The Best She Could

Marie Loree Bowen, school years, San Francisco.

I think we hold our mothers to a higher standard than anyone else; I don't think we want them to have human failings. Now that I am much older - towards the end of my own life - I am at peace with her. My mother didn't - perhaps couldn't - protect me from my abusive father. But I realize that she just wasn't equipped to handle or even understand what was going on - she had no point of reference for it. 

She had never had to care for children, knew nothing about it. When she married my father, her dreams were like Hollywood films she watched on the big screen or read in romance novels. Such an idealized view with protective upbringing by loving parents could not have prepared her for what was to come.

Marie and Lou Hagler. I have very few photos of the two of them together, after they married.
Mom "unfriended" Lou the old-fashioned way, after their divorce.

  As it was, Mom was Catholic. No birth control, and quite fertile, so she had 9 children in 13 years, children that she hardly knew what to do with.  As soon as I was old enough to care for my younger siblings, the babies were handed to me, and then soon after to my Laurie, too. (I'm holding my brother Tom in this photo; I was 5 at the time):

When Mom went off to work at night, she seemed to have a spring in her step, I'm sure in part to get away from the chaos. She dressed up, wearing those pointy heels that women wore back then, the ones that ruin feet. After work, she would join her workmates at a local bar - one named "The Transfer", in downtown San Francisco.

Looking back, I can see that losing two of her children in the years to come, devastated her, as one would expect with the loss of a child.  The first time, it drove her to drink, which affected my younger siblings the most. But Mom was the reason we had Christmas and meals, more often than not. She really tried, often "winging it", and bought us gifts with her own hard-earned cash. She never hesitated to hug us and tell us that she loved us. She worked hard outside the home, and did the best she could.

Marie and Lou,. with children. It was tough for Mom after she gave birth to my sister Laurie -her second child - because she had to be quarantined with tuberculosis for 6 months after Laurie was born. They never got to bond. But Mom loved us all. That love is the reason we could pass it along to our children & grandchildren. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

 

 

Just Marie. Who knows what could have been, if she hadn't had those children, or married that man? She knew how to enjoy life - when she could.

 Marie especially adored her grandchildren, and they her; they were the ones who cried the most at her memorial.  

Marie with a few of her grandchildren. They could do no wrong!

 Mom was in recovery for many years, and was even leader of her AA chapter. The last time I saw her, I told her how proud I was of her. I love you, Mom. 

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