Tedtalks: Mom & Dad

This month, Senior News is all about those revered paragons, mothers and fathers. Because, as John Steinbeck said, “It takes courage to raise children.”

For context, I reread tributes I wrote for both parents’ memorials, which made me a little weepy.

Mom was 84 in 2014 when she went on to “The Next Big Thing.” Dad followed in 2023 at 94. But they’re still with me, you know? That’s the thing about loved ones, and especially parents, I think — they hang around even after they’re gone.

Dad was 6’5” and, in his clerical robes up there at the pulpit, he looked like somebody who could shoot hoops with God.

He came from “frozen Yankee” stock, old Massachusetts lineage that helped invent the stiff upper lip. But Fred also had some serious soft spots — an activist, do-gooder kind of minister who went out into the community to talk to people in pain, who marched for civil rights and coached 9th grade sports.

Mom was a bleeding heart, too, a social worker who ran a residential program for mentally disabled adults in the grimy old mill town of Lawrence, Mass.

Lillian taught her “Number 1 Son” to laugh, to cook, to plant and to love words. Dad gave me the ocean: “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” That’s where I got it, and it has a lot to do with why I live in Trinidad.

My mother had no use for Mother’s Day; “I’m your mother every day,” she’d say. Dad just sneered at the Hallmark holiday for Fathers. I’m with them. It’s good to have a day to honor your parents, but I don’t need an excuse. I still talk to them every day.

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A new occasional column we’re calling “Random Reflections” debuts this month with Susan Bennett’s “A Life with Animals” (page 8). Susan and other writers will trade off as inspiration strikes (hence the “random” label). Want to join the rotation? Email tpease@humsenior.org.

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This month’s Poets’ Corner offering came from Debbe Hartridge. The backstory:

“My dad, William Davis, practiced medicine in Eureka back when doctors had time to really know their patients,” Debbe writes. “Bill Lemley, who taught English at College of the Redwoods, was a poet and my father’s patient. His poem about Dad hung on the wall of my father’s den until he died. Mr. Lemley passed away in 2018.”

Ted Pease is editor of Senior News.