Memories of my Mother

Kindergarten — oil cloths, sneakers, and other horrors

(On Friday, August 26, 1966, in the early afternoon, my mother, Patricia Anne Foley Browning, died at home of colon cancer. She was three months shy of her forty-first birthday and left behind seven children — six girls, one boy — ranging in age from seventeen to three. I was the middle child, fourteen, and a week away from starting high school.

In 2016, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of her death, I published “Memories of My Mother,” a collection of vignettes celebrating her life. The following is from that book.)

Kindergarten in the late 1950s was never all-day; in fact, it was optional. However, my guess is that as much I believed that Mom’s life revolved around my own, and as much as I believed that her days would be empty without my being in the house, she enrolled me in kindergarten.

From the start, kindergarten and I did not get along. First, there was the issue of the supplies we needed. The teacher — a woman whose name I have now blessedly forgotten — had drawn up a very specific list, and on it included one oilcloth. And just like the Carlson dolls Mom never bought me, she didn’t buy me the oilcloth either. This time, however, I knew the consequences would be much more dire than simply not having the dolls I desperately needed. Without the oilcloth, I could get kicked out of school. I could be required to wear a dunce cap. And never mind that I’d never wanted to go kindergarten in the first place because it was at a public — not Catholic — school, and knew, absolutely knew, that going to public school put my very soul in danger, and I’d wind up in Hell. But if I had to put my soul in jeopardy, the least Mom could do was buy me the oilcloth.

She brought me to Woolworth’s and then she steered me directly to the sundries aisle and pulled a red and white package from the shelf. Although I couldn’t read at the time, I knew my letters, and there was no ‘O’ or ‘I’ or ‘L’ on that package.

“That’s not oilcloth,” I announced.

“It’s what oilcloth is now,” Mom explained.

How did that make sense? That would be like her buying me a toy Edsel and then telling me that’s what Carlson dolls were these days.

I repeated that I needed oilcloth.

Mom opened the package, showing me a red and white, checked vinyl tablecloth. She reassured me that oilcloth was now vinyl and even better. I was not convinced. If oilcloth was now vinyl, I asked, why didn’t the teacher ask us to get vinyl? Mom changed tactics. Vinyl, she said, was new and improved. I watched TV, didn’t I know new and improved — like the PF Flyers, like the Dutch Boy Cleanser — was always better than it was before?

Not when it came to oilcloth, I told her, not when it meant I wouldn’t be following directions. Directions were important to follow unless they were Mom’s, in which case they didn’t matter at all.

I began to pout. Mom was dooming me to be the kindergarten miscreant, a malcontent, and she didn’t even care.

“You pout like that,” Mom said, “and your face will freeze. Is that what you want? Your face to freeze in a perpetual pout? Now knock it off.”

I survived the oilcloth fiasco. Mom was right. Somewhere in the 1950s, oilcloth had given way to vinyl, and the teacher didn’t care; the woman did, however, care about my inability to tie my shoes. I’d never met before, and I’ve never met since, a person more obsessed with shoe tying.

Every day those who couldn’t tie our shoes — and there weren’t many, maybe four of us — were forced to sit on the floor, at our teacher’s feet, as she showed us again and again and again how to loop the laces, tuck the laces, and finally pull the laces into two pretty, little bows.

The problem? I couldn’t do it. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get my fingers to work the way that teacher wanted, and she was getting more than displeased at what she saw as my continued refusal to learn. Every day, I’d go home crying, begging Mom not to send me back to school, and every day, Mom would sit with me on the living room floor and show me multiple ways to tie a shoe. But I insisted my shoes had to be tied exactly the way the teacher showed us, or I’d get in trouble.

One of those days, Mom pulled me to her lap and told me they were only shoes, and eventually, she promised, I would learn how to tie them.

“Tying your shoes,“ she said, “is not the be-all and end-all of life, and I assure you, it’s not the be-all and end-all of school.”

I didn’t know what the ‘be-all and end-all’ was, but it sounded encouraging.

Mom continued, “Even if you never learn to tie your shoes — and I promise eventually you will — I can buy you different shoes. Maybe ones with buckles or no ties at all. Would you like that?”

I nodded. I’d like that a lot. The next day, I went to school invigorated, solid in the knowledge that the shoe-tying problem was not a problem, at all, and soon, I’d be wearing maybe tap shoes or ballet slippers, and never again would I have to struggle with the looping and the tucking and the pulling. I was on my way. For maybe ten minutes. And then the teacher announced:

“All those who still can’t tie their shoes to the front of the class.”

Off I went with another little girl named Nancy, who no one in the whole class liked because — it was said — she made B.M.s all over her front yard. I shuffled to the front of the room, Nancy by my side, and took a seat on the floor, as the rest of the class played with the kitchen set or put together puzzles.

Once again, the woman, not so patiently, explained the looping and the tucking and the pulling. I tried, I really tried, and still I couldn’t do it, and neither could Nancy. Then, with an exasperated sigh, the teacher showed us ONE MORE TIME. That’s what she said, “I will show you ONE MORE TIME, and that’s it.”

‘That’s it?’ What was she going to do? Kick us out of school? Make us wear the dreaded dunce cap? This was beginning to sound ominous. And threatening. I don’t do well with threats as an adult, and I didn’t do well with threats as a five-year-old. My stomach knotted.

“Are you watching? Maureen, Nancy. Are you watching?”

We nodded. The teacher demonstrated. This time, Nancy got it. She understood, and miraculously she tied her own shoes, got to her feet and skipped off to join the rest of the class.

The teacher glowered at me. “Every single child in this kindergarten class can tie their own shoes, Maureen. Why can’t you?”

I had no idea why I couldn’t tie my own shoes, so I remained silent.

Then she asked, “What if you never learn how to tie your own shoes? What then?”

This question I could answer; I remembered exactly what Mom said:

“I’ll buy buckle shoes.”

The teacher, still glowering, sent me to sit by myself under the tables on the far side of the room.

Eventually, thanks to Mom, I learned to tie my shoes, and, again thanks to Mom and the fact I only went half-day, I survived kindergarten. When my school day ended, Mom would pick me up and take me on errands with her.

Those were special one-on-one times — times I treasure, even though the majority of errands seemed to involve going to the dry cleaners and picking up starched white shirts that were folded and then pinned to 8” x 11” glossy, white cardboard. Sometimes the cardboard was printed with pictures that I could color in. Other times, when the pictures weren’t preprinted, Mom would draw pictures, and I’d color those in.