Dr. Lant passed away April 16, 2023
“Knees Up Mother Lant”
Come and embarrass me all over again.
Mother’s Day, 2016.
Introduction
You will never understand my mother, Shirley Mae Lauing Lant Pipes
Phelps, Baroness de Barlais y de Kezoun (in her own right), unless
you’ve shown off, sung without restraint, and jumped high and higher still
to one of her ladyship’s favorite tunes, “Knees Up Mother Brown”, released in
1938, but known years beforehand by avid purveyors of anti-social behavior,
with a knack of throwing chairs and breaking windows… and heads.
Lesser writers would start their tale by uttering banalities as deadly as poison,
dreadful cliches about “I don’t know where to begin”. However I’ve never had
that problem with Poor Old Mother (POM). She oozed the most potent
charm imaginable, and we all succumbed to it before we knew it was
“Enchained”. She needed us all … and we needed her because life without
her was the textbook definition of dreary and dull.
What was her secret? She may not even have known herself, for self-
analysis was not her forte. She had unequalled powers. She used them.
They worked, whereupon she delegated the matter to me, who after all was
a social scientist who knew how to keep such projects as far from resolution
as possible and as opaque and enigmatic.
For a lifetime I watched how she called upon the elements of her alchemy,
her engaging powers and the use she made of them. It was as if a light switch
went on (and in due course off). How it worked she didn’t know; that it worked
we could all see. I could guess, I could contemplate, I could reason and deduce.
But I never knew for sure, though it had the greatest possible impact on my own
life.
Her Ladyship disrupts the quiet life in the shires.
POM liked to travel and did so extensively. She collected on her trips,
not old pictures and fine wines, but people of every type and description. It
happened every day, in every place. Only a single thing was required of them;
that they amuse their hostess and assist in her many schemes. They didn’t
know what hit them.
Failure to achieve this necessary task ensured instant banishment
from her enchanted realm of endless possibilities to the “real world”
where magicians were not at her beck and call and the pedestrian was
as good as it got.
“Better” was always her destination, the way she was going, and who she was
taking with her. And woe if you asked her, “What’s new, ,Shirl?,” for she’d certainly
tell you in exhaustive detail, laughter her major domo, no one safe from her
withering wit that delivered insight and truth in acid outbursts passed down like
so many golden heirlooms.
“Knees up”… was always just a single musical note away, a signal to begin
another all too memorable soiree, “Let ‘er rip, boys.” And they did, they most
assuredly did, even the people responsible for cleaning up, for Mamasita did
nothing but sail on; collateral damage never her responsibility.
It was at this moment that my hand flew up to cover my eyes in that unmistakable
“Oh, no!” gesture, known in every clime and culture. My cheeks reddened as a
matter of course; one night I even heard myself say it aloud, “MOTHER”, but it
was far too late for that to have any influence on a situation soon to be electrifying.
In an instant, just a fraction of a fraction of time, the primal instinct of all people to
frolic and raise cane was fully on display, ” Eat, drink, and be merry” the irresistible
standard under which she fought.
“Knees up Mother Brown/ Knees up Mother Brown/
Under the table you must go/ Ee-aye, Ee-aye, Ee-aye-oh”
This was the acknowledged signal for mayhem and the serous business
of doing what was necessary to justify the headache sure to have already
commenced. The Right Honorable The Baroness Barlais y de Kezoun (in her own
right) had done her ephemeral work with skill, joy, and a savoire fair her certain
panache. I might cringe. I might be embarrassed. But I knew beyond the shadow
of a shadow of doubt that I was traveling with a star.
You, too, have been traveling with a star, your own mother; not, perhaps as
flamboyant as mine, but as bright-shining and irresistible. Now is the time to
know her better and to acknowledge just how important she was to you,
how important she is, if you are lucky enough to have her with you, for you are
the most fortunate of all. Hers is not just a day, not just today, it is every day.
And you should be glad to say so. This book will help
Dr. Jeffrey Lant
from the Blue Room
Cambridge, Massachusetts
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
“Knees Up Mother Lant”
Come and embarrass me all over again.
Mother’s Day, 2016.
Introduction
Chapter 1… And she asked me “Was I a good mother”?
Chapter 2… Of principals and principles, my mother at her glorious
best, the First Amendment and me. University High School. High
Noon, 1963.
Chapter 3… My most memorable Mother’s Day, a tenacious memory
that tugs at my heart and may touch yours.
About the Author
(add)
My most memorable Mother’s Day… a tenacious memory that tugs at my heart and may touch yours
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. My mother is dead now. But I want you to know that hardly a day goes by when I don’t think of her… not in some idealized fashion either. For she was a vibrant, beautiful creature whose reality, for me, even if flawed, was more compelling than any fairy tale I might make up. And as for charm, why she was a by-word for that; I knew that before I even knew what charm could lead to. Some say that along with her penetrating eyes I inherited my full measure of that charm too. I leave that to you to find out.
This article is being written because it gives me the perfect opportunity to remember her… not just vaguely… but as she was and remains in my mind’s eye, a real woman, my much loved and often argued with mother. Here I am able to indulge myself in the most profound memories, certain that I am writing this article for you… not just for myself. And because the woman is important and the day I am recalling here one of the handful of truly special days of her life (so she often told me afterwards), I savor every word as I think it, write it, consider it, review it — and if not perfect and exactly so, change it. For there is not a word here or even a comma that I can accept in any other way. For you see, this was one of the handful of truly special days of my life… and I want you to share it and know why.
Thomas Gray, treasured poet.
Where did my mother’s love affair with England and her poets begin? I cannot say, but I can recall that wherever we lived its premises were littered with the lyric beauty of the English language… where words mattered, where understanding them mattered, where using them to maximum effect mattered, and where a word was never an obstacle but a friend not yet known well enough, but welcome for all that. As such, books, rarely closed, always open with makeshift book marks were found in every room. We read as effortlessly as we breathed… and the splendor of language surrounded us, shaped us, sustained us… and no one more than my mother for whom poets were accounted special beings well deserving of the veneration they received from her… and in due course from me. And so the profound love between a mother and her first-born son was made manifest in the poems we discovered and shared, the readings of such poems to each other, and the meanings we strove to find… especially for me when she was gone before. Then these bonds mattered most of all.
Thomas Gray, 26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771, just 54 years old.
Thomas Gray was born in Cornhill, London, the son of an exchange broker and a milliner. He was the fifth of 12 children… 11 of whom died in infancy. he smell of death permeated his young world… a constant visitor to his home, a constant reality where birth and mourning seemed inextricably linked and inevitable. And so he grew up wondering whether his own expected demise was nigh, accelerated by his abusive father. This recurring thought shaped his life, his outlook, and his poems. Later in life Gray became known as one of the “Graveyard poets” of the late 18th century, along with Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, and Christopher Smart. But for Gray this was not a pose; he had been to the graveyard too often too early for that. Death and Gray were on intimate terms from the start.
His sense of humor.
For all that Gray’s life was turbulent and difficult, it had moments of unalloyed joy, not least because he had the valued knack of seeing the humorous side of even the most oppressive subjects. It is good to see he skewered the masters of Peterhouse at Cambridge University as “mad with Pride” and the Fellows of this College as “sleepy, drunken, dull, illiterate Things.” It was the kind of thing I wrote to my college friends, too, and I knew the joy of such characterizations.
My mother knew I wrote these kinds of acid word pictures; I sent them to her, and she carefully tied them with ribbons adding her own often equally acid responses. These, too, bonded us; we laughed together. Too, there were other traits which may have made her see me in Gray: he spent his time indoors, voracious reader, avoiding athletics and exercise of any kind. But when the companionship of his friends was offered, he was a crowd pleaser with the apt, devastating mot at the ready. Gray and I might have been siblings; surely Kindred Spirits… she must have seen this… and if so have approved.
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”.
Thus, my mother traveled to England where I was then working on my first book and asked me to accompany her to the setting of one of her favorite poems, the “Elegy” written slowly, painstakingly between 1742 and 1750. She had waited a lifetime for this excursion… and so she and I on Mother’s Day went hand-in-hand to the ancient village of Stoke Poges, to the churchyard of the Church of England parish church of St. Giles. There great Gray’s remains repose for the numberless ages, his monument weathered, tilted, too much too illegible, special torment for this man of perfect wording.
We had come hence to see, to learn, to venerate…. and in the graveyard to read the “Elegy”, together, in turn, lyrically, each word a pledge to love each other now and forever, though I didn’t know its purpose then.
She had her tattered, well thumbed Gray in hand, so did I.
So we commenced the reading, the first stanza hers by right to intone:
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day/ The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea/ The ploughman homeward plods his weary way/ And leaves the world to darkness and to me.”
We are borne on these words to the place we most want to be with the person in this sublime moment we both wish most to be with.
Thus we walked and read together from the celebrated words which British General James Wolfe read to his officers September 12, 1759 the day before he was killed in battle, saying “Gentlemen, I would rather have written that poem than take Quebec tomorrow.” It was an admission made by thousands of those who have thrilled to these sonorous words and their eternal relevance to struggling mankind.
‘Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife”
Now my mother has gone the way of all flesh, the way we all must trod in time. We know such an end is natural but that does not assuage the bitter grief and finality of the matter, particularly when the dear departed is one’s mother. This loss is bitter indeed at whatever age it occurs.
Thomas Gray knew all this and in his beloved “Elegy”, popular from the moment of publication, popular still, he gave us all the words we need to cope, find hope and resignation — and the words of remembrance and above all of love.
Thus whenever I miss her and want her near me in all her humanity and that dazzling smile I can never forget, I take down from the clutter of my library her copy of Gray’s “Elegy” and read it aloud, as we did that memorable Mother’s Day so very long ago. Whenever possible I go to any search engine and play Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata in D minor (published 1738). It was one of Gray’s favorites and perfect accompaniment to his surgically precise words.
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power/ And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave/ Awaits alike the inevitable hour/ The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
But not, with God’s help and with Thomas Gray’s, to the dark void of forgetfulness and oblivion. They have given us the joys of memory and the words we need to summon it –and our loved ones — at will and thus they live again in us.
http://jeffreylantarticles.com/jeffreylant/my-most-memorable-mothers-day-a-tenacious-memory-that-tugs-at-my-heart-and-may-touch-yours/
pic – Dr. Lant’s Mother
===================
It was a great honor to work with Dr. Jeffrey Lant during his tenure as CEO of Worldprofit. This
article was given to Daniel Fischer while Dr. Jeffrey Lant was at Worldprofit.
Yours In Success,
Daniel Fischer Dano Enterprises
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