The Loneliest Liberal: Mo...m

By James Knudsen

[Originally published on February 28, 2015.]

Two-thousand fourteen ended with my siblings and me officially joining the ranks of the orphans following the passing of our dad Mo. I commemorated the event by changing the wallpaper on my smart phone to a very “Mad Men” shot of dad that was taken at a studio. This was replaced after a month with a picture of Dad and Mom which remains to this day.

Dad & Mom at a party, probably before I was born

And it occurred to me that, while plenty of ink...RAM has been devoted to Vern Oliver Morris Knudsen by myself and others here at Moristotle & Co., the other half of me remains largely unknown to my legion of readers. And so, without further delay, may I introduce: Ernie.

Her given name was actually Ernestine Juanita Cotta but, if you include all the addendums, it would run to something like Ernestine Juanita Jerome Cotta-Hagen-Donahue-Knudsen. She was born at home, in Tulare, California, on February 6, 1926, the second of three children. Named for her father’s youngest sister, she was known as “Little Ernie” among her extended family to avoid confusion. And “little” was an apt description due to her small stature and petite frame, which she would carry her entire life. Her diminutive size may have also been due, in part, to her frequent illnesses as a child. Pneumonia would plague her early years, along with most of the other childhood diseases. Unable to attend school, her mother, Emily, would keep her busy with little sewing projects. This would prove significant in later years.
    When she regained her health she became an accomplished dancer and was working as a dance instructor at her Uncle Jack’s studio by the time she was 15.

Some of her students, that summer of ’41, were soldiers from a nearby base who would return to ask her to the USO dances. Mom assured her Aunt Evelyn it would be okay with her mother, miles away in Visalia. Having dated a Portuguese woman for the past five years, I can assure the reader that it would NOT be okay with mom.
    That little tidbit of information, teaching soldiers to dance, that’s a typical piece of knowledge that my siblings and I have about Ernie. It’s a thread in a piece of cloth each of us carries. Each has many of the same threads but, there are a few that are only found in our individual swatch, and the ways they’ve been woven together in our separate minds have created different Ernestines: Paisley, brocade, chenille, silk, linen, cashmere – all unique and all in some way her.
    Some more of that common muslin border must include her graduating from Visalia Union High School in 194? and leaving Visalia, California for Corvallis, Oregon. There she attended Oregon State and finished her degree in Home Economics. By 1947 she was back in Tulare teaching at Tulare High School. She was 21. The next time we hear anything of her it’s 1950 and she’s living in Brazil.

Brazil. I’m not able to put in perspective what a leap that was for young woman of Mom’s origins. As a child I remember hearing the word “Brazil” often.
    “Mom, where’d you get that?”
    “I bought that in Brazil.”
    She never talked much about what she had done. I do know she was sent there by the Rockefeller Foundation to either teach the locals sanitation or do work as a propagandist under a covert arm of the OSS. Depending on which of those is true, that thread of her life is either pima cotton or spider silk raised in the milk ducts of a top-secret goat. By the end of the fifties she’d been married twice, given birth to three children, and learned that Rock Hudson was gay – not necessarily in that order.
    The New Frontier brought a smile to Ernie’s face. The young President was Catholic (like her), good-looking, and his wife had impeccable style. All was right with the world. But, as it was for so many, the sixties, which began with such promise, ended in turmoil. By the end of that decade she had married for a third time, given birth to two more children, and beaten cancer once. Thank god for the ’70’s.

Mom & Morissa

I make no attempt to hide my fondness for the seventies. I usually base this on the variety of the music, great Norman Lear television, and the 1972 Dolphins. But I’m beginning to think it’s because it’s the time I remember home’s being a home. Mom, having stared down the big “C,” started doing things in the early seventies, like going to Europe, learning to play guitar, and studying Portuguese at the University in Coimbra, Portugal. It was a time of my getting to know her a little. We probably had five or six good years. Soon I was going through my first divorce (theirs) and then off to the teen universe. By 1980 things were so bad Mom voted for Ronald Reagan.
    I said the seventies were when I started to get to know Ernie. As often happens, I’ve been getting to know her better in recent days. That first trip to Europe, I was probably five. I remember postcards telling of all the foreign cars she was seeing on the streets of the great cities. There’s a black-and-white photo of her striding confidently through Greek ruins. A few months ago I found slides from her trip. A series of street shots caught my eye and soon I realized they were pictures of the great design houses of Paris: Chanel, Dior, Cardin – it was her personal hajj, her trip to Canton.

The sign that hung in front of her shop;
she also sewed labels with that logo into her finished products

    The whir of the sewing machine had been a constant presence growing up. The little sewing projects she’d been given as a child became complete outfits of any type, any material, any size. One day she was talking about the various things she’d made – dresses, formal gowns, even silks for an equestrian event. Whatever people had asked her to make she had been able to do it. As I hear her again, I sense her trying to understand it, trying to figure out this gift she has, looking for a way to use it fully.

This may read like a mini-biography, but that’s not its true purpose. What I’m really attempting to do is make my case that, if the truth be told, I’m more like my mother than my father. Yes, I am all too aware that I can sound like my dad. I remember well the day I suddenly chuckled and it sounded exactly like Mo. I put my hand to my mouth and vainly tried to force the sound back to whence it’d come. I can manage a good approximation of his unique syntax and placement of predicate (is that the same thing?).
    And for certain siblings the resemblance isn’t even up for discussion. In their minds I am my father. I disagree. Perhaps it’s the Luke in me that refuses to believe he’s the child of Anakin, but I don’t think so. When I look at the two, very different, people who created me, I find that I understand one better than the other. Dad taught at Tulare Union High School for 33 years. Thirty-three years. The only thing I’ve done for 33 years is convert free oxygen into CO₂. Mom had half a dozen jobs I can name and probably as many more I can’t name. Dad found his niche, tucked himself in, and was content, happy even. Mom...well, I have some idea what she went through as she struggled to find her place.
    In the early hours of November 27, 1984, Ernestine lost her second battle with cancer. People had started wearing blue-jeans on jet-liners, it was time to go.

Copyright © 2015, 2019 by James Knudsen