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Writer's pictureMary Balistreri

Mom and Me and the Love of the Arts & Gardening

My mom planted a number of seeds in me as I grew up, as most parents do. My great love of music, theater, movies, reading, and gardening originated with her and the home she created for us with my dad. The two of them, Audrey & Tom, shared excitement for the next great musical or fantastic novel. They shared books and chattered about their favorite music. In our house, we sang, read, discussed what we sang and read, and voraciously watched old movies on television.



For most of my life, we could not afford to see movies at the theater, so we watched many of the greats on our old black and white television set. It seemed the best ones played on weekdays in the afternoon. I admit to faking a cold more than once so I could stay home from school and watch the Bette Davis film festival with my mom. Bette was my mom's favorite actress and Now Voyager was her favorite Davis film. Mine was, and still is, the creepy Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. One week, all of Natalie Wood's movies were being shown. I managed to cough and spit stuff up enough that week to stay home for three of them: Love With the Perfect Stranger, Splendor in the Grass, and Marjorie Morningstar. Wow! Natalie Wood became my favorite actress.


While I adjust to the newness of each new stage of dementia and Alzheimer's as my mom changes, I reflect on those days. Were the great old movies the draw? Or did I want to spend more time with my mom? As the youngest of six kids, and a very shy child, I craved more time with my mom. The older girls, all three of them, played the piano and sewed beautiful garments just like my mom. They were ten, eight, and three years older than me. I was the tagalong for sure. Usually underfoot and in the way. Delayed in these great skills mostly because they had already learned and my mom was super busy. Looking back, I think it was the bonding over the films and the creation of that connection with my mom that motivated me to fake the flu.


Mom also knew every fact there was to know about all of the actors, writers, and directors. She ticked off the lists of who they married, how many children they had, all of the scandals connected to them, and whether they were nominated for or won any Oscars for their performances. And, yes, of course, she watched Jeopardy! every afternoon. She would have been a superchamp.


If you have not guessed already, we watched the Academy Awards every year. I remember once mom was talking about Lorna Luft and making the point that she was a great singer, too. I had no idea who she was talking about. I think mom had seen Lorna on the Dinah Shore Show that afternoon. She became very irritated with me for not remembering that Lorna Luft was one of Judy Garland's daughters. I knew Liza Minelli, and loved her, but had not made the connection. It might have been because I was 12 years old and had some other stuff going on, like puberty. The memory makes me laugh now. Back then, I was counter-irritated because she was irritated. You know how all that goes when you are living with someone and they are your parents. The thing about all of this that stands out is that my mom had the most accurate, voluminous memory of anyone I had ever met. Her current situation confounds me. The strangeness of memory. It tucks itself in the abyss of our brains and our internal network miraculously retrieves it, or in my mom's case now, does not retrieve any of it.


Music was everywhere in our house and the movies of musicals were prime watching material. I had already seen Oklahoma! six times before I learned that my parents were already a couple when the musical premiered in 1943. They ran out and bought the cast album the minute it was available and were absolutely entranced. It was a masterpiece. It revolutionized the musical through its use of dance (choreography) that matched the individual and that person's identity. It was the first collaboration of Rogers & Hammerstein who became a fixture in our house. Later, when I began to sing while my mom played the piano, Rogers & Hammerstein songs filled our repertoire. We kept up with the times and soon Andrew Lloyd Webber, Kander & Ebb, Claude Michel Schonberg (Les Miserables & Miss Saigon) and Stephen Sondheim expanded our minds and fantasies.


My mother earned her bachelor's degree in concert piano, so our house was filled with glorious, complex music. I loved it when she played. She lost herself in those moments infusing her emotions into the pieces. When the phone rang or one of the many inhabitants of the house came home, she stopped playing abruptly, wiped the sweat from her brow, and collected herself to return to the world.


I react similarly when I am engrossed in a good book. I find myself sweaty, too. That is the Sicilian genes from my dad working. I tend to sweat regardless of the activity.


The summer after I graduated eighth grade and before I entered high school (a very sweaty summer for me with puberty overtaking me), I read everything I could find. I was also grounded for the entire summer and had to start sleeping in the dank, gloomy basement because my sister was too ill to share a bed. I'll discuss all of that some other time. For now, it's important because the gloom of missing the sunshine of summer and the ultra gloom of the basement - with its fake paneling and wooden couch loosely covered with big pillows - the kind that is actually made for outdoor living - created the perfect atmosphere for the parade of novels filling my days and nights.


At my mother's suggestion, I read all of the girl classics. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and a book called Kristy (not so famous as the others). My mom's favorite book was Kristin Lavransdatter set in 14th century Norway. It was three volumes long and, I confess, I had so much trouble with the names that I did not finish reading it until I was in my 20s.


What I remember most from that summer was the ending of a book (I can't remember which) where a brother and sister have been estranged for many years. Then there is a terrible flood and they die in each other's arms in a boat. I cried for days, completely inconsolable. I could not speak about why I was crying. I just held up the book and pointed to it. I remember thinking, "Will I ever feel this way in real life? Will I ever love someone like this and feel my heart breaking."


I found the answer to that is, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" I feel the swell of great love with gratitude sometimes, pride sometimes, and, of course, loss sometimes.


My mind equates all of these feelings with the garden. The smell of our lilac tree gliding gracefully on the breeze on Spring mornings. The hope tulips bring every year as they bravely poke through the icy ground and dare to live again. The beautiful colors of the roses in my mother's garden lighting up our ordinary lives with vibrant possibility. She loved to spend quiet time alone outside cultivating her garden. She talked about her roses the most. Each year for Mother's Day, my dad gifted her a new rose bush. The brand she frequented and most prized is out of business now, but that brand was important to her.


She prized excellence. The best musicians, music, writers, books, plays, performers. She believed in discipline. Practice at the piano, weeding the garden, finishing a book one page at a time (no sneaking a peak at the ending), cleaning the house on Saturdays, keeping track of all of the expenses, itemized with incredible exactitude - buttons, five cents; fabric, 29 cents; dog food, $3 - in tiny notebooks with lined paper. She kept lists.


I felt deeply and dramatically that my mother should have been a world renowned classical pianist. I thought her life a tragedy of the mundane - doing laundry, raising children, spending time alone. As I grew older, she told me that living a quiet life was the greatest thing a person could do. It made no sense to me that someone as gifted, beautiful, and intelligent as her should not be noticed by the world. It did not connect with me.


Recently, in going through her belongings, we found a notebook filled with scientific facts. Late in life, in her 80s, she was learning about physics and space. In this notebook, at the very start of it, she wrote this quote from Rene Des Cartes, "To live well, you must live unseen." That is what she was telling me. She found the answer to her beliefs in that quote. I get it now. I get her a little bit more.









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