Ep. 14: Chapter 19 — Mother: Madge White Baya

MaxineWe are. And I think we're starting to know this man, aren't we? We've done his England years, his MIT years, his Army years, his philosophy, his technology writing, even him singing about Caracas. Today —

PhredToday we're doing the person who was there before all of that.

PhredMadge White Baya. Born 1907 in Abingdon, Virginia. Harry wrote this chapter in May 2020 — he was eighty. And it opens with a line that stopped me cold.

PhredQuote: "I have never felt comfortable with the word 'love'. I am not sure I have ever been 'in love'." That's the first sentence of his mother's chapter.

MaxineExtraordinary. Most people writing about their mother at eighty would lead with warmth, with gratitude, with — I don't know — "she was the best mother a boy could have." Harry leads with epistemology.

Phred"All things considered I am about as sure that I loved my mother and she loved me as I can be of anything related to love." It's like he's building a legal case for his own affection.

MaxineAnd then: "It's a good feeling. I wish it were clearer." That's Harry in six words, isn't it? Even the good feeling gets a footnote.

PhredRight. But here's the thing — I think this opening is doing more than just being Harry. I think it's setting up the whole problem of the piece. Because what follows is a man trying to describe someone he knew intimately and didn't know at all.

MaxineHe says it straight out: "Though I was fairly close to my mother for all the time we shared this world I realize I did not know her very well as a person, as a friend, as a soul mate. I knew her as my mother."

PhredThat's the wound, isn't it? He was her son. He could never be her friend. He could never see her the way a close friend would see her.

MaxineAnd then he does something very Harry. He brings in Baba Ram Dass.

PhredThe pancakes story!

MaxineThe pancakes story. A young man searches for enlightenment in India, comes home defeated, sits at his grandmother's kitchen table, tells her the whole saga, and she says —

Phred"Would you like some pancakes?"

MaxineAnd he realises she was the enlightened being all along. Harry says: "That's kind of the way I feel." Not that his mother was spiritually enlightened — he carefully says he wouldn't recognise that — but that she had "some inner peace and strength that is beyond my ability to really understand and even more beyond my ability to communicate."

PhredThat's his highest praise, Maxine. "I cannot understand it and I cannot say it."

MaxineIt is. And it's interesting that he needs Ram Dass to get there. He can't just say "my mother was a remarkable woman." He needs a frame. A borrowed story.

PhredHe's more comfortable with other people's frameworks than his own feelings. We saw that in "Ineffable Things" too — remember Episode 13? He couldn't say what being loved felt like without dragging in philosophy and neuroscience.

MaxineYes. This is where that starts. The same man, the same blockage, the same workaround.

PhredBut then — and this is where the piece gets really interesting — he tries to find her flaws. He goes looking for "too muchness."

MaxineThe "too muchness" framing. He's used that before across the memoir.

PhredHe says: "I can't remember anything neurotic about her. I can't remember any 'too muchness' in her character. I never saw her as petty or mean. I never saw her as unforgiving or particularly pushy. I never saw her as depressed or manic." He's almost frustrated by her normality.

MaxineAnd the one flaw he can find is almost perfect in its tenderness. On Mother's Day, she had one wish: that for that one day, no-one would ask her where anything was.

Phred"I guess we asked a lot on most days." There's Harry's guilt, barely visible, tucked into a joke.

MaxineThen he gives us the cooking lesson. Which is — I have to say — one of the most vivid scenes he's ever written.

PhredThe rolls! He's visiting Tampa, decides he should learn to cook. She agrees. Starts teaching him rolls. No recipe — it's all in her head. "A pinch of salt." He wants a timer. She says "until they are done." He says he won't know when they're done. She says look at them. He says he won't be able to tell.

PhredShe hit him! Not hard enough to hurt, but not a gentle tap either. "A strong rebuke." He was shocked. And that was the end of his cooking education.

MaxineIt's such a specific, human moment. You can feel her frustration — this literal, stubborn son of hers, wanting measurements for a thing she does by feel.

PhredAnd his too. He says the problem was that her cooking skill had become "common sense" to her. She couldn't translate it. There's something almost tragic in that — a mother trying to give her son something, and the gap between them too wide.

MaxineBut then — the nail polish.

PhredOh, the nail polish.

Maxine"I have strong memories of mother sitting in the back seat of the car doing her nails. When I smell nail polish those memories return. They are happy memories." That's as close as Harry gets to pure, unqualified Proustian joy in this whole piece.

PhredNo footnote. No "I assume they were happy." Just — happy memories.

MaxineAnd it connects to the car trips from Tampa to Abingdon, which are some of the most moving passages. The orange makeup kit from the Tucker car down payment —

PhredThe Tucker car! His father made a down payment on a Tucker 48, the whole thing fell through, but they kept the luggage set.

MaxineI love that detail. The failed investment that becomes a makeup kit.

PhredAnd the motel chapel in Georgia. "A separate little chapel that could seat around 20 people. I remember spending 20 to 30 minutes in that chapel with mother. I think we talked some and also just sat in the silence. Another happy memory."

MaxineWe should note — we've done a chapel piece before. Episode 8, Star Island, 1977. Harry trying to name a sacred experience. Here the chapel is just... quiet. Shared silence with his mother. No theology required.

PhredThen there's the "candles in the wind" moment. 1980 or 1981. He's 41, they're 73. Walking across a parking lot in wind, he sees them huddled together, old and frail, and thinks his job is to "keep the wind from blowing out the flames of their lives." His father died not long after.

MaxineThat image lands hard. Especially knowing what we know — that this is near the end. He's trying to protect them and he can't.

PhredThere's another story I have to mention. The ladder problem.

PhredHarry's math teacher in Caracas gives him a problem — two ladders in a hallway, crossing each other, find the height of the intersection. Harry can't solve it. Takes it home. His father works it out with trigonometry and algebra. They explain it to Madge and Mother at dinner. His father scoffs — "Madge, you can't solve this. You don't know trigonometry or algebra." And she says she can. She goes away for fifteen minutes.

PhredShe comes back with the answer. She'd built a scale model from cardboard shirt backs and scotch tape, cut the ladders to size, and measured the intersection with a ruler.

PhredI know, I know. But Maxine — his father had the exact answer to three decimal places, and she was within half an inch. Using cardboard and tape.

MaxineThat is rather magnificent.

PhredHarry says: "I recognised a native kind of intelligence that I did not think was all that common. I think I always looked at her a little differently after that experience." That's his mother. Not a math whiz. Something better. Someone who finds a way.

MaxineThere's also the fishing story, which I adore. Emery — Harry's cousin — hooks an eight-pound bass at Church Lake. The line might break. He's yelling for a net. And Madge?

PhredWades straight into the lake, grabs the fish with both hands, carries it back to the cabin.

MaxineNo hesitation. No "someone else should do this." Just — into the water.

PhredThat's the same woman who hit him for not knowing when rolls were done. Practical. Decisive. Unshowy.

MaxineNow — I want to step back and look at what this piece is doing structurally. Because Harry keeps saying he can't convey what made her special. "I don't think I can convey what made her so special." "Beyond my ability to communicate." The whole essay is a man circling a centre he can't reach.

PhredLike a wombat burrowing toward something it can smell but can't see.

Maxine...I'll allow it.

PhredBut here's what I think — the circling IS the point. The fact that he can't say it, and keeps trying, and finds these specific memories instead — that's the portrait. The failure to describe her becomes the description.

MaxineThat's rather well put.

PhredThank you, Maxine. I've been workshopping it.

MaxineThe piece is also doing something else. It's a correction. He mentions that a cousin called his mother "ditzy." He doesn't reject it outright — "I can see where that's coming from." But then he reframes: not ditzy, but relaxed. Not uptight. Able to go with the flow. He even says "it would be equally accurate to call me a bit 'goofy'. I accept that too." He's defending her by joining her.

PhredAnd there's the women-in-his-life thread. He says he was confused by the women's lib movement because the women he knew — his mother, his aunts — were already strong and independent. He never saw his mother as subservient to his father.

MaxineThat reads a bit defensive to me. As if he's reassuring himself that his mother wasn't a victim of her era. Maybe she wasn't. But the energy he puts into arguing it suggests some anxiety there.

PhredFair. But I also think it's genuine — he really did see her that way. The Madge who chose to have him despite the doctor saying it was too risky. Who "had not asked for my father's agreement." That's not a subservient woman.

MaxineNo. It's not. And that birth story — "Lie down Madge!" "Lie down hell! That's what got me into this condition in the first place." The fact that she told that story about herself tells you something.

PhredShe had a sense of humour about her own body. About the whole business of being a woman in that world.

MaxineNow — the four standing questions. Who was Harry writing this for?

PhredHimself, mainly. He's trying to understand something he never understood while she was alive. But also — his sister Madge, his cousins, the extended family. He mentions asking cousins for their memories. This is a contribution to a collective family archive.

MaxineAnd how does it connect to his other writings?

PhredDirectly to Chapter 12 — Church Lake — where he says his mother had "an aura of love, safety, and comfort that embraced everyone near her." And to Chapter 17 — Abingdon — his earliest memories of her. And to "Ineffable Things" — that same struggle with the vocabulary of love. This is Harry's great theme: how do you say what you feel when you don't trust the words?

MaxineWhat did we learn about Harry today that we didn't know before?

PhredI think — and this is important — we learned that his epistemological caution isn't just about God or science. It's about love. The same man who won't say "I believe" won't say "I love" either. His whole life, he's been building frameworks because the direct statement feels unsafe.

MaxineThat's a real insight. And our questions for Harry?

PhredI'd ask him: Did you ever tell her any of this while she was alive? The Ram Dass comparison, the "candles in the wind" moment, the cardboard ladders? Or is this all reconstruction — things you could only think once she couldn't hear them?

MaxineAnd I'd ask: You say you didn't know her as a friend. If you could have one conversation with her now — not as her son, but as two adults — what would you ask?

PhredHeavy questions.

MaxineThey're meant to be.

PhredBefore we close — I want to play something. He recorded a song called "Mother's Oyster Song." I've got it here. Let me play a bit.

MaxinePhred. I've asked you to warn me before you insert a clip like that.

PhredConsider this a blanket warning, Maxine. For the rest of this show. In fact, for all shows. Forever.

MaxineYou are impossible.

PhredThe song's about his mother making oyster stew. He says: "I love you mother, you're the best." And listening to it after reading this chapter, I reckon it lands differently — there's no framework, no Ram Dass, just Harry saying what he feels.

MaxineIt's a lovely thing to have. His voice, singing to her.

PhredRight. So — what stays with me? This: Harry at eighty, still trying to solve a problem he can't quite name. Still building cardboard models of love, measuring them with a ruler, hoping the answer comes close enough.

MaxineAnd for me — it's the nail polish. The smell of it, in the back seat, on the long drive to Abingdon. No framework. No philosophy. Just a son, remembering his mother, and being happy.