Column Chronicles: Mom - Frank Cotolo on 148.ca

Mom

Frank Cotolo
November 20, 2014

I don't often write about my mother, so this will be a rare entry of my public articles and I hope you will identify with its nostalgia and warmth toward a parent we all have from birth.

An aunt once told me that my mom died in childbirth but this made little sense since a woman was always cooking in the kitchen for me and my five sisters growing up in a state located south of Illinois, called Florida.

Her name was Elmira, though some people called her Babs, and she was definitely our mom because three of my sisters, Ellie, Samantha and Tick, looked exactly like her when they were kids, though they were smaller than her then.

Mom was very smart, even though dad called her a dumb waiter. In her spare time she wrote books. One of the books was about etymology. Dad and us kids couldn't understand a word of it but one day a Etymologist happened to come over for dinner (he was on dad's bowling team) and he came upon the book. I remember he said that mom was extremely something or other (a word I don't recall) on the subject and that dad should be proud to have a wife that knew so much about the subject. I remember dad laughing all night after that comment.

I don't know where mom found the time to do things other than cooking and cleaning and tending to the lawn and the farm animals (I always thought it was strange we had so many farm animals considering we lived in the city) but she found time to do amazing things.

Once, she told dad to park in the garage when he came home from work. Dad thought she was drinking because we didn't have a garage when he left for work that morning. Lo and behold, when dad got home there was a garage. Mom had spent the afternoon with no more than a dozen nails, some wood and a hand saw building the structure. Dad was amazed but refused to show it. Instead of complements he scolded her for not getting a permit to build the garage.

All of us kids thought dad was more jealous than callous. He loved mom but in those days a smart, resourceful woman was intimidating to a common workingman. We learned later in life that it was dad who started the rumor that our mom died while giving birth to one of us. Uncle Stillbury caught dad in the lie when dad could not answer why mom would still be alive today if she died then.

There is so much to write about our mom that I am going to save it all for a book and it will be a big book because I will also have to go into the years my mother spent as the only woman ever to be in the Foreign Legion and how every First Lady in office wrote letters to my mom asking for recipes and how three of the smartest men in the world swore they had affairs with her.

And then there is her participation in the Treaty of Versailles. That will take up two chapters, at least.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.