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My American Hero - My Mother's Snowshoes
19 Plays25 days ago
Sam Declar honors his mother.
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Transcript
Introduction to My American Hero
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to My American Hero. This program is brought to you by POS Podcast Productions. Here is Sam DeClaire reading his 2022 blog post titled Mother's Snowshoes.
Mother's Love for Snowshoeing
00:00:14
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Music
00:00:20
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My mother, God rest her soul, left an indelible mark on me. She loved snowshoeing. She was one of the first customers to buy the 1970s classic Sherpa aluminum and nylon snowshoes with metal cleats.
00:00:34
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Before Sherpas, snowshoes were made of wood and rawhide. Mother loved her Sherpa snowshoes and for a while she kept them by the front door no matter the season. I can't remember exactly when it happened.
00:00:45
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I must have been about 9 years old, but one day, Mother decided to keep her snowshoes on after going for a long walk in the snow. She started wearing her Sherpas in the house. When it first started, my dad thought she might have developed a neurological disorder.
00:00:59
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But Mother seemed completely herself besides the snowshoes on her feet. This perplexed my dad. He remained patient for several weeks until the doctors confirmed there was absolutely nothing wrong with mother's brain.
00:01:13
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Before long, the snowshoes began to infuriate him.
Family Tensions over Snowshoes
00:01:16
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He started to yell all the time. Those goddamn metal cleats on your snowshoes are scuffing our hardwood floor. He'd howl.
00:01:24
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Mother never reacted to dad, though. It's as if she was pretending her snowshoes weren't actually on her feet. Mother had a hard time going up and down the stairs in our house. One time she missed the bottom stair and stumbled onto Pumpkin's dog bed.
00:01:39
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The dog yelping in pain was unbearable for us kids. My older sister used the F-word in front of my parents for the first time that day. Mom, fuck those stupid fucking snowshoes, she cried.
00:01:54
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Pumpkin lost his left paw and his eyesight in his left eye. It was hard for me to see Pumpkin hobble around after that. A few weeks later, with mounting veterinary bills on his mind, Dad sat us all down for a family meeting and pleaded with my mother to take off the snowshoes.
00:02:10
Speaker
Mother listened and nodded with empathy, but she never acknowledged the snowshoes. They became her new feet. One month later, my dad filed for divorce and my sister decided to move out and live with him.
A Gift of New Snowshoes
00:02:22
Speaker
I stayed with Mom because I couldn't bear to leave her alone. In 1983, I got my first job at O'Connor's grocery store and I quickly saved up to get Mother an innovative brand of snowshoe from a cool new company called Burton.
00:02:36
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Those first Burton snowshoes were popular among backcountry snowboarders. They were 35-inch long poly mesh snowshoes with signature Burton snowboard straps. Mom said nothing when she opened my gift on Christmas.
00:02:50
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But later that night, the Burtons were on her feet. She gave up her Sherpas for the Burtons I bought her. That's what Christmas is all about. I guess I didn't realize that nearly three-foot-long snowshoes would create problems for Mother.
00:03:04
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She had trouble turning corners in the house and hit the walls and furniture just about every time she walked. She got me good once when I was lying on the floor watching the Cosby show. That left a nasty scar in my right ankle.
00:03:16
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For years, we lived together as if the snowshoes didn't exist.
Tragic End and Legacy
00:03:20
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We never once talked about the noise or the damage to our floors. In 1985, I left for college and attended UNLV.
00:03:29
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In December of that year, during finals, the police called to tell me, Mother died snowshoeing near Pincushion Mountain. The straps on her right snowshoe had become so worn from constant use in the house that they snapped.
00:03:42
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She was 1,000 feet from her car when she died. The cause of death was hypothermia. She never attempted to crawl to her car. She wasn't going to walk or crawl anywhere without her snowshoes snug on her feet, even if it meant freezing to death.
00:03:56
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My mother taught me about true commitment. She's the reason I've been able to follow my dream of becoming a Las Vegas magician. I think of mother every time I'm heckled and told how much I suck.
00:04:08
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My mother never wavered, neither will I. To this day, my mother is my American hero.