You may have heard this said before by other sons, but my mom, Lena Mae Renfro, was the best woman God ever put on this earth.

I can only imagine what was going through her head when at the age of 45 she told her doctor she was pregnant. Did you get that? It’s a true story and she loved to tell it. In the middle of a hot Missouri summer in 1944, Mom began to have some old familiar feelings. She had already given birth to six sons and had a pretty good idea what the feelings meant.

But she made an appointment with the family doctor just to confirm her suspicions. As she liked to tell the story, she walked into his office and told him she thought she was pregnant. And he laughed.

“Lena, I hardly think so. You’re 45 years old. You’re way past the days of being a new mother.”

But mom insisted. Those were the days before home pregnancy tests, and young girls relied on their mothers to tell them what was probably happening. Mom wasn’t a young girl any more. She just knew. Still, the doctor had to be convinced and so he ran his tests and then told Mom what she had already told him.

She was pregnant with what would be her seventh son.

My parents never really talked to me much about what the conversations were like when Mom shared the information with Dad. But I can imagine it wasn’t a moment filled with joy as it was 26 years earlier when she became pregnant with son number one. Or, for that matter, even 13 years earlier when she became pregnant with son number six.

This baby-raising thing was supposed to be over. Who wants to start a new family when you’re middle aged and already have a pretty big assembly of kids to start with. And it’s been 13 years since the last of six was born, your four oldest sons are already out of the house and the next two are in junior high and high school.

But there I was. The little embryo that wouldn’t go away, getting just a little bigger every day.

I learned many years later that the pregnancy and birth were very difficult for Mom, and she was bed ridden both before and after my arrival. With Dad at work at odd and always changing hours, brothers five and six were saddled with most of the work taking care of baby seven for several months after my arrival.

What I do remember about Mom in those early years was this. It seemed to me she never sat down. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house until it was spotless, made the beds, and tried to adjust to the old familiar pattern of life as a new mother that she thought was behind her. There had to be a weariness that just couldn’t find enough rest.

However, her love for me was unconditional, and as I grew older, we became close in ways I doubt any of my older siblings ever had the chance to enjoy. I had her undivided attention. None of the others had that. With them, and so many of them, her attention was always divided. Looking back, I realize what a gift that was to have her to myself, and in today’s fast-paced world where both parents are likely working, how rare it is.

Did I mention how grateful I am?

***

Somewhere in my growing up, it wormed its way into my consciousness that there was some kind of dark secret that lived between Mom and Dad. It never came up. Not even in the faintest of ways. But I always felt it was there.

The reason I think this, I suppose, is because there was at times a deep and unexplainable sadness that would creep into Mom’s presence.

I settled on the notion that Dad had strayed, Mom had found out, and was profoundly hurt by the event. I don’t know this, and I never asked my siblings about it. Now, of course, I wish I had. Just to settle things in the mind, I guess.

I hope I’m wrong, but I’m afraid I’m not.

***

On the other hand, I do know that love came to Mom from all directions. Her seven sons gave her lots of grandchildren, and her grandchildren gave her lots of great grandchildren. Before age and illness began thinning the ranks and when chance and planning would get us all together — never happened more than two or three as I recall — there was what is known where I grew up as a “passel” of Renfros all hanging out in one place…more than a couple of dozen.

The laughing and teasing and story telling that would take place was incredible. Participating in it all was pure joy. Even better was grabbing a glance at Mom and Dad as they took in what had become of a love affair between two teenagers in the teen years of the twentieth century.

I know “this family” was gratifying to them both. The joy and connection that rested between them during those rare gatherings must have lifted their souls. They had produced this. They had raised, cared for, fed and clothed, and then pushed these seven sons out into the world to create their own families. And the result was an amazing collection of pretty successful individuals who would make a mark in their worlds. But it had all started with Claude and Lena.

***

Above all else, Mom was and still is a calming presence in my life. I have a picture on my office wall of her as a young girl, probably taken when she was seven or eight years old. She is standing by a chair in a simple dress, a benign smile on her face, and with the same look of peace I associate with her to this day.

She was the very picture of purity and guilelessness…unless you were playing against her in a game of 10-point pitch or pinochle.

This I know for a fact. The woman would stop everything if a game of cards was offered. And she was ruthless. In all other ways, Mom was an angel sent to earth to bring peace and comfort to everyone she encountered.

But when she played cards, she was transformed into your worst enemy who would laugh in your face as she sent you and your partner down in defeat.

Needless to say, everyone wanted to be her partner in a game of cards. Or to say it another way, no one wanted to play against her. I always believed that if she became really ill — like knocking at the door ill — all you would have had to do to revive her was to offer a game.

She would rise up shuffling the cards.

She could have been a highly successful riverboat gambler, I suspect.

***

Her influence on me — and it was enormous — was learning how to be quiet and listen. Those who know me well would likely say the lesson never took. That being still is the last strategy I ever engage. And they may be right.

But I came to understand how important listening can be when choices for action are so confounding or rare, or when the cure seems worse than the problem.

Mom’s advice would be learn to listen before you speak, learn to ponder before you act, learn to study before you move forward.

I can hear her say: “You cannot teach before you know.”

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