July 2006, Dr. Charles S. Borso wrote;

Margaret Ellen Morawski/Borso

When I was asked to write about my impressions / reflections of my Mom, I was somewhat hesitant as the characteristics and qualities that come to my mind are, I am quite sure (based on conversations with other siblings, but hey, they can write their biographies), rather different than those of others. Nonetheless, I guess a biography is typically through the eyes of the beholder, so here goes. Also, being the oldest, my most vivid memories are from early childhood and as we all change as we age, the person I describe herein is probably quite different than the person who left this earth at a time when I was finding my own way, raising a family, and too removed from her to adequately describe her thoughts, hopes, memories, and desires. But I think I have a decent understanding of her nature and expectations as a young woman – to wit I will present in outline form as I am under extreme pressure from my publisher (Margaret S) to get this out the door.

Mother:

Immediate thoughts of daily life are: Get children up early to feed the farm animals before going to school or work in the field, sneak out the back while the children were dressing to look for an occasional doe that visited the clover patch in the irregular-shaped meadow area by the creek that was too small to till with tractors; Make the children change clothes and wash up after morning chores (Kids always wondered, “Did the other kid’s really care if there’s cow manure on our shoes? We can’t smell it, so why did it matter?”); Make brown bag lunches for school; Turn on WJR on the radio to get the farm report for father as he went straight to the bathroom and would be there for hours (should we sell the wheat/corn/soybeans outright or take out futures contracts); Push us out the door or drive us to the first bus stop when we were late; Work in the vegetable and flower gardens after kids and father left before it got hot; Prepare lunch and take it to the field if the weather was changing and the crops would suffer or pick up father/kids in the fields and bring them home for lunch; In the afternoon, go into the cellar where last season’s potatoes were stored, canned vegetables were shelved, dill pickles were brined, meat and poultry were frozen in the Frigidaire that had been there since WWII; Peel the potatoes, put them in a bowl, and soak them in water so they did not turn brown; Put a plate under the steaks and put them on the table to thaw; Run to the corner store in the old International pickup (without brakes) and buy applesauce and milk (father grew up on a farm with plenty of dairy and hated “milking”); On the way back from the store, have an impromptu parent/teacher conference (it was easy then as all 3 or 4 kids were in the same one-room schoolhouse); Pick peaches, pears, and walnuts on the farm and go hunting for mushrooms in the woods during season; Prepare dinner of ham & potatoes, or steak, or meatloaf, or chicken noodle soup; Help the kids with evening farm duties if they had a lot of homework (which we often did, true or not); Put out towels for evening bathes and proudly display our new pajamas that she had recently ordered from the Minnesota Woolen Mills by catalog; and finally say prayers with all the children …. “now I lay me down to sleep” … (it was easier then, even with 3 to 4 kids at once, as we ALL slept in the same sagging bed brought over from the old country with a cavern in the middle so deep that we had to be careful not to roll over too far and be devoured by the monsters that lay therein). In the evening she put together scrap books that I only discovered after she passed.

Farmer’s Wife:

Dad planted for a living, but Mom loved to plant. Beautiful flowers, herbs, and, maybe, most of all vegetables. Like most Midwesterners, she hated winter. She would always make father plow the garden before tending to any of the fields as early as possible in the year – some times he broke equipment, got stuck in the thawing mud, would get her to wench him out after the second tractor got stuck pulling the first out. She would have ordered the seeds from the Burpee catalog during the winter and always had to “experiment” with something exotic that never seemed to survive the scathing summer heat waves. She never listened to father’s prosaic warnings that the Farmer’s Almanac said it was too early – after all she had lots of kids and slop buckets from the barn to place over the plants in case of an early frost, or two, or three.

She actually had a poem that she had written about planting corn published in the Monroe Evening News – it was part of a competition, and COUNTY wide (the locals just could not appreciate her – like Jesus said, “a Prophet is not recognized in his/her own city”).

She loved red flowers. I do not know, honestly, if her hair was naturally a faint red or she dyed it. I think it was the Lucille Ball roll model. But red was definitely her color. When she visited Nora and I in California during the birth of our first son during January, 1973, she was taken aback by the red geraniums we had growing everywhere. RED geraniums, in January! Each day during her visit, she would go outside to smell them, touch them, talk to them, extol them.

During a trip to Pasadena, California later in life my wife, realizing her love of flowers, decided that she should see the Hunting Library Botanical gardens. She fell in love with the Japanese garden section and we had to close the place down.

Farming, of course, had its hard side. She would drive tractor, fit the fields, haul grain to market, bale straw and hay, shovel grain in a stifling hot, enclosed tin silo under a ninety-degree sun. During the summers she would crate live chickens, sort eggs, pick vegetables and cart them off to hawk them in the Hungarian community of Del-Ray in the city of Detroit. I remember some of the old Hungarian “city-slickers’ being too prime and proper and asking mom to cut the heads off the chickens. No problem – grab a burlap bag that cattle feed-supplement had been stored in, cut the head, throw the chicken in the bag, tie the end of the bag off, and on to the next house. I remember humorous incidents when the bag opened and the headless chicken ran down the street with an entourage following it. Also remember propelling a few less than fresh eggs in the direction of houses that short-changed us or simply disappeared behind closed doors when mom conveniently turned her back

Artist/Musician

Memories are vague, but I know that she took a few violin lessons and certainly aspired to be a violinist. I think, deep down, she planted a few musical notes in my psyche and that is why our son Stefan became the excellent violinist that he is. I remember traveling to Monroe as a child to an army barracks that the government was de-commissioning to pick up an old piano that had thirty coats of paint covering it and not quite as many fully functioning keys. My dad purchased one of the barrack units and eventually cut into fourths – one for our great grandmother, one for my mom’s brother, and the other two went to rent for badly needed cash. The piano came from one of the other units.

Mom tried desperately to give the children music lessons. I remember a Polish teacher bringing an accordion to our house and trying to teach us how to play polkas. I do not think that he left the accordion at our house so I don’t know how we were expected to practice? I also recall playing a trumpet for a short time, but baseball, basketball, and football were more exciting to me. Mother would drive Caren into Milan to take piano lessons with Mrs. Cielcelski. I do not believe that father approved as he always referred to how pretentious the teacher was and that she never had work clothes on and always looked like she was ready to go to church. Margaret S., too, had lessons from another teacher, but probably learned more from her sister or “by ear” on that out-of tune, dysfunctional piano.

One of the happiest events I remember while still living in Michigan, was the summer that I took her to see “Sound of Music” in Detroit. I was working in Detroit near a theater where it was playing during the summers between college semesters and knew she loved that musical. It took her breath away on the opening scenes, the mountainous hillsides resplendent with flowers and budding bushes – she made the hills come alive with her presence. In fact whenever I hear Julie Andrews belt out that opening refrain, I will think of mom in a heartbeat, a refreshing breeze gently blows across my brow, and beautiful flowers come into view.

Itinerant Traveler

She did not live out of a suitcase, but would take a trip without reservations whenever the opportunity arose. Smelt fishing along the swollen rivers in the upper part of lower Michigan during the spring before planting season. Trips to Huron River State Park on Sundays during the heat of summer. 

The radius of travel grew as I grew. She forced father to take me to Michigan State University and “see me off to college”. She visited Princeton, NJ because she had to see the home where Einstein lived which was just a few blocks from our student housing.

Father feared flying, but when our first child was born, she decided she was taking her first airplane trip to Los Angeles, California – with or without her husband – ostensibly to see her new born grandson. Unfortunately for my indulging wife, it was really a whirlwind tour of the West. We stayed overnight in Vegas or should I say stayed up all night in Vegas while Margaret drank, gambled, smoked, swore, and cajoled the dealers like an old sailor. Then off to Pasadena (I had seen the Rose Bowl during college and she wanted to see it), Palm Springs, San Diego, Mexico, and Death Valley (she dearly wanted to go to Death Valley, but we called that part of the trip off – I think her hatred of the winter back in Michigan compelled her to want to go to the hottest place on earth she could think of).

Scholar/ Educator

As was typical for her generation, she did not have the opportunity to finish high school – eighth grade was her highest level, but she obtained the equivalent of a GED through tutoring, testing, coaching, and encouraging me. She loved words – often mispronouncing them (as I later discovered when I was corrected by teachers), but eager to “try them on for size”. Crossword puzzles had some sort of fascination, but she tired of them or never had enough time to finish one. 

She taught me one “trick” that worked well through high school, all my college years, and beyond – she bought me a dictionary and told me to put a checkmark next to the word the first time that I looked it up. If I ever looked that word up again, and a check mark was there, I was suppose to write it in a sentence and use it verbally in a sentence for the next few days. 

I remember her instilling in me a desire to read (probably started with sneaking away her romantic paperbacks). But she loved, and encouraged an appreciation in me, for Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, and the bible. 

I remember when the Russians were the first to launch their sputniks into space and she suggested that I might concentrate my knowledge in the direction of science so that I could save the world from communism. But she really, really, wanted me to become a doctor. After receiving my PhD, for a brief moment I considered entering an MD/PhD program until my wife knocked me on the head – but mom was very exited that I considered it. Having gotten a degree in BioPhysics I had a keen interest in biology and medical applications of physics. I have little doubt that this somehow influenced our daughter Maya to become a doctor – so you got your wish in a vicarious sort of way mom.

Psychologist/Behavioral Scientist

She was always there to pry out your deepest emotions – even when you did not want her to. Walk in the house after getting off the school bus, she would take one look at you and ask why you had a fight at school. How did she know? 

Our father had a very unfortunate farm accident and lost his leg in a farming accident a few years after their first child was born. He went through a period of severe mental depression after that. Mom did everything possible to encourage him to overcome his handicap. She took him to therapy, took him to visit old army buddies for pep talks, and stood by him through it all.

I feel that she had a deep understanding and empathy for others. Yes, she could cut you to the quick when irritated. She did not have a wide circle of friends, but she truly had friends who were considerably younger and older than herself. Neighbors who were twenty years younger (Dorothy?) considered her as a best friend. She treated her great grandmother more as a friend and confidant than as a mother-figure. Maybe it was just her generation and the remoteness of rural life as I do not witness such intergeneration relationships in contemporary society, but I think she had a unique ability to foster relationships across untraditional boundaries.

I also remember her instilling in me an understanding of racial relations and she was the only person I can recall as a child who treated a black person with a modicum of respect. When my wife and I recently worked in a village in Haiti I felt that it had something to do with another seed she had planted.

Spiritual Advisor

As was customary, Margaret was the spiritual advisor for her children– nothing shocking, that was/is the role of women in society! I could discourse on that subject, but would digress from this biography. .

She encouraged active participation in church at a young age. She seldom went to church but always ensured that we would. She would be more than patient when I decided to memorize the first five chapters of St. John – helping me with the diction, repetitively drilling me, attending church on the Sunday when I gave my performance. In fact she said that I would be a preacher some day. Image her dismay when I announced, somewhere in my high school years, that I was an atheist? I recanted after many years, but she never quite accepted it.

More importantly, in my mind, she encouraged her children to truly live their lives according to Christian tenets. She was always sympathetic for the down-trodden, the dis-enfranchised, the poor, and the needy. And despite occasional off-hand comments to placate others in the household/neighborhood, she genuinely encouraged us to treat others with respect regardless of race, religion, or creed.

She loved animals – right up there with St. Francis of Assisi.

To be continued.

July 2006, Steven David Borso wrote;

 To be continued.