THOUGHTS ABOUT MY MOTHER
Rose Reynolds Burket
An advantage to having a space between the crisis of death and a memorial service is the gift of some quiet time to consider the life that has finished. What is a life? My father in his last days said it is all about love for those whose lives entwine with ours. Another dear friend of mine said something similar, as have numerous writers. I believe them. Still, a lot happens in a lived life and all that also must have meaning.
I’m thinking about my mother whose lifetime covered one whole century and the tail end and beginning of two others. I’m thinking about how she was a little girl on a farm with animals, fruit trees, and a wonderful woods to wander in. How she walked several miles of hilly country road to elementary school in Millburg; How hard that must have been sometimes in a Michigan winter; How she dawdled around Blue Creek gathering water cress and wild flowers in the spring. And about her pet groundhog named Butterscotch.
Then, how she drove a horse and buggy daily to high school in Benton Harbor. That would have been in what became Central School where I attended kindergarten through 6th grade. And then, still not quite 20 years old, she got on the inter-urban and went off to Normal school in Ypsilanti to study speech and become a teacher. That, of course, is where she met my father, Myraum, and, though it doubtless would embarrass both of them to hear me say it, began a love story eighty years long that is simply awesome to most of us..
WWI happened. Rose and Myraum married on his 24-hour leave He went overseas. She taught school in Lansing. The war ended and they picked up their disrupted life. I was born and quite a few years later my brother Phil was born. After she had raised the two of us to something resembling maturity my Mother went back to school. It has always seemed to me to be one of her most notable achievements that she received her BA degree in the same month and year that my daughter Barbara Rose was born.
I don’t imagine many if, indeed, any of you remember the marionette show she created. It was during the depression and you have to be as old as I am to remember those rough times. My Dad constructed the complicated stage and she made and costumed the marionettes. She adapted the stories of HANSEL AND GRETEL and JACK IN THE BEANSTALK, and a pre-show revue with dancers and clowns, a dog named Chip (which was my part until I got old enough to operate and speak for Jack) and a charming mistress of ceremonies in a silver swing, She also adapted the Nativity story for Christmas programs. We all worked very hard practicing in front of mirrors learning to manipulate the controls and strings so that the dolls looked natural. We entertained children of all ages around Berrien and VanBuren Counties for something like 5 and 10 cents admission. Not a few performances were done here in Sonner Hall.
One of the most significant bits of theater knowledge I’ve been privy to (and one that not all theater folks understand) is that you can trust an audience’s imagination to create wondrous things when you give it a chance. Too much realism is oppressive and takes away the magic. The roar of an off-stage monster is much more fearsome than any kind of monster one can create on stage. I learned this at age 8 when even adults came back stage asking to see the high-heeled silver slippers on the white satin dancer. ( they were only bits of Christmas tinsel.)
A few months ago I was privileged to see a performance of Mozart’s MAGIC FLUTE by the Salzburg Marionettes, which are surely the most marvelous marionettes in the world. I was overwhelmed anew by the amazing ingenuity, creativity, and industriousness that prompted my mother to put all that together. Once I asked her whatever made her think of doing it. She said, “Oh, I just thought it would be fun. I read some books and of course I knew how to do the voices of the characters.”
I still have the little pitcher from the Hansel and Gretel family table and the witch, Rosina Daintymouth's brass pot. I hang them on my Christmas tree every year, the manipulating strings still attached.
You all know Rose’s long devotion to this church. But I think it’s worth remembering, because no one of that generation is left, how hard they worked to rebuild the church into this beautiful edifice after the fire, and how the women of the church cooked and served meals in Sonner Hall all through the years of the depression to help keep the church solvent.
My mother was a strong woman with an unshakable sense of justice and fairness, even when justice and fairness led to things of which she disapproved. And I think she was a feminist before the word came into popular usage. She wasn’t aggressive or noisy about it, but she was absolute and that was a very lucky thing for me. She suffered some truly difficult times. In a hundred plus years you are bound to. But I don’t believe she ever considered giving up or indulging in self-pity or expecting someone else to take care of her. In fact this very quality which made her so admirable also made the last few years of her life more difficult.
As I’ve thought about my mother with this memorial in mind one memory is persistent and so I think I must share it. When I was a student at Olivet College my Sorority had a Mother and Daughter Banquet. For some reason I was not sure my mother was to be there, but as it turned out she was. It was customary at our meetings to call on someone for an impromptu speech on an assigned subject and on an occasion like this a guest was called upon as well. I thought we were safe because of the uncertainty about her attendance and so did not think to warn her. Of course, we were the mother and daughter handed the impromptus. She was wonderful as you might expect, rising to the occasion as though she’d planned it for days. But what is prodding me now is the poem with which she closed that speech Some of you good Congregationalists probably know it, but I can’t find it anywhere and don’t recall it’s author or its source and I likely am not remembering it with accuracy and completion. It is after all an almost 60-year old memory.
To every one there openeth
A way and ways and a WAY!
And everyone must choose
The way his soul shall go.
The high soul takes the high way
And the low soul takes the low
And in between the rest
Go wandering to and fro.
But to every one there openeth
A way and ways and a WAY,
And everyone must choose
The way his soul will go.
(Prepared for Memorial at First Congregational Church, Benton Harbor, Michigan, June, 2001)