{"id":435,"date":"2016-05-08T12:10:23","date_gmt":"2016-05-08T16:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/?p=435"},"modified":"2016-05-08T12:10:23","modified_gmt":"2016-05-08T16:10:23","slug":"nancy-with-the-laughing-face-to-mom-on-mothers-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/?p=435","title":{"rendered":"Nancy (With the Laughing Face)…to Mom on Mother’s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mom<\/a><\/p>\n

The tributes by my friends to their mothers, young and old, in social media have inspired me to share a reflection about my own mother who passed away on Mother\u2019s Day in 1999.<\/p>\n

Those who knew Nancy Greene<\/strong> know that she always lived life to the fullest, pouring herself into everything she did. She was not only a loving wife to my father Ken, but a strong mother to my brothers Chris, Kenneth and to me.<\/p>\n

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Garden City, Long Island, Nancy Booth graduated from high school there and developed several friendships that would last her entire life.\u00a0 How many of you reading this really maintain friendships that were developed in high school?\u00a0 Not many.\u00a0 But Mom for at least 50 years would spend each and every New Year\u2019s Eve with her buddies and that is testament to her loyalty and devotion to others.<\/p>\n

After graduating from college at Endicott, Mom first worked in publishing and then in the advertising business which is where she met my father.\u00a0 They married in 1956 and lived in Pound Ridge where we grew up.\u00a0 Her 40 years in Pound Ridge was a full life.\u00a0 While we were young children, Mom and Dad were very active in breeding, raising and showing black Labrador Retrievers and also running them in field trials.\u00a0 Chris and I have fond memories of being roused out of our beds at 5am in the morning on rainy Saturdays only to drive several hours to somewhere in New Jersey or Vermont so the dogs could chase birds around the field all day.\u00a0 After several hours of this activity there would always be a party to celebrate the event and we would return home late and very tired.\u00a0 Some fun for a child huh?<\/p>\n

Well, we got her back though\u2026.when Chris and I became old enough for the swim team and for Little League.\u00a0 She and Dad were devoted parents in that regard, she was team mom for both baseball and swimming, they were timers at the swim meets, and they drove us and our friends everywhere.\u00a0 Even when Chris and I were put on separate Little League teams, they each alternated games so we would always have a parent there.\u00a0 And I guess I\u2019m probably the only kid who was driven around in a car to do his paper route, so I could make baseball practice on time.\u00a0 So although their dog activities stopped, they still had fun with us on the weekends as we grew up.<\/p>\n

Mom was active in the town of Pound Ridge as well\u2026avidly supporting the Republican Party, its candidates and also took a run at Town Clerk.\u00a0 She was the Dog Enumerator<\/strong> for a number of years; yes she had to count every dog in the town and make sure they were licensed.\u00a0 Who else but Mom would relish that position?\u00a0 Hey, it paid 50 cents a dog.\u00a0 Ask me some time about having to hand deliver license applications to almost every mailbox in town.\u00a0 She was a charter member of the Pound Ridge Ambulance Corps and I think of her on Memorial Day weekend as she had driven the ambulance in many parades.\u00a0 When Pound Ridge celebrated its bicentennial we were asked and of course Mom volunteered our house to be on the town tour.\u00a0 I fondly remember our panicked clean up of the place in a very short time\u2026.which is a good segue into another subject\u2026..<\/p>\n

One of the challenges in Mom\u2019s life was housekeeping.\u00a0 What with seven dogs and almost as many cats \u201cthe Animal Act, \u201c as she called them at any given time\u2026it was tough to keep the place clean.\u00a0 Our dogs lived in the house in cages, sprinkled throughout the house and those who have been to parties at our house will fondly remember looking under a freshly pressed white linen tablecloth only to see a dog quietly sleeping in a cage underneath.\u00a0\u00a0 As children, we often received birthday and Easter cards from the dogs and cats.\u00a0 As a child in that home you had many let me say interesting experiences.\u00a0 Often times dogs or cats would pass away either accidentally or of old age.\u00a0 And I can say that Chris and I had the ability to become attached to animals, but understand that things can happen suddenly.<\/p>\n

Aside from her animal friends, Mom had a great many human friends as well. Mom\u2019s favorite event of the day was Lunch.\u00a0 She looked forward to and was very determined to have lunch everyday with somebody.\u00a0 She would hop in that Mercury Cougar (or the Batmobile as we called it) and would drive to Long Island, to New Jersey and even Boston for the day to have lunch with friends.\u00a0 And those buddies of Nancy knew that she would always start off that lunch with her \u201cusual\u201d– a Dry Manhattan, up with a twist…or maybe two.<\/p>\n

\"dry<\/a><\/p>\n

Her friendship with and devotion to others was strong\u2026maybe sometimes to a fault.\u00a0 She would always invite someone who as going to be alone over for Thanksgiving (the strays – see my Thanksgiving post on this blog)\u2026a nice enough gesture in general, but on most occasions made for some interesting meals at our house at the holiday\u2019s.\u00a0 Speaking of meals, our family was treated to some of Mom\u2019s favorite home cooked meals\u2026Student\u2019s Ragout (taken from a murder mystery she read), Baked Ziti, and Pot Roast\u2026.on second thought, maybe not the Pot Roast\u2026<\/p>\n

We had always wondered when Dad passed away in the late 70\u2019s, whether Mom would date or marry anyone else.\u00a0 Although Dad was ill before his passing, it was still a great loss for Mom to have her best friend go.\u00a0 During that time she discovered Neil Diamond music and had bought all of his albums, and we even took her to one of his concerts in New York.\u00a0 His music calmed her, took her mind off the pain and helped her get to sleep at night.\u00a0 She even had a full size cutout of Neil that stood in her bedroom window that she\u2019d gotten from a record store; we of course kidded her endlessly about that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll admit during those months after Dad\u2019s passing we worried about her happiness or whether she would get despondent\u2026she always said \u2026.and this is vintage Nancy\u2026.\u201dI\u2019d never do anything to cut my life short, I\u2019m just too damn nosy.\u00a0 I have to wake up and see what will happen tomorrow!\u201d<\/p>\n

And so Mom buried herself in her friends, working to make ends meet at the house and\u2026.telling us how to raise our grandchildren!\u00a0 If you knew GG– Grandma Greene well you knew that you really didn\u2019t have to ask her for her opinion\u2026because chances were she had already given it to you!\u00a0 I think she has told just about everybody she knew how to run some aspect of their life at some time or another.<\/p>\n

\"bea_arthur-785797\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Think of the actress Bea Arthur in her role as Maude from both an attitude and octave level. Not to claim she was overly bossy all the time, but I really believed she cared about her friends and family and their well-being.\u00a0 We always had a family saying which was if someone occasionally got angry at you or told you what to do, it meant they cared.\u00a0 Well, that was true with Mom\u2026.she might have screamed, she might have said \u201cdon\u2019t be stupid, do this\u201d\u2026but it was really out of genuine concern and affection for us all.\u00a0 And she delivered any message with that deep voice that was formed from years of smoking and a few Manhattans\u2026. I remember many years ago, she left a message at my office and the assistant said to me that my father called\u2026.I, of course said to her…”ah, you didn\u2019t happen to get a phone number did you, because he\u2019s passed away years ago?” The assistant’s face went white and completely blank…<\/p>\n

The caller, of course, was Mom.<\/p>\n

Whether you knew her as Boofie, Nancy, Mom, or GG, her approach to life was straightforward, and as we toast her today with her favorite, a Sunday \u201cbloody,\u201d these lines from one of her favorite Frank Sinatra songs will sum up Nancy Greene best I think\u2026\u2026..<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve lived a life that\u2019s full.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve traveled each and every highway;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But more, much more than this,<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I did it my way.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Happy Mother\u2019s Day!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tributes by my friends to their mothers, young and old, in social media have inspired me to share a reflection about my own mother who passed away on Mother\u2019s Day in 1999. Those who knew Nancy Greene know that she always lived life to the fullest, pouring herself into everything she did. She was not only a loving wife… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[13,12,26],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Clfm-71","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":437,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions\/437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}