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RAMBLINGS OF A WOMAN RUNNING OUT OF TIME

Thank You’s – Long Overdue - My Mom - Ruth McLain

I’ve thought a lot lately about my work in rescue, what does it mean, how important is it really, how did I
get here, why do I stay, what led me to this place in my life where so many others are, struggling, not
knowing how we are going to make ends meet. I’ve written memorials to dogs and cats that I love, I have
sang the praises of dogs I have rescued and written wonderful descriptions of them, how they behave,
how they will or will not meld into a family, but the things I have never addressed publicly – or at least on
my websites – is what means the most to me, the people that mean the most to me, my love for those
people.

I have never extolled how they have colored my life, changed me, held me up when all I wanted to do
was die, seriously stay in bed and never get up again, how they propped me up so I did not fall over into
the mire of dark depression and never find my way out, how they have encouraged me, argued with me,
denigrated me for belittling myself, praised me for the smallest achievements and placed a glowing
crown of love on my head for selfless acts of kindness that I believe everyone is capable of and should
be performing. These are people who encourage me to believe that what I think and do is extraordinary
– whereas I believe what I think and do is ordinary, common, even expected by God (in whom I have
unshakable faith) and expected by all the “supreme beings,” religious icons and the inner selves that
many others look to in their personal spiritual worlds.

The list is long and goes back for years. I could drop dead tonight and not begin to list them all much
less speak to how they have impacted my life and made my life better in ways both great and small. The
list contains the expected, my mother, my siblings, a handful of friends, some “exboyfriends” and a few
canines and for those of you who know me, the unexpected, my exhusbands and my father – the latter
from whom I learned how not to live my life and the former how I learned I should strive to live my life.

At the top of the list and I want to get this posted today so I begin with the most important - is my mother.
My mother has not always been right, she has not always made wise choices, she has not always done
what I, even in retrospect, think was the best thing to do. What she has done is be there for me. I do
not even know how I will live my life when she passes and the mere thought of losing her leaves me
numb with anxiety and fear. I know it will happen, probably sooner rather than later, and my only joy and
peace is in knowing that I will see her again in heaven, wherever and whatever heaven is - we'll know
when we get there - I only care that it IS and it is the promise of the God she taught me to love and
worship.

This is not a theological discussion or argument, suffice it to say that my faith is my strength, I believe in
the hereafter, I believe we will all answer to God one day, regardless of who you believe God to be and
regardless of whether you believe God even exists, we will all answer one day for the lives we have lived
and the choices we have made. We will all stand before the Almighty. I do not know how we will get
there – or when, whether the dead in Christ will rise at the time of His return, if they are already there
watching us as angels, I don’t know the answers to those questions, nor do I care. I do know that as
surely as there is God and good and right, there is Satan, evil and wrong. If for every action there is an
equal and opposite reaction, I believe the same holds true for the nebulous world of faith. Take from that
what you will and leave the rest for more scholared theologians to ponder and argue.

My mother has been my strength. She carried me for nine months in her own body and heard my first
protest at entering the world. She brushed my hair, taught me to tie my shoes, took a switch cut straight
off a tree to my hiney when I needed it and made me apologize to my siblings whether they deserved an
apology or not. She made clothes for me, helped me with my homework, taught me to cook (everything
except biscuits), taught me that to deny my principles was to deny who I am and that no matter what
other people said, I must at all costs stand on those principles. She taught me to love unconditionally
and taught me that by example.

When she was so tired she herself could barely walk, she covered my body with blankets and kept me
warm while I shivered into the wee hours of the morning with chills and a fever. She rocked me, held me,
cried her own tears onto my face in the dark of night in that corner bedroom – I was maybe 10, it was
freezing, bitter cold for a south Georgia winter and I will never, unless Alzheimer’s or a stroke steals the
memory from me, forget that night. We lived in the middle of no where, had no telephone, she did not
even have a car to drive and she had five children under the age of 10. Never before or since have I felt
so much love. I was so sick and so scared and her touch - Jergens lotion and Vick's vapor rub -- the
softness of her hands, the quiet comforting lull of her voice, that night she never left my side - feverish,
almost delirious - to this day, when I am sick, I remember that night and am comforted. That is the power
of the love of a mother, a memory that sustains the test of time - right down to the chill of the evening,
the fragrances and the soothing tone of her voice.

My father worked (and played) on the road, was a notorious womanizer but never did she take her pain
out on her children and tried hard to conceal the truth from us. As the oldest, I was far beyond my years
and knew as young as 4 his crimes against his family despite her attempts to hide them from us. I took
up her shield and tried to keep the truth from my siblings, tried to protect them from him physically and
emotionally and did not until years later as an adult even realize I was doing so.

She took his beatings, his “in your face” womanizing, his mental and emotional torture and never once
caved to abandon her children. She left a time or two but I always knew where she was and that she
would return and those times probably saved her life so she could be there for us the next 40, 50
however many years God blesses my life with her – and I am so blessed that she is with me still and will
be forever - the love that only a mother can give never leaves. Her love will sustain me when it is my
turn to be with God and I expect if she goes first, hers is the first face I will see. If I go first, I will see my
brother Mikey - he awaits us all now. She not only survived those times, she became a stronger guiding
force for us having survived them.

My life is a collage of memories of times unspeakable, things that no daughter should go through at the
hands of her father, a child should go through at the hands of a parent, times so unspeakable that not
even my mother could believe them until they also happened to my youngest sister and times so brilliant
and wonderful that every child should experience them. Those experiences left me damaged but not
bitter, injured but not disabled, dysfunctional but not incapacitated. The good memories do not offset
the bad but make them more tolerable. Knowledge, the information age, counseling, has taught me that
both good and bad are part of the deal and that somehow they balance one another. We are all dealt a
hand of cards, they fall where they will, it’s how we play the hand that makes us who we are.

In the years since, the years that I have become an adult, my mother has listened, tried (unjustifiably) to
take the blame for what my father did – she has without ever hinting at it to me, carried the weight of
those experiences. She has lived with the regret that I am sure they bring, yet she has never spoken
directly of that regret. That’s what parents do, that is what my mother has done – lived with that weight,
placed her regrets with God, left them in a dark place only she knows of, but she has never judged my
father for what he did – that, she says, is God’s work. She has never implied any blame on her children
or reminded them of those extraordinary events unless they needed to talk about it.

Don’t get me wrong, my mother is not perfect. She has not always been totally truthful but her untruths
have come from a place of denial or that place from which all mother’s lies come – protecting her
children. The one thing she has always been with me is truthful about me, who I am, what I have done,
good and bad, what I can achieve, the heart I have, the dark side I have, my ability to let my own light
chase away those shadows, to let good rule over bad, and most importantly, my ability to forgive.

I remember overhearing her when I was around 16 years old telling my father that he would live to see
the day that none of his children would want anything to do with him and no one would ever have to say
a word to any of the children for that to happen, he would bring it all on himself if he did not change. He
beat her up for that conversation but truer words were never spoken. She has “I told you so” rights and
has not to my knowledge used them. Am I that good? Maybe – I have not said it to him on her behalf,
maybe not, I have regrettably used “I told you so” rights with others. This, despite his ongoing years of
accusations, to her face and to me that she worked to turn his children against him. Nothing could be
further from the truth. She has in fact encouraged us to forgive him, to bury the past, “he is your father”
she has said hundreds of times to each of us. She has forgiven and despite understanding her
children's difficulties with that would probably love to see the day that we could all do as she has and let
it go.

My mother is about as human and frail as any of us but she has the strength of tungsten. She has felt
the pain of her children, suffered through their disappointments, forgiven their flaws, loved their
weaknesses, celebrated their strengths. She has cried in the night for fear that we would not survive the
pressures of our past weighing on our current worlds. She has cried for our losses and never told us
she shed a tear. She has prayed herself to sleep, stopped everything she was doing to bail us out of
trouble, used her last dime to show me that she has faith in me when no one else in the world could or
would. My mother carries secrets about me that no one else on the planet are privy to and I trust her to
carry them with her to the grave. Do I deserve this kind of love? Of course not. I am the least perfect
daughter she could have hoped for.

I should see her every month, every day. I should take the time, make the time, find a way to get home
every month of my life, yet I have not seen her in five years, six years. Twenty phone conversations do
not replace my arms around her and I will go to my grave regretting this time but I have made choices
that have made it impossible. I chose to rescue homeless dogs to the exclusion of having a normal life,
to the exclusion of having time to go home or even being able to make time to go home. Of course I
regret the result of that choice but I do not regret the choice. I believe God led me to do this and He will
tell me when the time has come to stop. My mother does not understand my choice but she does
understand and support my belief that God led me to do this, that this is the work He chose for me to do
at this time in my life. Support my choice? Perhaps, perhaps not. But she respects it. A few years ago,
she wanted me to remarry, to live a normal life, to be financially secure before she died. Now, she just
wants me to be happy and of course to live for God and see her in heaven.

I think back and I wonder – how many times has she with six children gotten up in the middle of the night,
held one of us and looked around the room wondering “how will they make it.” How many times did she
wonder “will he ever get angry enough, drunk enough, mean enough to accidentally kill one of them or
even me?” How many days and nights did she suffer silently in fear? Wish for a different life, wish for no
life at all? How many times were we more of a disappointment than a joy to her? How many times did
she cry wondering why God had cursed her yet again with another child, then touched that tiny face and
thanked God for his or her health? When God took Mikey home, did she think, even momentarily as I
did at the age of 6, Mikey is lucky, he will never be beaten by that man. Yeah, at six, I thought that very
thing on the day I saw him bundled in blue, still, cold, dead and safe. Did Mom ever think that?

I remember her sobbing in agony and grief the day my father almost killed my little brother Jimbo,
beating him with an electrical cord. I had whelps on my back where I laid on top of Jimbo to deflect the
blows. Jimbo was three. She sent us scurrying to neighbors to get ice to bathe him. Miraculously Jimbo
lived and remembers nothing of that day. Neither does my sister Melinda. I have never forgotten any of
it including the baby aspirin that led to the beating. Jimbo took baby aspirin and distributed them to
neighbor kids thinking it was candy. He was three. My father left and did not return for two days. I don’t
think I ever knew for sure but I suspect he was with his girlfriend Helen – I cannot at the moment
remember her last name, but I will never forget her face or her fingernails. She was the second person
in my life I wanted to see die. He was the first. I was six and already jaded enough to wish the worst
upon others. That has changed. My mother, by example, taught me that was not the way to feel or act -
you are blessed when you can wish the best for others.

Some people would blame my mother. I did. But it was the summer of 1961. Just a few months before
Mikey died, a few months after Jimbo’s third birthday, a few months before my seventh. This was the
way things were done. There were no child protection laws. A man was allowed, and if not allowed, not
corrected, for keeping his wife and children in place. Women could vote but not many did. They were
still caught in the trap of the 40s and 50s that told them they had no rights, that the man was always
right. Few worked outside the home, none if they had children. In today’s light this all seems impossible
and it took me years to understand the odds against my mother. Even at that age, I did not understand
why she stayed. Yes, at that age, I was pondering questions that most children never even consider –
particularly then – we did not have a TV in every home, much less every room, what we knew of the
world was limited to what we knew of our own world, what we read or were told. Did I think this was
normal for every home? Obviously not because I questioned it. I blamed my mother because she was an
adult. She could take us and leave. It never occurred to me that she had nowhere to go, no income, no
car, no education to get a job, that survival required money, not just being safe.

How much did she suffer during those years? Trapped in a marriage, a loveless, violent marriage,
shackled by the children her body produced every two years, how much did she dread the missed
periods, the inevitable result of sex she probably resented coming second hand. Oh, there are things I
remember her saying in rage, in pain, in agony, when all of it was overwhelming to her. I don’t recall what
I did, but I do remember her saying she should just leave, leave us to “your Dad and that woman.” She
was cooking dinner and we kids were misbehaving. She put us in separate corners of the kitchen. I got
the favored spot, under the kitchen sink (it was open, no cabinets, just a free standing sink in the corner
opposite the stove and just outside the bathroom door in the two bedroom shotgun house we rented on
T Street in Pensacola Florida). Today, I wonder if it was the lack of feng shui in that house that caused
our misery, but I can afford the luxury of wondering something so silly today.

I remember, as a mean prank, putting my little sister on top of a chifferobe and in the process, knocking
a bottle of Avon Topaz lotion onto the floor. It shattered and with it, so did my mother’s fragile state of
mind. I will never forget her words. I will never have anything nice with all you kids. A bottle of Avon
Topaz. It was the only thing “nice” she had. Why? Because every spare penny went to my dad’s
partying. We had government rice and beans in brown and gray bags. He had beer money or Jim Beam
money or whatever his alcohol of choice was. Was he an alcoholic? Probably not. If so, he was a
functioning alcoholic. He went to work every day – problem was he got draws against his pay so when
pay day came he had no paycheck. Yeah, I remember those arguments too.

Those are the only two incidents I ever recall of my mother cracking under the pressure and taking any
action or making any remark to any of her children. Yet, there were years of this brutality. It went on
even after I got married and left, my only escape. It went on what seemed like forever to me, but what
about to her? I was seven when I broke the bottle of Topaz. After that day, I never heard my mother
make another remark like that. Her child had just died, her husband was cheating on her (again), she
had no way out, three little ones and yes, she was pregnant again with her fifth baby. How trapped was
she? A prison of her own life, of her own body and to her, a prison of her own making. All of this and
there was never in my entire life a day that I doubted my mother’s love. I questioned her choices with the
simplicity of a child – everything is fixable when you are a “grown-up.” Well, being a “grown-up” now I
know that is not true. We are resilient, but we cannot fix everything, sometimes we just have to hang on
tight and roll with life’s storms. That she could endure what she did and still make me feel loved, special,
important, smart, wanted, cared for – even needed – and has managed to continue this for my entire life
speaks to the character of the woman I call Mom. Ruth McClain

To this day, she says she loves my father. But like my siblings, she cannot let him in her life even as a
friend because some things never change. He controlled with physical and financial power then. He
controls with his attitude and words now so her choices have to be guided by what is best and safe for
her and not by what her heart has said. I know all too well how she feels. There was only one man I
ever loved. I married twice and yet I never married him. To his benefit, I threw him and the relationship
away. Was it my parents fault? Of course not. Did all of this impact my decisions? I’m sure it did. Not a
day goes by that I do not think about him, remember him, wish I’d made different choices – he is on my
list of people I need to commemorate in these pages - but I have been blessed in being allowed to tell
him these things after many years.

Two incidents in 54 years. To recall these two so vividly, if there were more, I would remember them.
How powerful a testimony is that to the woman she is, my mother? To have endured so much, love so
powerfully, be treated so badly yet never try to damage what might have remained of any relationship
her children may have had with their father? To encourage us to be loving, forgiving, caring individuals?
To encourage us to use our time and talents wisely? To give it to us straight when we made mistakes
but to never allow our humanity to diminish her love for us? To encourage us to stand on our
principles? To encourage us to HAVE principles? She is an amazing woman and there is no person on
earth that I love more.

If we are, as I believe, a beautiful patchwork quilt of everyone we meet however briefly – they all leave
their impression on our lives, every action and reaction we have to situations life presents to us, to all
the things we do, see, feel, hear, smell and taste, a wonderful, unique work of art, then my mother is the
quilt backing that holds me together. She is the foundation and God is the filler, the warmth, the heart of
the quilt that is me.

I will continue this as time allows - but I needed to let the world know of this magnificent woman who has
so shaped my life, the person I am inside, the values I have, the love I have for life, for family, for my
country, for God, the need I have to do the right thing no matter how painful it may be to me and if
necessary, to sacrifice my happiness for the happiness of others. There is no greater example of the
love of a mother for a child, no better an example of what unconditional love is than the love I go to sleep
every night and live every day knowing my mother has for me.