JUNE 3, 2023 – When I was young, Dad called Mother “Rabbit,” a term of endearment expressed often in the kitchen while she was cooking supper and he was checking on her progress and wrapping his long arms around her in a warm embrace. But most of the time, he called her “Boots.” I was about 10 or 12 when I learned the origins of that name. In her first year of college, friends had called her roommate and Mother, “Puss ‘n Boots,” and the names stuck. When I was teenager, I was glad Mother got the part of “Boots.”
Only once did I I ever hear Dad call Mother by her real name—Orrell, which, in fact, was short for her full real name, which was Orrell-Ethelyn. Orrell was pronounced “oral”—not with the accent on the second syllable, which is how I heard it pronounced by some people, who seemed to assume a certain non-existent pretension about a decidedly unusual name. It was Gaga’s real name too—not “Gaga,” which is what my sisters and I called our grandmother—but not even Gaga seemed to know where “Orrell” came from. When the internet became a thing, I researched and discovered that as a surname, “Orrell” first appeared in the Domesday Book (1086) and had been derived from a geographic feature in Lancashire, England—an “Ora” (ore) “hyll” (hill). Nothing much pretentious about that. (The “Ethelyn” half of Mother’s name was never used except on her birth and death certificates, and thus, it never stirred anyone’s curiosity. It had been derived from my grandfather’s side of the tree.)
The one time I heard Dad say “Orrell” was in the presence of some family acquaintance, who arrived at our house to call on Mother. Dad ushered the person in through the front doorway and then called to Mother upstairs. It sounded so unnatural to hear Dad say Mother’s real name, but I knew that the acquaintance would wonder about “Boots” and I could tell that Dad didn’t want to confuse the person . . . or have to explain the origins of Mother’s nickname.
Gaga and Grandpa called her “Sis.” I don’t know what UB called her. In all the times I saw Mother and UB together, I never once heard him call her by any name.
Mother was very attractive in her youth. My early memories of her were of a woman who compared very favorably to other women. She was of rather slight build, short to medium height, with luscious dark hair, intelligent hazel eyes, a sharp nose, and thin lips, to which she applied bright red lipstick, which made them look not as thin, and I liked to watch her put the lipstick on when I was small. A friendly, even soothing voice always passed over those lips.
She was photogenic, too. I remember her showing me her high school yearbook from her senior year at Rutherford High. It was no wonder that Gaga said Mother always had “a million boyfriends.” But it wasn’t just beauty that drew boys, then men to her. It was her brains, her talent, her friendly and out-going nature. She skipped two full grades in primary school, which put her even with her older, perhaps equally smart, but less talented, less friendly, less confident brother. She belonged to every high school club there was, from sports to social to academic, and she applied all of her considerable efforts to each of them. She could also play the piano, dance up a storm, go steady with three boys at once and knock off a straight-A average without batting an eye. She was voted “the most likely to succeed.”
She also had a nervous tic, which caused her first to move her head slowly to one side as her lower jaw opened and shifted slightly, then forced her head to snap back sharply as her mouth closed. Somehow I doubted that she had had the nervous tic when she was in high school. It simply didn’t go with her pretty picture in the yearbook. But my sisters and I were used to it, because we grew up with it. I remember once watching it from behind when she was seated with Dad up front in the Buick Super and we kids were crowded in the back. It was on a Sunday, and we were on our way to dinner at Ga (what my sisters and I called our paternal grandmother) and Grandpa’s house down near Dinkytown in Minneapolis. Mother had her Sunday hat on, and when she was in the snap half of one of her tic events, the hat flew right off her head and into the back seat. We all laughed, including Mother. Perhaps it was a pure coincidence that the tic ceased when decades later she went on medication for quite a different condition of the head.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
