Bear Paw Meanderings

Mother’s Day has just passed us by. I remember Mother’s Day of my childhood very well. When we went to church on Mother’s Day, and we did go to church, most of the congregation wore carnations on them somewhere. Red if your mother was living and white if your mother was dead. That tradition died out, like so many more, for some reason unknown to me.

I was blessed with having two mothers and two grandmothers and for a time even a great grandmother, Augusta Behrends. Although great grandmother Behrends did much to make me frightened to this day of dead bodies. Or, rather my real mother, Virginia Lucke, did it. When great grandmother died, mother held me up to the coffin and told me to kiss great grandmother. I never really got over that shock. To this day I can see her and it frightened me greatly!

In addition to my very real mother, Virginia Lucke, a very good friend, Laened Black came in and out of my life many times and taught me her brand of cooking, her brand of being a good Democrat and her brand of being a good person.

Blacks lived in my favorite house in Havre, an English style house complete with faux thatched roof at 503 Second Avenue. If that wasn’t enough they lived in a cabin up Greenough Gulch that was everything that I could imagine a proper cabin should be like. It was in a forest, we all crossed a bridge to get to the cabin which had real shutters that worked on all windows, two Dutch doors in the cabin, a sleeping loft and a massive rock fireplace in the living-room. The Blacks lived in two wonderful houses and I wanted to spend as much time as I could in those houses. While doing that I learned much from both Francis and Laened Black about being a good person.

My own mother, Virginia Lucke was from day one not only my mother but my friend and confident. She remained those things until the day she died some six years ago! I paraphrase Richard Nixon by saying that probably no book will ever be written about my mother but she was a saint pure and simple. She is why I go to Van Orsdel Methodist Church and she is the reason I try to be a better person.

I had two grandmothers while I was growing up. I could depend on my mother’s mother, Hattie Stuart for comforting when I needed it and being overweight and totally uncoordinated, I seemed to need it much. Grandma Lucke I could depend on to take my on long trips to places I would never have gone without her. She was my window to the world for many, many years.

So, that was my world of mothers. I was truly blessed with each and every one of them and maybe yet I will get over my fear of dead bodies. After all I am only 75.