My Mother's Fur Coat

She stood at the edge of the ditch, her fur coat dripping, her hair thick with mud and plastered to her face. She was my mother.

When last I had looked at her walking a few steps behind me she was dressed in her finest; a fur coat inherited from a deceased aunt, brand new rhinestone earrings and her hair newly coiffed. And because it was a rainy evening, she wore her gumboots. Anyone living on a farm knows you don’t wear your best shoes when it’s pouring cats and dogs, no matter what special event it is you are attending. As a child of eight years old, this transformation in my mother was a shock.

Walking with my head tucked into the collar of my coat, leaning into the wind, I had failed to hear her muffled calls for help. But fortunately her friend had. “Sir,” she had called to a passing gentleman, “would you be kind enough to help my friend out of the ditch?”

Time has not dimmed the memory of that man’s expression as he looked first at my mother’s friend, then at me before his eyes finally and reluctantly looked down at the sodden spectacle in the water-filled ditch.

“How did she get there?”

I think now that it was not the first question he should have asked. But to a young child, his question was reasonable and I wanted to know also. I knew without a doubt that if I had ended up in the ditch wearing my very best clothes, I would’ve been in very big trouble and explanations would have been required to more than just this stranger.

“Will you help please, Sir?” she asked again.

Reluctantly he reached down to grab my mother’s muddy outstretched hand. I’m not sure everyone knows this but a fur coat that has been submerged in a water-filled ditch is not the easiest thing to pull up a bank, especially when it has a woman in it who is wearing gumboots filled with water.

Eventually with a lot of grunting and groaning, on the part of the stranger, the two of them managed to pull my mother to the top of the ditch.

“Thank you Sir,” my mother stammered to the man’s quickly retreating back.

Together we slogged to where the special event was going to be held and made a bee-line for the washroom. As my mother and her friend attempted to squeeze the water out of the fur coat, they began to giggle. Tears actually ran down their faces in their mirth. I couldn’t believe it. Now if I had ended up in a ditch and then giggled, I really would’ve been in big, big trouble.

My mother used paper towels in an attempt to dry her hair but the mud stayed. They emptied the gumboots of water. And still they giggled. (I don’t know if anyone knows this either but wet fur coats smell like wet dogs. So while they giggled, I gagged.)

“Well we’ve got to see the show,” my mother insisted. “We’ve come all this way and we have to wait to get the bus home anyway.”

“Yes,” her friend sensibly agreed.

With a last glance in the mirror, her hair not looking a whole lot better than when she had first been dragged out of the ditch, we left the washroom.

At eight years old, I had not as yet developed any great understanding for my mother’s predicament. In fact I felt very embarrassed to be walking down the aisle behind this disheveled looking woman who people might realize was my mother.

Now as an adult, I have to give her kudos when I think of her walking to her seat with squelching gumboots, her hair still in muddy wet strings, carrying a dripping fur coat but still wearing her brand new rhinestone earrings.

My mother’s memory of that evening is somewhat different to mine.

She does not remember giggling – at all. She remembers very definitely that it was not a laughing matter. She remembers going too close to the edge of the ditch and sliding much too quickly into the freezing, muddy water. So now I finally have my answer to that stranger’s long-ago question.

She also remembers a very long evening in very wet clothes and wet feet but with a smile plastered onto her face like the mud in her hair.

The fur coat was never quite the same either. It certainly was no longer wearable to special events anymore even by someone as practical as my mother.