At thirteen I was hard to love. I was caught in that “coming-of-age” certainty that parents were too old and stuffy to understand me and I was convinced that I knew it all. I confess to being more surly than bad but once when my mother told me that I could not go to Rock Hill with a friend who had just gotten his license, I was furious. I went out the back door to the house on Leroy Street and with the parting shot of, “I’m not a baby anymore!” I slammed the door for emphasis. When I heard the first crash, I knew I was in real trouble.
The door was one of those with glass panels that could be louvered out like venetian blinds to let a breeze in. When the door slammed, the top glass broke. As it fell, it took out every panel it hit. The crashes, one after another seemed to go on for minutes. At the end, I stood outside the door facing my mother who stood in the kitchen.
She was old school in her punishment and when I was younger and got “too big for my britches,” she would say, “Go cut a switch!” I would try to find something that wouldn’t last too long but she would tear my legs up. I never felt mistreated. She was always careful not to hurt too much for too long but she would get her point across. Now I was too big for that kind of thing and she withered me with those steely black eyes and said, “Wait ‘till your Daddy gets home.”
I much preferred facing her switch to enduring Dad’s talk. My father could have a career as a charismatic preacher. He could deliver a sermon that would have me weeping with regret and shame. I might bow up to him occasionally and get away with it but he would not put up with me disrespecting Mom. I hated to hear him say that I had disappointed him and more than once said, “Please just spank me. Don’t talk.”
If Dot Hill loved you, and she cast a wide net around those she loved, she would fight a bear for you. She might not win a round, but she would keep coming until the bear gave up and ran off. She was a woman of few words. Call her on the phone and she allowed about one question before she was done. The answer better be brief too. When she would call in an afternoon and invite us to dinner, I could barely get out “Yes” before I heard the click. Even in person she never had much to add. She listened.
Dot Hill was fearless. She had to be, growing up with four brothers and a tomboy older sister who became a WWII Marine. She spent her childhood barefoot and even as an adult, if she was in the house with shoes on, she was on her way to somewhere. She played basketball in junior high school but when she topped out at 5’2”, she bowed to the inevitable and became the team manager.
Dot was a beauty. She was dark skinned and dark-eyed, popular and seventeen when my father moved to town with his family. While he noticed her immediately, he felt his chances with her were not good. She was dating Steven Epps, a very handsome young man from a good local family. Steven had success written all over him and fulfilled the promise as a decorated soldier who had successes throughout his life.
Bob Hill did not look like as good a prospect. He was tall at 6’2” but was self-conscious about the scars on his face from a serious case of acne. When he looked in a mirror, all Bob could see were scars and big ears. He did have a couple of advantages, however. Whether to compensate for his less than perfect looks or as a gift of nature, Bob Hill had charisma before anybody knew what to call it.. He moved to Fort Mill in the summer before his senior year in high school and joined the Yellow Jacket football team. He was the biggest player they had ever seen. By the time school started, Bob was popular enough to be elected class president. His determination to succeed in life showed even then.
During her senior year at Fort Mill High School, Mom and Dad started dating. Their time together would be limited when, in 1941, war was declared and like most of the boys his age, Bob Hill signed up. I don’t know if it was his Marine Corps uniform or his devilish charm, but Mom agreed to marry him. They saw each other any time he could get a weekend pass from Camp LeJeune where he was stationed.
On one trip to see him at Camp LeJeune, Mom contracted scarlet fever and had to stay close to the hospital for weeks. A local minister and his family were kind enough to let her live with them until she could travel back home.
While she was there for another visit, Dad’s orders came for him to ship out for duty in the Pacific and all passes were cancelled. He was able to beg his commander for enough time to get her on the bus for Fort Mill and to give her a dollar to get food on the trip. It was all the money he had at the time. She boarded the bus knowing that they might never see each other again. They did, but it was three years later. Dot Hill lived with her family and took a job working at the Fort Mill Telephone Company.
Cooking was my mother’s forte. Mom could taste a restaurant meal and go home and duplicate it. She could distinguish every ingredient. Her collection of recipes was extensive but cryptic. Like the Gettysburg Address, Dot Hill’s recipes were written on envelopes, scraps of paper torn from magazines, post cards, napkins and even the covers of cookbooks. She would call Irene Davis or another friend for a recipe and write on whatever presented itself. Here’s the enigma…she would jot down the ingredients but seldom wrote what they were for. She was also known to put just the ingredients without amounts and as her recipes often evolved, sometimes only the bare bones made it to paper. As a result, although we have kept all the scraps of paper, we seldom know exactly what we’re making until it is done.
Mother was strong enough to adapt to any circumstance but sometimes her solution to a problem was a bit…well…quirky. In the late fifties, church youth groups still had Halloween parties. There was none of this namby-pamby “Fall Festival” nonsense. One year she was caught off guard when I forgot to tell her about an upcoming costume party at the Presbyterian Fellowship Hall. There was no time to make something so off she went to the dime store. She came back with a pirate toy set but I had no pirate-style clothes. No problem! She had me put on a baseball uniform and combining it with a skull and crossbones hat, a plastic cutlass and an eye patch, I went as a Pittsburg Pirate.
Dot Hill was a right fighter. She pretty much went along with life until she felt there was an injustice. She rarely had to fight for what she wanted; she was wily enough to get her way without conflict but if she felt like one of her people was unjustly treated, she never forgot. She might act civilly but she would close her heart to the offender.
Mothers are always with us. I believe that fathers tend to look out for our future but mothers are here and now. Mother’s are the ones who take us in when we are battered by life.
Even though she has been gone for over ten years, I never have to ask myself “What would Mom Do?” The answer is written indelibly on my heart. “Do what is kind and good and right.”
As I was completing this writing, a calendar notification popped up at the top of my computer screen. It simply said, “Mama Dot’s Birthday…Tomorrow”
Like I said…always with us.
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