If Only We Could All Live in Mayberry (Mom: Part 1)

Anyone who knows my mom is aware that I, my siblings, and Dad are the luckiest people in the world for being hers. This post is about her– our unsung hero who wrestles recliners down staircases to make room for our massive family to sit together for brunch, who believes our dad is the funniest man alive, and whose ear-piercing scream can scare would-be intruders within a 4-mile radius while making her grandchildren convulse in uncontrollable laughter.

Mom was born the oldest daughter of eight children (preceded in sibling lineage by my Uncle Jim). My beloved grandparents, James and Norma Rellihan, created eight unique humans; I’m especially partial to the woman within whose womb (say that three times fast) I was made and grew into a human form.

Besides being my beautiful mother, Mom heads a large parish staff and has two of her own secretaries. If she worked in a corporate position, she would be a top executive, likely opting to remain in a V.P. position rather than strive for C-suite status because she prefers to stay within the shadows instead of standing in the spotlight. Some would describe her love of the shadows as her humility and shyness, but I know it’s because “behind-the-scenes” is where Mom works her most extraordinary magic.

Instead of working for a corporation, however, Mom has made her living for the past 50 years working for one of the wealthiest institutions in the world– the Roman Catholic Church. I think she is still waiting for her paychecks to reflect that "richest institution" bit fully. Still, she works tirelessly and with abundant enthusiasm every day, even though she could have retired well over a decade ago.  

Mom's position at the helm of our parish (well, just below the pastor– again, that shadow thing) served me well growing up. I was "Joyce Arthur's oldest daughter." If you know me, you know that I proudly own my self-importance regarding my firstborn status (additionally, the firstborn grandchild of the entire massive Rellihan clan, thank you very much). It's admittedly an inflated level of importance since, in truth, it only means that I came out of the birth canal first, but I've enjoyed milking it over the years. I've particularly enjoyed hearing the whispers of people recognizing my three siblings and me with their "Those are Joyce Arthur’s kids" as we walk into Mass or down the parish's School of Religion hallways, where Mom reigns as Queen Bee. I’ve enjoyed this semi-celebrity status pretty much my entire life since Mom began working at St. Mark’s when I was three years old.

(Alas, Mom’s notoriety wasn’t exactly helpful when Father Coleman wanted me to modify the felt lettering on my confirmation stole to indicate a female saint rather than St. Francis of Assisi since I was a girl–a story for another time–but for the most part, being Joyce Arthur’s oldest daughter had a lot of great perks).

Dad is no stranger in the parish either. He has gone from the salt-n-pepper-haired to white-haired "Joyce's husband," who used to put on one hell of a show. His Mother's Day presentations were delightful; his Christmas Eve children's pageants were legendary. He would ad-lib the entire narration of the reenactment of the Nativity scene. Dad never followed a script (he doesn't believe in preparing something now that you’re going to say in the future). Putting into action his innate ability to be in the moment, he voiced the hysterical inner monologues of precious little preschoolers dressed up as sheep, shepherds, angels, and travelers. The spirit of the Nativity danced through the congregation, buoyed by Dad’s hilarious interpretation of the imaginings of the young pageant participants. Some years, the asides of Joseph conversing with the innkeeper were brought to life by my dad in a way that would slay grown men and women to the point of tears, some of them slouching in the pews, limp from laughter.

Dad was a huge hit every year and, quite honestly, all but overshadowed the adorableness of the little bitty babies in their homemade costumes. Parishioners enthusiastically anticipated what Dad would come up with every year to describe that moment when Mother Mary pulls the doll representing Baby Jesus from beneath her smock. Dad’s improvised commentary was always contingent on how Mary would reveal the baby Jesus, like that one year when Baby Jesus got stuck in the folds of Mary’s flowing gown, requiring that she pull him with force. Sweet Baby Jesus ended up in Joseph’s lap instead of the manger. Dad had a field day with that.

I mention Dad in a blog post dedicated to my mother because even his brilliant pageant performances indicate the many ways my mom works her magic and influences the lives of everyone she has been put in charge of influencing. She brought my dad in to narrate the Nativity pageant because she knew very well that he would bring down the house and build a bigger and bigger following year after year.

And that he did. Dad’s commentary got better with each passing year. That Mass’s attendance grew so massive that they had to build a brand new church sanctuary to accommodate everyone attending to witness Gene Arthur's performance. You think I'm kidding. Ask anyone. But don't ask Mom because she thinks my dad is hilarious on any given day, and those particular memories crack her up to the point of debilitating her. To this day, when she begins laughing hysterically out of the blue, chances are if you ask her what is so funny, she will make a feeble attempt to speak through her laughter to tell you that she just recalled “that one year when Dad [snort] said [inaudible speaking] during the children's Mass.”

Mom has the same contagious laugh as her father, my Grandpa Rellihan. You don't need to know why Mom is laughing before you too are laughing as she nearly collapses forward, breathless. At the same time, a few high-pitched squeaks occasionally escape her body before she takes another deep inhalation to continue the process. Laughing with Mom is like doing 150 stomach crunches, except more fun.

Mom is brilliant. She has made us cringe throughout the years by correcting us with her knowledge of grammar and the English language. She was such an overt grammatical influence on us kids that my baby brother, Jason, became a professor of English Literature. I'm always afraid of letting her see these blog entries because my writing is often in such desperate need of an editor. [Enter my friend, Martha, who now combs my blog articles to catch my ongoing interchangeable use of past and present tense or shorten superfluous run-on sentences. Thank you, dear Martha! And my mother thanks you.]

I love that Mom is both smart and creative as hell. She writes the parish school of religion curriculum, and some of the things she comes up with leave me in awe. If she had demonstrated her brilliance in corporate America, we would definitely have lived in a different zip code.

My talented mom is also a woman of absolute nostalgia. I think she has kept everything all four of us kids handmade for her and Dad over the years. About twenty years ago, she began archiving family trips through crossword puzzles she creates to memorialize our travel adventures and most any event in which our family engages.

We also play Mom-created holiday bingo. The best part is how much fun every one of us kids has participating, including Mom and Dad’s eight grandchildren and their significant others. On family vacations, who cares about the beach? When do we get to play July Birthday Bingo? Halloween pumpkin carving is just messy nonsense unless there’s a bingo game showcasing last year’s carving hilarity.

My dad is hilarious, but Mom is the bomb in keeping us in stitches and creating ways for Dad’s humor and extroversion to remain in the limelight. Once you recognize it, it’s beautiful to watch. They say, “behind every great man is a better woman.“ Well, I’ve witnessed it all my life. Sometimes she’ll catch me watching her orchestrate everything, knowing that I see her secretly spreading her stardust. She’ll walk to me, literally biting her tongue the way all of us with Rellihan blood coursing through our veins, and she’ll pinch me, making me laugh and hug her as we both look on at what she’s created.

Mom has eight grandchildren, and she spends a significant amount of time engaging in their lives, despite her busy career as the Director of Religious Education for our parish. (Note: My father feels he and Mom actually have nine grandchildren. You can read about why at another time here). When my nieces and nephews turned four years old, they began a 9-year stint of birthday adventures with Grandma Joyce, who created a calendar of consecutive special trips and outings each grandchild partook in every year. It started with my oldest nephew Nicholaus 32 years ago and ended three years ago on my youngest niece Abby's 15th birthday. I imagine Mom is hoping she will have some great-grandchildren so she can reinitiate the cycle. To this point, Dad believes Mom suffers wanderlust, and yes, the eight separate trips she used to take with her grandkids every year satiated some of that need to traverse the planet. But Mom also created these yearly outings to enjoy one-on-one time (her favorite way of connecting) with the babies that her babies brought into the world. My mother lives life from an immense and unspoken depth. She lives to create memories that will last in her mind (and within her crossword puzzles) for a lifetime. We all love her for it.

About that shadow thing again. When all of us kids lived at home, we celebrated the Epiphany every year on January 6. My parents would offer us gifts in honor of the magi who followed the Star of Bethlehem to reach the stable and lavish the King of Glory with gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh.

Mom and Dad’s procession to deliver our yearly Epiphany gifts came in the form of an improv production of “We Two Kings.” It was enacted to the melody of the traditional “We Three Kings,” but with hilarious lyrical variations, which, of course, Dad would make up every year as he and Mom navigated through a pitch-dark house while holding a fishing rod to which they had attached an aluminum star that was illuminated by a flashlight.

As Dad knocked out verses that entailed relevant (and primarily embarrassing) quips about each of us kids, every once in a while, you’d hear him mutter, “Joycie, at least sing the refrain with me,” which made us all laugh because we knew Mom was doing everything in her power not to pee her pants from laughter, holding my dad’s arm and bellowing into the sleeve of his makeshift kingly attire of his bathrobe, Mardi Gras beads, a construction paper crown (later, my prom tiara).

Some years it felt like a sort of penance we had to pay to deserve the awesome gifts awaiting us almost two weeks after our already hefty Christmas stash, but mostly it was something we looked forward to and, like the St. Mark’s congregation at the Mass of the Nativity pageant, we couldn’t wait to hear what Dad came up with (despite some of it being cringe-worthy as we entered our teenage years), but, especially, to witness Mom’s reaction to Dad’s impromptu lyrics. Again, another example of how Mom’s powers wield memorable moments from the shadows (or, in this case, the darkness).

As much as I have always loved my mother, she used to do things incredibly perplexing to me. Something that, for many years, I thought must be the single curse of being a firstborn. I’d come home from school or practice to find out I was babysitting for someone in the parish whose original babysitter flaked. Routinely, they called my mother for help. These were mostly people I didn’t even know, but they trusted me to put their damn kids to bed because I was Joyce's child. I always knew when it was coming. I’d come in the front door after school or practice, and if I heard a welcoming, “Hi, honey!” I was safe. If I went in the front door and heard anything like, “Hey, Née Née?!” which sounded more like a question than a greeting, or “Hi honey, can you come here for a minute?” I knew that was the prelude to Mom not asking me if I would like to babysit a bunch of bratty kids but informing me that I would be doing so.

Of course, Mom was lovely about it and always framed it as a beautiful, selfless thing I was doing for people in need, but I wouldn't say I liked it.

Mom knew her oldest kid was strong in ways that she needed me to be at times. She had four kids to wrangle, and I was able to pick up the slack at certain times so she could prepare a holiday meal or get the house ready for company. This also meant that she relied on me in ways that didn’t always make sense to an adolescent. Like that period when my Grandpa Arthur’s second wife Martina began showing signs of dementia. Yep. Mom would volunteer me to sit with her and visit.

At thirteen years old, visiting with someone who goes in and out of lucidity and talks about how “well-developed” my breasts have become is just plain hard. I know Mom did it because she knew I could handle it and had nothing better to do, but I’ll never forget the clincher; the dinner when Martina’s dementia made her unable to differentiate meat from the bone and gristle of a chicken drumstick. Since I was seated next to Martina (by design, I’m sure), once we all realized what that loud crunching noise was, I was tasked with retrieving the shards of bone from her throat before she swallowed and choked on them.

After that traumatic dinner, Mom never again asked me to help with Martina when she and my grandfather would visit, but I would sometimes, of my own volition, choose to sit with Martina and visit with her. After that chicken bone incident, visiting and talking about random things wasn’t so uncomfortable. I started to feel for Martina what I think my mom feels for most people– compassion. I bet Mom was working her magic even then. But dammit, I wish she’d stop volunteering me to babysit strangers’ kids!

Age thirteen was also real fun for the summer chores list. Mom would leave lists for us on summer mornings when she would head to work, and we stayed home since we were out of school.

As a teenager, I would wake up late, eat Lucky Charms (after I’d unfairly pick out about 30 extra marshmallow bits in addition to those I’d already poured into my bowl, leaving little to no sugary morsels for the next person to enjoy), then wrangle all three of my siblings into helping me complete my list of chores by convincing them that we’d all be in trouble if Mom came home if each of our lists wasn’t finished. This never went over well, as Julie, Jerrod, and Jason had been up for hours and had already completed their own lists. I’d argue that they, unfairly, had easier, even dumb, chores like “policing the backyard,” which meant walking a lap around the fence perimeter to make sure everything was in order. My duties required real effort, and I was persuasive in making them see the difference so they’d help.

Some mornings, I had all three of them dusting and vacuuming as I ate my selfish, heaping mound of rainbow-colored hearts, stars, and horseshoe charms. Now, this was my kind of babysitting.

Mom loves all things pumpkin spice. When most of social media is griping about how many establishments are overdoing it with this popular autumn flavor, Mom kicks into avid consumer mode. If she sees something pumpkin spice flavored, she will likely buy it, even if she doesn’t know what it is. The last time I was home, there was a box of Pumpkin Spice Cheerios in the cupboard (speaking of cereal), a food oddity that rarely surprises me anymore.

Mom squeals in excitement if Dad brings her any pumpkin spiced pastry or hot drink. I think her love of pumpkin spice initiated Mom’s generous act of waking before anyone is up and sneaking out to purchase me an Americano from Starbucks or Scooters anytime I am home for a visit. She wants a pumpkin spice latté, so she uses that as her excuse to bring me my favorite morning drink. It started one Christmas about nine years ago, and she has kept up this ritual on every one of my visits home.

When I thank Mom while assuring her that she doesn’t have to keep buying me espresso drinks every morning, she responds, “You made me a mother; I can buy you a coffee.” It’s hard to argue with that kind of comeback.

Mom makes us all laugh just by being herself. She never attempts to be funny, yet I and all of her kids and grandkids think she is hilarious. Her humor comes out subtly, especially when she’s trying to be serious. Like the last time I was home, we were driving to Parkville, and she spotted a young woman riding a bicycle, looking slightly over her shoulder at some beautiful houses.

“Oh my gosh, that girl isn’t even looking where she’s going on that bike. She’s just looking around like she’s riding on a train.” (I look out the backseat window to see what sort of bike riding technique elicits this description)

“She doesn’t have to look where’s she’s going every moment, Joycie,” my dad responds.

“Oh really? Then what? She just falls down the sewer or runs into a pole?”

Dad looks at me wide-eyed in the rear-view mirror and laughs.

As I, too, laughed in the backseat of the car, I realized that seeing that girl likely took Mom back to the time when she was young and learning to ride a bicycle on Lexington Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. She had so much fear that she would hit the street light pole at the bottom of the hill that she could not put her feet on the pedals and go.

When she finally conjured the courage, she glided down the hill…
and ran straight into the pole.

Mom would retell this story when we were little, and one of us kids was afraid or dreading something. She used this early recollection to teach me and my siblings about self-fulfilling prophesy, reminding us that we might as well focus on good things happening rather than bad ones because she experienced firsthand how the latter can backfire.

Thankfully, the bicyclist remained in forward motion and didn’t suffer any ill fate for glancing over her shoulder as though she was riding on a train.

I have plenty of other hilarious, Mom-attempting-to-be-serious-but-instead-inspiring-gut-splitting-laughter moments. You’ve read about some of them in previous posts; worrying that we won’t have an iron on our hike in the event my back goes out again or that plugging my iPhone into our rental car’s USB port will cause the car to blow up. Or, that time I thought my Dad was finally going to snap when Mom tried to convince him to view his surgery DVD from the CD player on the stereo. She’s a hoot, and she doesn’t even try to be. She is pure joy.

This reminds me of a brief and precious conversation I was part of upon meeting my friend Joyce’s mother. She shared that Joyce was named ‘Joyce’ because she was their bundle of joy. As fitting as that is for my friend, it made me smile because of how it also epitomizes my mom.

If Mom’s fantasy world were to materialize, it would be made up of charming Thomas Kincaid cabins tucked beside mountain streams. Her ideal mountain village residents would be wholesome characters like those who inhabit Mayberry on the Andy Griffith Show. Aunt Bee would bake delicious pies for all occasions (though Mom would somehow have to inspire Bee to add pumpkin spice to her dough goods), a goofy yet good-hearted Barney Fife would keep Mom in stitches with his naive quirkiness. And then, of course, there’d be Andy– the kind sheriff, always doing what is right and good while allowing life's simple pleasures to overshadow the day's drama. This exact characteristic is what Mom has mastered. Sure, she tends to worry about things initially, but she ultimately has this way of shifting her focus to the simple and beautiful things in her life, of which there are many, to keep the world's chaos at bay.

Mom has no idea (or maybe she does) how her gentle strength and compassion play a vital role in my life and that having had such strengths demonstrated to me my entire life saves me in moments when the insanity of the world comes crashing down. I’m utilizing it right now as I watch our divided country hoping that we can come together and work through all the places that are broken and lacking love.

In the meantime, my mom continues to sprinkle her stardust on everything she encounters and prays that the world will become a bit more like her own family, where love and acceptance prevail despite our differences.

Mom lives in a Mayberry of her own making, and the world could use some of its simplicity and neighborly love.

All I know is, Mom better live forever. I can’t imagine any world without her.