Through dad's jokes and brothers' fighting, June Patinkin was always there and always will be

When I think back to my mom, who at 95 just left us, it’s always a summer day, on our childhood block, and I will tell you what I remember about her most. She was … there. There in our red brick home when we came inside for lunch after doing the things boys do, and at day’s end, there again.

And I was sure, as children always are about their mothers, that of course she forever would be.

Yet I am writing this now because her sun finally set. Our sun, really.

It should be said that it was June Patinkin’s time. And yet, like so many elderly moms and grandmothers, even in infirmity she remained our center, the figure we gathered around. Indeed, in taking her leave, she called us all home, her message clear, to hold on to each other as tightly as she had done with us.

What a brood she and my dad created, five sons, 16 grands and eight greats, soon to be 10.

Today, whenever we sons mention that we are one of five boys, the response is always the same: “Your poor mother.”

I can’t deny she put up with a lot, like us asking why Hugh, the eldest, was born seven months after she and Dad were married.

“He was premature,” she said.

Yeah, Mom. Sure he was.

Over the next seven years, she had Mark, Doug and Matthew, the story being she wanted a daughter, so she kept trying. She would deny this, but when her pal Katie Ballard was days from delivery in 1961, June reportedly said, "Katie, if you have a girl, I'll never speak to you again." Katie did, but June forgave her. Seven years after my mom’s fourth, she made one more try for a girl, and instead, uncooperatively, Nicholas arrived.

But despite life with five boys, despite the mud fights and tugs-of-war at the dinner table over the last lamb chop while she said, “Hal, do something” – despite all that, Mom remained an icon of social grace. Somehow, she was even refined when eating ice cream from the carton, a habit allowing her to claim it was just a few spoonfuls.

It was really six boys if you count her husband of 66 years, Harold, who, when waitresses remarked, "Isn't that nice, you tried five times and got five sons," would respond, "Yeah, but we tried thousands of times and got nothing,” eliciting an exasperated "Hal” from his wife.

She was clearly amused by such comments but felt her job as a mom was to feign disapproval, which is why, when her sons told her off-color jokes, she would first laugh, then remember herself and scold us for being inappropriate, usually with the phrase: "You boys are impossible."

Or else: “Hal, speak to your son.” Apparently, we were hers when we behaved and his when we didn’t.

As we began dating, she developed a new mantra: “Be nice to that girl,” though all bets were off if they weren’t nice to us. Once, Mom said to me, “That rotten Karen hurt my Douglas, didn’t she?” Forty-plus years later, Douglas is happily married with three daughters, but I don’t doubt Mom remained mad at that rotten Karen.

She was 22 when she and my Dad met while out with mutual friends. He was so smitten he proposed on the fourth date, but June demurred – she was off to Paris for a year of work and adventure. He decided to follow, wooing her until he had her hand.

But he later admitted that when he stepped off the train in Paris, he saw her first, with her hair cut jarringly short and wearing a hat with a ridiculous feather in it, and he almost snuck back on the train. But then she spotted him, so he thought, “I guess I’ll still give it a try.”

And so began the gift she gave us of being … there. Like at the beach spending the whole time counting, “One, two, three, four, five,” and repeat. Or during brutally hot summer days at the weekend farm my city folks bought, where she put us to work making hay. Often, as we stacked bales, suddenly, there Mom was, driving into the field with a gallon thermos of lemonade, as welcome a sight as the cavalry.

More: June Patinkin's obituary

My dad would say the farm was his idea, but you know those marriages where the husband acts like he runs the show, yet the wife has 51% of the vote? That was them.

Yet he remained forever smitten, calling her Pumpkin or Precious, and on each birthday through her 50s, buying her as many gifts as her age.

And telling us: “Do what your mother says. She’s a wonderful woman. She bore you in pain, I put her on a pedestal, what’s her name again?”

He only had one demand of her, and Mom always met it, making sure the house was stocked with Heinz ketchup. Secretly, that was in part because her cooking wasn’t always a home run. The less said about the infamous salmon loaf incident of 1966 the better.

But, my God, her cheese puffs – toasted bread squares topped with pyramids of baked cheddar mix. When they were served, we were like a flock of pouncing seagulls. As often happens with grandmas, that will be part of her immortality – living on through her signature dish, which we now strive to duplicate.

Despite her ladylike manner, June’s tenacious side came out when needed, such as during brother Douglas’ tantrum phase, which we now joke about, but it was worrisome until Mom held him down during an outburst and said, “I’m stronger than you,” and afterward, he actually did begin to get better.

She really was stronger than us.

As kids, we brothers saw Mom as a mild-mannered contrast to our roughhousing selves, but then came the day a 6-foot snake crawled into the farmhouse kitchen while she was there alone. We boys would have gotten the heck out of Dodge, but, mindful that her youngest was a baby and the snake was heading God knows where, Mom got a garden hoe and clamped onto its neck while it thrashed, later holding up her kill for a famous family photo.

Dad often told us that mama cows may seem timid, but get between one and its calf and they’re fiercer than bulls. Indeed.

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We sometimes joked that mom was only happy when she worried. Oh, did she worry. In my mid-20s, an actress named Claudine Longet shot her famous skier boyfriend because of a dalliance. A few days later, I got a mailed package from my mom with a half dozen necklaces and instructions to give one to any woman I was dating so they wouldn’t shoot me, too.

She was always our cheerleader, with the exception of the recent time I proudly played my new guitar for her in her assisted living facility. She paused when I was done, then looked up from her wheelchair and said, “Mark, you’ll get better.” My own mother.

I’m pretty sure I’m in the business I’m in because of her. In the 1940s, she transferred from Northwestern to the University of Chicago because it was a hotbed of liberal ideas, and she wanted to be part of that, and indeed, she became political editor of the student paper. On some technicality, her earlier credits didn’t transfer, but spending two years in U of C’s stimulating culture was more important than graduating.

She never lost her committed side, over the years stuffing envelopes for local candidates, volunteering for social aid agencies, helping preserve open land in her retirement years on Florida’s Sanibel Island, and even when bedridden toward the end, asking that the TV be turned off when certain conservative politicians came on.

There are many moments I’ll never forget. Like commencement day at the University of Chicago in 2018 when, at age 90, after at last confirming those credits, we wheeled her in cap and gown onstage to receive her degree as the oldest graduate in the history of the college.

I recall a day in the farmhouse yard as she, in jeans, planted 5-inch oak seedlings that we boys considered a waste of time, yet they’re now 50 feet tall. Forever, when I am under the lovely shade of those branches, I will think of my mom and the parallels between her planting and her parenting.

I’ll remember the way she never complained, even though God knows with the five of us she often had the right. The way she loved deeply and equally, even when the recipients were exasperating. For being devoted to improving her world, neighborhood and garden. And for believing, until the very end, in her right to nightly ice cream.

Most of all, I’ll remember her for being … there.

And in many ways, in this poignant time of bidding her goodbye, I know she always will be.

mpatinki@providencejournal.com

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: June Patinkin leaves behind lasting legacy of being there for family