Celebrating Mary Lou

This year to celebrate the birthday of my half-sister's mother (my father's first wife; I'm still convinced that some language must have a one-word term for this), we have a two-person guest post!  My sister and my nephew each wrote something about Mary Lou.

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On November 13, 1976, my mother became a first-time grandmother to my son, Joel, and my 4-year-old sister, Shanyn, became an aunt.  Shortly after Joel’s birth, my parents moved to Virginia and then to Florida.

In the summer of 1983 Shanyn started spending part of the summer with us in Pennsylvania.  A few years later, Joel started making the return trip with Shanyn and visited for a few weeks to a month in Florida.

It was great fun for Joel, but I was always worrying that they were getting into mischief at Grandma’s instigation!

Of course, as Joel got older the visits were not as frequent, but my mother would tell anyone who would listen how proud she was of Joel’s military service and that he had given her the new title of great-grandmother, with the births of his sons Zachary and Connor.

In observation of Mary Lou’s birthday on October 16, I asked Joel if he could write a Grandma memory.

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I remember getting up at the wee hours of the morning to go fishing.  My grandmother, an insomniac, was already awake and vacuuming when the alarm went off.  There were several steps in the fishing process, first stopping so she could fill up her massive cup of Diet Rite cola at the convenience store.

Sand flea (Talitrus saltator) ,
by Arnold Paul / edit by Waugsberg
 - Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 2.5

Instead of buying bait, we would catch it.  If we were fishing off of a pier then she had a cast net to grab some wayward mullet.  Mission complete, I thought, we had caught some fish!  If we were surf casting then she had a makeshift sand flea trap made from the remnants of an appropriated street sign and some chicken wire.  The trap went into the sand as the surf retreated to catch the little crustaceans.

Not long after the sun came up we would be headed back to the house.  There were always porpoises breaching in the intercoastal along the causeway.  Grandma James would look at the red and white smoke stacks of the power plants as her daily vision check.

I wasn’t much for the fishy part, but I enjoyed the time with my grandmother, who never met a stranger.  Oh, the stories!

— Joel Kent III

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Mary Lou (Bowen) Sellers James would have been 86 today.

Mary Lou and Shetland Ponies

To celebrate the birthday of my half-sister's mother (my father's first wife), here is my half-sister Laurie with a guest post!

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And here I am again, faced with my mother’s birthday, and yet another request from my Seester to write something for her ancestry blog.  Except THIS time . . . .

On this October 16, Mary Lou Bowen-Sellers-James would have been celebrating her 85th birthday.  Having been a single mother for a good part of her working years, she managed to find jobs or situations where she could work while I was at school or bring me along on her workday.

In 1967 we lived in El Monte, California in a house owned by the family she worked for.  In exchange for rent, we got to care for their horses and train Shetland ponies for the owner’s business.  At any given time, there were three to four horses and 30 to 35 ponies, along with a number of dogs and cats.  This in itself was her dream job, but there was a secondary job that seemed to be a part of every child’s life in the Los Angeles area in the '60's.

Along with a host of others, my mom worked as a roving photographer, taking photos of kids on Shetland ponies.  The crew would show up at the owner's property, prepare the ponies, load them up on the trailer, and then drive to a targeted neighborhood.  From there, each photographer would start walking, pony in tow, carrying a tripod, camera, chaps, vest, cowboy hat, whatever other equipment was necessary, along with her lunch, water and snacks for the pony, and a shovel, for a long day of photographing cowboy poses.

I was thrilled to be able to work alongside my mother as she got the children ready for the shoot and hear her talk about the horses to the kids and parents.

Of course, those were the days of developing film, so once the photos were ready, she’d be back to deliver the sleeves of photos to the parents, but while I was in school.

We took SO MANY photos of kids on Shetland ponies!  I grew up thinking every kid in the world had a picture taken on a Shetland pony!  Later in life I remember being shocked at the number of people with no knowledge of photographers and ponies just showing up in neighborhoods, looking for kids to dress up like cowboys!

It was a cool job and we were happy.  Even at the age of 10, I felt like we had found our place to be.  She loved what she was doing and I thought we were settling in.

Unfortunately, Mom suffered a back injury when she was thrown from one of the horses and we had to give up the house and the job.

That was the bad news.

Our salvation came in what most people would find an unconventional source:  My stepmother invited us to live with her, my father, and their three young children until my mother got back on her feet.

I thought I had hit the family jackpot!  I could actually LIVE with my siblings and, I’m pretty sure, we all had Shetland pony photos!

I’m not sure why, but we trained the ponies to stand in this manner as in the photo above, stretched out for the photo.  This guy’s ears were back, which my mother would never shoot.  She’d click and talk until the pony was looking at the camera, alert and ears forward.  She told me that making the pony look like it was enjoying its situation as much as the kid is what sold photos!

Photo posted by Maia C. and used under a creative commons license.

The Mother-in-Law

Lynn and Mary Lou,
Thanksgiving 1957

It's October 16, the birth date of my half-sister's mother, Mary Lou Jocelyn (Bowen) Sellers James.  During the past few years I have been trying to document my memories of Mary Lou both for my sister and myself.

My family was unusual for its time.  My sister and her mother lived with us for a while when I was younger.  We were a relatively early "blended family."  So I actually knew Mary Lou.

I still haven't figured out if there's an existing term in English that accurately describes our relationship.  She wasn't my stepmother, because she was married to my father before his marriage to my mother.  A pre-stepmother?  Pre-mother?  Ante-mother?  I bet Yiddish has a word for it.  But still family, whatever the term.

One of the more interesting stories that Mary Lou told me was about when she and my father were first married.  They had been friends prior to that and skating partners, but apparently not really romantically involved.

I don't know what Nana, my maternal grandmother, thought of Mary Lou prior to the marriage, but — at least according to Mary Lou, who sometimes "embellished" her stories — she had specific misgivings about her new daughter-in-law that manifested right after they were married.

The wedding night must have been spent at Nana's home.  Mary Lou told me that the next morning, Nana went upstairs to inspect the bed sheets to ensure that her daughter-in-law hadn't been fooling around with anyone, I guess including my father, prior to marrying my father.

That sure can set a tone for a marriage.  I guess it's amazing that it lasted as long as it did (just under five years on paper, although it may have been less than that in person).  Coincidentally, the divorce was finalized on Mary Lou's birthday.

Now That's What I Call a Blended Family!

My stepfather

Recently I visited Florida for my high school 40th reunion (which I may write about at some point; still processing my feelings about it).  While I was there, I stayed at my stepfather's house, and it occurred to me just how blended of a family I have.

Both of my parents have passed away, my mother 25 years ago this coming January and my father this past May.  So the only living parents I have now are my stepparents.

When I scheduled the trip for the reunion, I was also intending to visit my father and stepmother.  After my father's death, however, my stepmother has been moved to Texas, where she now lives with her son and daughter-in-law, because she really couldn't live on her own anymore.  So I didn't get to see her, unfortunately.

My stepmother's son, of course, is my stepbrother.  He has two sisters, who are my stepsisters.

My stepfather has two sons from his first marriage, so I have two more stepbrothers.  (I did get to see both of them on my trip.)

I have a full brother and full sister from my parents' marriage.

I also have a half-sister, about whom I have written several times, from my father's first marriage.

I guess I had a stepgrandmother growing up, because my grandfather was on his third wife before I was even born.

I even have a living stepgrandmother, because my stepfather's mother is still alive and kicking (in fact, she turns 94 this December!).

And as if that weren't enough to keep track of, my brother used to ask people this question, just to see their reactions:

"When is my sister's sister not my sister?"

And that happens when your half-sister's mother remarries and has a daughter with her second husband.  So my half-sister's half-sister is not biologically related to me and therefore not my sister.

(They could have used a variation of that line on NCIS:  When is my brother's brother not my brother?  Ziva's half-brother, Ari, had a half-brother, Sergei, from his mother's second marriage.  Sergei was not related by blood to Ziva at all.  And so we have art imitating life.)

I guess that's why I had to become a genealogist — just so someone in the family could keep track of all this.

Shared Responsibilities in a "Blended Family"

Loretta (family friend),
Laurie, and Mary Lou, before the
latter two lived with my family

Today is October 16, the birthday of my half-sister's mother, Mary Lou.  I've written previously that Mary Lou and my sister Laurie lived with my family for a while in California.  I believe it was during that time that my mother and Mary Lou came up with a creative way to share responsibilities for childcare.

As I recall, Mary Lou would get us kids up in the morning, fix us breakfast, and help us get ready to go to school.  My mother, who worked a graveyard shift at the time, would come home in time to see us before she went to sleep.  She would then pick us up from school in the afternoon, spend time with us until our bedtime, and put us to bed.  After that, she would go to work, and the cycle would start over again the next morning.

I think this was when my family lived in La Puente and Laurie and I attended the same elementary school, so roughly 1968.  We apparently were well ahead of the curve with blended families and coparenting, which were probably terms that hadn't even been thought of yet.

And I had Laurie read this before I posted it, and she agrees it sounds right!  Not doing too badly for events that happened when I was 6 years old.

Piranhas and Stream of Consciousness

Photo by Greg Hume

October 16 was the birthday of Mary Lou, my half-sister's mother, so it seems like a good day to remember her and tell a couple of stories about her.

The first story comes from my own memories.  As I wrote last year, Mary Lou and my sister lived with my family for a while around 1968.  After they moved to a place of their own, they couldn't have been too far away, because we used to visit them semiregularly.  One of the really fun things about visiting was that Mary Lou had a fish tank with real piranhas.  (Yes, I'm pretty sure it was illegal even then to have piranhas, but I was a kid, so I didn't think about these things.)  Mary Lou would let us feed raw ground beef to the fish, always warning us that we shouldn't let our fingers get in the water because the fish would be more than happy to bite us along with the meat.  We loved watching them gobble up the beef and then look for more.

The second story was one my mother told me.  When Mary Lou wrote letters, it was stream of consciousness.  Whatever she was thinking about, she wrote.  So a letter might start off with the latest family news and then continue with, "Oh, someone is at the door.  I'll get it and be right back."  Then it would pick up with information about whoever had been knocking, whether friend or salesman.  She even wrote e-mail messages like that sometimes, just whatever popped into her head.  Since Mary Lou was Irish on both sides of her family, maybe she was channeling James Joyce?

Mary Lou has been gone since 2004.  I like to think she knows I'm writing about her and appreciates it.

Will the Real Mrs. Sellers Please Stand Up?

Mary Lou in 1964

My family was "blended" decades before that became a common term.  In 1968, and maybe a little before and/or a little after (I don't know the exact dates), not only was my father on his second marriage, but his first wife and his daughter from that marriage (whom I always have called simply my sister) were living with my family in Southern California.  For a while my sister and I attended the same elementary school.

Mary Lou, the aforementioned first wife, told me a story about a contest at the elementary school.  It was for the "best mother" in the school.  One day she was at the house when the phone rang.

"May I please speak to Mrs. Sellers?"

Mary Lou answered, "Which one?"

This threw off the woman from the school a bit, but she recovered enough to say, "The one with a daughter at Rorimer Elementary School."

And again Mary Lou answered, "Which one?"

The woman on the other end of the phone became a little more disconcerted.  "The one who submitted an entry for the best mother contest?"

You guessed it:  "Which one?"

By that point the woman from the school was totally confused.  Yes, my sister and I had both submitted our mothers for the contest.  After a few more details, Mary Lou discovered that she had won the contest.  (I guess my sister, being five years older, could write a better essay.)

Funny, but now that I think about it, it's interesting that Mary Lou told me that story, but my mother didn't.

I'm posting this story in honor of Mary Lou's birthday, which was yesterday, October 16.  If she were still with us she would be 78 years old.