PLYMOUTH — On this day, I wish I was planning my mom’s 97th birthday party.
And next month, my dad would be turning 100.
I’d really like to be able to throw them the best birthday parties ever because they always did that for me.
They always did birthday parties well — all my friends were there and family always showed up and the cake was delicious because mom baked it and she made the best icing I’ve ever tasted.
So I would be sure to throw her and my dad the best birthday parties as well because they really deserve that.
Over the years, I’ve written about how I feel about my parents. To me, they were the best parents I could have ever had.
As I have said before, we had three people in our family, four good legs, I had two of those good legs and I was the least productive of the three of us
I gained a real appreciation of the abilities of people with disabilities at a very young age.
Dad was my coach, my friend, my biggest fan (along with mom) and the best role model I could ever have hoped for.
Mom? Well, she taught me just about everything — to be kind to people, to respect people’s feelings, to listen, to help, to care. And to love her cooking — oh, how I long for her vegetable soup with homemade noodles.
And she was also my best friend — at least for 17 and a half years.
My mom — Elizabeth Kraszewski O’Boyle — died at age 42 on May 10, 1968, the day before Mother’s Day in the year I graduated high school. There has not been a single day since that I have not thought about her or my dad. I rely on them every day for guidance as I travel through life.
My dad lost his right leg in World War II when he hit a beach in northern France and stepped on a land mine.
My mom had polio and her left leg was weak and shorter than her right leg, requiring her to wear a leather and steel brace with an elevated shoe.
Whoever I am today, I credit Elizabeth and Bill O’Boyle Sr. as being the responsible parties.
My mom taught me to appreciate people — all people — regardless of race, ethnicity or religion. She saw the good in all people and she always accented the positive.
Like Chuckie, the mentally challenged boy who lived next door on Reynolds Street. Chuckie didn’t have much of a life, yet he always had a smile and he endured way too much for a little kid.
That’s why my Mom would make me buy Chuckie a Mister Softie vanilla ice cream cone every day before she would give me money for my own treat.
“If you don’t get Chuckie a cone, who will?” she would ask.
That was the essence of my mom — do for others. Help where you can. Make a difference, even if it seems small to you, it’s much bigger to the person you are helping.
It’s those kind of things that have stuck with me through the years.
Like how she would sew my old socks together into a ball for us to play baseball in the street, despite the pain she had in her arthritic fingers.
And how she would walk with me up and down Reynolds Street to catch the bus to go shopping, whether in Wilkes-Barre or New York City where I just had to find wide-wale corduroy pants like Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones.
How she and her best friend, who I called Aunt Minnie, would bake Christmas cookies, using different colored dough to cut out reindeer and Christmas trees and Santa Clauses and churches, and bells and candy canes and wreaths and then decorate them with such precision that people were reluctant to eat them because they looked so beautiful.
Her pierogies and piggies and kielbasa and scalloped potatoes and roast beef and ham and chicken and, well, everything.
How she kept an immaculate house, tolerating two males who were not nearly as neat as she was.
How she learned to drive.
One day, she told me to get into our 1957 Plymouth — the biggest car I have ever seen — because we were going “over town” to Wilkes-Barre to shop at Fowler Dick and Walker The Boston Store. She carefully pulled into the parking lot and up the ramps, but as she was steering the behemoth vehicle around one of the huge cement poles, the car scraped and a stripe of yellow paint marked the dent.
Mom was worried what dad would say. The car was but two weeks old. When we got home, dad looked at the car and then he looked at my mom and said, “Are you alright?”
Mom cried, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I would realize much later what that scene meant. Dad knew the value of his wife and son far outweighed the cost to fix the damage to the car.
Mom and dad are looking down and they will join me to celebrate their birthdays.
Mom’s party is today. We will have that red soup with homemade noodles. And we will have ham and scalloped potatoes. I will put together a relish tray with pickles and radishes and olives. I will have to buy a cake, though.
This will all be virtual, to use a pandemic-created term.
But it will be a celebration for sure.
Happy Birthday Mom!