An open letter to Mother

This February 28 marks a real milestone for my mother, Gertrude Angela Schaefer:  She’ll reach her 90th birthday.  Such a day to celebrate!  Can you imagine?  Ninety years?  That’s a whole lot of years and responsibilities to put into perspective, to be sure. 

Mom came into the world in 1921, the fourth of five kids born to Dayton tailor Urban Zimmer and his wife Emma.  World War I was still fresh in everybody’s mind, though peace wasn’t officially declared until a few months after she was born.  Just days after her birth Ohioan Warren G. Harding was inaugurated 29th President of the United States.  Later that year Russian Communism took deeper root throughout eastern Europe and Asia while Adolf Hitler became Fuhrer of the Nazi Party in Germany.  That fall The Tomb of the Unknowns was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.  

In happier news, women were still celebrating their newly won right to vote with the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution which became law the August before Mom was born.  The first Miss America pageant was held in Atlantic City in 1921, as was the first Sweetest Day celebrated in Cleveland that year.  Such a year it was.  

I suppose I wanted to start my Open letter to Mother with a little world history because, at her encouragement, my own fascination with world events grew.  As a school kid I was lucky enough to come home for lunch every day.  Sometimes she let me take my tomato soup, sandwich, and apple sauce into the dining room so I could watch television.  I remember fondly in 1961 sitting there watching Robert Frost attempt to read his poem at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.  

I remember, too, an evening one year later, with all us kids intently watching our black and white Westinghouse television in the corner of our Fauver Avenue living room, while the President reported trouble with Russian missiles in Cuba.  When I turned to look at Mom sitting in a kitchen chair behind us, she was weeping.  Maybe it was because she worried about her kids living in a nuclear world.  Maybe it was because of powerful memories of waiting for Dad to come home from war in the 1940s.  All I know is, I can see her sitting there like it was yesterday. 

Mother, you need to know how much I love you.  You need to know that I know how your interest in the world and your love for me spurred me on to become a caring person and a teacher of children.  

Thanks for reading Mr. Punneymoon’s Train and Five Little Firemen and a ton of other Little Golden Books to all of us kids countless times.  Thanks for buying that set of encyclopedias at Kroger when we were still in elementary school.  Thanks for the set of records that introduced me to the instruments in the orchestra.  Thanks for freezing cherries and making that amazing crisp out of them.  Thanks especially for the apple sauce.   

Thanks for packing so many picnics with Dad and taking us kids out to parks where we could run and be crazy.  Thanks, too, for getting my head stitched up when I needed it after a fall.  And thanks for telling Patty and Mike to quit spelling out words I couldn’t understand in our bedroom at night when we were supposed to be going to sleep.  Thanks for teaching us all how to play cards.   

Thanks for playing Flower Drum Song, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, and The Four Lads on the house stereo countless times.  Thanks for encouraging me to get a paper route.  Thanks for sending me up to the library on my bike every once in a while, the place where I found my love for literature.  Thanks for countless Christmases, new shoes, new prayer books, and Carroll High School tuition.  

Thanks for giving me my first collegiate dictionary when I was a freshman at Wright State.  Thanks for not blowing too many gaskets when I bought Mrs. Wise’s Chevy in 1968 when you didn’t think I needed a car to get to Fairborn.  Thanks for encouraging me to write and use my head for something other than a hat rack.     

Thanks for being a good grandma and great grandma.  One of my all-time favorite memories is watching you and little three year-old Noah sitting on your back porch deck with lemonades, talking as you love to do, while I cut the grass after Dad left us.  You initiated that little boy in the art of conversation that you love so much. 

Happy birthday, Mom.  I hope this one is extra special as you remember a life so full of love and children and a deep abiding faith in God.  

I love you. 

Tom / kid #3

Today’s elder idea:  My faith in God has ever been sustaining in my life.  No matter what problems arose, I found my first inclination was to get down on my knees in prayer.  An altar in the corner of the bedroom was a source of consolation and inspiration, and when times were especially difficult, I would light the votive candle.  God, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” the Sacred Heart, the Blessed Mother, St. Jude (Patron of the Impossible), St. Anthony (Patron of Things Lost), St. Julie (Patron of Notre Dame), all hear from me frequently.  Life has been very tough at times, but always I can bound back although the tears are not far behind. 

Gertrude Zimmer Schaefer

Excerpted from “My Love Story”  (1996)

Written for author Nicholas Sparks through a writing contest sponsored by the Dayton Daily News.

photo:  Gert Zimmer at 20.