November fourth is the 100th anniversary of my mother’s birth.
Georgiana Helen Mello was born at home in Tiverton, R.I. She was the seventh child born to her parents, immigrants from the Azores islands, an autonomous region of Portugal. One of her older sisters had also been named Georgiana; she had died in the Spanish flu epidemic.
Three more children followed, all boys. The family lived in an old, two-story house with a good-sized yard and a narrow view of Mount Hope Bay, which was down the street. My grandparents worked in the local cotton mill, but my grandfather also tended a large vegetable garden.
During the Depression, Mom and several of her siblings moved to Connecticut with her parents. The owner of the Tiverton mill also owned one across the border, and had asked my grandfather to work there. The family lived in what my mother called a “guest house” on the owner’s property. She loved to reminisce about that period in her life.
Mom was tall and pretty, with lovely blue eyes. She liked school and had a large group of friends. She and her sister, Bessie, played in a drum and bugle corps and participated in events and competitions around New England.
But she felt pressured by her parents to drop out of high school, to work. She later got her high school equivalency and attended a business school. She hated her work as a seamstress in a garment bag factory and yearned for something more. Mom was one of the first women she knew to get a driver’s license.
Mom traveled with her friends, going to the Ted Hilton Resort in Connecticut and driving down to Florida. Her trips south opened her eyes to Jim Crow.
During World War II she rolled bandages, volunteered in a hospital and on weekends headed to nearby Newport, which was packed with sailors. Though she had fun in that raucous environment, she worried about her four brothers. Alfred was in Europe, Frank in Burma and John and Manny in the South Pacific. Thankfully, they all came home.
She met Raymond Faria Soares at the Lincoln Park Ballroom in North Dartmouth, Mass., in the early 1950s. She was impressed when he told her he was just back from California, where he’d had a civil service job. That was a bit of an exaggeration, but I was always amused at my mother’s lifelong conviction that a person couldn’t do better than to get a civil service job. Then again, when you grow up in the Depression, job security is no small thing.
One time, Mom and her friends came up to Old Orchard Beach for a weekend. Dad secretly followed with a couple of his own pals. Then he surprised Mom and took her out on a date. He secretly set back the clock in his car, because there was a curfew at the guest house where Mom was staying.
My mother was so embarrassed when she missed the curfew and had to knock on the locked door to wake the landlady. Mom always put a lot of stock in appearances.
But this little adventure secretly delighted her. She and Dad were married on April 23, 1955, at my mother’s parish church, Holy Ghost, with a reception following at the American Legion Hall. Their wedding photos were taken in the yard of my grandparents’ house.
I was born 14 months later. On my birth certificate, Dad’s occupation was listed as “wood cutter.” He was working in the woods, cutting down trees to make way for housing developments.
It took Dad a while to find a career path, but in 1962 he purchased an Arnold Bread franchise. His first route was a modest moneymaker, but he eventually got the city of Fall River, Mass., which was a significant improvement. Sometimes the whole family (my sister had arrived by then) would go with him to deliver bread.
About 10 years later, my parents also ran a day-old bread store. They made a success of that as well. Mom was sociable and likable and enjoyed being behind the counter. Later she would work at the renowed McWhirr’s Department store in downtown Fall River. She and I had often shopped there when I was a little girl, traveling from our suburban home on the bus.
Dad died in 1980. He had a massive heart attack while heading off to work in the early morning. Mom, by then, was working part-time in another department store, this one in a mall. She sold the bread route and tried to move on with her life.
I was proud of her when she took a series of trips to Europe in the ‘80s. She got to see Ireland, England and Portugal, and made new friends along the way. She was able to cross off a bucket list item by becoming a poll worker.
Mom died in 2009, proud to have voted for Barack Obama the previous fall and to have seen him inaugurated. The end came after she had a back operation and developed septicemia. My sister and I had to wear protective equipment to be in the room with her. It was extremely hard to see her go this way, but she did go peacefully.
My mother was not a great cook, but she was a wonderful seamstress. She loved the book “The Shell Seekers” by Rosamunde Pilcher, the soap opera “The Young and the Restless” and coffee. I would tease her that she couldn’t drink anything without eating something with it, and she couldn’t eat anything without also having something to drink. And whatever she was eating usually included bread.
But the most important thing I could say about Mom is that when my sister and I were growing up, our friends wanted a mother like her.
I completely understood why.
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