1.
Helen Hardt Rowe was born in Dunkirk, New York on July 29th, 1930. She had a love for children's theatre and poetry. She studied the former at Fredonia State University and Middlebury College in Vermont; the latter at Bread Loaf, with Robert Frost. It wasn't until after she died that I came upon a folder in a locked box among her things, and discovered what a talented writer she actually was.
When she met my father, a Canadian broadcaster working in Kingston, Jamaica for the JBC, she was a vacationing American schoolteacher on holiday in Bermuda. They fell in love over three days of riding around the island on my father's mint-green Vespa scooter.
After they married, the two of them moved to Holland. Dad became an English language announcer at Radio Nederland. As a team, they photographed calendars for KLM and did freelance radio interviews. Alongside my father, she interviewed, among others, Sophia Loren, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Jayne Mansfield.
When they returned to North America so he could do his Master's degree at Northwestern, as part of his plan to enter the foreign service, she supported my father by working as a schoolteacher in Evanston, IL.
When he did, she became a diplomat's wife, with all the attendant unpaid labour. She didn't particularly care for the rigid protocol that was the heartbeat of international diplomacy, but she learned it cold. She loved travelling, and meeting and entertaining accomplished, interesting people. She relished introducing my brother and I to the wider world, always reminding us that we were just a very small part of it, and to treat it, and its citizens, and their cultures, with the all the respect of guests towards hosts.
She was an accomplished porcelain painter who did delicate florals. I loved her violets in particular. She adored walking, and nowhere more so than roaming any of the world's beaches. She was simultaneously a woman of her time, and a woman very much ahead of her time—an actively anti-racist member of the Baha'i Faith at a time when a degree of genial social bigotry was often the norm, even in otherwise exalted circles. A woman who chafed at pomposity or smugness in any form.
She raised two very different children, one of whom—me—presented her with challenges, the meeting of which did not always come naturally. We sometimes clashed, but lack of love was never even a question, and she gave me a lot of space to be the person I was, and became, and am, even though it was sometimes difficult for her to do so.
Like many ex-children, it took me decades to learn that when she fell short of my expectations, it wasn't because she hadn't tried. There was a useful lesson in humility there for me.
The night of her funeral, I slept in the guest room of my parents' house on Vancouver Island. In my father's room, the radio was turned way, way up. Listening at his door, I realized that he was trying to muffle the sound of his savage weeping. Whatever clashes my parents had with their children, they were an indissoluble team to us, and with a united face.
My memories of my mother are set in amber. Closer to sixty than fifty, I remember her love and tenderness with gratitude, and I remember the rest with tenderness of my own, and with an awareness that forgiveness is a mutual prospect, and that I have needed it, and will need it again. One should never ask for something one can't oneself give.
Love is the embers in life's grate; neglect will put the fire out, but memory, gently applied, can bring in back to full flame
2.
Helen Oliver, who never didn't refer to herself as my "second mum," came into my life sometime in the late 80s, as an adjunct to my then-nascent friendship with her son, Ron.
A natural mother, she swept me under her wing without a look back. In my mid-twenties, it had not occurred to me that there was room in my life for a second mother, or that I might need one, least of all a glamorous, sun-struck ex-model who, at times, seemed only marginally older than her three children. But we all of us fit together like an esoteric puzzle, and in no time at all I had acquired not only a "second mum," but also three siblings—a relationship that endures to this day.
She never forgot my birthday, my anniversary, or any other holiday. For my part, I never forgot to reach out on Mother's Day. When my books came out, or I received a literary award of some kind, Helen couldn't have been more of a cheerleader. There was always a call, a message waiting for me on the answering machine, or a card in the mail. She celebrated all her children's achievements, and mine were no different in her eyes.
She became an indispensable part of our Christmases in California over 30-odd years, first in L.A. and then in Palm Springs.
Her elegance and her kindness raised the tone of every gathering and, in Palm Springs in particular, onlookers often had the impression that she was perhaps a retired film star whose face they couldn't quite place. More than a few of the leading men Ron's film's were quite taken.
I can't remember the last time she called me "Michael." I was always "dear," or my nickname, "the Duchess" (except she spelled it “deer” and "the Dutchess" when she wrote it, so that became the official family spelling.) For my part, I nicknamed her "Helen Wheels."
She was one of the brightest lights in my adult life, and a shining example of the literal currency of maternal love: how loving your children and teaching them that they are wonderful and powerful can make then just that. I rag my deer Ron mercilessly, but he learned all about obstacle slaying at the feet of his mother, to whom he was perfect.
Helen died while I was at my last NeCon writer's conference in Rhode Island. Distance has never felt crueller or more palpable than it did on the afternoon I heard she was gone.
That Christmas, in Palm Springs, she was a soignée ghost in black slacks and matching turtleneck, and cherry red blazer. I heard her soft laugh around every corner, and caught the scent of her perfume, and counted myself obscenely blessed to have known her, and known her love. She still haunts my heart, and never more than at Christmas, and on Mother's Day.
Most people only have one mother. I can't imagine not having had two.
