More Than All Right: A Daughter’S “Momoir”

By Patricia A. Bird

Long before Steel Magnolias became a hit movie, Holly Ridge, North Carolina had produced its own vigorous southern flower, Lena Shepard Morris Bird. In this memoir of her mother, author Patricia A. Bird narrates how Lena inherited all the best of her traditional world while developing the gifts that allowed her to unconsciously model a newer one.

Through nineteen vignettes, Lenas story shows how she applied her motto, If its worth doing, its worth doing right, in her home as mother of three and wife of fifty-four years, at her church, and in her workplace. Raised in this environment, Patricia Bird became one of the earliest women Episcopal priests in the United States.

From childhood on, Rev. Bird shares the memorable recollections of her mothers ninety-three years that helped shape her growth. More than All Right portrays Lena as a woman of great energy, great humor, and unconditional love. It presents an evocative portrait of family life in the forties and fifties.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450271431

Patricia A. Bird

Patricia A . Bird wrote this “momoir” following her mother’s death in 2010 as a way of processing the rush of memories. She is a retired Episcopal priest and professional church musician, Bird lives in southern Delaware and volunteers with Meals on Wheels and Habitat for Humanity.

Book preview

Contents

Chapter 1

In the Kitchen at Green Fields Village

Chapter 2

Mom and Dad

Chapter 3

Mom and My Big Mouth

Chapter 4

Mom and the Gift of Music

Chapter 5

Mom, the Mail, and My Piano

Chapter 6

The Lecture, or

Selfishness and the Real Meaning of Christmas

Chapter 7

Mom and the Blue Willow China

Chapter 8

Mom and the Three R’s:

Romance, Radio, and Reading

Chapter 9

No Pets in the House

Chapter 10

Something New to Wear

Chapter 11

Momisms

Chapter 12

Mom and the Divine Fire

Chapter 13

Pedestals Are for the Perfect

Chapter 14

Mom’s Craftiness

Chapter 15

Give Them Wings

Chapter 16

The Hallmark of Relationships

Chapter 17

Mothers and Daughters

Chapter 18

Mom Always Loved Us Best

Chapter 19

Moving Right Along

Prologue

My mother might have been a contender for Grandy, North Carolina’s Best Dressed Woman of the Year, if there had been such a competition, or at least the woman with the most clothes. That probably would have been the sum total of her fifteen minutes of fame, unless you count going on a TV quiz show called Cinderella Weekend in the early 1950s and winning a watch and a box of candy. Her sphere of influence was primarily limited to her home, her church, and her workplace, just like the majority of the rest of us. To those within this relatively small circle she gave her all, with enthusiasm and a degree of love that was extraordinary.

Her recognized ability to lead others inspired almost every group or organization she ever joined to elect her president or chairwoman or superintendent or whatever office represented its highest position of leadership. She could start a new job at the lowest level and soon be head or supervisor of the department. If she’d been raised in a different era than she was and in a different culture than she was, I’ve wondered whether she’d have become one of the luminaries of her time. But perhaps that’s just the biased reflection of an admiring daughter.

The evidence of what she did become, however, is undeniable. Wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, great-grandmother, friend, churchwoman, working woman—to each role she brought all of herself. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right was an injunction she laid on us numberless times when we hadn’t performed a task to her satisfaction; that or, It doesn’t take any longer to do something right than it does to do it wrong. I secretly disagreed with this second proverb, having discovered that skipping over as much ground as I possibly could to get to the end of a chore often shortened the work considerably! Mom didn’t accept that view, and many times I was set to redoing something to her specifications. The dishes aren’t done until you’ve scrubbed the sink was one example of why I might be sent back to finish a job not well done.

This momoir is primarily meant to honor her many wonderful attributes, but she and I had less glorious times, too. One area that often set the smoke billowing was the all-important subject of men. If I didn’t particularly care for a man, he always seemed to be the one that Mom really liked, and she would start thinking about what dress to wear to the wedding. If I really did like one, he was never good enough for me, and Mom would rehearse all the reasons why I shouldn’t be in a relationship with him. This led to some mother-daughter conversations that are best left to the past!

Mom was an extravert with a capital E, while I’m a devout introvert. On the Meyers-Briggs test, my scores were described as obscene by the professor who administered the test. All the scores on the ESTJ side added together didn’t equal even one score on the INFP side. He said he was surprised I ever came out of my room! This was more accurate than he knew because, as a child, I much preferred solitude, as I still do, and spent long, perfectly happy hours in my room, reading or daydreaming. Why don’t you go outside and play? Mom would ask anxiously, no doubt convinced that she had birthed an alien. It was beyond her comprehension that, much of the time, I preferred my own company to being with others.

When I went to parties or on dates, she was always eager to hear how it was, and the door would barely have clicked shut before she’d ask,

Did you have a good time?

What did you do?

Where did you go?

Who was there?

She was genuinely interested in whether I’d enjoyed myself. Any time she returned from a social outing, she was ready to tell about her experience. But I needed time before I wanted to talk about mine, and it continually frustrated me that Mom didn’t understand that.

I didn’t know then, nor did she, that with my extremely introverted personality I needed to filter and process my experiences before I could share them. I felt she was unfairly pressing me for information when, if she’d only wait until I was ready, I’d be more than willing to talk. This, too, led to many uncomfortable exchanges between us, with her thinking I was keeping things from her, and me feeling I was being given the third degree. It took a long time, but over the years we both learned enough about each other to understand why we’d bumped heads over this so often, and I learned to love her outgoing approach to life while she learned to respect my contemplative nature.

She wasn’t a heroine or a saint. She didn’t set the world on fire. Her accomplishments weren’t the stuff of best-selling biographies. She was just Mom. She and Dad had always enjoyed traveling and had pretty much covered the United States and parts of Canada before he died in 1994. What they missed, she filled in with wonderful trips with her friend Betty. After she’d moved to the retirement community, where she lived until her own death at ninety-three, she had the opportunity to do some overseas travel. On one junket she visited Turkey, and on another she went to Oberammergau and Vienna. Mom often reminisced about these trips and expressed awe that she’d actually done these things. I think she, herself, summed up her life when on several occasions, after sharing a memory of something she had done while visiting foreign parts, she said to me with a smile, You know, honey, for a little old farm girl from North Carolina, I did all right, didn’t I?

Yes, you did, Mom. You did more than all right.

Patricia Bird

June 18, 2010

Chapter 1

In the Kitchen at Green Fields Village

The kitchen was probably the largest room in our 1950s-style rancher in Green Fields Village; even if it wasn’t, it holds the largest place in my memory. It featured a checkered linoleum floor made up of large alternating red and white square tiles and Formica countertops that were probably meant to be a coordinating red but looked as if they suffered from severe anemia. The working part of the kitchen, reading from left to right, included a spacious counter containing the toaster, various canisters, the dish rack, and assorted impedimenta of family life. Then came the sink, another short counter space, and, finally, the large gas stove on which my mother taught me to cook. There was a window over the sink, perfect for daydreaming when it was my turn to do the dishes.

On the short wall, between the archway to the living room and the doorway to the utility room, the refrigerator jutted out like a large white rhinoceros—or perhaps polar bear would be a more apt image—challenging our freedom of movement and requiring that we describe a wide arc in walking around it. It must have had distinctive sounds, too, because no matter how stealthily I tried to open it, securely screened by its bulk from my mother’s line of vision, a voice would issue from the living room, Get out of that refrigerator! or "Don’t start eating