Mother was a natural healer.

Even without a degree in nursing or training in first aid, she always knew just what to do.

Although she was a rather timid person normally, when it came to patching someone up, she was fearless.

My father liked to work on his mountain property cutting trees and hauling logs. He often ended up bruised and battered in the process. Mother was never squeamish at the sight of blood.

“Oh, Luther!” she’d exclaim when he showed her his latest wound. “What did you do this time?”

And she’d commence to cleaning and dressing his cuts.

I’ve written earlier of the way Mother would nurse me back to health. Usually, she did so while I was in her house.

There was another time, though, when Mother came to stay with me in St. Louis with the sole purpose of helping me recover my health.

It was in December of 1995. I had to have surgery and would need to recuperate for a few days on my own afterwards.

I knew I could not count on my now ex-husband Rick to look after me. He was always too busy with one thing or another.

I worried that I might not be able to walk or move around very well once I was sent home from the hospital, so I asked Mother to come stay with me for a week.

Almost as soon as she arrived in St. Louis, the hospital released me.

Since Rick was at work, Mother had to come pick me up. The only car available at the time was Rick’s sporty little Toyota Supra.

[The car was an automatic, otherwise, Mother would not have been able to drive it. But who would intentionally buy a sports car with automatic transmission!? That should have been all I needed to know about Rick…but I hadn’t been paying attention and married him anyway.]

Mother looked like a wild granny driving that thing.

Shortly after she got me home and settled in bed upstairs, Rick’s dog Galahad got sick and threw up all over the kitchen floor. Poor Mother had no choice but to clean it up. Later she told me, “Now I know what it means to be ‘sick as a dog’!”

(And in fact, the dog really was sick. That was the beginning of the end for poor Galahad. Rick struggled to keep him alive with surgeries and other heroic measures. But he died a few months later. It was a rough winter.)

Not only was Mother doctoring me and Galahad, she was also humoring Rick.

I remember one evening Rick looked in the cabinet and saw a pack of chocolate chips.

“Hey, Louise, I wonder what these chocolate chips are doing here?”

Mother took the hint and whipped him up a batch of cookies.

Rick and I weren’t the only ones in the house glad to have Mother there with us. She had a secret admirer.

Our jet-black German Shepherd, Lance.

Lance was a spooky dog. He was a little unbalanced—probably overbred—perhaps neglected as a pup.

He was extremely protective of me and did not like to see strangers anywhere near me.

Once I had him on campus and when a student extended her hand to take a book from me, Lance went into a defense stance, snarling and snapping.

I had to be careful with Lance.

One afternoon while she was sitting on the bed in the guest room upstairs, Mother caught a glimpse of a dark shape—a shadow almost—out of the corner of her eye.

It was Lance.

He crept slowly into her room. Slinking, like he was stalking prey. Mother wasn’t sure what he was going to do, and she admits to being a little frightened.

He drew closer and closer to her, and then, just before he reached her, he snatched up one of the slippers she had left at the foot of the bed, turned, and bolted down the stairs.

When she later went downstairs to start dinner, she saw Lance lying in the dining room with his head pillowed on her slipper.

Lance had something of a foot fetish!

Occasionally Mother would sit at the dining room table writing Christmas cards, and Lance would come in and lie at her feet. He loved Mother as much as he loved me. We conjectured that the two of us must have shared a familiar scent.

I healed quickly under Mother’s careful watch.

In fact, I really was bed-ridden for only one day. Before long I was going up and down the stairs again.

Even though I was able to fend for myself, it was fun having Mother there with me.

Lance and I both missed her when she had to return to Raleigh.