My mother was an extraordinary woman. I wish I had told her so while she was still alive.
She was the second oldest of four sisters and third child in a family of seven children. She developed rickets when she was three or four, and her legs were misshapen as a result. It didn’t affect her gait but she was self-conscious about her protruding bones and delighted when slacks became acceptable for “business.”
I put that word in quotation marks because my mom spent a lifetime in business. Mom married late in life, later than her other “prettier”, as she saw them, younger sisters. I was an only child. Our life in the beautiful Manhattan apartment with it’s faux and sometimes vrai Louis XVI furniture, wrought iron gates separating the dining from the step-down living room came to an abrupt halt when my father died when I was seven years-old.
My mother had to work two or more jobs to keep me in a boarding school because there was no money, and she didn’t want to impose me on any of her sisters. When I graduated from The Montessori School in Bucks County, PA (a non-sectarian boarding school owned and run by a lovely Quaker lady who had been a disciple of Maria Montessori) I was 12 years old and ready for high school—well, not really, but my Board scores showed that I was ready for 9th grade.
We lived with my grandma in her three-storey townhouse in North Philadelphia. Mom and I slept on a murphy bed together in our 2nd floor two-room apartment. We had an ice-box in the kitchen even though this was the 40’s. When I was 16-years old my mother achieved her dream: she bought a row-house in West Oak Lane, made Austrian drapes for the living room, and padded her bed-room wall with green satin quilting. My friend Thelma also reminded me that she painted our refrigerator lavender!
I could write volumes more about the beautiful, funny, loving Evelyn Applebone, but I will end with saying that Mom lived alone until she was 82 years-old and took two buses and the El to get to work every day. She smoked cigarettes and drank a glass of cream sherry when she got home from work. She went to “business.”
And then she had a stroke. And there was no doubt that I would want her to live with me. “No,” she said, “we will live together, but I will not be living with you. I will pay my share.”
I am so grateful for the years we had together in our beautiful apartment with Mom’s furniture from Manhattan gracing every room. She died when she was 86. The night before she died I was sitting with her in the hospital, and she said, “It’s a burden having me live with you, isn’t it?” And, thanks be to Who Be’s, I said to her, “I love living with you. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
ElderChicks 
Thank you, Pat. I didn’t know most of what you wrote. I am delighted to know more about your remarkable mother. I remember that she was still going to business when we met.
No wonder my friends are such special people: they inherited these qualities from their superior mothers.
As you did from the wonderful Fannie Glatt.
what a fab remembrance!!
Your mom sounds as lovely and distinctive as her name: Evelyn Applebone. I like it!
Evelyn was a great presence in my life – a woman who showed what independence meant by example – and a great cook.
Your testimonial to your mom touched me deeply. You made the obvious affection you shared very real and I guess when we write about a remarkable mom the love and sincerity shines through.
I didn’t have the good fortune to know your mother but I now feel as though I do. I can see her spirit living on within you.
Most of our mothers DO live on within us, whether we like it or not. You were lucky to know that before she died, to realize what a good thing that was, and to tell her.