Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
(NOTE TO READER: Jocie Brooke is the young teen character in my Heart of Hollyhill books, Scent of Lilacs, Orchard of Hope and Summer of Joy. She loves writing articles for her father’s smalltown newspaper. Well, she just loves writing anything. So sometimes she takes up pen and paper to write down some reports for her Hollyhill Book of the Strange she’s been writing for a few years now. Then through the magic of storytelling, she shares those pieces with me and I share those pieces with you. 🙂 Happy Reading!)
Sometime in the 1960s
Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky the week after Mother’s Day. I’m glad it’s over. I’ll just count down the days until Father’s Day. I’ll have something to celebrate then. But at church, everybody always makes such a big fuss about Mother’s Day. All the mothers get flowers and lots of “Happy Mother’s Day” greetings. I guess that’s good. I can tell the women in our church Happy Mother’s Day. I might even smile. Mothers do need a day when they are a big deal. But I don’t much like Mother’s Day. You see, not everybody has a good mother. I didn’t, and Mother’s Day pokes me with that.
Then, as Dad likes to say, good mothers don’t grow on trees. I’m not sure why he would say that! No mother, good or bad, grows on trees. That’s Dad, always trying to come up with something different to preach on. He did preach about mothers on Sunday. Not about them growing or not growing on trees, but about how a good mother loves God. A good mother takes care of her family. A good mother would jump in a river to save her child even if she couldn’t swim. He didn’t say that either. I did, but that doesn’t sound like something that can have a very good ending. My friend, Pauline, says I can think up the craziest things. So I guess I’m something like Dad with that. Anyway, I guess it would be better to say a good mother would make sure a girl knew what she needed to know about being a girl. You know, about when to start wearing a bra or shaving her legs.
I didn’t have that kind of mother. Even if she had stuck around until I needed to know those things. Of course, she didn’t. She took off without so much as a goodbye when I was a little kid. I used to wonder if it was maybe because I cried too much when I was a baby or if I wasn’t cute enough or I don’t know, something. But my mother never liked me. To her I was a pest. Unwanted. A bother. She never hit me or anything like that. I used to wish she would since that would prove she knew I was there. But no. She just pretended I didn’t exist.
Sometimes I wondered if I was invisible. And after I got over my mother wishing I was, I decided being invisible might be fun. To test out if maybe I really was in some strange way, I started sneaking up close to people talking in the church yard after Sunday services to see if they would notice me eavesdropping. They hardly ever did, but since I was never invisible to Dad, I got into big time trouble with that eavesdropping stuff.
I didn’t miss having a mother when she left us. Maybe because I’d never had a mother. Maybe because Mama Mae took over for her amd she loved me just the way I was. But then the Lord took her away too. She talked about going to heaven sometimes, but she never sounded like she was in any kind of big hurry. I guess the Lord was in a hurry for her to get up there and start planting flowers for Him. She died planting tulips one year. So whenever I see tulips, I imagine Mama Mae smiling down from heaven on me.
Aunt Love took over for Mama Mae. She helped Dad keep the house going and more worrisome for me, tried to make me behave. The way she thought I should. Some completely unnecessary rules that Mama Mae never brought up. Aunt Love and me have had our rough spots, for sure. I don’t exactly act the way Aunt Love thinks a preacher’s daughter should. She’s probably right. But Dad loves me anyway and Aunt Love and I mostly put up with one another. She doesn’t hug my neck or anything but she does sometimes say something nice to me. Not often, but every now and again. And I try really hard to not get on her nerves. She has enough problems with the way she keeps forgetting everything without me messing with her nerves too.
So everybody doesn’t have a loving mother. Some mothers don’t kiss their kids’ skinned knees or teach them prayers at night or tuck them in at night. Some kids are like me with mothers who not only never wanted them but just plain don’t like them all that much. What are we supposed to do on Mother’s Day when everybody else is hugging their moms and singing their praises? I guess I can remember Mama Mae and think of her tulips. And sometimes feel sorry for myself. Oh, and think about Father’s Day next month. I might not have had a mom who loved me but I do have the best dad in the world.
Till next time.
Comments 12
I love the Hollyhill series, Ann, and the character Jocie. Might be time for a re-read! I had a good mother and I am mother to four adults who grew up not knowing their father who had abused us. This post is beautiful. Thank you!
Author
Jocie here. It’s good you had a beautiful mother and I’m sure you were a great mom who made up for the not good dad your kids had. It’s better when both mother and father are good, but life can throw us some hard pitches sometimes. We just have to do our best to field whatever happens with the Lord’s help. So glad you enjoyed reading my report from Hollyhill. I’ll be writing another one soon.
I didn’t have a wonderful mother at all in fact she gave me some of the worst memories that I have and then also ended up with not so good foster mothers they wanted someone to do all the chores for them even cook but I did learn to cook the fast and hard way which is good. I know a lot of young wives that have no idea how to cook and I feel so sorry for them!
Author
Jocie here: So sorry, Peggy. And you didn’t even have a great dad the way I did to take over for your not good mother. And those foster mothers should have done better. It’s good you can think back and find something good out of your experiences and that is that you learned to cook. I guess I’m learning that too helping Aunt Love now that her memory is sometimes not so good. She can still cook but she has trouble remembering she put the biscuits in the oven and when to take them out. Tabitha and I try to watch out for her on those times because she does make the best biscuits.
Thank you for bringing back Josie for a spell. As you know, I’d love to see her in another novel of yours. 😊 I had a wonderful mother who was gone way too early from my life-in my 30’s when she passed away! But blessed that my dad lived to be 90! My three children live locally and treated me to a dinner of whole catfish-my favorite and not every seafood restaurant has them.
Happy Mother’s Day a little late.
Author
Sounds as if you had a great Mother’s Day, but did lose your mother too soon.
It’s always fun when Jocie wants to take over the reporting from Hollyhill. Maybe someday she’ll get to be in another Hollyhill story.
Glad/sorry to see this column…I can identify with the writer…I too did not have a good mother. She walked off and left me (I was 2 1/2) and my baby brother who was six months old with our paternal grandparents with the promise “she would be back” she was just going to town. Never happened. My dad was serving in WWII aboard a navy ship and we learned later she took off with another man. We never saw her again; never had any contact with her. My grandmother took over and even though she was a farm wife and a mother of four teenagers she loved us, fed us, corrected us and taught us about Jesus. She was our substitute mama.
Author
Ann – with note about Jocie – Jocie is my young teen character in my Heart of Hollyhill books. Occasionally she takes over my keyboard to write a report from Hollyhill in the 1960s about her life. The first book I wrote about Jocie and her family and friends was Scent of Lilacs. I guess I need to make that clear at the top of her posts. Jocie was a fun character to bring to life in my Hollyhill books as she had to deal with her mother deserting her as yours did you. Sounds as if you were bountifully blessed with a grandmother who took over as your mother.
I had a wonderful Christian mother, who instilled many value’s in me. Mothers Day is a sad day for me though, my Mom passed away the Friday before Mothers Day, having cancer that was operated on three years before on Friday before Mothers Day, but I cherish her memory and will never forget her 42 years after her death.
Author
Ann here (Not Jocie) We never stop missing our mothers, Donna Jean. I’m glad you had the blessing of having a good Christian mother and can bring up those cherished memories when you think about her.
This is great! So helpful for those who did not have “good” mothers. I can think of a couple young girls who may benefit from reading this book.
Author
Jocie here. I would love to share my story in Scent of Lilacs with those girls. I was sometimes sad that my mother didn’t love me but my dad has always been there for me. And then I have Wes too. I tell him he’s my grandpa even if he says that makes him sound too old. He’s not really my grandfather but he loves me like one.