The Life of the Party Comes to Boston

The Mom Stories

How Mom’s love for family overcame her fear of leaving home

My mother was a Westfield girl through and through. When my parents talked about going to the big city, they weren’t talking about Boston or New York. They were talking about Springfield, MA, which was about 10 miles away straight up Route 20.

Once, when I was about ten, my father tried to take us to a Red Sox game. Boston was almost 100 miles from home, but it was a straight jaunt down the Mass Turnpike. We made it as far as the Storrow Drive exit, but then got hopelessly lost on Boston’s maze of one-way streets.

After a few wrong turns, my father gave up in exasperation and announced, “we’re going home.” I don’t think my parents left the comfort of their small town again until I moved to Boston in 1978.

It was rare for my mother to leave my father alone, but she really wanted to see where I lived. So she gathered up her courage and decided to take the Peter Pan bus to Boston. My father reluctantly drove her to Union Station in his Lincoln Continental, and I promised to pick her up when she arrived at North Station in Boston.

My mother was in her 40’s then, and it was her first time traveling alone. Being the social creature she is, she made friends with her seat mate on the bus and arrived full of chatter. She kept up a brave front as we hopped on the orange line from North Station to Downtown Crossing, her eyes opened wide at the panhandlers with their ragged clothes and garbage bags, begging for change as we jostled to get on an empty car.

But all was forgiven when we arrived at Filene’s Basement, a mecca of bargain shopping in the basement of the old Filene’s Department Store. My mother had never seen such treasures. She was used to bargain stores like K Mart selling cheap off-brands. Filene’s Basement was on a whole different level. You had to sift through a lot of dross, but you might be lucky enough to find a Gucci bag or Chanel jacket at a fraction of the price.

Afterward we would get tea at the Ritz Carlton or Copley Plaza. This became our Saturday afternoon ritual at least once every season until I moved even further away to DC.

When I was turning 40, all I really wanted for my birthday was a trip to someplace exotic. I didn’t inherit my parents’ homebody genes. Somehow from the two of them emerged a free-spirited wanderer.

A major trip was not in our budget, so my ex planned a big party at our home in Boston. The invitation had a drawing of a huge sun with a sailboat floating past exotic palm trees, and the home-made invitation read:

The dress code was beach casual, and most of the guests came baseball caps, flip flops, and Hawaiian shirts. My mother was not going to be out-done! She delighted in being the center of attention. She had a closet-full of outfits with matching hats for every occasion. For my birthday, she chose a jumpsuit patterned with tropical fruit, and a straw hat embellished with lemons, limes, and strawberries.

I don’t know how she talked him into it, but my father came to the party too! Knowing what their relationship was like, I’m sure they had a few choice words about it, but when she knew what she wanted, my mother could be very persistent.

Now that I had my mother outside her comfort zone, I was determined to take her on the trip of a lifetime the following year for her 60th birthday. My brothers and I planned a big surprise bash at the Legion Hall in Westfield.

The party’s theme was American Southwest — think cowboy hats and leather boots. My mother had a fascination with Native American handcrafted silver jewelry. I have no idea where a middle-class white woman of English and Scottish heritage developed that interest, but she did it the good old New England way. She and her business partner formed a company called Black Bear Traders and traveled the circuit of country fairs in the region.

Their booth was always mobbed with old friends and relatives from “upcountry” looking for the perfect piece to add to their collections. Country western music was all the rage in that part of the world, so bolo ties were popular with the guys. The women favored turquoise and silver earrings or long strands of silver beads.

I knew we could never really surprise Mom about the party. She had her ear on the pulse of the family. But I had something else up my sleeve. In lieu of gifts, we asked her friends to donate money toward a two-week trip to the Southwest. It would be the longest time she was ever away from home, but I knew she would buy into the idea of mother-daughter bonding time.

That trip is a topic for another story, but it definitely deepened our understanding of one another. Usually when I got together with Mom she was so full of pent-up feelings that she talked nonstop for hours. She had a lot of old stories about hurt feelings and family disappointments.

But after a week in a car, driving thousands of empty miles across Arizona and New Mexico, Mom ran out of her old stories. We settled into a companionable silence for much of the trip.

A peak moment for me came when I was driving up the winding road to Sedona. My mother was a very anxious passenger, and on top of that, she was afraid of heights. We drove in silence most of the way as I concentrated on the curves. When we got to the top, Mom said to me, “I couldn’t have done that with anybody but you.”

We were a long way from home, but at last we had come home to one another.

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