Memories of my mother on her 100th birthday

One hundred years ago today, on October 14, 1925, a baby girl named Phyllis Joanne Sauter was born in the small town of Wellsville, NY. That little girl grew up to become my and my sister Lisa’s mother. Her father worked for the B&O railroad, which meant that they lived in towns all over the Southern Tier of New York and that she started and finished school in the same district but attended several others in between. That’s how we ended up moving to Hornell from Buffalo when I was five - because that was one of the places they lived.

Thinking back on her almost 80-year lifespan (she passed in September of 2005), I’m amazed at all the world events she lived through - the Great Depression, WWII, the Civil Rights Era, Vietnam, the moon landing, and 9/11, to hit some of the highlights and lowlights. She raised us mostly on her own, cared for her mother until my grandmother’s death, despite a relationship that was fraught, to put it mildly - largely because it benefited me and Lisa, was proud of building a credit record in the late 60s and 70s when it was often difficult for married and/or separated women, and maintained her decency and humanity throughout. I’m sure that she had many disappointments in her life, but it never made her bitter.

I remember that there were two things that were always plentiful in our house when we grew up - books and pets. Many of the photos I still have from her younger days (a lot of our family photos were lost in the Hornell flood of 1972) show her with dogs and cats, and not only did our trips to the Olean and Elmira malls always include a stop at the bookstore, but visits to the library (only about a 10-minute walk away) were also a regular occurrence. We mostly had homemade dinners despite her holding down a full-time job once we started school, and her Mexican wedding cakes (at Christmastime) and whipped cream frosting (on chocolate cake, also made from scratch, which I demanded every birthday) were to die for. She put up with all my medical travails (four surgeries, not including a tonsillectomy, before the age of 13) with amazing grace and patience and when I was at Strong Memorial Hospital, 60 miles from Hornell, for my spinal fusion when I was 12, she came up just about every day of the month I was there - usually after working a full shift.

As a person of her time, her attitudes on some things weren’t always as progressive as they might have been, but her mind was never closed and she changed her views on many subjects over the years. She was fairly upset by my conversion to Judaism, more because she took it as a personal rejection than on any theological grounds, but I told her I was following her values in the best possible way by thinking for myself and choosing my own path. I believe she also came to see it that way and also saw it as a positive thing, even coming to my adult bat mitzvah in 1997. While not ostentatiously religious, she was a Christian in the best sense.

Although she never officially left the Republican Party in which she was raised, she was definitely more of the Eisenhower variety, despite her liking for Reagan (more based on his image and nostalgia than anything else, I think). She was already pretty appalled with them by the time of her death, and I’m sure she would have left by now. (I don’t think she had voted for one, at least for President, since Bush Sr.) Unlike today’s crop, I don’t think there was a single group or person she ever hated. She was one of the least racist people I’ve ever known, and while she always insisted that she wasn’t a feminist, for all intents and purposes she was. She was also pro-choice (having seen the consequences of pre-Roe America up close with people she cared about) and pro-union.

She is responsible for the things I think are the best about myself, and I hope that she would be proud of me and Lisa if she could see us today. Neither of us ever made a lot of money, but we know what the important things are, and she was the one who taught us that.