His Mother Had Never Backpacked; He Took Her to the Presidentials for Her 60Th Birthday
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Appalachia Volume 69 Number 2 Summer/Fall 2018: Role Reversal in Article 3 the Mountains 2021 Care for the Caregiver: His Mother Had Never Backpacked; He Took Her to the Presidentials for Her 60th Birthday Stephen Kurczy Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/appalachia Part of the Nonfiction Commons Recommended Citation Kurczy, Stephen (2021) "Care for the Caregiver: His Mother Had Never Backpacked; He Took Her to the Presidentials for Her 60th Birthday," Appalachia: Vol. 69 : No. 2 , Article 3. Available at: https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/appalachia/vol69/iss2/3 This In This Issue is brought to you for free and open access by Dartmouth Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Appalachia by an authorized editor of Dartmouth Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Care for the Caregiver His mother had never backpacked; he took her to the Presidentials for her 60th birthday Stephen Kurczy 10 Appalachia Appalachia_SF2018_FINAL REV3.indd 10 5/9/18 1:36 PM he hoisted herself up and over another rain-soaked S boulder along the Gulfside Trail between Mount Washington and Mount Adams. Each step required concerted effort, as if her mind had to constantly overrule her body’s growing yearning to stop. Thick rain clouds rolled along both sides of the 5,000-foot-high ridge. Distant lightning, followed by a low rumble of thunder, threatened to engulf New Hampshire’s high peaks, and along with them my 60-year-old mother, Linda Kurczy. Mom reminds me of a pit bull: short in stature, with cropped black hair and, depending on your perspective, either strong-willed or stubborn. She had been awake since sunrise, grinding forward even as the windchill dropped to 30 degrees. It was August. Her nerves were frayed from a day that had begun in a shelter below Tuckerman Ravine and turned monstrous, with rain turning to hail and wind ramping up to 71 mph (the highest wind speed all month, according to weather data). Such conditions wouldn’t surprise those familiar with the area, but this was Mom’s first time in the White Mountains. As darkness settled, she became unsteady on her feet. I feared she might fall and break a tooth or sprain an ankle. We each put on headlamps, and I clenched a flashlight in my teeth. It had been more than four hours since we had hiked away from the Mount Washington Observatory, which had closed its doors early at 4 p.m. because the near-hurricane-force winds had compromised the safety of the Auto Road and spurred most people to evacuate the summit—with the exception of my mother and me, it seemed. I gripped a hiking pole with one hand while helping Mom over the rock-strewn trail with my other. I took her day pack and wore it along with my 50-liter backpack. I rechecked the map. We didn’t say it, but we each wondered if we were lost. An image flashed through my mind of my grief- stricken sisters looking at me and saying, “We can’t believe you killed our mother for her 60th birthday.” Mom fell. Then I fell. Then she fell again. “I don’t know if I can keep going,” she said, tears coming down her cheeks. “I’m sorry.” “Don’t be sorry,” I said, hugging her. “I’m sorry that I got you into this.” “How much farther?” she asked. Linda Kurczy pushes across the ridge below Mount Washington as a storm lifts. STEPHEN KURCZY SUMMER/FALL 2018 11 Appalachia_SF2018_FINAL REV3.indd 11 5/9/18 1:36 PM Despite what the internet says, 60 did not feel like the new 40 for my mother. Born in 1955, the same year that Disneyland opened and Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, Mom greeted her 60th year with more anxiety and existential self-doubt than a Camus-reading teenager. She questioned what her final years of professional life as a public school teacher would be; she didn’t want to be seen as that teacher, the one hanging on until retirement. Would society continue to value her? She also seemed haunted by the death of her parents from cancer when they were in their early 60s. Studies have shown that the longer your parents live, the longer you’re likely to live, which is comforting unless both your parents died young. I thought a good hike in the White Mountains might help Mom feel younger, or at least excited about new adventures. She had lived in New England most of her life, yet she’d only seen the White Mountains from a car. In recent years I had started trekking through the range regularly. I would share photos and stories, and Mom would say that she’d love to experience the mountains one day. She was probably just hinting that she’d love to spend more time with me, but I took her literally. So in 2015, during the second week of August, just after Mom’s birthday on July 30, I told her to get ready for a weeklong mystery trip. It would be our longest uninterrupted mother–son bonding time since—well, since I was in the womb. It’s strange to think that I once happily lived inside Mom’s belly, physically tethered to her through an umbilical cord. Even after that cord was cut, I was still tethered to her emotionally, dependent on her care. This mother– son relationship has been endlessly analyzed, but I think stories about mothers and sons in the wilderness reveal more of the unique dynamic. Of a mother’s protectiveness, as with the 2016 story of a Colorado mom who pried open a mountain lion’s jaws to rescue her 5-year-old son. Of a mother’s encouragement, such as how ultramarathoner Scott Jurek was inspired by his late mother’s battle with multiple sclerosis. Or of a grown son’s need to take on the role of guide, as I did in this story. The first stop on our road trip was not Mount Washington but upstate New York, where we spent several carefree days touring wineries. I mention that detail because this story is also about the lengths that a mother will go to spend time with her children. My mother did not drink alcohol for most of her life. In her teens, she joined a conservative Baptist church, where she was inspired to become a missionary. She attended a small evangelical 12 Appalachia Appalachia_SF2018_FINAL REV3.indd 12 5/9/18 1:36 PM Stephen and Linda Kurczy in Pinkham Notch, at the start of their two-night backpack- ing trip. COURTESY OF STEPHEN KURCZY college in Maine and married an even more conservative man who had attended Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Virginia. Eventually, they returned to Connecticut, where Mom had grown up. My father became the pastor of Mom’s childhood church, and she became the director of Christian educational programming. Alcohol didn’t mix with that life. Only after all three of her children had grown up and moved out of the parsonage did Mom try her first glass of wine, one night out with her brothers; she hated it. But she kept trying varieties and quickly developed a taste for dark reds. The drink became a way for her to connect with family and, I think, shrug off some of the pressures of being a pastor’s wife. Less than a decade later, as she and I toured the Finger Lakes wine region, I asked her why she had been so opposed to alcohol for most of her life. “It was called ‘the devil’s drink,’” she said. For many years, it had been inconceivable to her that a good Christian could have liquor in the cabinet, an assumption that was slowly eroded. She once asked her brother—the same SUMMER/FALL 2018 13 Appalachia_SF2018_FINAL REV3.indd 13 5/9/18 1:36 PM brother who would later coax her into trying wine for the first time—if he would hide his beer when his church friends came for a house party. He responded, “Why would I do that?” Out to dinner once with church friends, Mom told the waitress that their table would not be drinking alcohol; a friend interjected, saying, “Who are you to speak for me? I’ll have a beer.” “It was a jarring reality—that my idea was not the only way,” Mom said. That realization was part of a newfound tolerance, not just for alcohol but also for alternative political opinions and religious views. “I’m at a more gen- erous time in my life,” she told me. She said she wanted to be more gracious, more compassionate, and slower to judge, and not be seen as a scold or a prude. Then she glanced at me and said, “I’ve thought so many times, What- ever is Stevie going to say about me at my funeral?” I asked her why she’d wonder such a morbid thing, why she was so emotional about turning 60. “Because the end is in sight,” she said. “I want to stay present, to stay alive in my classroom—not just alive, but vibrantly alive with my stu- dents. I long for us to leave our church in a good place, in a strong place. I want to finish these things well. I’m afraid that I’m going to get tired.” Mom preferred red, so I packed a 1-liter carton of Cabernet Sauvignon for our trek into the White Mountains.