Marjorie Mae Paul Matheny was my Mother. She was born July 16, 1924 in Blackduck, to Gladys Adell Morehouse Paul and Andrew Jackson Paul. She graduated from Blackduck High School on May 28, 1942, and married Ralph Douglas Matheny on July 21, 1945 in St. Paul. She died at the hospital in Bemidji, on April 26, 1996 and was buried in the Lakeview Cemetery in Blackduck. These are the facts of Mom's life and death, but these facts do not tell who she was. So here are some of the things I remember about her...some are my memories and some were told to me by Mom and Dad.
Mom was the fifth child born to Andrew Jackson Paul and Gladys Adell Morehouse Paul. She had an older half-sister, Dorothy, whose mother, Lulu Felt Paul died the day after Dorothy was born. Mom's siblings were Duane Curtis Paul, Adella Grace Paul, Elaine Gladys Paul, and Margaret Ann Paul. In 1932 Andrew and Gladys had a stillborn baby who is buried in Lakeview Cemetery in the same plot as her parents. I heard Mom and her sisters talk about "the baby," but I didn't know it was a girl until I got into genealogy. Emily Joyce Paul was born when Mom was nearly 14 years old. Em always said that Mom was like a mother to her.
Mom and her older siblings had musical talent. When their father would preach in Nebish, they provided the music. Mom played piano, violin and cello. She earned letters in high school for playing cello in the orchestra. I remember hearing Mom play her cello when I was young, before her hands became crippled with arthritis. I was amazed that my Mom could coax such beautiful music from that instrument. The last time I heard Mom play her violin was at a 4-H "Parents Night" meeting at Sunnyside School, where the parents of members took over the meeting and provided the entertainment. Mom and Dad worked up a musical number. Dad had a toy violin that was about 12 inches in length. He hammed it up in front of the audience while Mom played her violin out of sight of the crowd. They played the old cowboy tune "Red River Valley." They were a hit. I still have Mom's violin and I treasure it for the memories of the music she played on it.
Mom had a beautiful alto singing voice. I used to sit by her in church and listen to her sing. As someone who can't carry a tune in a bucket, I envied her ability to harmonize. I inherited my singing ability from Dad. Libby and I used to fight over who had to sit by Dad in church and listen to him try to sing, always about a note and a half off key, and who got to sit by Mom and listen to her beautiful voice. What Dad lacked in ability, however, he made up for in enthusiasm.
Mom worked out only once in her life. After her family moved from Blackduck to St. Paul due to her father's failing health, she worked as a nurse's aide at a hospital. The rest of her life after she married Dad, and as long as she was able, she spent as a homemaker. She was a stickler for a clean house and I remember many Saturdays spent cleaning our old farm house from top to bottom "in case we get company." She always had a variety of pies and cookies in the freezer for the same reason. She taught me to cook and bake and many other things that have helped me over the years. Mom made the best homemade bread, buns and cinnamon rolls that I have tasted. She would spend one day a week baking, and always timed it so that when we got home from school, a pan of buns or rolls were coming out of the oven, and we were allowed one for an after school treat. With lots of butter. Every now and then I get a craving for homemade bread, and I always use her recipes. Somehow they just don't taste the same as when Mom made them.
Her family was also blessed with artistic talent. Her brother Duane and sister Margaret painted; Duane doing landscapes and Margaret, portraits. Mom's talent ran more to crafts. It wasn't unusual to find old 78 vinyl records heating in the oven so she could shape them into the base for a wall hanging, or to have her ask me to go outside and find dried weeds and fall leaves for other projects. She dearly loved to decorate for holidays. I remember her taking a good sized twig from a tree, painting it white and putting it into a flower pot, and then hanging colored eggs from the branches for Easter and red paper hearts for Valentine's Day. She was in her glory at Christmas time, when every available surface was covered with evergreens and shiny ornaments. She made wreaths for the door and walls, once using white feathers for a wreath, and Christmas tablecloths for the kitchen and dining room tables. She once said that Christmas was her favorite time of year because she got to go crazy decorating. I remember being at Mom and Dad's apartment in Blackduck before Christmas one year. The living room was cluttered with boxes and garlands and evergreens and Christmas lights. Mom was in her wheelchair, directing my harried Dad as to where this should go and that should go and how to decorate here and there. He looked at me and said, "Help." Eventually we got everything just the way she wanted it.
Mom was a talented seamstress. She told me that when I was very young, there wasn't money to buy me a winter coat, so she took one of her coats and made a coat and bonnet for me out of it. She sewed the wedding dress and bridesmaid's dress for Em's wedding. She made most of my clothes until I was a senior in high school. And she had the patience to teach me to sew. She taught me so well that several outfits I made, with her guidance, won prizes in 4-H contests. She showed me how to do embroidery and I remember embroidering pictures onto endless dishtowels and pillowcases. Both of these things are a source of pleasure for me now, thanks to her talent and willingness to teach.
Mom had a pretty good sense of humor. She would tell a couple of stories on herself. Once when they lived in Willmar in the early 1950's, she said that she heard some scratching noises at her kitchen window. She knew that Dad was outside puttering around the yard, so she flipped back the curtains, stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry.....only to find herself face to face with the neighbor. He had been putting putty on his windows, had some left over putty, and had walked over to use it on the windows of our house. Mom said that he just turned around and walked away with this strange look on his face.
When we lived at the farm, Dad came home from work one afternoon and called to Mom to come into the living room, as there was a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman there. At that time, door-to-door salesmen were common, and Mom was none too pleased with any of them. Dad was a great one for playing pranks, so when Mom called back that she didn't want any darn old Kirby salesmen in her house, she thought Dad was playing a joke on her. You see it coming, don't you. When she walked into the living room, there stood the Kirby salesman with his vacuum cleaner, ready to demonstrate how well it worked, but with a look on his face that indicated he thought maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
Don't get the idea that my Mother was a saint. She wasn't. She had her faults as we all do. We had our disagreements, mostly when I became a teen-ager. She was a very religious woman, and we argued about her belief that dances and movies were sinful. She believed that Sunday was a day of rest, and that I couldn't keep Sunday a holy day by playing 4-H softball. When she became so ill that she had to move to the nursing home in Blackduck, she became somewhat selfish and used her illness to get what she wanted, as do many chronically ill people. By this I mean things like whenever she wanted all of her children to show up for some event, she would tell us that we had to come because this "might be the last time" we were all together. That worked for her for many years. Mother was good at guilt trips. But we all knew that this was her pain and sickness talking, and not our Mother. Her selfishness came from forced idleness confined to a bed or wheelchair. I know I would not have borne this with the grace that she did. It was rarely that she ever complained, and then only out of frustration at not being able to do the things that she would have liked to do. She was devestated when she could no longer hold a needle to sew or embroider. She turned to working crossword puzzles while she could still hold a pen. Near the end of her life she was given morphine whenever she felt she needed it. Whenever I tend to complain about my lot in life, I think of her and feel ashamed that I should complain about anything. Through all of her illness, she was always there to listen to problems and offer good advice. She was well respected and well loved.
I miss her.
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