31. A little about my mom…

A little about my mom…

My site’s been a little dad heavy the past few months. With Mother’s Day coming up in a few weeks, thought it’d be a good time to switch gears up and talk about my mom a bit. But where to even begin about the person who’s been with me since my literal beginning…

I guess let’s start with her beginning. My grandpa Henry “Hank” Fulmer and my grandma Elizabeth Ann “Betty” Kershaw were Kansans. I’ve always kind of hated this term, but it works here; they were “salt of the earth” people. I know it can get kind of tricky talking glowingly about the 40s and 50s, what with society being heavily segregated racially and heavily patriarchal (among other things), but on the whole, my grandparents and their families were a morally upright kind of people. God, country, family… all that stuff.  

They were good with their hands and grew stuff, but I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call them farmers. I think we often like to think that everyone back in the 30s and 40s were industrious farmers who lived exclusively off the lands they tilled, but as it’s been explained to me, most people had normal jobs just like we do now, but grew stuff like corn, tomatoes, bell peppers, etc. to help supplement stuff they’d buy at the market. Maybe they’d have a few chickens out back to help with eggs and the occasional special meal (RIP chickens).

Like a lot of men of his generation, my grandpa signed up to fight in World War II not long after the attacks on Pearl Harbor and served honorably in the newly formed United States Army Air Force, while my grandma waited for him back in Kansas. And like a lot of men and women of that generation, once said war was over, they got to booming out some babies.  

My mom is one of four kids. In order, there’s my (dearly departed) Aunt Sherry, my mom, my Uncle Ted, and lastly my Uncle Kirk. My mom was born in 1949 in Wamego, Kansas, which is about as about as stereotypically small-town America as one could imagine. It’s one of those towns that has one major road that runs through it with one or two stoplights being more than enough to regulate the traffic of the town. One of those towns where at a certain time of night, both of those traffic lights become a blinking yellow light because the red, yellow, and green pattern would be overkill. I’ve never really pinned down the inspiration for Smallville in Superman lore, but it’s not hard to imagine Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster basing it off a town like Wamego, KS. It’s a town, especially in that era, where everyone probably knew each other’s names and knew each other’s business. It’s that kind of place.

If ever a person existed to be a mom, I think it’s probably my mom. I know that’s a heavily loaded thing to say, but I’ve always felt that to be a true statement. I think for a lot of girls born in that era, the idea that they could be anything but a mom just wasn’t really something that could be entertained too much. Girls of that era had their own moms, grandmas, and aunts as their main source of inspiration for what was possible in life. The toys they played with were specifically designed to train girls to be moms. The media they were consuming on television every night was uniformly patriarchal in nature with a working dad head of household and a mom who stayed at home and cooked while dispatching words of wisdom to her two rascally boys. If daughters existed in those shows, they were either invisible or they were essentially miniature versions of the moms on screen. Any books girls of that era would read (or be allowed to read, more accurately) would be only marginally better.

So… when I say my mom was born to be a mom, that’s largely where I’m coming from. My mom took after her mom who took after her mom so on and so forth. It’s what she wanted to be and then she ended up becoming a pretty damn good one to me and my siblings.

I know the realities of life are not like they’re made out to be in media or even in how my family recounts them later in life, but it really does seem like the Fulmer side of my family lived a kind of Mayberry by way of “Leave it to Beaver” lifestyle, both in Wamego, Kansas and then Dallas, TX where they moved in the 50s. When I think about my dad’s side of the family, I feel a lot of pathos and intensity there. When I think of my mom’s side of the family, it feels very idyllic.

I know, I know… I’m leaving out a lot. And I don’t want to be dismissive of the realities of the hardships of living in that era. I’m talking about my grandparents, my uncles, my aunt, and my mom; all of whom I adore. I’m not eager to really jump into the difficulties of life back then, nor am I eager to whitewash (for them) any good or painful memories they have. I’m sure my Grandma and Grandpa Fulmer had some really bad moments as parents. All parents do. And they were certainly products of their era. All I’m saying is that, as I perceive it, life growing up in the Fulmer household was about as close to the mythological America of the 1950s as can really be possible.

But every family of that era had a “…and then the 60s happened” moment or series of moments. Kids born in the late 40s came of age at an interesting point in history, my mom included. Not long after she entered her teenage years, President John F Kennedy was assassinated not even 10 minutes from where my mom attended school in Dallas. Only a few months after that, she’d find herself sitting in her room with her massive headphones on while John, Paul, George, and Ringo musically transported her away. Not long after that, she’d discover the Rolling Stones. She had a fun high school experience and then not long thereafter, she met my dad and then not long after that my siblings and I came around. All the while, the freaking 60s was happening both with her and without her.

I never really know where anything I write is going to take me. I know this post is kind of disjointed. I’ve started and stopped this post several times over several days. I was just in the shower thinking about stuff and it dawned on me that this post is essentially a companion piece to a similar piece I wrote about my dad in January. In that post, I wrote a letter to my kids about their grandpa. They never got to meet him and I hoped it would be a decent introduction into a man I wish they knew. I started this post with different intentions. My kids know my mom. I saw her literally three weeks ago. She’s a healthy 74 years old and shows no signs of slowing down, despite her recent retirement.

I concluded that letter in a similar biographical place as I did this piece. At some point soon, I’ll pick both letters back up and get into talking about the story of a marriage, a family, a separation, and then all the bad and all the great that followed. But that’s a story for down the road. For now, can’t wait to talk more about my mom. She’s a pretty special person to me.