Randy Fitzgerald

As happens almost every spring, the parents of a graduating senior at UVA asked this year if they could borrow our little four-room farmhouse up near Charlottesville for this past weekend’s graduation festivities

            We are always happy to put it to use for graduation, because Charlottesville is a madhouse during that particular weekend. Not only do parents and friends of graduates have a terrible time finding available accommodations, but it’s also practically impossible to get a dinner reservation. The people who stayed at our Keswick farmhouse this year had put their name in the hat six months ago, and Barb had written them the necessary letter explaining in advance some of the “hardships” they might encounter during their stay at Dove Cottage.

            She pointed out that the farm has no telephone (and that cell phone reception is generally pretty lousy there). She mentioned the lack of a television (or an antenna, dish or cable line to accommodate one, should a guest expect to carry in their own).  She noted that there is no computer, and that one cannot be used there because there’s no useable phone, computer hookup or wireless system anywhere for miles.

            She mentioned that there was only one bedroom, one bath, and that the two sofa beds were not remarkably comfortable. And, oh yes, if you leave the screen door open, the occasional possum might wander in.

            She encouraged our guests to bring drinking water, alerting them to the existence of a well and the possibility of rusty-looking water for the first few hours of their stay.

She warned them to make a tick check at the end of each day, if they were inclined to walk about in the fields and woods. 

            “Lordy,” I said, reading over her shoulder. “This doesn’t sound like a place I’d like to visit.”

            She had forgotten to tell the family about the wonderful view of the mountains, about the deer that gather in the meadow each morning, of the absolute peace and quiet there. She didn’t mention the hammock or the front porch swing, the comfy sofas that you can put your feet on, the hundreds of books throughout the house, the millions of stars in the night sky when there are no city lights to compete. She forgot to talk about breakfast on the screened porch, lunch under a big maple in the yard, and the blackberries that grow wild down by the spring branch.

            Even I almost forget from one year to another how splendid the country is for at least three seasons of the year. But each spring when we go there to open up the house, I draw in my breath when I step out of the car, and I can almost taste the fresh air.  Opening the house for the summer is not a quick job because first you have to undo all the winter preparations you made last fall. Cutting the water back on usually involves priming the pump, and taking back the house usually means trapping a field mouse or two and releasing them back to a field.  This year, we didn’t find a one, thanks to some renovations made last summer that apparently closed off some of their avenues of ingress. There were a few harmless-looking spiders to evict, but they went without protest.

            The job I like least each spring is cleaning the broken limbs from the yard. I don’t mind the bending and lifting so much, but the loss of big limbs reminds me of how old all the trees around the house actually are, and how they can’t have many years left. Already there are a couple of huge stumps in evidence, one bringing memories of the majestic oak where hung Barb’s childhood swing-now reduced to being a pedestal for a potted plant or two.

 I noticed that the limb where we always hang our woven chair is dead this year, no longer able to support our weight.  It will have to come down and the chair hook removed, though there is no other limb, no other tree situated so advantageously for a session of late afternoon swinging while soaking in the view of the blue mountains.

            I hope our guests liked this place-some people do “rustic” better than others. For Barb and me, “rustic R us.”  We find ourselves soothed each time we visit the farm. We may arrive deep in conversation, car radio blaring rock and roll, with a to-do list before us that would scare Ty Pennington and his crew. But as our first day there wears on, we find ourselves getting quieter and quieter, and when we do speak, the words come out sometimes almost in whispers.  At some point one of us turns off the music, and the afternoon is given over to the sounds of geese flying past, a lone cow mooing far away and- blessedly-utter peace and quiet.

            And while a graduation is a time for great celebration, it is also a time of taking stock, shedding tears, solemn moments and sheer contentment and peace.  From that perspective, I think our farmhouse probably served its weekend purpose well.

I wasn’t able to get out to see the Queen last week, but there was a time years ago when Her Majesty passed my way, looked directly upon me, and bestowed a lovely smile and, I think, a slight nod. I like the queen.

            My “personal encounter” with her, such as it was, came in 1972 when Barb and I were living in England for awhile.  That happened to be the year the Queen and Prince Phillip celebrated their silver wedding anniversary with a walkabout on November 20, according to the journal I kept that year.  Barb and I learned of the walkabout plans late the night before, so we got up early, caught the tube from Shepherd’s Bush where we lived, and soon found ourselves “downtown” behind a rope with everybody else in London lining both sides of the street around us.

            But we were on the rope. That was clearly an advantage when the Royals came past.  I remember that the Queen was far lovelier than I had expected, far warmer looking than in her pictures.  I have to turn to Barb’s journal for an actual description, because we guys don’t record details like this:  “The Queen wore an aquamarine coat dress with mink at the collar and cuffs. She had quite nice skin and lovely blue eyes. Her makeup was perfect. She had a 50s hairdo and a purposeful manner, almost as though she really wanted to walk up to someone and talk but wasn’t sure whom to pick out.”

            Princess Anne, on the other hand, had no problem with that decision.  I still don’t believe it after all these years, but Anne walked directly over to us, stopped, and said, “Are you American?”  I was dumbfounded, literally speechless for a few seconds.  Barb, standing at my side, found her voice before I did and said, “Yes, we are.”  But Anne never acknowledged her presence or her comment, never even slightly turned in her direction, but kept her eyes on me, until I stammered out a repeat of Barb’s response.

            We learned later that one does not speak to royalty unless directly spoken to, and I must have been the one spoken to.  I guess Princess Anne knew that rule even if we didn’t.  Anyway, Anne continued to talk with me, asking what I was doing in London, and when I told her I was working on my doctoral dissertation on American writer William Faulkner, she indicated that she knew who he was-which pleased me immensely.

            My journal also records that at one point the Princess asked where we had been besides London, and in response to my list of places all around England, she said, “Ah, traveling about then.”  (Actually, since we were in England at the time, I guess her “traveling” would have had two L’s in it.)

            I remember it seemed like a long conversation, but when Barb and I excitedly reconstructed it on the way home on the bus, I realized it was actually fairly brief.  “How do you suppose she knew I was American?”  I asked.  And Barb-ever the jokester-said, “Maybe she caught your accent when you yelled, “Hey, Queenie!”

            We got a second round of excitement that day when some friends called from Wales to say they had seen us “on the telly with the Queen.”  Sure enough, the BBC had recorded the Queen’s nod to us and Anne’s conversation with me, and it ran a number of times on a number of newscasts that evening and the next day.  We called the BBC and tried to get a copy, but they didn’t or wouldn’t or couldn’t provide one.  So you’ll have to take my word for it.

            Actually, Barb did have our movie camera and filmed the scene as the Royal Family-the Queen and Prince Phillip, Charles and Anne-approached, but when they got close to us, and particularly when Anne came right up to us, she thought it was rude to have the camera in their faces so she put it down.  She would have made a lousy paparazzo. (On another occasion, though, he did politely record Princess Margaret, Lord Snowden and the Queen Mother as they passed in a carriage.)

            That night we called my parents back in Charlottesville, hoping that we might also turn up on CBS, but we didn’t; nevertheless, they were quite excited with our story.  I told Barb that my dad was really going to enjoy having this tale to tell to his friends at the Elks Club, because he always grumbled about the outrageous stories those guys told each other, trying to impress.  “They’re always exaggerating,” he said. “Nobody would ever believe half the stuff they tell.”

So after Barb and I returned to the States and I had occasion months later to accompany Dad to his club, imagine my surprise when one of his buddies there excitedly asked me to tell him all about my visit with the Queen and Prince Phillip at Buckingham Palace.

That quote above is from the late, great Georgia humorist Lewis Grizzard, and ain’t it the truth?

My mother loved getting phone calls from her children, and she would be very pleased to know she is so often center stage in my thoughts and memories even 25 years after her death. Nobody loved center stage better than Mom-from her laugh to her big bouffant hairdo to the elaborate Christmas presents she bestowed each year, Mom was always bigger than life.

            Nobody worked harder, either. My family has always been in the restaurant business-one of the toughest businesses in terms of both demands on one’s time and chances for survival.  Dad and all three of my uncles owned or worked in restaurants at various times around Charlottesville, and all the family wives and kids helped out in them as well. Dad would usually go in before the sun came up to meet the delivery trucks and get things in order for breakfast. Mom came in later to hostess, take cash, waitress and do whatever was necessary through lunch, after which Dad would head off to his club to play cards and relax until he rejoined her back at the restaurant for the dinner shift. 

There they would work together until closing up at 9, then staying on to clean out the register, get the books in order and lock the doors behind the clean-up crew at 10.  At one point they were simultaneously operating three restaurants, and the only time they closed down any of them was on Christmas Day. What a life!

Somehow, even with that schedule, they were great parents. Since Mother’s Day is coming up this weekend, I’ve been thinking about my mother’s contribution to my family’s life a lot lately. It wasn’t your ordinary upbringing, but it was a good one.

Because Mom and Dad were always at the restaurant, most of our family meals were taken there, too, and usually we ate together as a family. Barb laughingly tells the story that when she and I first got married, I tended to sit down for meals in our tiny Crestview kitchen at the enamel  table with the orange vinyl chairs (yes, donated from one of the family establishments) and say something like, “I think I’ll have meat loaf and mashed potatoes tonight.”  (Believe me, that misconception did not last long.)

Whether because of her restaurant connections or just native ability, Mom was a wonderful cook. On the occasions when she did prepare a meal at home, it was always superb and memorable.  For the birthdays of each of her three children, she always prepared all our favorite dishes at home, and somehow the whole family also made it home for an elaborate meal on all the holidays and other special occasions as well.  Being the calorie lover that I am, I will remember, and crave, those meals until the day I die.

Mom loved to cook, and she loved to travel.  She was a huge movie fan, was the first one up on a dance floor and-everyone said it-a very beautiful woman.  She was young when she died-only 59-and she was still eagerly tackling new things.  She had begun to take courses here and there at UVA, notably writing and psychology classes, and doing quite well in them. She changed careers late in life, joyously becoming the Revlon cosmetics representative at the Charlottesville Miller & Rhoads. She also developed a late-in-life fondness for Las Vegas.

For many years, Mom was afraid to fly; but once she did, she was off and running-somewhat a surprise since, on her very first flight, another passenger got up from her seat as the plane taxied off and rushed screaming down the aisle that she had a premonition the plane was going to crash.  So the plane had to return to the gate, let that woman off, and try for takeoff once again.  I’ve always been amazed that my mother-a big believer in premonitions herself-didn’t get off along with her.

Before her flying days, Mom used to take a train periodically to Georgia where Barb and I were living in impoverished fashion in graduate school.  Those were hugely exciting visits, because Mom would always take us to the best restaurants in Atlanta, to clubs and shows and concerts-and then she would leave and it would be back to books and beanie-weenies. 

Mom was always fashionably dressed and well-groomed-she took a lot of pride in herself-so Barb and I were quite surprised when on one of her visits she got off the train disheveled, wrinkled and even smelly. It turned out there had been an elderly woman sitting near her who had gotten violently ill as the train sped through the night, and Mom had helped her to the restroom numerous times and held her head while she was being sick, and then provided her jacket as cover when the woman slept.

My family never knew who Mom was going to bring home from the restaurant. One night she befriended a young couple from West Virginia when they could not find a motel, having unknowingly arrived in Charlottesville on the eve of the UVA graduation.  Mom had never seen them before, but she brought them home, and they ended up spending a week at the house and becoming lifelong friends of my parents, even though they were at least 25 years younger.

When the movie “Giant” with Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor was filmed near Charlottesville when I was in high school, members of the cast and crew often ate at my parents’ restaurant, and one evening Rock Hudson’s stand-in mentioned the difficulties they were having finding enough rental cars in the then-much-smaller town of Charlottesville.  Mom immediately offered this stranger the use of the brand new —— that Dad had just given her, and the stand-in was of course thrilled to accept.  Dad was less thrilled, though, and upon hearing the story, he made Mom go out to the set and retrieve it.

Mom’s adventures could fill a book, and it’s no surprise that I ended up marrying a woman who also marches to a different drummer. Both of them can lay claim to being imaginative, loving, generous, colorful, inspiring-sometimes outrageous-women and mothers.

Once a year is not often enough to acknowledge all that our mothers give to us and leave us with, but it is at least a chance to say “Thank you” and “I remember.” So Happy Mother’s Day, Barb and Beth-and happy Mother’s Day to all of you who bear the special distinction of being somebody’s mom.