When we were little, she tossed wiffle balls to us in the backyard.
She couldn’t resist the odd prank, though. When she was in school, baseball was her game. She pitched. She pitched so well that she was the only girl the boys let play with them.
She’d strike the girls out in softball games, pitching underhand. Then she’d strike the boys out in baseball games, pitching overhand. Years later, she’d strike out her own sons, but not enough to discourage us.
She loved to pitch wiffle balls. She could make them drop, rise, curve, anything. Most of the time she’d hang gopher balls over the plate so we could blast away, but she never lost the charge she felt inside every time she fooled the hitter for strike three. She could make one drop a foot. We’d swing and miss. Then we’d all laugh.
Most of all, I remember her face. As she began her windup, she’d stick her tongue out to the left. When we connected, she’d hoot and laugh as we ran around the bases. “Runrunrunrunrun!” she’d crow, jumping up and down.
That smile could melt Casey Stengel, one of her favorites.
I know why my dad fell for her. She was easy to love. To her, life was a game. She made it fun. When something tickled her, she let go of a piercing, high-pitched cackle. Her blue eyes would open in mid-giggle as wide as if she were riding a roller coaster, which, in reality, she avoided at all costs.
She grew up when the Giants still played in New York and the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. She would talk to us about her favorite Dodgers: Don Newcombe. Gil Hodges. Pee Wee Reese. Jackie Robinson. They were her heroes, along with FDR, for whom she did campaign work in college before his last term in office. That was when she wasn’t going to class, acting in plays and working in student government.
That was who she was. She was always busy, always active, and it didn’t stop when she graduated college. She threw herself into causes, from presidential campaigns to historical societies to child-abuse prevention to the PTA to the Children’s Hospital guild. There wasn’t an organization in town that she didn’t either lead or become heavily involved. She believed in helping her community and those who couldn’t catch a break. It was as natural to her as breathing.
She loved the work. She loved to help people.
Later in life, she helped raise money by dressing as a madam — lipstick, rouge and mascara pasted on her face and a cigarette holder in her hand. The first was a function on the upper floor of a shoe store, which was known a century ago as a house of ill-repute. The character became so popular (in part because it was such a polar opposite of the actress) that she reprised the role for virtually every fundraiser in which she participated.
She put the same energy into raising us as she did everything else. She chose us to adopt and at no time did we feel anything but cherished. She quit teaching to raise us. That’s what many moms did in the 1950s. She likely would have done the same had she been a young mother 40 years later. She was a strong believer in many of the era’s ideals of childrearing. One was that one parent should be home, and only the most desperate of economic realities could change that.
She disciplined with love. She never spanked; she explained, she taught. The guilt we felt each time we disappointed her was ample punishment, just because we loved her so much.
She used sports as one way to reach us. She used her natural thespian talents and interest in the Seattle Sonics to imitate the long, loping, arm-flinging strides of Spencer Haywood and the compact, energy-conserving, patty-cake steps of Lenny Wilkens.
We’d laugh every time.
She went to every one of her sons’ sports events, every play, every speech. She didn’t do it out of sense of duty. She did it because she couldn’t stay away if she wanted to.
Today, she is five months away from her 84th birthday. Her blue eyes stare vacantly. Dementia has quickly taken away much of her magic. She asks her caregiver when her sons will be back to visit. Friday, her caregiver answers, and they’ll stay through Mother’s Day.
She asks again 10 minutes later. And 10 minutes after that.
Her sons call daily. They tell her they love her. “I love you, too, honey,” she says. The caregiver tells the sons that the smile returns as she says it.
Do yourself a favor and hug your mom today.
But don’t stop when Mother’s Day ends.
Sports columnist John Sleeper: sleeper@heraldnet.com. For Sleeper[`]s blog, “Dangling Participles,” go to www.heraldnet.com/danglingparticiples.
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