3. Heights

To explain how young my grandmother was when she married my grandfather, Mom said, She put a piece of paper with a 1 written on it in her left shoe and one with an 8 in her right shoe, so she could say yes when they asked her at the courthouse if she was over 18. Within a year she gave birth to my mother, and nine months after that she died from sepsis. 

After her mother’s death Mom was raised by her Aunt Mae and Uncle Seth, who loved her as their own. No one talked about it when she was young, but when Mom was old enough, the woman who was, in all ways but one, her mother told her the sepsis was the result of a back alley abortion. 

When Mom married my dad, she wanted nothing more than to fill a house with children. The more the better. It turns out that seven was the magic number. Maybe that kind of early loss gave her, not only the determination to make babies, but a more general tenacity.

Before I was born, my family lived in Arlington, Virginia, where my siblings went to St. Charles School. While visiting the school one day, my mother noticed that the fire escape outside Joe’s classroom was blocked by a May altar. A few days later, she had a chance to speak with the pastor. She told him about the fire escape being blocked. She mentioned that this fire escape was just outside Joe’s classroom. He patted her on the arm and said, You don’t need to worry about such things, Mrs. Reilly.

But she had no intention of worrying about it. She went home and called the fire department. The fire marshall was far more interested in the fire escape than the priest had been. I’m sure it didn’t win her any friends in the rectory, but her children would be safe.

When I was still very young, Mom decided to paint the house. Not in the usual way people say, Let’s paint the house, and then they hire painters and choose colors. She actually was going to paint the house. And this wasn’t a brick or clapboard house that could be painted in the usual way. It was a three-story stucco house. In order to paint stucco, you have to hold the paintbrush at a right angle to the wall and dab the paint on each of those bumpy stones. But she wanted a blue gray house with bright white trim.

One morning after sending all her children off to school, she drove over to Folk’s Paint and Building Supply on Wisconsin Avenue and told Mr. Folk she needed to buy the paint, brushes, tarps…oh, and could I rent some scaffolding? He smiled kindly at her — he was a very nice man — and suggested he give her the names of some contractors. No, thank you, she said. I’m going to do it.

To be fair, she did have two teenage sons. Dennis and Joe spent their summer vacation painting. Every morning they got up and put on their paint clothes to work with Mom. Washington truly was built on a swamp, and we felt it almost every day of that summer—still, hot air saturated with moisture.

The boys got quite a bit done when Dennis wasn’t losing his temper and running after Joe. Joe was at a disadvantage being younger and shorter than Dennis, but he was a runner. If he had a clear path, Joe could easily get out of reach. And if they were painting, Joe could climb the scaffolding to get away from Dennis since the older and taller of the two was afraid of heights. 

Dennis wasn’t the only one afraid of heights, though. When Mom was on the scaffolding, Joe stood at the bottom and pulled the vertical metal pipes from side to side. He could get that metal moving five or six inches. Mom would call down to him to stop, evincing as much surface calm as she could muster. 

When Mom was dying, she told me that she was terrified of heights. I asked her why on earth she would climb scaffolding to paint the house, especially with a son who, for a good laugh, would shake that scaffolding. She looked as though the thought had never crossed her mind, Why wouldn’t I?

Throughout my childhood, my mother was the creator of a world in which I could achieve whatever I set my mind to. I could be whomever I wanted to be as long as I remembered that I was a Reilly. As a result, I believed that being five feet one and a hundred and ten pounds gave you the strength with which to scale tall buildings, take on the Catholic Church, or turn tremendous loss into a super power. Just ask my brother Kevin. But that’s another story.