A reading from Philippians:
But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Mom had several families in her lifetime. There was her immediate family of her sisters and parents. Her church family and the Key Women. Her work family at Francis Scott Key High School. And of course, her husband, children, and grandchildren. She was known as Donna. As Mrs. Roop. As the lady in the front office at Key. And, as Mom and as MiMi.
Growing up in Highfield, Maryland, she was known by her initials, DDT, which she was teased about in grade school. Mom was the middle daughter and “one of those Taylor girls” consisting of Pat, Donna, and Bonnie. A Smithsburg High Leopard, she was a member of the fieldball team and the basketball team. A cheerleader and a majorette and a baton twirler. Voted ‘Most Athletic’ of her senior class. She competed in roller skate dancing at the rink in Waynesboro. Donna held multiple beauty queen titles, including Miss King Korn of Chambersburg and Miss National Yacht Club. But Mom wasn’t the one to tell me about these accolades. I found out she was a cheerleader because I discovered her uniform in the back of the closet. It was my Halloween costume that year. When I was a teenager, I found her yearbooks and flipped through the pages fascinated by my mother’s athletic talents – especially given my lack of any. The black and white pictures of her roller skating competition days were kept in a bedroom cabinet, held together with a rubber band. And Dad was the one who told us often – and I mean, often – about her beauty queen days when he first met her. It was only in the last year or two that she brought out her old scrapbooks filled with the pictures and articles about her pageant days, showing her beautiful smile and adorned with sashes and crowns.
A few days ago, I found a ginormous box of pictures of her with her sisters, competing in pageants, roller skating, holding cats and dogs, tap dancing, twirling batons, and playing on sports teams. Those Taylor girls. They had quite a reputation. And I mean that in a good way. Let me read from a newspaper clipping I found in that box:
“The Taylor Sisters, a song-dance team from Blue Ridge Summit, will entertain at intermission of the special Youth Canteen dance … The petite sisters are widely known in the area as entertainers.”
Everyone from Smithsburg to Waynesboro knew about those three young ladies. Raised by a soft demeanored father who was a painter and former minor league baseball player, and a mother who was a force to be reckoned with and a beauty in her own right who took in every injured and lost animal. Those Taylor girls possessed a little from each of their parents. Mom often talked about her father hunting rabbits with his beagles, Brownie and Boots, and how her and her sisters would push the dead rabbits around in a baby carriage in their backyard. Which was both funny and creepy considering their mother helped establish the local humane society.
One day, we were driving down Raven Rock Road outside Smithsburg. Out of nowhere, Mom tells me a story about when her and her sisters were in high school. All three girls were hanging out in Smithsburg, she thinks at some restaurant or ice cream shop, when Pat’s car just wouldn’t work right. The only direction it would go in was – reverse. She said to me, “So I got behind the wheel and drove us the whole way home. Backwards.” If you’ve ever driven Raven Rock Road, you know it can be treacherous driving forward, let alone in reverse.
Mom and Dad met in 1961 at what is now the Shamrock Restaurant in Thurmont. After Dad passed away, I asked how they met at a National Guard Dance held there. In my head, it had always been a fairy tale story. The handsome soldier meeting the beauty queen and I imagined how he twirled her around the dance floor that night. So, imagine my shock and laughter when I was asking Mom about that night and she tells us, “Well, he was there with someone else, and I was there with someone else.” And that’s all she would tell us. The mystery will remain of the two broken hearts they left behind that night.
When Mom was a child, she contracted rheumatic fever. Twenty-five years later and pregnant with me, she was cautioned by doctors that due to the long term effects of rheumatic fever, she should terminate her pregnancy. Mom and Dad were told that I could be born with birth defects or disabilities. And nine years after that when she was pregnant with Christian, the doctors wanted to perform a variety of tests to ensure he would not be born with Down Syndrome because of her age. Both times, my mother faced those doctors down and said, “I’ve waited too long for this baby and I won’t let you touch them. We will love whatever God gives us.” In the end, they got a healthy boy and girl each time. Mom said it was like she put her order into Sears – she got one of each.
While she was pregnant with me in 1971, her and Dad bought 12 acres on the Potomac River. We stayed in a little Brentwood camper along the bank while Dad leased out the rest to a local farmer. One of Mom’s favorite stories was when I was about 4 years old and I locked them out of the camper. I sat in the window sipping on my Dad’s mixed drink, shaking my head to their pleas to open the door. Thank goodness she was a petite woman, because Mom had to climb through the storage area to get in and unlock the door. In 1980, Christian joined us and The River became our second home, despite the floods, the maintenance and upkeep, and even despite the groundhogs, cicadas, and black snakes. When my brother was about three, Mom and Dad decided to go forth with their plan to make it a campground and called it Roop’s Gateway to the Potomac.
Mom loved to sit in her swing on the hill and watch the campers come and go, putting their boats in and out, enjoying the River and each other’s company. But – if you exceeded the 5mph speed limit Dad established, she would yell from her swing, “Slow down!” And if you didn’t slow down, off she’d go to, as she’d say, “have a word with them.” At the River, Mom also loved watching the wildlife who passed by our porch, in the woods beside us, and in the fields behind. Well, except for that family of mice who decided to make a nest in her and Dad’s bed. She slept on the couch from then on. Usually with one – or both – of my beagles alongside. There was this one doe who often appeared, alone, and she ate so close to our camper, you could have reached out and touched her. Mom being Mom, she gave the doe a name – Gertrude. I have no idea where the name Gertrude came from. When I wondered out loud why Gertrude was always alone, without missing a beat Mom’s answer was, “She probably has bad breath.”
We have our fair share of bucks in that field too, which always made me want to bring my hunting bow down to get my trophy wall mount. Despite the fact that Mom and Dad bought me that bow, she would always ask me, “Aren’t they beautiful? How can anyone shoot them?” One time I answered, “Very easily with my bow. Especially if it has a huge rack.” She answered, “The hell you are. I’ll jump out and yell, ‘Run! Run! Run! Nicole has a bow and she’s gonna shoot you!”
Mom and Dad loved going on long drives, with no destination, just driving the back roads to see how things have changed or how they stayed the same. After Dad passed, Mom and I would take those long drives together, and at the end of each one, she would offer to buy me dinner at McDonald’s and tell me how much she enjoyed our drives. This came from our years in a red, white, and blue motorhome Dad had gorgeously renovated from an old school bus. We traveled to over 40 states and saw the landmarks and historical sights we learned about in school. Mom tried crocheting to pass the time as she sat in the front seat, but between being the map navigator and her wanting to see everything, the blanket she started in 1977 wound up the size of a hand towel and is still in the crochet bag she brought along that summer.
For 22 years, Mom worked at Francis Scott Key High School, first as a nurse’s aid, then in the front office. The best part about Mom working in the front office was if I was running late to class, she would give me a late note for my teacher. The worst part about Mom working in the front office was she did the attendance for the school, reporting on who was absent, who came in late, and who was leaving early. This meant Christian and I could never miss school… Ever… Senior Hook Day used to happen every spring at Key and my senior year, I was not allowed to participate. Mom felt she would be a hypocrite if she let me leave early. So, that day, I was the only one left in school from the class of ‘89. The ONLY one. And there I sat in the front office. With my Mom. Because my teachers couldn’t have class with only one student.
Mom always said she was going to write a book of all crazy excuse notes she received from parents. Her favorite story was from a parent who tried to explain that her son had diarrhea. Mom said the mother tried three times to write the word diarrhea, striking it out and trying again. Finally, the mother wrote, “Johnny had the shits.” As Mom said, “She should have just started with that.” And there was the time she tried to break up a girl fight in the hallway and wound up slammed against the lockers between the two of them. She came home that day and said, “That’s the last time I try to break up a fight. I’ll let ‘em kill each other first.” Mom also typed up the detentions and suspensions. If you were particularly ornery, she memorized your address and telephone number so she didn’t have to keep looking it up. When she saw people around town or in church and they would ask if she knew their grandson or granddaughter, niece or nephew, she always replied, “Are they bad?” And when they would answer, “No,” she would say, “Then I probably don’t know them.”
Mom was so proud to work at Key. She made friendships there that lasted her lifetime and who she continued to be in touch with, asking me for any updates I may have heard. She chaperoned Homecomings and Proms, worked the gate at basketball and football games, and her closet is full of shirts and sweatshirts from Key Athletic teams. Then again, let’s be honest, Mom could NEVER turn down a free sweatshirt. So many of her colleagues and former student workers have reached out to me in the last week, telling me how much they enjoyed her humor and working with her or how she was such a great help to them during a difficult time, offering her advice in her no-nonsense, outright honest, yet sweet way.
If you are Facebook friends with me, you know it’s true when I say she’s the most popular woman on Facebook who doesn’t have a Facebook account. Over the years, I have shared just a snippet of her wit and humor. She was, in a phrase, comedic gold. Every week, she would make a trip to town to get her groceries – Kennie’s first, then Food Lion because Food Lion had the better bagels – then McDonald’s for two of their $1 chicken sandwiches. One she would eat there, and one she would take home for dinner. She would often ask me, “What did you say about me on Facebook?” because someone had stopped to talk to her and say how much they enjoyed her and I’s conversations that I posted.
Take for instance the story I told about her practicing to take her motorcycle license test over 40 yrs ago. We were at the River and she was riding across the back hill while my Dad and I were down the hill. At one point, I turned to my Dad and said, “Mommy went into the woods.” Up the hill we ran and there we found her and the bike in the Y of a tree. Apparently, a rabbit ran out in front of her and in her attempt to miss the bunny, she threw her arms and legs up, screamed, and into the woods she went. Dad runs over to her and the first thing he says, “Donna, you broke my damn mirror.” My mother would always end the story with, “No, I’m fine, Paul. Don’t worry about me.” But she got that motorcycle license and that M classification is still on her driver’s license. Even though they sold the motorcycles decades ago and she hadn’t been on one since, she refused to give it up. She told me, “I earned that license and they can never take it away from me.”
Another popular post was Mom telling me about her and Dad’s first anniversary dinner. Dad took her to the The Red Horse restaurant in Frederick. Mom ordered the fish thinking it would be, you know, like a fish sandwich at McDonald’s. She said, “But here it comes to the table and the waitress put that plate down in front of me with this fish. Head and all. It just laid there. Looking at me. I couldn’t eat it. She probably wondered what was wrong when I asked for a container to take the whole thing home.” She ended the story by saying, “The cat ate good that night.”
Mom was such a people watcher, especially at Christmas. The four of us would head to a mall on Christmas Eve, knowing our shopping was complete weeks beforehand, which Mom kept a list each year of what she bought. One column for Christian and one column for me. The total amount spent in each column had to be equal so there was no partiality shown. And even though they would agree not to buy each other anything, Dad would sneak off on Christmas Eve to buy her that surprise gift of jewelry. He would then hide it in Mom’s meticulously decorated Christmas tree that took her three weeks to finish. Each branch had an ornament and each branch had an icicle. During one of these Christmas Eve trips, Mom and I were walking around the Valley Mall when we saw a young Mennonite woman with her dark dress and head covering, and carrying of all things – a Victoria’s Secret bag. I look at Mom and she looks at me and says, “Well, they have to wear something underneath those long skirts.”
The stories I could tell about her are endless and hilarious. I have been told by people that my Mom Roop stories always made them laugh, even on the worst of days, and they will miss them. Maybe I will have to be the one to write a book of all those stories instead of her excuse notes book. And I’ll include the stories she didn’t want me to repeat on Facebook because as she said, she didn’t want her church friends to hear about them. Let me tell ya, those are the best ones.
I could also tell you about her collection of mini-bird houses. Her beautiful handwriting. Her Pennsylvania Dutch sayings. Her nightly exercise routine. How she was the biggest worry-wart. How she broke her arm roller skating when she was 12 and that’s what finally stopped her from biting her nails because her arm was in a cast. And how at the Baltimore Orioles FanFest, we saw a VIP’s only line to meet her favorite player, Brian Roberts, and Mom convinced the staff member in charge of the line that she was Brian’s mother so we could meet him and get our picture. Yep. That was Mom.
My mom had a quick wit.
I get that from her.
My mom was sarcastic.
I get that from her too.
My mom was brutally honest.
I definitely get that from her.
And she was as stubborn as the day is long… My brother got THAT from her.
In 1963, my parents were married in this church, and a few months later, they finished building their house just up the road from here. Mom and Dad were so poor their first meal was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches they ate on a box for a table because they couldn’t afford furniture. But Mom was a saver and coupon clipper, and Dad knew how to invest well. If we didn’t have a coupon for a restaurant, we didn’t eat there. Mom and Dad never went on date nights and we never had a babysitter because if we could not go along, Mom and Dad did not go. She taught me to find the best yard sales and to walk into a store and head straight to the back for the clearance items. Christian and I wanted for nothing – band instruments or athletic equipment, prom dresses or the newest sneakers. And, It wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ we went to college, it was a matter of what school went to and for what major. Ironically, as first me then my brother moved out of the house, Dad kept building onto the house. The sunroom was his pride and joy and where they spent much time watching gospel singing programs and old Carol Burnette shows, and Mom watched her Orioles baseball and Duke basketball games.
For many, MANY, years, Mom wanted a gazebo so she could look out over the pond in their backyard. She told Dad over and over, “If you don’t build me that gazebo soon, God’s gonna have to give me one in heaven instead.” Finally, about 15 years ago, Dad got her that gazebo, surrounded by a beautiful garden and a Koi pond. I am sure, last Friday, Dad was there. And he walked her to her new gazebo. Surrounded by God’s garden. And I can guarantee it was just as beautiful as my Dad’s.
Blessed Be.
musings by nicole 