For well over a year, I’ve been leading a creative writing class at a senior living center near my home, listening to a great group of folks tell their stories. I’ve grown fond of these writers. They are creative and kind and willing. And today, I’m honored to feature one of those writers here.
Ted Johnson was the first person to show up on my inaugural day of leading the class. He couldn’t have known how nervous I felt, nor how grateful I was to see him there–with pen and paper and a smile. Ted has an easy way about him, always has a kind word for others, and brings to the table some great stories. I met him for coffee this week so that I could take his picture, and I reminded him of the importance in this work, in the stories he sets to paper. We forget, sometimes, the power of memory, of the connections we make when we share those memories with others. Enjoy reading this essay by Ted Johnson.
My Mother
By Ted Johnson
At 87 years old my mother still lived alone in her apartment in Minneapolis and apparently loved it. My sister was living in Billings and I in Milwaukee, and we worried about her—a lot. She had given up her car a couple years before with little fanfare, and I could only hope that I would be that mature when my time came.
I drove to Minneapolis to see her and to assure myself that all was well. We had been trying to get her to move to Milwaukee for years, but she was adamant, unyielding. “It wouldn’t feel right,” she said. “Anytime I’d turn on TV to get the news, I’d see a face I’d never seen before. I’m used to all these local people and I’d miss them. Bill Adams has been the weatherman on WCCO for twenty years. It wouldn’t seem right to go to bed at night without listening to Bill.”
“Are you watching a lot of TV these days?” I asked.
“No,” she said, her tone indicating that she sensed some criticism in my question. “I don’t watch a lot of TV. We play bridge. We play sheepshead and work jigsaw puzzles. We have coffee parties at each others apartments. I’m not watching TV all the time.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to criticize, and I don’t feel there is anything wrong with watching a lot of TV. In fact,” I told her, “Your generation hit it just right. Just about the time your kids were ready to leave the nest, television came in to its own to help you fill your spare time.”
She took a deep breath. She didn’t like that. I’d seen this measured and controlled exasperation many times before.
“You know”, she said, “I wouldn’t worry so much about my generation not having a full and rewarding life. I honestly think we have seen more changes than any other generation that has lived on this planet.”
She went on to remind me that she was born in a small mining town in northern Minnesota where they used candles and kerosene lamps for light. That even after Edison invented the electric light bulb, they didn’t see it for three or four years. “For transportation,” she said, “we had the dependable horse and buggy. Cars were not available to us until about 1903, when I was 10 years old.” Henry Ford’s Model T was the first car she remembered.
“We went through World War I and not long after that we suffered through the greatest Depression the world had ever seen. Shortly after that we went through the biggest War the world had ever seen. 50 million people world-wide were killed in some manner,” she said. Every family in the United States had some relative of theirs in the service in World War II, she told me. “After the War, our generation came back and built this country into the strongest and richest country in the world.”
She took another breath.
“And to cap it all off we sent a man to the moon.”
“That,” she said, “should keep you from worrying about whether my life is exciting enough.”
And, that’s the way my mother set me straight.
Like cattle they herd us into assembly to sit and wait for an indeterminate amount of time.
