Euology.

Her name could have been synonymous with that of Dior, Klein, and Wang, but that was never meant to be.  Helen Marie Tabor grew up in the town of Bloomfield, New Jersey.  Her home was essentially without a father.  She had one, but he traveled as a truck driver and it is my understanding that he was not home much.  Long enough perhaps to father a quiver full of daughters leaving them to be raised by a strong mother and a community of relatives.

The house she grew up in was swallowed up by the Turnpike.  It was a house that her grandfather built.  One of many on the street.  But even with the changes brought about by sprawl, she remained in the community in which she was raised.  Even returning to it for the period just prior to and two years after my birth.

She shared everything with her 3 sisters.  Growing up in the depression it was just the status quo.  And being the youngest you had the opportunity of wearing everything every other sister had ever warn.  There were stories of hand-me-down bicycles, ice skates, and clothing and rarely was she the recipient of something that had a tag on it.

She learned early to play piano and organ, but it wasn’t a skill that would one day be a vocation.  She played well, but with the finesse of a machine and not of a summer breeze.  Being indicative of the era it was in America, she also learned to knit and sew.  This was to be her silent passion.

Beautiful and soulful, she grew up like many of us…not realizing that something was missing until becoming an adult and seeing that THE world was different than HER world.  In high school she met the man who would be her life mate and father of her children, but it was mostly due to duty and expectations rather than joy and purpose.

She had spoken often about New York, and fashion, and designing clothing…but as it so often does, motherhood trumped personal desire.  And thus, a Silent Passion.

I have a sense, from conversation, that she may not have seen her child raising as particularly successful.  On more than one occasion she had been chided by her offspring as not being emotionally connected to them.  The phrase “I love you” was never freely given.  In fact, for me, it was my late 20’s before I coerced it from her lips.  And very rarely again.

But this is not a condemnation.  It is just the person she was.  And even though we are not without our own issues, her 3 daughters and 1 son have turned out to be pretty outstanding human beings.  Would she have won mother of the year awards?  No, but she was the best mother I could have had, because the combination of her and my father’s skills made me who I am today.

Maybe not a designer of clothes, but a 4 time creator of wonderful people…and countless ‘grand’ people.  Helen M. Tabor Henry.  Gone at 84.  You have been Loved.