Mom died a couple of weeks ago. I thought I had more time, to be honest. When I left Los Alamos after the new year, all signs were positive. I am fortunate, I suppose, that my last moments with mom were when she was peaking for the last time. She sat next to me as I surveyed the Risk board on the folding table in front of me. The table is probably older than I am, and my no-good nephews allied to eliminate me. It was like we were playing Diplomacy.
But Mom was there, at my left elbow, and happy. Dad was to her left.
For mom, hospitality was unconscious and automatic. There was always room at the dinner table for one more. One of my friends, one of fuego’s friends, or some random Russian scientist with nowhere to go on thanksgiving.
Ask Alexi (the Russian previously mentioned) what Makes America Great, and he will tell you. He will speak of turkey and stuffing, but he will also speak of the welcome of strangers. He will tell you that people like Mom make America great. And he’s right.
I took it for granted when I was a kid that I could drop a friend in around the table. This welcoming attitude cannot be undersold today.
There are many, many other things that made Mom awesome, and I didn’t even know some of them until helping to compose her obituary. She was valedictorian at her high school, and went to Rice University on scholarship. While there, she met my dad on a blind date. They were married for 65 years.
There is a photo of Mom, taken by Dad on the rocks above El Paso, TX. It’s a slide in a box somewhere, I hope. I only saw it once, Mom in blue jeans turned up at the cuff, the wind blowing her hair, the sun in her eyes. Seeing that picture showed me a version of Mom before me; a photo that could have been in a fashion magazine.
I didn’t really understand it then, but a photo like that is a partnership between subject and photographer. Between Mom and Dad.
I’m drifting here. Not sure which stories to tell. But if you knew her, you have your own. She was fierce, and gentle. She was kind. So kind, she was baffled by the unkindness let loose in our country recently. She was tireless helping others, particularly others with special challenges.
Perhaps that started when her family took in a “problem child”. He was seven and didn’t even have the alphabet. Mom took Uncle Dupes under her wing and with infinite patience taught him his letters, and then his words, and Dupes’ life was rescued.
She never stopped doing that.
I think I’ll end with that. Not enough people make the world better; few have the impact she did. But for all I’m proud of that, that was Barbara Seeger, awesome person. But for me she was Mom.
Mom, whom I puked on God knows how many times, who watched God knows how many terrible student plays (You’re a good man, Charlie Brown adapted for the bicentennial an obvious exception), who somehow sensed a critical moment to send me an articulate pep talk from a thousand miles away, is gone now, and I will miss her.
