Rita Loretta Carrier (née Archambeault) would be about to turn 100 if she were still with us on this Mother's Day. She died in December 2010, a few months shy of her 92nd birthday.
Mom was born in Connecticut in 1919 to Wilbrod and Albertine Archambeault, recent immigrants from Québec. The family moved to Massachusetts shortly thereafter. In the late 1930s, she was one of only three students - all of them girls - in the first graduating class at what was then a new Franco-American high school in Southbridge, Mass., where she spent the rest of her life.
I remember my mother telling me, many years ago, that there was nothing especially memorable about her life. She wasn't wrong about much, but she sure was wrong about that. The dictionary defines memorable as "worth remembering," and Mom's life certainly fit the bill in its own humble but life-affirming way. She was unknown to the world at large, but like so many members of her generation, she traveled life's highway with more grace, decency and goodwill than did many a globe-trotting celebrity, politician or tycoon.
Mom and my father, Leonide, became engaged before Dad went off to war in late 1942. She wrote to her fiancé daily when he was serving in the U.S. Army overseas, usually in English but sometimes in French. Dad saved her letters. I later found these priceless treasures in a green cardboard Manhattan Shirts box in the attic of the home my parents shared for more than half a century.
After their marriage in 1946, Mom raised two sons while holding down full- or part-time banking and bookkeeping jobs. She worked well into her 80s, and she remained married to my father for 56 years, until his death in January 2003. When we took her back to the cemetery the day after Dad's funeral, she was quiet and thoughtful, until we drove away. "It's cold to be in the ground," she said, before falling silent once again.
Mom was deeply religious, scrupulously courteous and unfailingly honest. She almost always was upbeat. She was profoundly generous, and she placed a premium on tidiness. She survived two bouts of breast cancer with strength and characteristic good humor. When her father died on a Wednesday in April 1986, she buried him that Friday and was on hand for my marriage to Liz Soares the next day, wearing a convincingly brave face that hid the conflicted emotions she must have been experiencing.
She loved to play the lottery and she was meticulous about her appearance, which drove my father crazy sometimes because it seemed to take her forever to get ready to go anywhere. In hindsight, I see now that Mom was a bit obsessive, especially about her household budget. An early riser, it was not unusual to find her sitting at the kitchen table as the sun came up, balancing her checkbook to the penny or planning her weekly expenses in a small spiral notebook filled with her precise cursive handwriting. She was the CEO and the CFO of our childhood home, juggling work, parenting, her marriage, cooking, cleaning and God knows what else, and getting by on very little sleep, although she was the master of the cat nap.
Mom was so fluently bilingual, having grown up in a French-speaking home in Yankee New England, that she routinely switched back and forth between English and French during conversations with friends and relatives, sometimes in mid-sentence. She was very proud of her heritage. She was well-spoken in both French and English, even though the latter was her second language and she didn't learn it until she started going to school. Her English carried such a slight trace of a French accent that people normally didn't even notice it, unless they were meeting her for the first time, or talking to her on the phone.
And that's just scratching the surface. So yes, Mom, your life is worth remembering, especially on Mother's Day. It was, in its own way and within your circle of family, friends and acquaintances, véritablement mémorable.
I remember my mother telling me, many years ago, that there was nothing especially memorable about her life. She wasn't wrong about much, but she sure was wrong about that. The dictionary defines memorable as "worth remembering," and Mom's life certainly fit the bill in its own humble but life-affirming way. She was unknown to the world at large, but like so many members of her generation, she traveled life's highway with more grace, decency and goodwill than did many a globe-trotting celebrity, politician or tycoon.
Mom and my father, Leonide, became engaged before Dad went off to war in late 1942. She wrote to her fiancé daily when he was serving in the U.S. Army overseas, usually in English but sometimes in French. Dad saved her letters. I later found these priceless treasures in a green cardboard Manhattan Shirts box in the attic of the home my parents shared for more than half a century.
After their marriage in 1946, Mom raised two sons while holding down full- or part-time banking and bookkeeping jobs. She worked well into her 80s, and she remained married to my father for 56 years, until his death in January 2003. When we took her back to the cemetery the day after Dad's funeral, she was quiet and thoughtful, until we drove away. "It's cold to be in the ground," she said, before falling silent once again.
Mom was deeply religious, scrupulously courteous and unfailingly honest. She almost always was upbeat. She was profoundly generous, and she placed a premium on tidiness. She survived two bouts of breast cancer with strength and characteristic good humor. When her father died on a Wednesday in April 1986, she buried him that Friday and was on hand for my marriage to Liz Soares the next day, wearing a convincingly brave face that hid the conflicted emotions she must have been experiencing.
She loved to play the lottery and she was meticulous about her appearance, which drove my father crazy sometimes because it seemed to take her forever to get ready to go anywhere. In hindsight, I see now that Mom was a bit obsessive, especially about her household budget. An early riser, it was not unusual to find her sitting at the kitchen table as the sun came up, balancing her checkbook to the penny or planning her weekly expenses in a small spiral notebook filled with her precise cursive handwriting. She was the CEO and the CFO of our childhood home, juggling work, parenting, her marriage, cooking, cleaning and God knows what else, and getting by on very little sleep, although she was the master of the cat nap.
Mom was so fluently bilingual, having grown up in a French-speaking home in Yankee New England, that she routinely switched back and forth between English and French during conversations with friends and relatives, sometimes in mid-sentence. She was very proud of her heritage. She was well-spoken in both French and English, even though the latter was her second language and she didn't learn it until she started going to school. Her English carried such a slight trace of a French accent that people normally didn't even notice it, unless they were meeting her for the first time, or talking to her on the phone.
And that's just scratching the surface. So yes, Mom, your life is worth remembering, especially on Mother's Day. It was, in its own way and within your circle of family, friends and acquaintances, véritablement mémorable.
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| Rita Loretta Archambeault, circa 1921 |
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