If you look behind the Velvet Elvis, and travel back in time just a few years, there once was a lady, not unlike the one who lived in Mother Goose’s shoe, who laid claim to a thousand children. You may have spied her white hair just above the fence line at the Palomita de Patagonia B&B as she trimmed the roses born of stalks from the library next door.
She loved libraries; to read, write and play with words. From her front porch, amidst the din of music from the old Big Steer bar, she and some friends brought to life the Patagonia Press newspaper, turning Smelter Ave into the writer’s block.
Aside from covering local news in Patagonia, she wrote about children, many of whom she met during trips to Nogales to tutor the tunnel kids who lived on the streets there. Of the thousand or so she claimed, it was those who seemed most damaged by life’s vicissitudes that owned my mother’s heart. She didn’t pity them. She might say instead, “What’s so special about something that doesn’t need fixing?”
My mother’s most memorable preschooler, Robert, was just four when he was enrolled at the preschool my mom built in the Barrio in the 80s. Despite his age, Robert swore like a drunk Viking and had a disposition to match. The first time he gave her the finger, she adored him.
He was the icon for a difficult child, a distant echo of the five kids my mom had already raised and survived. He is also the inspiration for this long overdue tribute to Mary Munroe, who passed away unheralded November 6, 2020.
She left behind five kids; many of whom shared traits with Robert. She dreamt of the Von Trapp family from “The Sound of Music” and wound up as the matriarch of the Island of Misfit Toys and the children who played there. So, for those of you who hoped your children might serenade you with songs of gratitude only to hear God’s laughter in reply, this tribute may be for you as well.
I can’t remember what day her hair turned gray. It was after my then seven-year-old brother Chip set the curtains on fire at 3am, but before he tricked her into believing they were giving live demonstrations in his high school sex education class. She dressed the principal of Amphi High School down on the telephone before she realized she’d been had.
Despite relentless exposure to unbalanced teens and tweens, she embraced what she lovingly referred to as the “Von Crapp family.” As time passed, she wrote poems, Christmas letters and three novels recounting the comical tales of her children, thereby reducing the world’s crimes to misdemeanors. In this way, she built her life from the shards of broken dreams and made a mosaic that looked a good deal like real life.
It is well known that fruit bearing trees may sit idle in a season of hardship. In this way, the fruits of Mary’s life began when her marriage ended. Those early years must have felt like Lucille Ball in a chocolate factory operated by Forrest Gump. You didn’t know what you were going to get, and the conveyor belt didn’t give a tinker’s damn.
She told me that those years were a blur. They were also a mysterious gift that inspired her to tend to more than 1,000 preschoolers over 20 years at a nonprofit that catered to children at risk. She developed legislation for the Child Abuse Check Off Bill that funded related programs in Arizona by a simple check box appended to Arizona State Tax forms.
Later, she worked as a court appointed special advocate for Santa Cruz County as well as a member of the Patagonia Planning and Zoning team.
While her achievements were notable, she would, in her humbler moments, tell you that our achievements are padded heavily with the gifts of those who watch over us. She wouldn’t want me to brag too much.
That said, she was a gardener who raised children and did so despite an uncertain harvest. She wanted the kids in her school to have a string of good memories; each day a step in a ladder where ascension from troubled homes was possible. Still, her greatest gift to her family was allowing us to witness someone blossom in spite of exposure to long seasons of discontent. She often said, “The first 50 years are the hardest” in response to anyone with tales of life’s injustice.
She was a regular at the Patagonia poetry group and a party organizer who married a West Pointer who knew only dirty limericks. The irony, of course, is that Mary was born on Nantucket, the birthplace of the foulest limerick ever written. She embraced this “artform,” as well, by requesting a limerick of each child for admission to a funeral party held in her honor in 2009.
She bemoaned the fact that she would not be conscious at her actual funeral party, so she rented the Crown C Ranch near Sonoita for a preemptive, pre-death, funeral shindig. Having successfully leveraged the mantle of guilt by prestaging her death, all children were present. The party was as epic as Mary was, a soul with the wisdom and foresight to cheat death by dying awake with laughter. As expected, Nantucket figured heavily in the poems and questionable limericks that night. The only issue at the time was the condolences from distant friends who thought her ‘passing’ was real after news of the funeral hit the Nogales newspaper.
At the end, she received a gift she desired greatly: a passing in the company of her children, in her home, without prolonged suffering. My eldest brother Chip said he had a suspicion that she would leave us on the 6th of that November. My wife, brothers and other family held her hands while reading lines from a favorite poem: “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray. This poem is about everyone who gave much but never saw the bright lights of fame; a requiem for those who toiled in obscurity and still managed to seed a garden where happiness could grow.
If you were loved by my mom, I suspect you have left a beautiful mark that others may never see; that you did so without hope of compensation. These were the kind of people she liked. At the precise time the poem finished, so did she.
For Molly, Martha, Saul, the Bergiers, members of the Quiddler Club and the Munroe kids.