Commander Charles, U.S. Navy (Retired)
My mother had no patience with anyone who said they were bored. She was always doing something, in seventy-five years I never once saw her idle. Reading was major, before her eyes went bad in her middle and late nineties, she read at night, three or four novels a week. From young childhood she sewed, loved to sew, make things, clothes, curtains, slipcovers. She made clothes for all the girls in the family, cousins as well as Gina. And she made my shirts when I was in highschool and at Florida: once as I walked across the quad to class another student stopped me and asked where I bought a shirt I was wearing, one with pictures of old cars all over it. I told him "my mother made it." He asked to buy it and I said it's not for sale.
Along with the slipcovers, she also learned to upholster furniture, did several large living room pieces beautifully. About ten years ago a bed in the house needed a headboard, I brought a door that had been taken down, and she whipped out a padded cover for it in a few minutes. We slipped it over the door, and both were very proud of how perfect it was. Recently, getting the house ready to list, we had to reclaim the door to put back in its doorway upstairs.
Along with the slipcovers, she also learned to upholster furniture, did several large living room pieces beautifully. About ten years ago a bed in the house needed a headboard, I brought a door that had been taken down, and she whipped out a padded cover for it in a few minutes. We slipped it over the door, and both were very proud of how perfect it was. Recently, getting the house ready to list, we had to reclaim the door to put back in its doorway upstairs.
Lifelong, mama knitted. I have many sweaters that she knitted for me, including a blue one that, when I was at the Naval War College, another officer offered me a hundred dollars for it. And there's an enormous white sweater that, one reason it's so large is that Tass used to put it on and snuggle up in it all wrapped around herself, making it a special treasure.
During my early years mama was a gardener. Planting azaleas, learning to graft camellias, half the camellias in our yard, both on Massalina and on W. Beach Drive she grafted, some with two or three different flowers, knowing and remembering always made each camellia a treasure. The White Empress bloomed beautifully this year until this week’s freeze did its usual work. One, a combination of red flowers and white flowers, up and died suddenly the summer of 2011 right after mama died at 99, and I tried not to see overly significant in that. During my Cove School years she was doing major work in the yard and I was always expected home from school immediately to dig holes, rake and haul leaves to the site, mix leaves, dirt, fertilizer, peat moss and water into a slushy soup before planting azaleas, or camellias. So water would hold, we always fixed a “saucer” of dirt around each plant. Some of those azalea and camellias mama brought over from Massalina Drive more than fifty years ago. One, a pale pink azalea with a delicate fragrance, Linda and Bill Lee rooted cuttings, dozens of which “took” and have been given away and many kept. Joe has taken a couple dozen home to NC and planted them or given to neighbors.
In the middle 1950s there was a class locally that both my mother and Linda’s mother took, learning to etch designs in aluminum trays. I think they had it in the parish house at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. We ended up with many of those trays at home, round ones, square ones, rectangles. One mama etched with what at the time was rather proudly offered to us by my Uncle Charlie as the “Weller coat of arms.” That was long before we found out that an uncle had worked up an English heritage for us. We only learned of the immigrant Andreas Wäller, our German ancestor fairly recently: I who grew up during World War 2, was horrified. Anyway, when we sorted out “things” after mama died, nobody wanted the aluminum trays.
Her other hobbies will come to mind, but the most memorable may have been doll-making. Many years ago mama took a class in doll-making, including casting the heads and painting the faces on them; then she made the clothes for each one, several dozen over the years, and they were in a display case in our home. Baby dolls, bride dolls, fashionable ladies. Mama always loved giving a doll from the display case to someone who admired it. The last time I recall was when Walt's daughter Leslie visited us from Arizona with her five children. After mama died, every one got to pick what they wanted from the dolls.
My favorite, claimed and owned by me very early, was the doll mama made when Prince Charles was a little boy, that was meant to resemble him. So, it’s Charles, or Charlie, or Chuck. At the moment,
Hey! If I want to remember and ramble on Saturday as the sky reddens in the east, what’s that to you?!
T