Tribute to my Mother
Watercolor I sent to mom for Mother’s Day in 1976
“When it came to money, The Lord always provided with enough, but not much to speak of . . . so we didn’t.” Rachel Ann Schwasinger Ickes
Born April 11, 1897; Died August 30, 1987
In her staunch, strong embodiment, I could never tell God and mom apart . . . when that wee, small voice came saying, “Stop” . . . fair warning, just in the nick of time to save me again!
Mom inherited her father, Julius Schwasinger’s Baden-Baden, Black Forest, German traits and with an Immanuel Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer library, she had a hint of stubborn pessimism . . .
However, Mom also inherited her mother’s brainy, witty, Carpenter, Civil War family’s sunshine that melded deliciously with dapper, spat-booted, Neven Darwin Ickes.
Neven’s father came from The Vikings, Pennsylvania Dutch Revolutionary War patriots and land barons, founding Ickesburg, Pennsylvania. This, with his mother’s salt of the earth, Reeves family of Ministers, birthed him, an eternal optimist.
We eight kids were composites of families with strong roots!
I first remember Mama in her brown-rimmed glasses, strong and sturdy, combing her long, chestnut brown hair in a swirl on top of her head or a knot in the back and securing it with tortoise shell combs. Donned in her hand-made, long dress and crisp apron that had a bit of her beautiful tatting fancy work at the collar, she began the daily task of washing lamp chimneys, trimming the wicks, and filling them with kerosene. She lined them up on the buffet ready for night and tended my baby brother, Bud.
I loved looking at my mother and how her specs were perched just so on the tip of her turned up nose and thought she was beautiful.
Bustling to cook at the Monarch kitchen range stove, hoeing in the garden, milking the cows, canning, sewing, and keeping house, she always welcomed having company. Young and old neighbors, men, women, and kids came to visit at our house and usually stayed for dinner. Dishes were undone and floors un-swept . . . and with one of us on her lap, her dark brown eyes kindled happily on whomever came, giving them full attention. She was known for being a wonderful hostess and friend to laugh or cry with, over a cup of tea, listening and sometimes giving advice . . . in general, having a meeting of the minds. Often, when they left, she shared a piece of her fancy work she constantly worked on, or a book or magazine for them to read. Her greatest joy was to read in the midst of kids, or anything.
Her HOA (Help One Another) club of neighborhood ladies came to our house. A quilting frame went up in the living room with ladies seated all around and we played underneath, admiring their legs. Some were fat and crossed primly, others skinny, swinging in nervous time with their stitching. If anyone gossiped, Mom flattered them with: “We don’t gossip, we discuss ideas.”
Our house was busy in teenage years, filled with our friends, us kids playing cards, games, or singing around our piano with Mom thumping on the keys. She especially liked our schoolmate, Wendell Rakow, first on the list (Marion’s boyfriend for 12 years!). As she made a chocolate cake and ice cream, she was mutually engaged with her sense of humor and wise wit. Sometimes they needed her matter-of-fact wisdom or help on book reports or essays.
When it came to us kids, she let no grass grow under our feet to teach us what she thought teachers missed. I remember her making us re-write papers in good Palmer Method Penmanship to get higher marks and we relied on her, like an encyclopedia, because she remembered everything . . . theorems in Geometry, translations in Latin, and how to parse, or diagram sentences in English. With a thump on the head with her thimble, before we left her nest, she was determined to have pounded in us how to spell, write, and speak the king’s English, master the protractor, and be sharp in Mental Arithmetic . . . all the while having a needle and thread dangling from her crocheted collar and silver thimble on her right hand, ready for come-what-may.
A member of The Royal Neighbors Lodge, PTA, teaching the old folks Sunday School Class, raising chickens for us in 4H Club, and actively marching with the WCTU in front of the pool hall ‘den of thieves’, protesting tobacco, alcohol, bootleggers, and illegal drugs, she kept busy.
Cal Stewart, editor of the O’Neill newspaper, regularly featured her writings of interesting people, places, and things, and folks, who didn’t know where to start, called on her for a lifetime to write obituaries. (While Dad accompanied her to sit by the dead all night with the mourning family.) Because of her photographic mind she was often asked to recite long dissertations, poems, or stories for parties or public gatherings, especially on Decoration Day (Memorial Day), she recited “In Flanders Fields.”
Sometimes she ventured out to visit her folks and her cousin Fern in Kearney, or to Lincoln, when she was runner-up for Nebraska’s Mother of The Year, and Dad fed us cornbread and milk.
The most amazing thing about our mother was that she believed in angels.
She said you have to be receptive to know. Stories about their existence was a part of our lives, but witnessing it firsthand during World War II convinced us . . .
One morning we kids were at the breakfast table and Mother was busy cooking at the kitchen range, when she quietly turned to us and stated:
“The angels came to visit me in the night.” (We knew all about her angels and stopped eating to listen, holding our spoonful of oatmeal midair.)
“In the night, angels came to tell me Millard’s plane was riddled by shrapnel on its mission across The English Channel.”
“Oh my gosh, Mom!!!” We all yelled. “Oh, Oh, Mama! Mama, what about Sonny Man???”
Wartime was so scary, and we were petrified all the time for our brother, Lt. Millard Ickes, a Navigator on a B17 bomber, far away across the sea, because our whole town of Page, Nebraska was grieving over the loss of Robert Murphy, Bernard Bolin, Warren Wood, and Wendell Rakow . . . Over There . . . but, oh, how dear to our hearts was Millard’s crew and pilot. Trembling, we gathered around Mom’s skirts, peering up at her in fright for what else she had to say . . . Waiting, we were electrified!
“There, there,” patting us and with a big swoop, she wiped our tears with her apron, then sat us down, huddled on her lap and resumed . . . “The angels said, Millard’s pilot, Captain Bookout, made a safe landing back to their American base in England and Sonny Man with the crew is safe!”
Mom’s eyes were glistening, and her lips were moving, a sign that she was praying, and no one made a squeak. We had to let the revelation . . . the gospel truth, sink in!
It seemed like our house ricocheted overwhelmingly in transcending love, joy, and thanksgiving all together in a swirling to make us feel dizzy. “Does Dad know?” Mom nodded, rocking us back and forth on the bench for a long time and crooning something unrecognizable that was a comfort to us . . .
When our brother came home on furlough, he told the whole story about that night, when he, the Navigator, quaking in his boots, charted their crippled plane’s course, while the crew prayed, and their plane amazingly made it safely back across the English Channel to their base in England . . .
Whew! You could hear a pin drop . . . Millard went on . . . “After that night our plane could no longer fly us . . . she was unsalvageable . . .but with her last breath, she brought us home. Cheers went up by our buddies at the base waiting for us and looking at the miraculous landing that brought us back . . .”
That moment was like a requiem.
We leaned-in to hear the rest . . . “And to think Mom’s angels gave her the message that we were safe at the same time . . .”
We were all speechless! What a homecoming!
News traveled fast all over our hometown of Page and made headlines in The Page Reporter. Everyone rejoiced far and wide, but especially us . . .
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I often feel my mother’s presence, hear her voice, and sometimes feel an actual nudge, like she told us about her mother, who died when Mom was nineteen, but never left her.
Her mom was the essence of her life, as my mom is to me today, almost a hundred years.
Mom could easily have led an academic professor’s life in Kearney College, but married our dad, a farmer, and had us eight kids; six of us raised through the Roaring ‘20s and our precious little brothers, Lionel, and Dennis, coming later.
During The Great Depression, times were hard, but our warm, snug home was a cocoon of love and safety. We led a charmed life, having a garden with canned meat, fruit, jelly, and vegetables on the cellar shelves, besides Mom’s root beer and always a lamp at the window. We had enough and shared with others less fortunate, even the tramps were fed at the back door, who had a story to tell, too.
Everything seemed rosy when we got the privileged space that we jealously took turns enjoying on Mom’s lap in the big rocking chair, while she read to us before bedtime around Dad’s blazing fire. One night, I had a leg ache and Mom stopped everything and draped my leg across her aproned lap to massage out my ‘growing pains’. Basking in her full attention, I dared to ask, “Mom, who do you like the most?” Every kid perked up their ears, “Whichever one is sick!” she said as popcorn and apples were passed around.
That is how it was. She met all our needs . . . sewing our clothes, marcelling our hair, reading to, and teaching us everything she knew ‘till the cows come home’.
Sometimes she gathered us around the piano, while she played “The Belmont Schottische” to dance. Other times, she gave us penny candy bars and played I SPY or piled our card table with 1000-piece puzzles, card games, and The Omaha World Herald funny papers. She advised: “Pay attention to Buck Rogers’ comic strips about his rocket ship, that will come true some day!” Although we could not fathom it, we respected her judgment.
At eighteen, mom, a student fresh out of Kearney State Teachers College was recommended by her professors to teach Out West at Bartlett, Nebraska for The Headquarters Ranch School serving prestigious ranches in a late pioneer neighborhood. A special gift of teaching has passed down through many generations … from her grandmother, Emily, who taught in a private Girls School in Boston . . . to her mother, Marion, who rode side-saddle to teach in her western Nebraska home neighborhood, when a young lady. . . to mom . . . on to me. . . and already obvious in the generations following.
When it came my turn to go to Lincoln to attend The University’s Lincoln School of Commerce, I completed the accounting courses and graduated, like my two sisters before me, but knew I’d rather go out west to teach like my forebears. While being employed at The State Capitol, I enrolled and audited night classes in teaching courses at the University of Nebraska and Wayne State Teachers College, to earn my Third-Class Ham Radio Operator’s License and 2nd Grade Elementary Teacher’s Certificate. I followed my grandmother’s and mother’s Methods to add Phonics, Mental Arithmetic, Art, Bible Stories, and Music to my school teaching agenda.
All eight of us kids were blessed with the genes of great ancestors that mom pressed into greatness with her relentless teaching and her angels carrying us to high places. Lola was also a teacher, Marion and Neva executive secretaries, Millard and Lionel became Doctors in Veterinary Medicine, Dennis, an Attorney of Law, and Bud held on to the family farm with sons, Bobby and Lee going strong to this day.
Forever, a smattering of her is found in uncanny genes down through all our Neven-Rachel Ickes generations to the present day. She planted a seed of inquisitiveness and knowledge that we, our kids, grandkids, and great grandchildren amazingly have. Thanks Mom!
With Love and Happy Heavenly Mother’s Day! Your darling daughter, Sybil (number four)
Other Plummer, Carpenter, Schwasinger, Ickes genealogy: (1) Melanie Rachel’s Wish, Sybil Ickes Malmberg Berndt - available on Amazon; (2) After A Few Mishaps, Alice Carpenter Brown, published by Flintlock Press; (3) Goodbye Emily, Sybil Ickes Malmberg, unpublished