Remaining Faith and the Football Pot
I played Jr. High Football. I am not sure why. Maybe it was because I wanted to be as cool as my team captain brother Cary or as skilled as my play making brother Craig. I was neither. I was too clumsy to be a star like Craig and to me – no one will ever be as cool as my big brother Cary. Regardless, I played ball.
I can literally remember running down the field in the small town of Omak on the opening night of a Jr. High football season and in the midst of the deafening chaos of body hitting 14-year-old-body I could actually still hear the exact moment my mother arrived in the stadium.
When she routed for you, the clamor she made could cut through the sound of tackling, blocking, and running – even above the sounds of the crowd cheering. Yes, it was the volume of her voice, she could get very loud, but mostly it was the giant stew pot that she would bring to the games and bang with a soup ladle to punctuate her every cheer.
And she did not cheer the way other moms cheered. She did not yell, “Defense” or “go team” or “we’ve got spirit.” As I ran down that field I actually would hear her shout, “BABY! OH MY LORD! CURTIS MATTHEW HARLOW!!! DON’T GET HURT!!!! PAT! DO SOMETHING.”
I am sure most mothers think these same thoughts as their children play football but my mom did not just think them – she yelled them unashamedly to the rhythm of a metal vessel being beaten to death.
And almost no one dared to get close to her while she hit her pot. No matter how crowed the stadium got she would clear away all that seats within a five foot circle around her. Almost, no one that is. My Father, Pat – in spite of the physical danger of getting an unintentional right hook of enthusiasm from Mom- never left her side.
It is impossible to talk about how much we loved mom without talking about how much she loved Pat. And is impossible not to mention how much we all love Pat. My father wants us to believe that his devotion to her was normal, no big deal but he is just being self-effacing. His love for her and their love for each other was amazingly consistent and truly rare.
Thank you Pat for standing next to her at those football games… and baseball games and basketball games and plays and dances and dates and long drives and weddings and babies and weddings and babies and more wedding and more babies (etc. etc.) and now even at the arrival of great-grand children.
In so many moments of our lives, even as adults, you and mom are there together -not as Pat or Carol but always as “Pat and Carol.” You are faithfully standing next to us and faithfully standing next to each other.
Thank you most of all for standing next to her during the days when mom could not stand that well for herself. I want to be a husband and father like you.
Many others were faithful to mom too, especially in those last years. On behalf of my siblings I want to say thank you to all the amazing care givers in her care facility and to everyone who sat by her, washed her, talked with her, helped her eat and brushed her hair as she battled her illness. We will be forever grateful to you.
I am glad I played football. It has been a long time since those Jr. High days but my life is not all that different from those fall Eastern Washington nights. I am still running and all around me there is still noise. But through it all I can still hear her cheering for me – for all of us. I am convinced that the faith my mother had in me and in all of her family and friends will remain long after this day is over.
Remaining Hope and A Snowy Cabin
By far the funniest and most poignant storytellers I know are my siblings and my father Pat. To be at the dinner table with my brother Chris and hear even one of his hilarious quips was to risk having microwaved Banquet Fried Chicken come flying out of your nose.
Mom loved funny stories (or to be more accurate, she loved it when the family was altogether telling stories). Sometime students ask me how I learn to communicate. I tell them all, I learned at Carol Phalen U.
Memorializing her should be about telling funny stories. And it should be a party. Mom loved parties of all sorts. Whether it was an impromptu visit by one of the thousands of people that she called friend or a highly planned popcorn and potato chip extravaganza orchestrated for the big game (by the way – every single time the Seahawks played it was the big game) Mom was always up for a celebration.
Birthdays were enormous. For years my mother and father competed in a sort of arms race of who could surprise the other on their birthdays’. These surprise parties would involve hundreds of people, lodges, bowling allies, duct tape, forcible kidnappings, and on at least one occasion Pat riding around tied up in the trunk of a car for an hour or two.
As big as birthdays were, reunions were even bigger. Mom loved to be surrounded by a million grand kids playing capture the flag while fainting goats bleated for their lives and someone like Karen Harlow, her daughter-in-law, was belting out Garth Brooks on the Karaoke machine. To see my sister Lisa’s girl, Taylor, throw a fast ball next to the big evergreen tree in her yard was always a thrill for her. It was in these grandchildren at play moments that she was happiest.
And on these occasions, she loved to serve mounds of fat free burritos for everyone and anyone who dared enter the reunion vortex that everyone knew as the Phalen’s Phunny Pharm. In this way, “Phalen’s Phunny Pharm” was not just the name for her home – it was the description of her entire life.
Birthdays and reunions were special, but Christmas was the undisputed pinnacle of these celebrations. Mom loved to have EVERYONE and I really mean EVERYONE with her at Christmas. All seven kids and their spouses and grandkids were needed. On top of these, multiple friends, new and old, would be enfolded into our brood each year as if they had lived with us their entire lives.
Every Christmas was an adventure. Sometimes the adventure was dangerous. One year, mom wanted all of us to go deep into the back woods and do some version of Little House on the Prairie meets the Pharlow (Phalen/Harlow) clan. With multiple grand kids in tow we drove our vehicles literally down dirt roads into eight feet of snow covered back country.
As we drove in, it quickly became clear to all of us, expect Mom, that just getting to the small cabin she had rented might be impossible. Mom refused to even consider turning back. She never gave up. Mom was always determined. She had overcome so much in life and a little snow was not going to ruin her Yule season outback Christmas dream. Urged on by he we packed in both the gear and the kids for the last half-mile.
When we got inside the cabin, we found the situation less than ideal for survival. The walls literally had holes in them and the fireplace would not draw enough air to get a serious flame going without filling the room with smoke. That night we had to chose between heat and black lung.
By morning we were bone tired, froze to the core and, my always-responsible oldest sister Leslie was chastising the males because, “the yellow snow is way to close to the door of the cabin.” Little Danielle, mom’s first grandchild, had soot lining her tiny nostrils from breathing in the smoke.
At this point in the adventure 99.9% of all humans would be grumbling. Mom however was completely positive and undaunted. I remember her standing outside sipping coco and looking at the snow-laden branches of the pine trees saying, “Isn’t this the best time ever.”
Beside snow-laden evergreens, mom loved giving Christmas gifts. Some families are rip and tear people. They jump into the presents and seconds later every package has been opened. Mom hated this approach. At her house, opening the mounds of gifts that she had literally spent all year buying would start early in the morning and not finish until late into Christmas afternoon.
Every gift was to be savored. Little hints and jokes were written on each label and if ever we were not watching close enough mom would insist, “Look, everyone look. Slow down! Watch, your sister (or brother or friend). They are opening a big one.”
In her determination and hope filled outlook mom gave me her most valuable gift. Her exhortation to slow down as well seems all the more wise to me now. It is clear to me more then ever that not even one gift that we exchange should be rushed.
Remaining Love and Cattail Seeds
Another gift mom gave me was letting us move back in with her for a short time when I was an adult. I always knew that Mom had rubbed off on me a lot but living with her that year, at age 35, gave me the full measure of just how very much I am like my mother.
Anyone who lived with her or who has been near her was stamped by her presence. As I listen to those who gather to remember her today, in a hundred little ways, I can see her influence. In the small things like the sound of the laughter and in the big things like how Kelli, her step-daughter, shows the same intense devotion to her children that my mother did for us.
Like mom, I worry. Her concern for every member of the family never went on vacation. When you called her you had to start the conversation every time by saying, “Don’t worry, I’m fine” and God forbid if you ever tried to wake her as she slept on the couch. She was easily startled as she dozed. Anyone trying to nudge her awake would inevitable be startled by her half awake cry of, “It is a fire! Get the kids out!”
I too startle easy. Like mom, I also have no sense of direction. Like mom I am often late. Like mom I love dogs. Like mom, I need to garden and collect old things and clean obsessively and have parties and make Christmas bigger and bigger each year. And please don’t sit next to me, (or my sister Leslie), while we are watching our kids play ball. You might get a scream or two in your ear.
And like mom, there is something in me that longs for eternity. Mom was not a theologian or overly public about her faith in Christ. She did however spend her life trying to get to mass on time. Sometimes doing a good job of it and on a few occasions showing up just as everyone else was pouring out of the church.
While I lived with them that year, Mom and Pat let me set up my office in the back room they both used for office space. One night I was pouring over papers, worried about some financial dilemma or another that has already faded from my memory when mom came back to the office to sit with me and play solitaire on her computer.
As we both stared at screens, we passed the time laughing and talking about kids and then very uncharacteristically, Mom got serious. She wanted to discuss my job as a minister and she began telling stories about the many wonderful experiences she had in the church growing up.
At one point she asked me, “why did you become a minister?” I do not remember now exactly what I told her but I do remember what she said in response, “I know that feeling,” she told me. “The one you get when God is all around.” Then she paused for a long moment. “The first time I felt him was when I was a little girl, and I was alone in the church. I felt him there.”
We both said nothing for another long moment and then she told me a story I had heard her share several times before. “One year, while we were spring cleaning the church a nun asked me to remove the cattail plants from the altar area. They were in full bloom, with thousands of seeds ready to fly everywhere. As I took them in my hand the nun knew exactly what my little girl heart was tempted to do. “Carol Margret, don’t you dare make a mess in this church.”
“She was too late.” Mom told me, “I just could not help myself and I ran down the middle of the church releasing those cattail seeds in a giant cloud behind me.”
For the past two days whenever I close my eyes that is the image I see first. Mom running free down the middle of a church releasing those seeds everywhere. It is important to remember today mom, in spite of or maybe even because of all of the trials of her life, she found the presence of God.
That image of her running through the church, the prayer we later shared alone that night in the back office fill me now with deep gratitude. I am so thankful for her and for the God who made her. Along with gratitude however I am also deeply sad. The sorrow is crushing.
Loosing my mother is hard. Watching my mother suffer from Alzheimer’s was even harder. The blessing of being her son more then makes up for all of this pain and I am willing to experience the grief of loosing her in exchange for the privilege of having been loved by her.
St. Paul writing over 2000 years ago in the harsh world of the 1st century said it best. To the young believers of that day he promised that today with all of its trials and questions and hurt is not the end. For those who are know the presence of God, “these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (I Cor. 13:13)
Mom lived these words. She had faith in us. She had hope no matter how bleak or cold was the moment and she had amazing love. Love that cheered for us and saw the best in us and wanted that joy for us that she felt while running down the middle of that church.
She is gone now but the faith, hope and love of her life will remain. Make no mistake, Mersi’s words still echo loudly. I can hear the banging of her pot and as she yells, “Don’t get hurt.” And I will not forget to “Sit down and watch” as we continue to open the gifts she has left for us. And I know that even if it makes a big mess, she would want to find us – with a large bunch of cattails in our hands – running and laughing together.
I can’t remember the name of the class now – something like “Art And Our World 399.” I do remember the fighting. It was 3 a.m. ish when it boiled over. Everyone was greasy, dog-tired, over-caffeinated and about to get an F on the biggest project of our academic lives.
