Today is the first Mother’s Day for Kathy since her mom died, so this is a tough day for her -but I find myself also thinking about my own mom- and thinking about how so few people in my immediate circle ever knew her or even met her. Obviously I have friends from Colton, Decorah, Atlantic, and Luther Valley who knew my mom and loved her- but amongst my friends here in Kenosha and Racine, there is almost no one. That’s mostly because my mom died just two years after I moved here, which hadn’t allowed her much chance to meet too many people around here. (By the way, I would probably not be here in Kenosha/Racine at all if it hadn’t been for my mom spotting an ad in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sometime in the fall of 1985 – wanted: a new fine arts director for radio station WGTD. She knew that my apprenticeship at the Lyric Opera of Chicago was soon to end and that I needed to figure out what was next. As you have probably figured out, I was indeed hired by WGTD and the rest is history. . . My history. Thank goodness my mom read the paper so thoroughly. That’s one of countless reasons why I’m so glad that Beverly June Berg was my mother.)
Here are just a few things you might find interesting:
She was born 1930 in Milwaukee. She was a huge surprise to her folks when she was born, because her mother was almost fifty years old and did not even realize she was pregnant until she went into labor. (Minnie Hintz was a big woman and she was at that age where lots of things were changing in her body, so she really didn’t know. Talk about a surprise package!) Fortunately for me, that little premature baby survived and grew up into the woman who gave birth to me and to my three siblings.
She grew up in a family that was strongly rooted in Milwaukee and which had a pretty conservative view of the world- and which particularly saw African Americans through rather prejudiced and bigoted eyes. So I am tremendously happy and proud of my mom for – in a sense – rising above who she might have easily become and gaining a much richer view of the world. My dad had a lot to do with that, but clearly my mom was largely on her way to that even before he came along. And I think it’s a mark of how far she had come that my mom – conservative upbringing at all – was able to accept the fact that my brother Steve was gay and to love him as deeply as she did before.
I love that my mother played the cello when she was young- the yearbook we have from Pulaski High School includes a picture of her in one of the school’s orchestras. And years later, when we lived in Atlantic, something inspired my mom to take her cello out of mothballs and to join my brother (a violinist) in playing for a southwestern Iowa community orchestra. That took guts – but I am so glad she did it.
My mom did not get to go to four-year college, but she did get some secretarial training – and she was good at it! One of my eternal memories of her is of watching her fingers FLY over the typewriter keys. I’m a pretty decent typist myself, although nowhere near as fast as she was – but when I’m on a roll and my fingers are really dancing over the keyboard, I almost feel a little bit like I’m channeling my mother. . . or at the very least, that I owe her whatever digital dexterity I have. My mom had a beautiful singing voice, so I like to think that my voice at least partly comes from her. Also, Marshall says that when I get excited about something, my facial expression looks exactly like my mom’s did, so I guess I inherited her enthusiasm. And I seem to have inherited her metabolism because I am the only Berg who is overweight the way she was. Lucky me.
My mom met my dad when she was a secretary at Ascension Lutheran Church and my dad had come as the church’s intern. I wish I knew more about what that courtship was like- sometime I will have to ask my dad about that. Suffice to say that they were married in the summer of 1959 and I came along very shortly after that. By the way, both of my mom’s parents had died some years before my dad came into the picture; I often wonder what that felt like for her. . . and whether or not my mom was as open and loving as she was because of those losses and the hunger for affection which they probably left in their wake.
So what was she like? First of all, she would have flunked just about any Good Housekeeping Survey of Motherhood because she wasn’t much of a housekeeper. (Not that we made matters any better, with our mess-making and our general aversion to helping out.) It simply wasn’t that high a priority for her – and needless to say, this particular apple hasn’t fallen very far from that particular tree.
I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who could make guests feel as welcome and comfortable as my mom could. We would hear that all the time from people who couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so welcome in someone else’s home. My mom had a real knack for that – and I also loved how my mom was an interesting mix of outgoing yet slightly shy. . . and that as funny as she was, her sense of humor was also one that almost never made other people in the room feel bland. She made you feel special – a trite phrase, I know, but it says it well.
She was such an interesting mix of “open to the new” yet “rooted in the true.” She grew up Missouri Synod Lutheran – and I remember dad saying in his eulogy at her funeral that she never really did lose that stiff spine of Right and Wrong from those days. . . even though in many other ways she became quite liberal in her thinking and very open to new perspectives, new ways of doing things. She was also quite well read, and although I think she never felt like she was dad’s intellectual equal, she was in fact tremendously bright- and tirelessly interested in the world around her.
She loved her four children so very very much – and was so tremendously interested in each of us and so proud of what we could accomplish. Of course, her enthusiasm for us could sometimes lead her to some interesting interpretations of events. I remember when I took piano in Decorah from someone connected with Luther – I would have had about eight or nine years of piano at this point – and after a couple of years this teacher suggested that I move on to a different teacher. My mom’s interpretation of that was that she was a high-strung woman who was way too nervous to be able to teach an easy-going youngster like me. My dad remembers it this way: the teacher wanted me to move on because she was frustrated that I was so very talented on piano but was so little inclined to practice. I think I prefer my mom’s version, but life does not allow us to claim those fictions for our own story. But to me that embodies that idea of a mother’s love often looking past the faults and failings of the child at hand.
My mom really was my biggest fan- I don’t think anyone saw my musical talents the way she did. To her, they were just one huge source of delight . When she died, I lost the person who was more interested in me than anyone else was.
Holy cow, I’ve already written a book! And there is still a lot I could say about my mom. Maybe I need to jump to her death in November of 1988. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving; my whole family had gathered at the family farm in Kenyon that year- the whole family except me. (I had to work.) I was at the radio station Saturday afternoon, doing my request show- when the phone rang, and my dad on the other end of the line – in cracking voice – said that mom had collapsed and died while they were on their way back from Minnesota. (They were in La Crosse at the time.) It looked like a massive stroke- but it wasnt- and even after a full autopsy they were never able to pin down just what had happened to claim her life so suddenly and without any previous warning whatsoever. She was just 58.
I often think of how different the loss of Kathy’s mom was – a slow decline over the course of several years, and the moment of her death was not a shocking surprise but rather a long awaited end to her suffering. She was 68 – taken from us too soon. Would I have preferred to lose my mom in more that way? With time for goodbyes? Time to get ready for the death? No. I cannot imagine what I would have said if given the chance to say goodbye to my mom. The thought is literally unimaginable to me. We had said many many times over that we loved each other. I’m glad I was spared the pain of saying to her when she was on her deathbed.
Don’t get me wrong. I hate the fact that she died so young- before she had a chance to know any of her grandchildren – before she could really get to know Kathy – before she could see me become a teacher at Carthage – before she could see the beautiful home which Kathy and I built in Racine – or the good things which have happened to the rest of us in the family. But she left a profound impression upon all of our lives, and I feel very much like so much of who I am is because of her. Actually, I am a very interesting mix of my mom and dad- and I’m grateful to both of them. . . but today I am acutely aware of the absence of my mom – and thinking of others on this Mother’s Day who lost their moms too soon. It is a special sort of hurt which we have borne but we can hope that out of it will spring new possibilities, new hope, new love.
One last story- The summer before I entered 9th grade, my dad accepted a call to a parish in Atlantic, Iowa. I was desperately unhappy about the move- partly because I was terribly shy back then- but feeling at last like I had a circle of good friends in Decorah – including Marshall – and didn’t want to leave them. One day after sharing my feelings very honestly with my mom, she said – I think in all sincerity – that if I turned out to be as unhappy in Atlantic as I feared I would be, she would move back to Decorah with me. She loved me enough to do that. She was also pretty certain, I’m sure, that it would never come to that – that one way or another I would find my way to new friends in Atlantic. And indeed I did- and moving to Atlantic provided me with marvelous new friends, exciting growth in my faith, and an encounter with a splendid voice teacher who truly changed the course of my life. And by moving away from Decorah, it made it more workable for me to then return to Decorah as a student at Luther four years later. So it all worked out magnificently well in the end. . . but I still like to think of that astounding promise which my mom made to me back in 1974 – a promise which could have been extraordinarily hard to keep, but a promise she made to me all the same simply because she loved me.
Pictured above: the last photograph of my mom taken before she died. This is a picture of my dad and her dancing at the family farm in Kenyon, Minnesota- Thanksgiving 1988.