWESOME mother, for a googleplex number of reasons
– including for her always being such a strongly supportive
advocate for each of us. (She was like a mother lion, like good mothers are – but I will be forever grateful to
her for that!) I know she sacrificed for us kids - maybe too much. I will owe
her, forever. (And I will be so happy to have the chance to work
repayment to her, someday, hopefully starting soon, in a new paradise
earth here, after Jah resurrects loved ones back to life here...)
What else, to tell here now? She grew
up starting in 1936, just after The Great Depression; and she lived
through WWII (watching terrible news reels regarding that at a local
theater; dealing with rations; wearing badly fitting bloomers,
because rubber for elastic went to the war effort; etc.). She was one
of eight brothers and sisters, and she worked very hard, as a child,
to help care for her younger siblings. (Her own mom had to devote a
lot of time to the youngest, who was born with Down's Syndrome.)
She went to a parochial school, which resulted in some very negative
experiences for her. Her dad (Edward Kennedy Delaney) was a lawyer, judge,
and a Mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota. (So, for those years, she grew up
in the public eye.) She grew up in St. Paul, on Portland Avenue; and
her parents also had a farm, with horses, out in White Bear Lake.
(There, when I was a teenager, my Mom grew a big vegetable garden –
and I got to pull a LOT of weeds. At 16, I had more romantic ideas.
It was probably a good thing that she had me pull weeds instead.)
What else? She could run like a bandit!
She was a softball coach for myself and peers, for years. She played
softball herself, and could crack a softball and run for bases at age
50. While she could, she loved to bowl! She sewed clothes for us; and costumes for me, for Jr. High
music/dance/theater endeavors; and more. She herself dabbled in jazz
dance, piano, guitar, and lots of crafting. (She would take us kids
out into woods to collect pine cones, and to a lake to search for
driftwood. Those were beautiful, fresh-air, building
appreciation-for-nature times. Then, she made some decorations of
pine cone owls, with plastic eyes, sitting on top of artful
driftwood log pieces.
And cooking. Wow!! She was my first and
main inspiration for this, for sure (I am a chef now.) During the
70's recession, she took her [way too low of a given] “budget”
and fed us well, making just about everything from scratch. (Even
when I was in very young, like in kindergarten, though, I remember
her making homemade noodles, and cleverly hanging them everywhere to
dry!). So I learned how to cook, creatively, from my Mom!! She was
big on spaghetti! She would let it simmer for a long time. At her
funeral, about 5 people, including some who were little neighbor boys
then, praised her spaghetti sauce, saying they could smell it, and so
tried to hang around then, to have a plateful.
But the years went by, and my Mom's
love of cooking and baking (and opportunities to obtain ingredients)
flourished. I found that we both had a love of cookbooks and
magazines, specialty kitchen items, etc. We enjoyed watching the
Cooking Channel together at her house. She had always generously
baked cookies, etc., for others. She volunteered to make chili, etc.
at a local recreation center. She made Chateau Briand for my high
school French Club, out of the goodness of her heart. She had joined
a St. Paul Bread Bakers club, which donated food, as I understand.
(During the recession years, she was part of a U of M Extension
Service Homemakers Club also, and so would help teach cooking and
baking to other homemakers.) She worked some short stints at a
grocery bakery; and (even shorter), at a hotel restaurant; but was
basically one fantastic home cook, making meals for family, friends,
and relatives that were unforgettable. What else though, with this
cooking and baking bit? The woman won so many Minnesota State Fair
ribbons for baking (and also art, horticulture, and floral
arrangements) that I have two bags full of them. I am trying to
figure how to display them! (She also had a bit written about her in a book a woman wrote about pie-baking contestants, and also a Minnesota State Fair recipe book. [I can find the names of these book, and note them later.]
She was a Master Gardener too, and made
herself available to answer people's gardening questions. Personally,
she had a goal to form her yard to be, color-wise, like a work of "impressionism" –
like Monet's Garden. After we lost her, one neighbor remarked that is
what her yard looked like. If I needed some chervil or chocolate
mint, Mom had it. I could hardly leave her house, without being given
a bagful of garden stuff, home-canned goods, and/or a bouquet of
flowers, which my Mom always so eagerly wanted me to have. (My Mom also loved getting to participate in the "Art in Bloom" contests at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in the springtime - wherein artists create floral arrangements to reflect and/or complement various paintings on display there.)
So anyway, there stood my Mom, at her
graduation display, at the Fine Art Gallery of the University of
Minnesota, happy as a lark, all smiles, having conquered everything,
to receive not just her Art Degree, but one with flying colors –
the coveted BFA degree, a Bachelor of Fine Arts, in Studio Arts. (I
also have more background stories to share later, regarding what my
mother went through, in her journey [with an added struggle] to
obtain this – one piece of which was written by herself.)
Featured on the walls of her display
were large, lovingly-made sketches/watercolors – of mostly her
grandchildren. The big 20” brass bowl (with the sculpted grapes and
leaves on the bottom-side of it), which she made in foundry arts, was
sitting there, gleaming too, as were some of her pieces of pottery
work. But then, hanging up on the side, was this giant,
brightly-colored painting. (She was asked to make a large-sized
work.) It was full of the sky, flowers, a pathway leading up and
beyond the horizon – and had a little portrait of my grandmother,
her Mom (who had passed away), towards the bottom, excitedly showing
the viewer the little bunch of wildflowers she found, growing out of
the cracks in the sidewalk!!
My Mom wanted a photo of her and I by
this painting she made. “Come on, Teri!”, she called. “It's a
3-generation picture!” I gulped – it was of her; myself; and her
Mom, in the picture. Three woman who kept going, largely by being
joyful and thankful for blessings found along the way of our often
difficult paths – and gaining hope and strength from them, namely,
from the Creator and giver of all good things, of “every perfect
present.” (James 1:17)
After loving every shared moment of my
Mom's art-victory celebration, I had to leave. But I went out in my
car, turned on a song that included a lyric of “along that stoney
path”, and completely broke down in tears. She was such a GREAT,
wonderful mother; she had been through SO much Sheol, so many
more-than-hard times – but she had dreamed of this accomplishment (and even the
works therein), she wanted this, she worked so hard for and sacrificed
for this, and SHE DID IT, SHE ABSOLUTELY DID IT.
…...I found this painting, rolled up
and slumped over, in a bucket, in the corner of my Mom's basement. I
brought it, as it was, to a studio in town, and the very nice
photographer hung it up by clips, and photographed it for me, free of
charge. I made a poster of it, and hung that in my Mom's hospice
room; and then also shared that poster at her funeral (and on her
funeral folders and cards [along with the garden trellis she made, by
hand-rolling metal, that you see in the background of this page]).
After my Mom died, it turned out that
she had left me a little bit of money. I knew what I had to do. I
brought the canvas to Nash Frame Design, in Minneapolis, who
stretched it. Words cannot describe the deep, overwhelming feeling
that came after a man from that studio delivered this piece with his
truck, and installed it on my bedroom wall here. It was profoundly
joyful, but yet devastating, at the same time. In a way, it was a
victory in itself.
Now, every day of my life (unless I'm
out of town), I wake up surrounded by my Mom's artwork, including
this big, wonderful painting. I turn around and see the face of this
happy little lady – meant to be my grandma, but, really, exuding
the same spirit as my Mom – encouraging me to keep up my same
shared way as them: To be someone who notices, appreciates, and is
grateful for and joyful over the beautiful things, the blessings
around them – even small ones, like delightful, little surprise
flowers....I know I raised my own children to be “aware” (and
they are definitely each creative and artistic). But then too, I so
loved the time when my own grandson - near a homemade and
family-decorated little gray sidewalk here – picked up some
wild-growing violets, and said, in his then 2-yr-old voice, “Pree
f-wowers!” [Pretty flowers.] Pass it on.
(Note: I have some straight-on shots of
the unframed canvas (as taken by that nice photographer mentioned);
and also some close-up photos I took of the face of my grandma in
this picture. My Mom had worked, to paint her, from an old
photograph, of when my grandma was younger. I am planning to post
those pics at a later time.)
