Eulogy for Mom

 

Eulogy for Mom

Pansy Geraldine Davis nee Green lived not only a good life, but an exemplary one. As her children we were given unconditional love, but she thought that was the kind of love everyone deserved. She was all love in her actions, as a nurse, as a partner in life to Dad, as a sibling, as a beloved friend to many, and as our mom.

She was patient but prompt. She was kind but did not mince words when the truth was needed. She was not boastful, despite her accomplishments, although she did say that she always knew “whodunnit” having watched and read so many mystery stories. In later years she occasionally said she was proud that she didn’t raise prejudice children. She never bragged about getting straight A’s when she went back to school for her master's in nursing, or about her consummate golf and quilt-making skills.

My mother was not someone who talked much about her faith.  Yet I know of no other person who followed the teachings of Jesus more closely. That unconditional love radiated her faith in her actions and how she treated people.

A friend of mine once commented that our family was sentimental about food. Well, we were about things Mom made. I found a Mother’s Day card I made in fourth grade that said, “Thankyou for making corn bread dressing,” which she made for every holiday meal, along with beef and vegetable stew, red cake and of course the best possible cornbread.

Mom loved deserts and made great ones---from homemade peach ice cream to crem brulee, bananas foster and Tira masu.

Mom thought any drink tasted better with lime juice in it, and I inherited that taste.  For decades she had a lime tree. She also liked hummingbirds, slot machines, bright colors, making clothes and quilts and reading.

My mother gave me access to learning by answering questions I asked before I could read. The first time I heard a live orchestra, I was about 5, and they were playing Mozart’s “Jupiter Symphony.” I asked Mom what Jupiter was, and instead of just saying “it’s a big planet,” she told me about the Greek and Roman gods the planets were named after. She read a picture book of the Iliad and Odyssey to me, and I memorized the Greek alphabet in the back. Ancient Greek became my main language in college, and with it I read not only Homer, but the New Testament, and Greek drama, which was to be my specialty when I became professor of theatre history. theatre history.

She also read a whole King Arthur book to me and I still read Arthurian scholarship today, NOT fan fiction. For her 80^th birthday, I drew a picture once of my mom reading that King Arthur book to me in her white nurse’s uniform, her white shoes sticking out from beyond the edge of the book. So, she read our bedtime stories right before she went to work. And remember those complex origami looking hats? Very hard to draw.  What the picture represented was how she worked nights when we were little, and slept while we were at school. We never felt her absence. I still wonder at how she did that. I ended up becoming a Drama major and got my PHD at the UW School of Drama in Seattle.

Mother also helped me with my interest in theatre. She made costumes and puppets for the little shows I put on. My parents sent me to Saturday Drama classes at the civic theatre for almost all my school years. Both our parents are lifelong learners, and helped us learn about whatever we were interested in. For me it was playing music and writing. Mom would never interrupt me when she saw that I was practicing or writing or drawing in earnest.

We all benefitted from her sense of humor. One holiday dinner my brother was talking about how music to me was like fishing to him. You must understand this was a compliment since Barry is a fishing genius. He added, “But I understand music.” Which is very true, he does, I then said, “I understand fishing.” Mom was the only one who laughed.

I also inherited a couple of Mom’s quirks---the ability to get turned around and when coming out of a building, always choosing the wrong direction. I inherited ger tendency toward spoonerisms. She laughed at herself when she once said, “Calvin Clean Jines.” I was in a childrten’s play and once said, “Fiestas, Pound Ups, Row Wows long ago.”

She was a world traveler and loved new places and new ideas.

I look out today and I see many people who knew my mother as Pansy, a sort of different person than our mom, because she was much more than our mom. She was a boss, a hand at Bridge, a golf partner, a healer, quietly intellectual and a quick study.

    She lived a good life and she lived an exemplary life. Pansy, our mother, was all Love, and loved by everyone who knew her.

 

Helen Keller on Learning Greek to read Homer

 Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, chapter 21:

My mind opened naturally and joyously to a conception of antiquity. Greece, ancient Greece, exercised a mysterious fascination over me. In my fancy the pagan gods and goddesses still walked on earth and talked face to face with men, and in my heart I secretly built shrines to those I loved best. I knew and loved the whole tribe of nymphs and heroes and demigods--no, not quite all, for the cruelty and greed of Medea and Jason were too monstrous to be forgiven, and I used to wonder why the gods permitted them to do wrong and then punished them for their wickedness. And the mystery is still unsolved. I often wonder how

   God can dumbness keep
   While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time.
   [Sidney Lanier, Acknowledgment, III]

It was the Iliad that made Greece my paradise. I was familiar with the story of Troy before I read it in the original, and consequently I had little difficulty in making the Greek words surrender their treasures after I had passed the borderland of grammar. Great poetry, whether written in Greek or in English, needs no other interpreter than a responsive heart. Would that the host of those who make the great works of the poets odious by their analysis, impositions and laborious comments might learn this simple truth! It is not necessary that one should be able to define every word and give it its principal parts and its grammatical position in the sentence in order to understand and appreciate a fine poem. I know my learned professors have found greater riches in the Iliad than I shall ever find; but I am not avaricious. I am content that others should be wiser than I. But with all their wide and comprehensive knowledge, they cannot measure their enjoyment of that splendid epic, nor can I. When I read the finest passages of the Iliad, I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten -- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine!

My admiration for the Aeneid is not so great, but it is none the less real. I read it as much as possible without the help of notes or dictionary, and I always like to translate the episodes that please me especially. The word-painting of Virgil is wonderful sometimes; but his gods and men move through the scenes of passion and strife and pity and love like the graceful figures in an Elizabethan mask, whereas in the Iliad they give three leaps and go on singing. Virgil is serene and lovely like a marble Apollo in the moonlight; Homer is a beautiful, animated youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his hair.

How easy it is to fly on paper wings! From "Greek Heroes" to the Iliad was no day's journey, nor was it altogether pleasant. One could have traveled round the word many times while I trudged my weary way through the labyrinthine mazes of grammars and dictionaries, or fell into those dreadful pitfalls called examinations, set by schools and colleges for the confusion of those who seek after knowledge. I suppose this sort of Pilgrim's Progress was justified by the end; but it seemed interminable to me, in spite of the pleasant surprises that met me now and then at a turn in the road.