03-Dec-2006: My Mother and the Amazing Universe
My birthday will be in three days: 06 December. My mother's is shortly after that, on 10 December. That's partly why I think about her
at this time of year. I can still remember her voice clearly when she told me that she had spent her 21st birthday in the hospital after
my birth. In those days in Ontario the 21st birthday was considered the Big One. One became eligible to vote, but, most importantly,
became legally able to consume drinks with alcohol in them in public. Actually I had been drinking beer in Toronto's taverns since I
was eighteen, but I always had a borrowed birth certificate with me. I remember a waiter at the Brunswick House who, on reading the
birth certificate I presented, exclaimed, "You're thirty!??" I shrugged and said, "Sure." (After all, I would be in about 12 years.) I felt
I was cheated in a way because no one has ever asked to see my birth certificate since I did become "legal." And, to top it off,
I soon moved to Quebec where the age of majority was a much more sensible 18.
I understand my mother's pain.
Actually, there is much about my mother I understand, unlike any other members of her extended family. I went to a Mackenzie family reunion
in 1995 to meet my mother's family after her death a year before. Members of the clan told me that they had changed my diapers when I
was a baby and remarked that I had always been the quiet one. They shared beer at this gathering in a field north of Fergus and, I, feeling out
of place and disoriented, shared more than I should have. In the beer-slurred talk, a gentleman, maybe a cousin or married to an aunt, said,
"Your mother was quite the woman! Did you ever hear about the time she went into a tavern and..." That's as far as he got before his
wife shushed him, saying, "He doesn't need to hear about that stuff." Truth was, I did. And frankly, I don't care how risqué the story
might have been because I've always known my mother was exuberant, out-going, and always looking to have fun. She spent a week
with me before she died and told me about the men in her life in an open and frank way that she could share only with me: her first-born. I was not surprised
by any of her stories.
For most of my life my mother was a distant lost hope. When she and my father divorced in 1954, my father got custody of me and my
siblings and ensured we did not see our mother. He took us to Toronto once to have lunch in a restaurant where she was working as a waitress. One
night he woke me from a sound sleep to say, "Your mother's here." A sleepy-eyed 11-year-old was hugged by a beautiful-smelling woman and
shuffled back to bed. That was it. I did not see her again until I was thirty years old.
I did not try to locate her. How could I? She had been married at least once more that I knew of and she was living somewhere in the USA. So,
during my adolescence and 20's she was out of my mind, as much as an old love is ever truly out of one's thoughts and dreams. Then my sister
gave me, for Christmas, a history of Elora, a village where we had spent three years as children. As I read the book, I was struck by how
often the name Mackenzie appeared and it slowly dawned on me that maybe my mother still had relatives in the area. We had lived with our
mother in Fergus, a mile down the road from Elora, so I took a page from the
Fergus phone book and took it back to Quebec. There were eight Mackenzie's listed. I decided to write to every second one. I told them who I was,
my parents' names, where and when we lived in Fergus, and asked if they had any information that might lead to my mother. Now, this is where the story
gets spooky.
You can't write a novel about this because it stretches credulity. But I can talk about it. Life, as someone once said, is stranger than fiction.
One of the gentlemen who received my letter owned a shop on Fergus' main street. The day before my letter arrived he had been chatting with
the lawyer in the office next to his shop. The lawyer said that he had just received an inquiry from Mae Mackenzie that day. So, my mother was
fresh on this person's mind when my letter arrived. He passed the letter onto the lawyer who phoned my mother in Omaha, Nebraska and asked her
if she minded if he shared her address with her children. He then called my sister (she lived nearby and I had included her
telephone number in my letter) to give her the news. My mother called me. She was so overcome with joy that she barely made sense and I was too
tongue-struck to say much.
A few weeks later I flew to Toronto and took a cab to my sister's place where Mom was visiting. It was 2:30 am when I got there and my mother
was still up waiting for me. She hugged me and said, "This is the happiest day of my life."
Over the next eight years I twice visited her in Omaha, she visited us with her third husband, and she spent a week with me in rural Quebec shortly
before her death. Otherwise, we spent a lot
of time on the telephone. How did I feel about rediscovering my mother? It was like meeting someone that I was always comfortable with; someone
with whom I could share anything and she would understand and stand by me. She obviously felt the same way about me. I was the black sheep
of my father's family and she was the black sheep of hers. We both knew what it was like to be excluded and judged by people who were supposed
to be close to us, but were, in fact, about as far away from understanding us as one could get. I know I've always been an embarrassment to my sister
and brother; and Mom was an embarrassment to her family and community.
But life is so much bigger than that. My mother was filled with clichéd bromides; through them I felt her love. She was sentimental; through it I felt her
love. She told tall stories; through them I felt her sense of adventure and daring. A slogan that I use often is: If you don't do it during this lifetime, then
when are you going to do it? It came to me when reflecting on my mother after she died. That was how she lived life: you get one chance, so do it
now.
I could write a lot about my mother. Her funeral alone could fill a chapter in a book. But I want to focus on one thing her: how did I locate her? She had
actually been married twice since divorcing my father and had children with her second husband. At each marriage she changed her name. She was living in a foreign country
with a population ten times Canada's. I probably never would have thought of trying to locate her through relatives in Fergus if my sister
had not given me that book. And, if I had contacted them at any time during the previous 18 or so years, they would not have known where she was. And, if I
had contacted them two or three years after she sent a letter to a lawyer in Fergus, likely no one would have remembered. The right connection at the
right time. Time and space intersected at that moment and my mother and I found each other.
She was a good woman who wanted to party on her 21st birthday—just like any other 21-year-old at the time—or at any time, for that matter.
I hope I made her proud of the reason she missed her birthday party. You can probably tell that I love her till this day.