On this Mother’s Day, I recall her best qualities

When I think of my mother, who died in Fairfield in 2014, a month shy of her 93rd birthday, I almost invariably think of her kindness — to others, including strangers, and to pets and animals.

I also think of her devotion to her family, to an ambitious U.S. Army officer and her five children, a quality of her being that was never strained but always constant and steady.

Like so many adult children of parents who grew up and came of age during the Great Depression, I have looked back now and then and wondered how she — and my father — but especially her, managed an often-chaotic household and, almost yearly, packed up and moved across the U.S. or the planet. And she did it with aplomb, patience, humor, and perseverance.

And I will always remember how she and my father used all their personal and emotional resources to make the family's fall and winter holidays — Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's — special and memorable.

When we kids were all at home in the 1950s and until the mid-1960s, how many times did she slave over a hot stove, bake desserts, steam vegetables, never complaining and seemingly never breaking a sweat or her even temperament, and marshal all of us to help set the table and later clear it and wash the dishes? They were actually fun times in a different era.

And my mother, Arlene, was at the center of it all.

I think it was in the mid1950s, at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College-School of Advanced Military Studies, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she began to accept and embrace her role as the wife and moral support for a man who had cast his eyes on becoming a general officer one day.

And she continued in that role as he advanced up the ranks, attending required officers wives club's meetings, greeting West German city officials in Munich and Augsburg, where the family was stationed in the late 1960s. Her brunette hair was perfectly coiffed, her dress new and stylish, her smile wide, her eyes sparkling (I've seen the 8-by-10 black-andwhite photos). She was my father's better half, a goodwill ambassador who charmed. She maintained the charm right up until the time he retired as Professor of Military Science at the University of California, Berkeley, his last duty station, in 1972.

My mother encouraged her children to participate in — if not excel in — sports of all kinds. For my brother, it was basketball and swimming. For my three older sisters, including my late twin, Diane, it was swimming, skiing and tennis. For me, it was baseball, basketball, and swimming.

We all, at one point, participated in, with my mother's blessing, scouting programs, Girl and Boy Scouts. She reveled in our achievements, small as they were, and, no doubt, bragged about us.

My mother also was a great traveling companion, especially on those long summertime, cross-country vacations to visit relatives who never visited us. On a trip from Texas to California in the early 1960s, I clearly recall her sitting in the front seat of the family's 1957 Chevrolet station wagon, making sandwiches for all of us while my father drove through New Mexico, Arizona and into the Golden State. At such times, she was cheerful, never complained, and made sure we were taken care of, even if we annoyed our father, who did not want to be distracted while he drove. She was our advocate when my father turned grumpy.

Family pets — and all animals, really — never had a better friend than my mother. She doted on the family's longhaired dachshunds, three of them over the years while we kids grew up.

My mother grew up as the oldest of three children born to a plumber and pipefitter and a housewife who, for a time, lived on a small farm in Kansas. Her family eventually moved west in the late 1930s to Petaluma, where prewar jobs in the Bay Area and at Mare Island were plentiful as the country began to emerge from the Great Depression. So she knew a few things about farm animals and respected them.

One day, when my father and mother lived in Fair Oaks, she noticed a young neighbor who appeared to be mistreating a horse. She promptly walked over to the neighbor's home and gave the teenager a matter-of-fact talking-to about how to properly care for a horse and get it to do what you wanted it to do. By all accounts, the horse appreciated my mother's intervention.

My mother also was something of a low-key political analyst, whom I'd describe — accurately, I think — as a Kennedy Democrat, unlike my father, although he did vote for JFK in 1960, largely because he could not tolerate Richard Nixon but later embraced Ronald Reagan.

Had she lived, she would have had no patience for someone like ol '45 and not be surprised that he faces a grand jury investigation in Georgia on suspicion of interference with the Peach State's 2020 election.

My mother was kind, compassionate, and tolerant, loved to entertain and welcome guests into her modest homes. I hope, after all these years, I have inherited her best qualities on this Mother's Day.

On this day, I invariably think of her kindness — to others, including strangers, and to pets and animals.