My Mother's Rickshaw

 

Mother, aged 85, in 2005
(one of the last photos of her)

Today is the anniversary of my mother's birthday.  She was born in 1920, the sixth child in a family of nine children; five boys and four girls.

I have shared bits and pieces about her in various previous posts as I remembered her on her birthdays, on Mothers' Day, and her death anniversary.  But, reading "Running in the Family", a book about family anecdotes, I was reminded of a story that my mother's older sister and my mother had told me about how she came to become the proud owner of a rickshaw when she had been about 7 or 8 years old!

My mother, along with all three of her sisters, attended a Catholic school as a child.  While a number of nuns taught at the school, there were lay teachers, too.  When my mother was in Second Grade, her class teacher had decided to raffle off a rickshaw she had acquired (I'm not sure how the teacher came to own a rickshaw or why she was raffling it off; I don't remember that part of the story being told to me; maybe my mother and her sister didn't know it, either).  The teacher had told all the students in her class to bring 25 cents for a raffle ticket which would be put into a box and she would select the winning ticket the following week.

Personally, I don't know how common (or ethical) it was for a teacher to tell her class students to bring money to buy a raffle ticket for a chance to win her rickshaw or any other personal belonging, for that matter!  Not very, I should think!  Or if the raffle had been approved by the school administrators, or even if they knew of it!

But, the long and short of it was that my mother knew she had to take 25 cents to school, the next day and she didn't have 25 cents of her own to take.  She would have to ask her parents for it.   Back then, 25 cents was a big amount. And, apparently, she believed that her father wouldn't give the money for a raffle ticket for a rickshaw!  Or, maybe he would have, but, she didn't think so and didn't want to risk it.  Instead, she concocted a story as to why she needed to take 25 cents to school the next day.

Mother's story was, there had been a lot of petty theft in the classroom, recently, with supplies going missing.  The teacher wanted to buy a statue of Our Lady to place in the classroom, with a note about the sins of stealing, as a deterrent.  And the teacher wanted every student to contribute 25 cents towards the price of the statue and she, herself, will put in the rest of the money required to purchase it.  That sounded like a very plausible story for a second grader to come up with, didn't it?

I don't know if her parents believed her story or not, but, apparently, it worked!  She was given the money she needed!  The next day, she took the money to school, bought a raffle ticket, and forgot all about it.  She was probably very relieved that she was able to get the money she needed and was happy that it was all over!

Until, several days later, when it was announced that she had the winning raffle ticket and was now the new owner of a rickshaw, which will be delivered to her house, later!  How was she going to explain that to her parents?  It meant that she had to tell her parents that she had made up a story about the reason for wanting the 25 cents in the first place!

Neither my mother, nor her sister, said anything about what their parents had to say about her fabricated story or if she was punished for making up a story, in anyway.  Maybe they were secretly amused by their daughter's creative story telling! Or, maybe they were just bemused by the whole situation.  Just what were they going to do with a rickshaw?  

According to my mother, the rickshaw was sold off and the money from the sale was placed in a post office savings account that her father opened for her!  I've no idea what she did with the money, later.  Maybe she used it to pay for expenses as she put herself through teacher training school.

But, that was was how my mother came to own a rickshaw, at the age of 7 or 8, when she was still in second grade. 

Two of my cousins called me, this morning, to let me know that they were thinking of me and remembering my mother on her birthday.

Happy birthday, Amma.  Thank you for blessing me with the stories and the memories.