Kes: Mothers Spend Their Lives on the Front Line

When I was nine years old Elvis Presley was the biggest thing in the universe. You could not turn on the radio without hearing “Heartbreak Hotel” or “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog.” Everybody in the world was enthralled with him….

Except Mother. She didn’t like all the gyrating and hoopla. I don’t remember her ever saying it was the “Devil’s music” or anything like that. That was not her style. But I knew in my heart she’d rather us be listening to Hovie Lister and The Statesmen Quartet.

One of my friends had an Elvis pink and black (his favorite colors) bucket hat that was oh, so “cool.” I begged Mom for one. If you had just an inkling of the Elvis craze, you’d understand how quickly they sold out in our little town.

Mom drove all the way to Paris, Tennessee, and paid a ridiculous sum just to satisfy my selfish request. I was a happy little boy on the ride over there and back for sure. ’Course, I don’t have one remembrance of that hat after we got home.

But I still think about that ride today. And it’s not about me and Elvis anymore. It’s about a Mother who loved a child so much she went against her better judgment, and spent money she could ill afford to fritter away, so a foolish son could have what he wanted.

In the words of a famous Statler Brothers’ song, “And that’s only the beginning of the things I could tell you” about Sarah Ophelia Kennedy Colbert.

I once thought she wasn’t very smart. It was the ole apple pie trick. You remember this one. I’d eat my slice of dessert just as fast as I could, then look up with the saddest eyes I could muster, and say to nobody in particular, “I’m still a little hungry.”

Mom would quickly declare she was “full as she could be” and slide her piece of pie over to me. She “fell” for that simple ploy day in and day out for years…and years.

But don’t think always sugar and spice. She had a hard side! Mom made me take back the 15-cent spyglass I stole from the Ben Franklin Store. And apologize to the owner. And every single worker in the place. And a couple of ladies that came in off the street to buy some yarn.

It embarrassed me so much I never took anything else in my life that didn’t belong to me.

She could be as strange as all get-out at times. I was running pell-mell down the gravel road beside our house when I lost my balance. My body somehow got to outracing my feet. I slid down that road on my hands and knees past two vacant lots and an Allis-Chalmers 60-inch All-Crop Harvester.

I was screaming loud enough to wake the dead when Mom grabbed me up and sprinted back to the house. She had me standing on the coffee table and was picking out the little shards of rock in my hands and knees with a pair of tweezers as she calmly tried to get me to hold still.

My six-year-old body couldn’t comply. I was writhing with pain. As this scene unfolded, I looked down and saw tears silently gliding down Mother’s face. WHAT! I was the one bleeding here. Not her!

You can bet I will hold that picture in my heart forever. But I see it a little differently now.

She would read those Childcraft books to me in bed at night until both of us fell asleep. When we could not afford a pair of real cleats for my first Little League season, she started selling Avon. She was the Den Mother when I was a Cub Scout.

She took us to church every time the doors opened whether we wanted to go or not. We had “dress clothes” just for Sunday. With so much Niagara Starch in them you couldn’t bend over without breaking. We wore Buster Brown shoes that felt like concrete blocks tied around our feet.

I wear “Sunday clothes” to this day even though the dress codes have relaxed…out of respect for her.

Do you know she “waited up” for me when I started dating and going out. I kid you not! It didn’t matter how late I came in. She might be in bed. But not asleep. She’d come down that hall in her gown to hug my neck and ask how the night went. Every single time!

Everywhere I go these days people tell me how LUCKY I was to marry Cathy. It’s like a universal mandate. Let me set the record straight on that. In October, November, and December, before I was born in January of 1947, Mother was on her knees in that little upstairs apartment on West Cherry Street, across from Bethel College, praying for the child she was carrying.

She was praying for a healthy birth, that this child would, at the appropriate time, surrender his/her life to Jesus Christ, and when it came time for him/her to find a spouse, that God would provide the perfect one.

Let’s be absolutely clear, LUCK didn’t have nothing to do with the wife I have.

But a humble, faithful, wonderful, loving Mother sure did….

Happy Mother’s Day,
Kes
kesley45@aol.com