{Prompt: What was your Mom like?}
Describing a person is tricky. How much of their persona is real and how much of it is a facade? Is the person that I know in some way the same person that you know in another way? Is the person the same to themselves as they are to others?
I think I can describe my mother — her attributes and her life experience pretty well. And I think she is pretty much the same person on the inside as she is on the outside.
Margaret Whitesell Gallup, circa 1961.
But first let me tell you about her, little by little. You can judge for yourself. This is the way that I was introduced to my mother.
Step by step.
At first, she was my young mother. She fed me peas and carrots. She showed me how to hold a fork and a spoon. She wiped my mouth and combed my hair.
She helped me get my shirt over my big head — putting it on and taking it off. She helped me get my foot through each pants leg — the left leg in the left side and the right leg in the right side. She helped me with my socks and my shoes, and she taught me how to tie the laces.
Mom with Mike - circa 1963.
At the end of the day, she filled the bathtub up with water, a couple of toys and some soap suds. She washed my neck, and behind the ears.
When I had on my pajamas, she would read to me. Sometimes she would rub my back.
Mom with me - circa 1965.
Hush little baby, don’t say a word,
Mama’s gonna buy you a mocking bird…
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
You make me happy when skies are gray,
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you,
Please don’t take my sunshine away.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky…
Once we looked out at the stars… out of the window, above our back yard… and we made a wish on a star — the first one to appear. I must have just seen Pinocchio, or heard Jiminy Cricket singing When You Wish Upon a Star.
Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have this wish I wish tonight.
Can you imagine?
A scene from Disney’s Wish
Together we read many books.
We read the tale of Peter Rabbit, who was so terribly naughty (and came home without his shoes or his blue jacket). We read about Curious George, whose curiosity would get him into big trouble (especially with an ink blotter).
We read about Sam-I-Am, who would not try green eggs and ham… until the very end of the book (a happy ending as it turns out).
And we read about the accidental poisoning of the king of the elephants by mushrooms, in the Story of Babar (a very unhappy event).
We read the conversations of dogs in silly hats, and we were astounded by the dog party in the tree, so brilliantly illustrated by P D Eastman.
Near the end of Go, Dog. Go!
Mom showed me how to play with many toys: Playdoh and Silly Putty. Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys. Wooly Willy and Etch A Sketch. Slinkies… Yo-Yos… View-Masters.
I colored and drew. I clipped and I glued. We made decoupage from cut out magazine pictures, and art from macaroni. She did some hand sewing from patterns, and I watched. She made a wall hanging from macramé.
One Advent season, as Christmas approached, we set to work to create Chrismon ornaments for the tree in the church lobby. We cut into Styrofoam — making squeaking noises that I could barely tolerate, sounds that still make me cringe. We attached beads and ribbons. We deciphered the messages in the symbolic shapes. We took pride in the glowing Chrismon tree with its especially meaningful ornaments, pearly white and gold.
A very fine Chrismon ornament (Credit: Our State Magazine).
She taught me games like hide-and-seek and Simon Says. She prepared me to run and jump and throw and dodge, so I could play tag, and kickball, and Red Rover, and Dodgeball.
She set me loose with my brother and our toys, to play Cowboys and Indians, or World War III, or the most violent game of all - Tetherball. Mike and I would lash out — flailing at the tetherball, to get it spinning in the right direction. Usually, Mike got it orbiting all askew, over my head — the cord to the tetherball growing shorter and shorter, until it spun to a stop against the pole, granting him victory.
Injuries were to be expected, and mom would fix them with a Band-Aid, or a rub and a kiss.
Once Mike threatened to throw a cap gun at me, from twenty feet away. And when I didn’t leave him alone, he did throw it at me. (He claims he threw it to the side of me). So as I dodged to escape the projectile, it hit me perfectly on the side of my forehead, where the metal cap gun instantly popped open a laceration, and I had to run inside to Mom for treatment (and vindication).
I had two more bleeding head wounds during childhood, one more at the hand of my brother (who threw a rope tied to a rock over a tree branch, while I was standing on the other side). The other injury happened when I fell off my bicycle into the side of a bulldozer, at the other end of the neighborhood. Mom provided first aid both times.
She put antiseptic on our scrapes when we fell on the asphalt. She dried us off when we fell in the creek. She mixed up a remedy of Port wine and honey when I had a sore throat. And she took us to the doctor and the dentist to get our shots and our cleanings.
New parents— Gerry and Meg, with Mike.
In return, we were expected to do our chores. We would brush our teeth and take a bath. We would set the table or do the dishes. We had to clean our room and make our bed. As we got older, we had to do our homework… practice music… mow the lawn.
Clearly the chores were a chance for her to catch her breath and relax for a minute or two. One summer when there was nothing to do, I told her I was bored.
“Well, why don’t you go work in the yard?” she says.
“Doing what?” says I.
“I don’t know. Go pick up the pine cones.”
“Which pine cones?”
“All of them.”
“All of them? You gotta be kidding.”
“Nope,” she says, secretly smiling. “Go pick up all the pine cones. You better get started. It might take a while.”
That’s probably not how the conversation went, but she could be sneaky… crafty.
Did I mention how much I hate pine trees.
A ‘few’ pine cones on the ground.
We were expected to learn to play an instrument… or sing. In early childhood, I played with bongos and maracas, and we had rhythm sticks to play with in our music class in school.
Mom bought an autoharp, and she learned to play chords and sing… sort of. There was a lot of looking up and down in the process, and a lot of stopping and starting. Looking up at the sheet music for the chord and looking down at the autoharp for the right chord key from the 15 provided. It was hard to watch. (With a little video-editing magic, the results might have been better, but there was no way to easily fix it back then. You just had to practice.)
An Oscar Schmidt OS15B Autoharp.
I took a short course to learn to play a keyboard — a Yamaha keyboard — when I was very young. Mom sat with me, encouraging me as I learned to play the scales.
I must have weaseled my way out of playing keyboard or piano, because before I knew it, I was in the children’s choir at church. Mom dropped me off, after school, at the side entrance to the chapel, where almost all of the kids would play tag for 5 or 10 minutes before the rehearsal began.
Poor Mr. Smith — our long-suffering choirmaster (Leonard A. Smith). He must have encouraged the free play before rehearsal. Without it, we children would have been totally unable to stand still for so long in one place, focusing on music. He still had his hands full. I can still see the look of relief on his face, when the practices ended and we all ran up out of the basement to the parents waiting for us in their cars up on Stone Street.
I tried my hand at playing recorder, and I played flute in 6th grade (and 7th, 8th, and 9th), when we had to choose an instrument for school. I learned to play well enough to play in a community orchestra around the time I was in college. But the notes I played were never the best quality. I never learned to play with proper posture and a good embouchure. I was only an average musician.
The problem was that Mom never seemed to see me as average. She called me her pride and joy. She seemed to think I could do anything.
And she would let me do anything. Go anywhere. She let me bike out of the neighborhood to deliver afternoon newspapers. She let me ride a moped up to Five Points to visit my friends. She let me apply to the NC School of Science and Math, move to Durham and spend two years learning from others.
She let me go to Vanderbilt for college, 12 hours away. And when I moved back to Raleigh, she let me apply to go study in Australia, half a world away.
I guess she had faith that God had a plan, for better or worse. She was willing to put my future in His hands. She said as much, recently, in a text to me, when I asked about some of our childhood excursions, down the creek and far from home.
She said, “As for the free-time activities, a parent’s (especially a mother’s) heart is unalterably joined to her son and she doesn’t dare to dwell on dangers (known or unknown) ready to attack him. She can only ask God to protect him and trust that He always will.”
Her trust in God probably wasn’t unwavering, but her trust was lasting and profound.
Dressed for church—in 1968.
Growing up, I went to church and Sunday school. I learned all the stories of Jesus — all the events in his life, from Bethlehem to the Sea of Galilee to the Garden of Gethsemane. Mom got me an illustrated Good News Bible, which still sits on my shelf of books of personal significance.
She typed up at least a hundred bookmarks on colored construction paper, each with a separate Bible verse, enough for each week of the year… maybe even enough for each day of the year.
We went to Christian retreats, tent revivals, and a Billy Graham crusade.
Church clothes in 1972.
We once went to a Moravian Candle Tea, in the Christmas season, way out on Blue Ridge Road in west Raleigh. I had my first coffee (I was about ten) with sugar and cream, and I had some coffee cake to go with it. We stayed to listen to Christmas carols in the chapel of the Moravian Church, sparsely decorated with greenery, beige tallow candles, and dark red velvet ribbon. They also had beautiful multifaceted stars, representing the star of Bethlehem — the star in the east.
At Christmas, we decorated our tree with aluminum tinsel, and plastic icicle ornaments. We once strung a garland of white popcorn and crimson cranberries. We had bubble lights on the tree inside, and C9 electric bulbs on the azalea bushes outside.
Me - Christmas, 1976
We watched Christmas specials — squeezing together on a couch, while Andy Williams sang It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year — stoking the fire in the fireplace as Bing Crosby sang, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.”
We watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas and silently celebrated when “his heart grew three sizes that day.”
We watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, secretly rooting for Hermey the dentist, Yukon Cornelius, and all the characters from the island of misfit toys.
We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas, eagerly waiting for Linus to step up to the podium, bravely to explain the “true meaning of Christmas.”
Not to say that we didn’t care about gifts. Quite the contrary. We asked Santa for gifts; we wrapped gifts with paper, bows, gift tags, and ribbon; we looked for hidden gifts, or hid them from others; and on Christmas Day we tore open our gifts and spent the day at play — enjoying the day for all it was worth.
But we always knew that Christmas was about more than the material things. It was about God’s gift to mankind. It was about the gift of having a Mom and a Dad to care for you… and celebrate with you.
The Gallup family - Mike, Gerry, Steve, and Meg.
Now those days seem long ago.
Nearly fifty years have passed.
Margaret (my Mom) is older now — much older than when we lived together in a small house in Raleigh, scratching to get by — wishing on stars and trusting in God. She’s been blessed.
And I’m grown up too. We live far apart. I’ve seen what kind of effort it takes to raise a child — watching them learn… letting them go. Trusting in providence. It isn’t easily done.
Gerald and Margaret Gallup - August 1, 1959.
This is my Mom:
She is studious, pious, faithful, humble, and reverent.
She is thoughtful, caring, kind, selfless, and patient.
She is ebullient, playful, and crafty.
She is encouraging, comforting, and serene.
She is the same on the inside as she is on the outside. She is genuine… sincere… wholehearted.
She isn’t hard to describe at all.
It’s just hard to believe such a person really exists.
Someone filled with love.
Appendix - Biographical information
Born in Columbia, South Carolina to two chemistry instructors. 3rd of 4 children
Studied Education at High Point.
Met husband while working in Wilmington. Gerry at Camp Lejeune.
Moved to Raleigh. Two children and a miscarriage.
Odd jobs - Teacher, Librarian, Secretary, Reader for the blind.
Husband dies in 1977
Begins paper route. Then temp work with Upjohn as Nursing Assistant
Dating Mr. Pate.
Moves to Stanley in 1988 to care for parents.
Father dies in 1991. Mother dies in 1993.
Marries Ivan Purdham in 1997
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