my mom Archives - Page 10 of 16 - Ramblin' with Roger

Mother’s Day: no mother, again

There are days when everything is really going well. Then there are other days you wish you could call your mom on the phone.

Here are a couple more pictures of my mom, before she was my mom. I don’t know exactly when they were taken, if I saw them before, I don’t recall them. Funny how she has that head tilt in both, albeit in different directions. My sister Marcia is doing a yeoperson’s job of finding photos, scanning them, and putting them on Facebook.

I’m fairly sure I know where the first one was taken.

It looks like the front of Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church, 35 Sherman Place in downtown Binghamton, NY, where I would later be baptized, in August (?) of 1953.

The Sherman Street church, indeed, all of that street was razed in the late 1950s to build a playground right across from the Interracial Center at 45 Carroll Street, where my father spent a lot of time working on social justice issues.

The church congregation moved to 203 Oak Street, at the corner of Lydia Street, only two short blocks from my home at 5 Gaines Street.

Don’t know much about this clearly earlier picture, except that the man in the car is almost certainly her Uncle Ed Yates, her mother Gert’s brother.

The freaky weather in Albany last month (80F on one day, 27F and snow 36 hours later) reminded both of my sisters of something that happened to my mom one Mother’s Day, or perhaps before: she slipped on ice on the front porch of our house and ended up in the hospital for at least a week. I think it was 1966; the week before May 8, the low temperature was 31 to 33F, and down to 26F the night before in Binghamton, NY. Though it COULD have been 1967, when it was 33F to 35F the evenings of the week before May 14.

There are days when everything is really going well. Then there are other days you wish you could call your mom on the phone. I’ve had more than my share of the latter thus far in 2014.

That damn song about ancestors

My parents are gone and have joined my ancestors, and there is no one else in an earlier generation in my lineage.

Right after I got back to Albany, after my mother’s funeral in February 2011 in Charlotte, NC, I attended the church service of my current congregation. It was Black History Month, and I had helped organize the events but did not participate much in them. I’m standing in the congregation, rather than singing in the choir when we got to do Lift Every Voice and Sing.

I’m singing it, as I’ve done dozens of times in the past. We get to the lyrics:
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last

And I start sobbing uncontrollably. Don’t know if anyone, except The Wife, noticed, but I was unable to sing anymore.

I’m reminded of this because it’s always the last song we perform at my church in Black History Month, and I am still unable to get through the song without crying at some point, and that had not been an issue before 2011. I think it’s that “adult orphan” thing, that my parents are gone and have joined my ancestors, that there is no one else in an earlier generation in my lineage – my parents were both only children – and somehow I’ve become the eldest member of my tiny little tribe on earth, the children and grandchildren of Les and Trudy Green, who were married March 12, 1950, in Binghamton, NY.

LISTEN to Lift Every Voice and Sing.

Mom’s grave marker

It seems like yesterday, and a long time ago, that Mom died.

As I have mentioned, my mother is buried at Salisbury National Cemetery in Salisbury, North Carolina; the place has an interesting history. My father had died in August 2000, and it was a great stress for the family to figure out the logistics. But when my mom died three years ago today, the situation was considerably easier; since Dad was cremated, Mom was likewise.

What I did not know is that they don’t just take my father’s marker and add my mom’s information. Instead, they made a new marker altogether, with my dad’s data on one side, and my mom’s on the other.

My sister Marcia, who lives in North Carolina, went to Salisbury on Veterans Day 2013 and took this picture. Since I haven’t actually been to NC since my mother’s funeral, this is the first time I’ve “seen” the headstone.

Mom’s mother was named Gertrude, and she wasn’t too fond of it, though she was not one to complain too much. Her first cousins knew her as Gertie, but all the time I could remember, she preferred Trudy.

My sister Leslie sang Wind Beneath My Wings at my father’s funeral, dedicated to my mother, and reprised it at mom’s funeral.

It seems like yesterday, and a long time ago, that Mom died. I suppose that is irrational, but there it is.

Mom: still surprising me

My mom would have been 86 today.

My sister Marcia has been posting a number of photos on Facebook. Most of them were pictures I remember but hadn’t viewed in many years. Then there is this one; I’d never seen it before, as far as I can recall.

My mom married my dad when she was 23, and I suspect this shot predates that, but I have no idea of the provenance of the photo. Who took it? What was the occasion? I may never know. She does look lovely.

Gertrude (Trudy) Elizabeth Green, nee Williams, would have been 86 today.

Grandparents Day: my grandmas, and one of my daughter’s

Curiously, this picture triggered a memory of some kind about my OTHER grandmother.

One of those holidays I think WAS created by Hallmark is Grandparents Day. Well, technically not, but it FEELS that way.

Here’s another picture my sister Marcia found, taken at some point in the 1940s; no idea where, when or why. The woman in the top row, second from the right is my great aunt Charlotte and the guy next to her in the sweater is her husband, Ernie Yates. Ernie died while his kids Raymond (directly in front of Charlotte), Frances (sitting on the floor), and Donald (on the blonde girl’s lap) were still young, but Charlotte had grandchildren, as Fran, Donald, and Robert (either not yet born, or an infant) all had children. Fran and Donald now have grandchildren.

The woman behind the blonde girl, partially obscured, is my grandma, Gertrude Williams, Ernie’s sister. She had three grandchildren, including my two sisters. And the young woman in the back row next to Ernie is my mother. I don’t know who she was holding hands with, but it was not my father. She too had three grandchildren, as my sisters and I each had a daughter.

This picture was posted on Facebook, and a cousin suggested that it was taken on the second floor of something called the Interracial Center at 45 Carroll Street in Binghamton. The only people I recognize are my mother and her mother in the front row.

Curiously, this picture triggered a memory of some kind about my OTHER grandmother. A guy named John wrote, “I worked with your Grandmother Agatha Green in the Sunday School as a teacher at Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church Binghamton NY at the earlier location on Sherman Place & the church moved to Oak St. in 1960. Yes, I of course also recall your Mother and VERY artistic Dad, Les … A GREAT encouragement, motivation to me was knowing your Grandmother … (& I do mean “Grand”)…one fine Lady who made a HUGE difference in [my] life to the extent that she did NOT, sadly live to see. God Bless Her Soul!!!”