2 SHE WANTED TO BE A MOM MOM WANTED TO GET MARRIED as soon as possible; by the 1940s she had passed her mid-twenties, and she worried that time was running out for her to start a family. But those were the days of World War II and Dad was stationed on the island of New Guinea, where Japanese fighting was intense, so there were no long leaves before he was discharged in December 1945. Sixty-four days later, at 8:00 a.m. on March 3, 1946, they were married by Dad's brother, Father Paul, a catholic priest, in Holy Apostles Church on Lyell Avenue in Rochester. Mom wore a navy-blue suit. Dad wore gray. Exactly thirteen months later, I was born. Mom and Dad were living with his widowed father in the home where he had grown up. Even then, he was around only occasionally; he worked during the day, was often out drinking alone at night. Mom was doing the best she could, without training and without much support; but she loved her role as a mom. "Enjoy the days when they're small," she told Jeanne and me when we had children, "because they grow up so quickly." She had a tough childhood of her own. She was born Theresa Catherine Koch (at Confirmation, she would add the name Agnes, after an older sister) in Rochester on July 23, 1918. Her mother, Theresa Uhl Koch, was thirty-eight and would die of kidney failure four years later. Her dad, Francis Joseph Koch, was forty years old when Mom was born; fourteen years later, he passed away from a heart attack. Mom was the youngest of the seven children in a family that never had much money. She was closest to her brother Al, who was just a year older than she was. When their mother passed away, Mom and Al were sent together to St. Joseph's Villa, an orphanage in Rochester, until their older siblings could care for them. Although most of Mom's siblings never went beyond grammar school, she graduated from Holy Family School in June of 1932 and from Nazareth Academy High School five years later. It took her an extra year because the family ran out of money when her dad died, and she had to transfer briefly to a public school. Ten years after that, she had already been married for a year and I was born. I was a healthy kid, but when something went wrong, Mom had a home remedy. Twisted ankles could be treated by soaking in hot water with Epsom salts. A cup of chamomile tea-from leaves she boiled in water-treated upset stomachs. To prevent constipation, she gave us kids enemas-using soapy water. And if we had wax in our ears, she cleaned it out with a bobby pin. In most cases, her advice was: "Just lie down. You'll feel better soon." Mom was good at simple things, the basics. As my brother Mike said one day, "Ma could iron shirts like nobody irons shirts anymore." And we kids loved those nights when she would get a big pot of oil boiling on the stove and make hot fried cakes. We loved filling a paper bag with confectionary sugar, shaking the just-made donuts in it until they were covered all over, and eating them warm with a glass of milk. She loved to cook, but she really liked the way Burger King made a fish sandwich-and the way McDonalds brewed a cup of coffee. She never learned to ride a real bicycle, but, every day, she pedaled a stationary bicycle fifteen miles; she never learned to drive a car, but she was world-class at talking others into taking her out for a ride. And she was deathly afraid of water, but she made sure every one of us kids learned to swim. Thursday night was usually shopping night at Wegmans; she'd take her little two-wheeled cart and head over to Finch Street, where Wegmans was open until 9:00 p.m. On nights when she had an extra dollar, Mom would send us up to Christoff's Market to get a pound of bologna freshly sliced, for sixty-nine cents. I grew up loving fried bologna-blackened-on bread with hot mustard. Once a week, for dinner, Mom also usually cooked either Spam-because it was cheap-or liver and onions-because "they're so good for you." I can't eat either of them to this day. But whatever she was serving, Dad had a rule: no milk until we ate everything on our plate. "I don't want you filling up on milk," he'd say. We couldn't afford to waste food. Of everything Mom cooked, her most beloved recipe was for German potato salad. She brought it to every family gathering, and it was the first to disappear. I swear that several people came to my father's wake who had never met my dad; they'd heard that Mom was making German potato salad, and they wanted some. She shared her recipe with anyone who asked. "You cook up some potatoes," she'd say, "about as many as you would want-and add in the number of onions that look like they should go in. You put in some sugar and some bacon, but not too much, and then some vinegar until it tastes right." She said, "I don't know why people think it's difficult; there's nothing to making a salad like that." Mom had opinions about everything-and her own unique expressions. "Don't go away mad-just go away and don't let the door hit you on the way out," she would say. Or, "who died and left you the boss?" "What makes you think you're God's gift to creation?" "I'm going to brain you." "He doesn't know his rear end from third base." And the one I've always tried to live up to: "The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother." From my earliest school days, she checked my homework; she encouraged me to read, to go to the library-and she bought me books; she told a story-endlessly-of the time she caught me reading in the bathtub, doing my best to keep the book from getting wet. And in those early days of rock and roll, Mom bought us records she also could barely afford-because she loved music, all kinds of music-the newest hits and the old songs, too. She sang to us endlessly. My siblings and I may be the only ones from our generation who can lapse into "Moonlight Bay," or "Bye Bye Blackbird" and get most of the words right. Some nights our uncles would come over to sing and play the harmonica-mostly songs from World War II-and Mom would join in, sometimes playing the ukulele. She only knew the chords to one song, "Walking My Baby Back Home," and she didn't know that one very well. "Always sing louder than you play," she told me once, "because that way it's harder for people to tell you're not very good." Although Dad was seldom around, Mom and he never physically fought, but they were always bickering-usually about the money he spent on alcohol. From time to time, she would take a part-time job to get a little money of her own. Her most unusual job was working undercover for Wegmans, the large grocery chain, helping catch crooked cashiers who undercharged their friends at checkout. We finally encouraged her to quit because she worked in a bad part of town and had to come home by bus, alone, late at night. When Mom and Dad separated in the 1970s-they never divorced-she moved into a small apartment on her own, and we tried to broaden her horizons. We took her, once, to see a movie. She had loved movies growing up but hadn't been in a very long time. We picked Godspell because it had religious overtones and Mom was religious. "So this is what movies are like today," she said when it finished. "Well, I guess I won't need to see any more of them." And we took her on her first airplane flight. Her sister, our aunt Mag, was living in Florida, and I had a business trip there. It took us several months to talk her into going, but it helped that Jeanne and our young kids were coming along. The flight was smooth until we hit a bit of choppiness on the landing. I told Mom what was happening, so she wouldn't be afraid. "Turbulence?" she asked. "Hmmm. This is the first part of the flight I've actually enjoyed; this feels like flying." It was her only trip in an airplane, her only trip to Florida, and the farthest from home she had ever been in her life. She never flew again. Mom's last job, maybe her happiest one, was working as an occupational therapist helping residents with crafts at St. Ann's Home. She worked there during the short time my grandfather lived there-and during the long time her sister, my aunt Loretta, lived there. She was at their bedside when each of them passed away; she retired in 1985. Although Mom and Dad lived separate lives, they kept in touch. On one trip when she visited him as he was dying in the hospital in Buffalo, my sister Judy heard her say to him: "You know, Bob, I've always loved you." He said he loved her also. It may have been the first time they told each other that in many years. Although they'd been apart for years, after...
