A mother's touch

As Mother’s Day was approaching last week, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about my mom and mothering in general.

I first reflected on how, over the years in my counseling office, I’ve had different looks at the difficulties that come with the career.

Women in their late 20s or early 30s, for instance, talking about the tension and guilt they feel in the pull between working outside the home and being a good mother to their children. Not to mention a good partner to their husbands.

Or mothers in their 50s talking about the heartrending intricacies of being a good mother to a struggling grown child. The fine line between taking control and letting things take their own course. Overlaid, many times, by the unrelenting responsibility of seeing to the mothering of an aging parent.

Such is the plight of many mothers these days.

As for my mother, aka Helen, since she was up in Kansas City with my three sisters, I was left in charge of caring for her animals. Saturday evening, after the rainstorm passed and the setting sun sloped in, making rhinestones out of the droplets nestled on my grass, I drove in a blustery wind (it had the trees doing the hula) to the Republic of Frontenac to feed and water B.G. the bird and Peachy the cat.

I took the back streets – Olive, Pine, 10th, Michigan, and old Mt. Carmel. Drove slowly.
Stopped a couple of times. Looked around. Always takes me back, when I do this, to my favorite childhood times with my mother - running errands or going to the store in the Chevy. Away from my six brothers and sisters. Just the two of us.

Had something of the same experience Thursday of last week. Only this time it was me doing the driving. Chauffeured mom to over to Joplin in the early a.m. for a check-up following cataract surgery. We took her four-door Mercury Grand Marquee. Brother Bill rode silent shotgun next to me. Mom, wearing big Lana Turner sunglasses, rode in the back.

“You know this car rides better than your sister’s Cadillac on the road,” she observed as we rolled up the highway.

I drove the back way — south on 69 past the KOAM-TV station, through Crestline to Riverton, and east on old Route 66 to just past Galena where I cut off through the country roads to wind our way to the Regional Eye Center on 32nd street.  

We had a leisurely visit (talking interspersed with plenty of silence and no cell phone calls) as we rode. Talked about family, food prices, her childhood in Arcadia, Hillary and Obama, my work, the economy, and more. And, of course, the mercurial spring weather, especially the rain and expansive flooding from Cow Creek outside Pittsburg and Spring River east of Riverton.

On Sunday, I met my sister, Penny, mom and brother at the gas station on the 69 bypass around Pleasanton. After a short visit, we said goodbye to Penny, Bill buckled in beside me in my trendy Explorer and mom, again wearing her oversize shades, slid into the backseat.

When, instead of heading out to the highway I turned to our old route through Pleasanton, mom said with delight, “Ooh, we’re going through town.”

Even though it was Mother’s Day, we didn’t talk much about mothering. But we did have another sweet, mother-son, unhurried visit as we rode slowly through the old town and then back out to the highway to continue south toward home.

Just before we got to the bypass around Arma, a mother’s touch did come in handy, though, with something she said to trooper Scott of the Kansas Highway Patrol. “Sir,” he said politely after pulling me over, “I clocked you on radar doing 76 in a 65. Can I please see your license and insurance?”

As I was fishing through my wallet, mom leaned forward from the backseat to the open window and said, “Officer he was just hurrying his poor old mother home to get her medicine.”

After a few minutes had passed and he had not returned from the patrol, car mom asked, “What’s he doing back there now?”

“Checking on the radio if there’s any warrants for my arrest.”

After a short pause, she asked, “Are there?”

“Not that I know of,” I smiled.

“Mr. Knoll,” trooper Scott said when he returned to the window, “I’m only issuing you a warning ticket today. You just slow down and take care of your mother.”

“Yessir, I will,” I replied.

“Thank you!” mom chimed in from the backseat.

As I pulled back onto the highway I spied trooper Scott in my rearview mirror. He was smiling.

“Do you think what I said helped?” mom asked as we turned off the bypass to roll slowly through Arma and on through Franklin toward home.

J.T. Knoll is a writer, speaker and prevention and wellness coordinator at Pittsburg State University. He also operates Knoll Training, Consulting & Counseling Services in Pittsburg. He can be reached at 231-1852 or jtknoll@swbell.net.