I was on the hot seat and Mom came to the rescue

So, there I was with a naked woman in my highschool locker.

I was band president and drum major. I was above reproach. Except for the naked poster, which Mrs. Ensley discovered by accident.

I was in my senior year at Ray District High School in Kearny. It was 1973. Mrs. Ensley, the school secretary, went to the principal. The principal called my mother. I was doomed. Sitting in a chair outside the principal’s office, I was looking pretty dismal when Mom came in. She gave me one of those “Just wait until you get home, Mister,” looks and walked past me into the principal’s office. There was a discussion. I was called in. To the hot seat. Except something wonderful happened. While the principal tried to brand me an ungodly libertine, Mom just looked at him, then looked at me, then at him again. “My son’s an artist,” she said without irony. She made clear I was above all that libertine stuff, because not only did I like to draw unclothed females — I was good at it. Art should be supported, not trampled. And the principal was quashing my artistic nature by threatening to toss me out of school.

In the end, she crushed him. The principal was beaten, outmaneuvered. Mrs. Ensley gnashed her teeth.

From then on, no matter how angry I got with my mother, Eleanor Williams, wife of a copper miner and smelter rat, I always remembered how she went to bat for me when she didn’t have to.

Mention the word “station wagon” to a young person these days, and the response is abject puzzlement. But drift back into the 1960s with me.

The wagons we had were almost like buses. One was a great big yellow monster. My sister Sam and I liked to ride waaaay back in the rumble seat. Mom would let us lower the rear window, and we would pretend we were U.N.C.L.E. agents shooting at THRUSH agents out the back.

One day, I told my little sister to duck down in the seat so Mom couldn’t see her. When she had, I yelled, “Mom, stop the car! Sam fell out!”

She hit the brakes so hard, we skidded to a stop, slamming us into the padded seat. That’s when I popped up and said, “Just kidding!” Mom collapsed over the steering wheel, sobbing. I was so ashamed. Still, despite all the caterwauling and flurry of tears, she forgave us. I think she was just glad Sam didn’t wind up a skidmark on the highway.

My mother passed away in 1998 the same day my wife and I got our first new pickup truck. We were at the dealership and didn’t find out until that evening. She had been ill for years, and a person might think such a death would come as no surprise. But, for me, it did.

I thought I was tougher than that, but I remember crying so hard I had a near out-of-body experience. My wife held me as my body shuddered with grief, and I felt like another person observing from the outside, thinking, “How is this possible?”

I was a bit crazy for a time, my emotions circling around a black hole. I later hand-painted our 2,100-square-foot house with a single paint brush — just for something mind-numbing to keep busy.

Life went on — as Mom would have wanted. And my juvenile sense of humor, which she loved most of the time, returned. I just wish I could still hug her now and do something a little silly to see that smile. Allen Wadlo Williams is a Valley musician and songwriter. He worked nearly four decades as a copy editor at The Republic.