Journal of Elijah Charles Clapp
Ordinary Mother
by
Dorothy Clapp Robinson
May 1934
POETS chant and Reporters extol the accomplishments of our exceptional women. Magazine pages are filled with stories of those among Us who through force of intellect, sheer will power, or a combination of circumstances have fought their way into ringside seats at the Big Show, for men only. In vain have I waited to hear a hymn of praise about that work-a-day person, the Ordinary Mother, she who's name and influence are known to her immediate circle only.
The Ordinary Mother holds no office, advances no reforms and is inclined to relegate the needs of Society to a second place - if she thinks of them at all. Her intellect is average. Her tongue, more times than not, faltering; her ideas safe. She complains some, scolds more, gossips occasionally, even spanks, but gives up -- never!
Her dress is likely to be not last year's but the year's before, or, the year's before that. It isn't always becoming and sometimes looks as if it had been pulled on at the eleventh minute.
While our financial Queens match wits with competitors over matters involving hundreds or even thousands of dollars, the Ordinary Mother does only the old, prosaic, and entirely familiar task of making one dollar do the work of two. She even gets crabby trying to get Big Sister her promised dress, give Big Brother the dollar Dad refused him, and keep the family eating on that five dollars that must last until the end of next week.
Her voice is never heard in lecture halls but hucksters and clerks at bargain counters know it well. She would turn panicky at the words "Big Deal" but is a past-master at getting the most for the least money. She is no financier, she is too busy making ends meet.
She sometimes attends lectures but secretly wonders what it's all about and is happy to get back on to familiar grounds where she can grapple with darning cotton and tomato juice, hand-me-downs and the un-lasting qualities of silk hose.
She has all reverence for her sister legislators, but the law governing dance halls to her doesn't hold a candle in importance with seeing that Daughter gets home from them when she should. The liquor problem is vital to her in direct proportion to the care and watchfulness it requires to keep Son away from the crowd that uses it. Her views on marriage and divorce she puts in one sentence, "when you are married you are married, and it's up to you to make the best of it."
Then again this Ordinary Mother isn’t a club woman. Keeping one family within hailing distance of the Straight and Narrow is too absorbing. Let others carry the banner for a better civilization, it is all she can do to partly civilize one family with minds of their own.
She is always a follower but an indefatigable worker. Like the buck private in military ranks she puts into actual operation the plans at the generals; but never dreams she should share in their praise.
These Ordinary Mothers do such matter-of-fact things. One, when Daughter returns from a dance on cold winter nights, will snuggle into bed with her until she is warm at drowsy: another, in two years time by odd bits of work saved money enough to buy a cow, then sold milk enough to feed it. One, after their little business was burned, produced a receipted insurance policy her husband had dropped. Yet another when Daughter was offered a much needed position, said. "No. To take in washing two more years won’t hurt me but to quit school now w cripple you all your days."
Just an Ordinary Mother is mine, Mary Nielson, born m Sanpete County, in 1865, the oldest daughter of Hans and Caroline Christensen Nielson. As a girl bride she Went with her husband Elijah Clapp, into the then barren wastes of San Luis Valley, Colorado. The group the Clapps joined lived successively in Richfield, Sanford, Manassa; at then under the leadership of Marcus O. Funk and others, they settled the village of Eastdale in Costilla County. There for years they battled the elements for existence.
There was no doctor nearer than Manassa; and between Eastdale an Manassa lay many miles of sand hills, and the unbridged Rio Grand. When sickness came the Sisters waited on each other. Mother ha a natural gift for nursing and calm level head under all circumstances. Soon she was being called regularly into the homes to help one of her sisters go through the Valley of the Shadow. For years she followed this calling and God so blessed her efforts that no mother nor baby was lost because of ignorance or negligence.
With the other women of the Village she washed and carded wool and spun her own yarn. Perhaps she did it a few years longer than most of them. Knitting was automatic. I can never remember her with idle hands. Many times she ground wheat in a borrowed coffee mil1 to make bread for her babies. She shod them with moccasins made of old denim and corduroy. True to the best Danish traditions she always did the milking, and as a matter of course made butter and cheese. When her husband was away, as he often was laying brick or molding adobes, choring was added to her regular routine of housekeeping and child bearing. The latter was a life-time job for she bore a child every two years for twenty four years; at one time she gave birth to twins. Two were buried in Sanford, two in Eastdale.
Her trials were not always physical. For fifteen years after going to Colorado she saw none of her people. Then fantastic dreams came true and she went home to Sanpete for a blessed three months. For thirty years no blood relative crossed her threshold. Her parents were never in her home after she left Sanpete. It was a severe trial but staying by her husband was her job. She often smiles now at women's pleas of non-support and incompatibility. Rebelling against their lot just wasn't done by women of her type.
In nineteen hundred five her husband went to Idaho, and true to form she followed a few months later. They settled on a homestead near Moore, on Lost River. Here her thirteenth child was born. Then, to her work as a farmer's wife, were added the anxiety and heartbreaking care of an invalid husband. For eight years she struggled along, caring for him, making her own living, keeping her children in school.
When the father knew his days were numbered he moved the family to Iona, where a married son lived. He lingered long enough to see them settled in their new home, then went ahead to prepare another home in that more glorious land, the Great Beyond.
Now bereft of his love and counsel, far from brothers and Sisters, a stranger in a new town, she leaned more heavily than ever upon the Priesthood and the associations it gave her. That Gospel that had set her feet to the path, that had kept her following that path weary year after weary year, was her solace in her hour of grief. Her children were brought up to reverence the voice of authority. By example alone were they grounded in the faith for she never preached.
Her's has been a great struggle, surmounting the difficulties that beset the path of the common worker; a willing' struggle, for at her side was her eternal companion, ahead the voice of the Priesthood; a fruitful struggle - for out of it has come attributes and qualities that will bring exaltation in the Celestial Kingdom, Just an average Mother who submerged her own life in her children and through the submerging gained her own.
Dear Ordinary Mothers, God bless you. As the father said to the faithful son all we are and have is thine. And in the final reckoning I am wondering if the Great Judge will not find something extraordinary about you after all.