Mom (5 page)

Roselyn Payne:
That was your name—the “A-One Sweeper.”

Roselyn Elizabeth:
We all knew what our jobs were and what our responsibilities were: you were the parents and we were the kids. It wasn’t a time where people were friends and buddies; that wasn’t our generation at all. You weren’t smothering—I guess the new term is “helicopter parents.” Sometimes you don’t want your parent there every second to experience it and video it. Although you never missed a school play, never missed a parents’ night, never missed
anything
. For four children!

Roselyn Payne:
I would get there sometimes, and I would be one of two parents. I used to say, “Where are the people? Where are the parents?”

In the early days, your dad had evening office hours and he’d be late getting home. So we made a decision to sit down as a family and have dinner at six thirty—
every night
—no matter what. When you went off to college or medical school or wherever you were, you all knew if you called home at six thirty, you could talk to the rest of the family because that was
our time
. And if your dad had to go back to the hospital at night, didn’t matter. He came home and we had dinner together every night, and we had breakfast together every morning. We had two meals together every day.

Roselyn Elizabeth:
Did your experiences in medicine affect being a mother and vice versa?

Roselyn Payne:
One thing I learned is that
all
parents want their children to succeed, and
all
children want to succeed. I used to go to talk to sixth graders, and I’d say, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I never heard a child say, “I want to be a drug dealer.” I never heard a child say, “I want to stand on a corner.” But somewhere in between, something happened.

I think being a mother helped parents respect me. I would give them advice, maybe about feeding an infant. I was young then—you know, I finished medical school in my early twenties, and I guess I looked younger than that. I would tell them, “You don’t have to think about feeding the baby every moment,” or whatever it was. And they would look at me like,
Well, what do you know about that? She doesn’t know what’s going on!
And I’d say, “I have four children.” Oh! That gave them new respect:
Well, maybe she knows what she’s talking about!

Looking back, people will say, “Oh, you were a pioneer—there were only five women in your class!” But I didn’t see it. I was following my dream to be a pediatrician and have a family.

You all have done very well. But I take no credit and I take no blame. People say, “Aren’t you proud?” My mother always said, “Don’t be proud; just be thankful.” So when you were coming along, I said, “I won’t take credit because I’m not going to take blame either!”

We never encouraged you particularly to go into medicine. When our oldest son was about twelve, he said that he thought he would go to law school. So we said, “Why are you going to go into law?” He said, “Doctors work too hard!” At the time, he had a very good friend named Bruce whose father was a lawyer, and Bruce said he was going to go into medicine. “Ask Bruce why he wants to go into medicine when his father’s a lawyer.” He did, and Bruce said, “Lawyers work too hard!” So I said, “The truth of the matter is, you work hard if you’re successful—no matter what you do. So you have to decide to do something you enjoy, because you’re going to work hard.” So he said, “In that case, I’ll go into medicine.” [
laughs
]

Roselyn Elizabeth:
Well, of course you’re my one and only mother, and it has evolved towards friendship also. A lot of people laugh and say, “You all act like sisters!”

Roselyn Payne:
True. We are very close, and we’re a lot alike. We’re buddies. We talk every day, all day long. Your dad sometimes says, “What are you all laughing about so much?”

I love you very much, and I’m very pleased with who you are. As I’ve said, I’m not proud; I’m thankful.

Arlene Freiman:
I wanted children from the time I can remember. It just wasn’t as easy to have children as I expected.

Dad and I got married when we were really young: I was twenty, and he was twenty-two. If it had been up to me, I would have had a baby right away, but we were still in school and we had a lot of school to go. So we waited to have a baby. When I made the decision to go to law school, one of the considerations was whether I wanted to wait another three years for children. After I did wait three more years, it wasn’t so easy to have children.

Your older brother, Michael, was my sixth pregnancy: there were five miscarriages before him. I was despondent. I just felt that this was the most important thing to me, and it wasn’t happening. I couldn’t look at babies, because it just reminded me that I didn’t have one. I avoided people who were friends when they started to have children. It wasn’t a good strategy, but it was the only way that I knew to handle it at the time, and they were such wonderful friends that they let me do that.

After law school I worked for an attorney named Jim Beasley for ten years, and I was having this series of miscarriages, and he knew it. When my sister Wendy had Richard, Jim came into my office, and he sat me down on the couch. He said, “This is your nephew—you can’t avoid this baby. This is really important, Arlene.” Through it all, Jim always said, “This will happen for you. You’ll have children.”

When I was pregnant with Michael, I did what I did for all of the others—I didn’t tell anybody, and I didn’t really want to admit to myself that I was pregnant. There was this feeling that maybe I could protect myself, that if it didn’t work then maybe I wouldn’t be as unhappy. But it doesn’t work like that. When you deny yourself joy, it doesn’t make the pain any less if it doesn’t work out.

But when I got past the first three months, I began to believe that I might really have a baby. Well, I
say
that I believed it, but really I didn’t. When they were taking me from the labor room to the delivery room, they said to me, “We see the baby’s head.” I looked at Dad; he would never tell me something that wasn’t true. I said to him, “Is there really a baby there?” And he said, “Yes.” So I thought,
Maybe there is really a baby there!
I know that when I was in the delivery room, I was stunned.

Giving birth to a baby is a tumultuous experience, and I think that there’s a lot of excitement and a lot of fear that surrounds it. But I don’t think I felt any of the fear. I was so thrilled to be there—I was just
so
thrilled to be there. Without a doubt, it was the high point of my life. It wasn’t just with Michael—it was all three times. When I delivered you it was equally the high point of my life, and also with Dan.

Lesley Freiman:
It’s funny, ’cause hearing about it from other people, I just get such a different experience about what it’s like giving birth to a child.

Arlene:
I look back on these almost fifty-nine years, and there’s one sentence that was the best thing that anyone’s ever said to me: I was in the delivery room with Michael, and there was a resident on call who looked at me and said, “Within an hour, you’re going to be a mommy.” Every time I think of it, I just think,
What a gift!
It just rings in my head all the time.

Lesley:
Do you think it’s affected your being a mom that it took so long?

Arlene:
I know for sure that it made me much more patient as a mother. Because there are times that really do try your patience. But I don’t think that I would have raised you another way if it hadn’t been so difficult. Maybe it helps to remind me that every day of my life I am so grateful to be the mother of wonderful children. The one thing that I wished for in my life happened to me. I’m just forever grateful. . . .

My old boss Jim Beasley died a few years ago, and they named the law school at Temple University after him. Last spring Dan invited me to go with him to the Admitted Students Day, and we walked up the steps to the law school, and I saw the name: the James E. Beasley School of Law. I looked at Dan as we walked up—Dan didn’t know that Jim had always said to me, “This will happen for you”—and I couldn’t believe that there I was, walking up the steps of the Beasley School of Law with my youngest son. It was remarkable to me.

Lesley:
So why did you want to talk to me about these things?

Arlene:
It’s like your bat mitzvah: there’s a time when it becomes really important to express the feelings that I have for you. It was important for me to do that today, when I thought that I had the opportunity.

Lesley:
I hope you know that you express this much better than you think you do.We all really know that.You tell us every day in one way or another.

Johnella LaRose:
I had two children and I was three months pregnant with you, Kasima, when your dad left. And I remember thinking,
Now what am I going to do?
We were living in the Los Padres National Forest [California] with other Indian people, taking care of horses and cows. We got $436 a month on welfare, and I did beadwork, I sewed, I did laundry, I ironed—I did everything.

Kasima Kinlichiinii:
You would pick up cans, too, and I was like,
Oh my God, here she goes again, picking up cans!
The other day, my cousin was drinking ginger ale, and I said, “Don’t you throw that can away!” And I was like,
Oh, God, I sound like my mother!
[
laughs
]

Johnella:
When you were four and the boys were ten and twelve, I just couldn’t make it anymore. I was in the Native American Health Center in Oakland, and one of the gals gave me a flyer about a pre-apprenticeship program in the trades. I had no idea what that was, but I thought,
I’ve got to do something.
So I went through the apprenticeship, and I became a union cabinetmaker.

My first week my paycheck was $240, and that first year I made $13,000 in the shop—at that point I had been getting $8,000 a year on welfare. The next year I made $19,000, the year after that I think I made $26,000, and it’s gone up from there. So it changed
everything.
It was a lot of money—hard-earned money. I didn’t think I was going to make it—I was the only woman in a cabinet shop with twenty-nine guys—but I did it. I was running the shaper, the planer, table saws—everything.

Kasima:
And you’d never used any of those before?
Johnella:
Never—but I learned. One time I brought a cabinet home, and I set it on the kitchen table. Your brother walked in, and he goes, “Where’d you buy that?” I said, “Your mother made it!”

Kasima:
I remember you just being busy, busy all the time. You were always dirty. [
laughs
] Dirt in your nails all the time. I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I’m really thankful that you did that for us.

Johnella:
Do you remember—I didn’t have a car, so I had to ride my bicycle to drop you off at the babysitter’s at five thirty in the morning. Then I rode three miles to work every single day for two years. I was in really good shape! And one day it was raining, and you said, “No more bicycle! No more bicycle!” I mean, you were just
sobbing.
I thought,
Okay. Maybe we should try and get a car. . . .
[
laughs
]

There were problems, no doubt. This one guy would say to me, “Why are you here? You should go home.” He didn’t think women belonged in the shop. I was like,
You got to be kidding me, right?
I said, “I don’t have a husband to take care of me. I’m feeding everybody in this house. There’s nobody paying my bills.”