While the world remembered the heros of 9/11 last week, my brother and sister and I also remembered our mom who died in a car crash on 9/11/1969. I guess you could say she was our personal hero!
I am thinking about her even more this year, as we are staying at our lake, which was her favorite place in the whole world.
We have a little one-room cabin – and I do mean little 6’x9’ – on the side of a hill overlooking a beautiful spring-fed lake. The bunk beds and pull-out sofa we had growing up have now been replaced by one adult bed and a small dresser, but the rest of the cabin is the same – suitcases on the floor and open shelves stacked with coffee cans, soup cans, cereal boxes, dishes, pots and pans and of course sun screen and bandaids.
Our "kitchen" is outside on the patio where there is a picnic table and cooking area with a Coleman stove and the stone fireplace that my dad built many years ago. We have no electricity and no running water – though my dad used to joke that we had “walking water” as he carried a pail up from the lake.
It was here that my mom thrived, and we were always so proud of her! She would get up early in the morning and make breakfast before my dad went to work. Then while we were playing with friends – or later, off to our summer jobs – she would fold up the couch, make up the beds, sweep out the cabin, boil water and wash the dishes (using 2 rubber maid basins) and by 10:30 she would be ready to swim or take a canoe ride.
My mom always seemed young to me – and I always admired how nice she looked – whether it was up here or at home. No dowdy house dresses or baggy bathing suits for her. She wore neat shorts or slacks and a nice blouse, and always had a fashionable well-fitting bathing suit that flattered her slim figure. And while other mothers would just float on tubes in the water on those hot summer days, Mom would dive in and actually swim. One of her favorite things to do was to paddle the canoe around the lake just as the sun was going down.
In the evening, Mom always had a nice dinner ready when my dad came home from work – no matter what the weather. When it rained, we had a tarp that attached to the cabin and extended out to the edge of the picnic table -- but not as far as the fireplace. I will always remember watching her one evening when my dad had to work late. We had already eaten dinner and some of the neighbor kids had gathered around our cabin. It started to rain just as my dad arrived, and as he was washing up, Mom stood, holding an umbrella over the fireplace, cooking his hamburger, while we sat in the cabin singing "Sound-off" to the beat of the rain on the tin roof.
Because of the limitations here, (and because, as my mom later told me, she and my dad wanted some “private time”) we would only stay at the lake for 5 or 6 days. The pattern I remember was being here for the weekend and going home on Tuesday. Mom would immediately send the sheets, my baby sister’s cloth diapers and our dirty clothes out to the laundry for a “wet wash”, then go to the grocery store. On Wednesday the wet wash would come back and she’d hang them out on the line to dry, meanwhile making a pot roast or meat loaf, and maybe a ham or small turkey – enough meals for 5 or 6 days. Then on Thursday she would pack up everything – including my sister’s playpen, and we would head back up to the lake.
As Mom got older, she had various health problems, including what we now know as "afib". But she always said that when she was up here at the lake she felt 10 years younger! So it wasn't surprising that on a beautiful, sunny day, the eleventh of September 1976, she decided she would drive up to the lake for a day. On the way home her heart gave out and her car crashed into a tree.
We will always be sad when we think about losing her so early. But we will always be grateful for the time we had with her, for wonderful woman that she was, and grateful to know that her last day on earth was spent in her favorite place on earth -- here at our lake!
Ethel Mae McMahon - with Harold and Lucy, at the lake in 1946
