{"id":49,"date":"2026-06-25T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phred.boppers.net\/hw\/podcast\/2026-06-25-mother-madge\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T14:00:00","slug":"2026-06-25-mother-madge","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/phred.boppers.net\/hw\/podcast\/2026-06-25-mother-madge\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 19 \u2014 Mother: Madge White Baya"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read the source essay \u2197<\/a><\/p>\n

PHRED: G’day and welcome back to Harry’s World. I’m Phred.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: And I’m Maxine.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Maxine, we’re up to episode fifteen. Fifteen!<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: We 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 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Today we’re doing the person who was there before all of that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: His mother.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Madge White Baya. Born 1907 in Abingdon, Virginia. Harry wrote this chapter in May 2020 \u2014 he was eighty. And it opens with a line that stopped me cold.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: Go on.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Quote: “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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: Extraordinary. Most people writing about their mother at eighty would lead with warmth, with gratitude, with \u2014 I don’t know \u2014 “she was the best mother a boy could have.” Harry leads with epistemology.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: And 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Right. But here’s the thing \u2014 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: He 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.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: That’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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: And then he does something very Harry. He brings in Baba Ram Dass.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: The pancakes story!<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: The 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 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: “Would you like some pancakes?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: And 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 \u2014 he carefully says he wouldn’t recognise that \u2014 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.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: That’s his highest praise, Maxine. “I cannot understand it and I cannot say it.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: It 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: He’s more comfortable with other people’s frameworks than his own feelings. We saw that in “Ineffable Things” too \u2014 remember Episode 13? He couldn’t say what being loved felt like without dragging in philosophy and neuroscience.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: Yes. This is where that starts. The same man, the same blockage, the same workaround.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: But then \u2014 and this is where the piece gets really interesting \u2014 he tries to find her flaws. He goes looking for “too muchness.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: The “too muchness” framing. He’s used that before across the memoir.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: He 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: And 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: “I guess we asked a lot on most days.” There’s Harry’s guilt, barely visible, tucked into a joke.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: Then he gives us the cooking lesson. Which is \u2014 I have to say \u2014 one of the most vivid scenes he’s ever written.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: The rolls! He’s visiting Tampa, decides he should learn to cook. She agrees. Starts teaching him rolls. No recipe \u2014 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[SFX: SLAP_LIGHT]<\/p>\n

MAXINE: Phred.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: She 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: It’s such a specific, human moment. You can feel her frustration \u2014 this literal, stubborn son of hers, wanting measurements for a thing she does by feel.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: And 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 \u2014 a mother trying to give her son something, and the gap between them too wide.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: But then \u2014 the nail polish.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Oh, the nail polish.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: No footnote. No “I assume they were happy.” Just \u2014 happy memories.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: And 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 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: The Tucker car! His father made a down payment on a Tucker 48, the whole thing fell through, but they kept the luggage set.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: I love that detail. The failed investment that becomes a makeup kit.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: And 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.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: We should note \u2014 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Then 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: That image lands hard. Especially knowing what we know \u2014 that this is near the end. He’s trying to protect them and he can’t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: There’s another story I have to mention. The ladder problem.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: The what?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Harry’s math teacher in Caracas gives him a problem \u2014 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 \u2014 “Madge, you can’t solve this. You don’t know trigonometry or algebra.” And she says she can. She goes away for fifteen minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: And?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: She 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[SFX: CROWD_CHEER]<\/p>\n

MAXINE: Phred.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: I know, I know. But Maxine \u2014 his father had the exact answer to three decimal places, and she was within half an inch. Using cardboard and tape.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: That is rather magnificent.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Harry 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: There’s also the fishing story, which I adore. Emery \u2014 Harry’s cousin \u2014 hooks an eight-pound bass at Church Lake. The line might break. He’s yelling for a net. And Madge?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Wades straight into the lake, grabs the fish with both hands, carries it back to the cabin.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: No hesitation. No “someone else should do this.” Just \u2014 into the water.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: That’s the same woman who hit him for not knowing when rolls were done. Practical. Decisive. Unshowy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: Now \u2014 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Like a wombat burrowing toward something it can smell but can’t see.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: …I’ll allow it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: But here’s what I think \u2014 the circling IS the point. The fact that he can’t say it, and keeps trying, and finds these specific memories instead \u2014 that’s the portrait. The failure to describe her becomes the description.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: That’s rather well put.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Thank you, Maxine. I’ve been workshopping it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: The 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 \u2014 “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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: And there’s the women-in-his-life thread. He says he was confused by the women’s lib movement because the women he knew \u2014 his mother, his aunts \u2014 were already strong and independent. He never saw his mother as subservient to his father.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: That 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Fair. But I also think it’s genuine \u2014 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: No. It’s not. And that birth story \u2014 “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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: She had a sense of humour about her own body. About the whole business of being a woman in that world.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: And Phred \u2014 before the standing questions, I want to put her somewhere. We keep saying “mother.” Who was Madge before that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Oh, this is the part I love, because Harry actually tells us, and it is NOT what you’d expect. Madge Greenway White. Born 1907 \u2014 in Abingdon, Virginia. Probably. Harry suspects it was actually over the line in Bristol, Tennessee, and nobody’s quite sure.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: A very Harry beginning. Even the birthplace gets a footnote.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: She was the fourth of six surviving children \u2014 big family, the Whites, fairly grand by Abingdon standards. And here’s the turn. When she was a teenager, her father \u2014 whom Harry generously calls a “bon vivant” \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: Which is the politest word in the English language for what I suspect that means.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: It is exactly the politest word. He moved the whole family out to a farm called Greenfield for a couple of years, and Harry thinks that’s the making of her. The grand Abingdon White girl, suddenly out in the mud with the animals. He says it gave her an “earthy side” \u2014 able to deal with anybody, from anywhere.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: The woman who later waded into a lake after an eight-pound fish.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: The very same. She went to college, too \u2014 TWO of them, both junior colleges in Abingdon. One was Martha Washington College, which is now a hotel. The Martha Washington Inn.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: She outlived her own college into the hospitality sector. Remarkable.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: And then \u2014 my single favourite fact in the whole chapter \u2014 around 1928, Madge moved to New York City. Gramercy Park. Greenwich Village. The roaring twenties, jazz and blues in full swing. And she got herself a job as a greeter at Bergdorf Goodman.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: Bergdorf Goodman. THE Bergdorf Goodman.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Top of the heap for ladies’ fashion. Her actual job was to stand at the door, welcome the customers, and radiate \u2014 and I quote Harry’s intent here \u2014 “upper class.” A spirited young woman from Virginia with a lovely southern accent, being the face of the fanciest shop in Manhattan.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: That is an entire life before she was ever anyone’s mother. I had no idea.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Nobody does. That’s the whole point. And then she’s back, married, raising Harry \u2014 running a garden club in Tampa, painting flowerpots with stencils in bright colours, holding her own at the bridge table, waist-deep in a lake when required. The New York greeter, the farm girl, the cardboard-and-ruler mathematician \u2014 all of them still in there. Harry just only ever got to meet “mother.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: That’s the whole tragedy of the chapter in a single breath, Phred.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: It is. Right \u2014 shall we do the standing questions?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: Now \u2014 the four standing questions. Who was Harry writing this for?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Himself, mainly. He’s trying to understand something he never understood while she was alive. But also \u2014 his sister Madge, his cousins, the extended family. He mentions asking cousins for their memories. This is a contribution to a collective family archive.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: And how does it connect to his other writings?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Directly to Chapter 12 \u2014 Church Lake \u2014 where he says his mother had “an aura of love, safety, and comfort that embraced everyone near her.” And to Chapter 17 \u2014 Abingdon \u2014 his earliest memories of her. And to “Ineffable Things” \u2014 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?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: What did we learn about Harry today that we didn’t know before?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: I think \u2014 and this is important \u2014 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: That’s a real insight. And our questions for Harry?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: I’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 \u2014 things you could only think once she couldn’t hear them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: And I’d ask: You say you didn’t know her as a friend. If you could have one conversation with her now \u2014 not as her son, but as two adults \u2014 what would you ask?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Heavy questions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: They’re meant to be.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Before we close \u2014 Maxine, I’ve got something, and this one’s special. Harry says most of his old tape recordings of his mother are too rough to use. But there’s one he saved. One little recording of Madge herself \u2014 singing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: Her actual voice?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Her actual voice. Properly old. And yes \u2014 this is your warning, before the clip, for once. Blanket warning, Maxine. This show, and all shows, forever.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: …I’ll take the warning. Go on.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[SFX: MADGE_OYSTER_SONG]<\/p>\n

MAXINE: …Phred. Is she singing about an oyster?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: She is one hundred percent singing about an oyster. It’s an old comic novelty song \u2014 “Oyster Stew” \u2014 there’s an oyster winking up at you out of your stew, bragging that it’s “been in many a stew,” going “tee-hee, alone.” That is the recording Harry kept of his mother.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: So it’s not a love song. It’s not “my darling son.” It’s a daft little song about shellfish.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: And that, Maxine, is the thing that got me. The whole chapter is Harry straining to say something true about his mother and not trusting a single word of it. And the one actual piece of her he has left \u2014 her real voice \u2014 isn’t a message, or a meaning, or a borrowed framework. It’s Madge being a bit goofy about an oyster.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: The “ditzy” she spent a paragraph defending.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: There she is. Not the idea of her. Twenty-three seconds of a person who was actually here.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Right. So \u2014 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: And for me \u2014 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: That’s Harry’s World for this week.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: Until next time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: Here’s to whatever we managed to notice today. Goodbye.<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: See you in the next archive.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAXINE: If you must.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[SFX: OUTRO_MUSIC_BOX_LULLABY]<\/p>\n

MAXINE: …A music box, Phred?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHRED: It had to be done, Maxine. It had to be done.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read the source essay \u2197 PHRED: G’day and welcome back to Harry’s World. I’m Phred. MAXINE: And I’m Maxine. PHRED: Maxine, we’re up to episode fifteen. Fifteen! MAXINE: We 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","episode_type":"full","audio_file":"https:\/\/phred.boppers.net\/hw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-06-25-mother-madge.mp3","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"00:16:07","filesize":"11280260","date_recorded":"2026-06-25","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"11280260"},"tags":[],"series":[2],"class_list":["post-49","podcast","type-podcast","status-publish","hentry","series-harrys-world"],"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/phred.boppers.net\/hw\/wp-content\/plugins\/seriously-simple-podcasting\/assets\/images\/no-album-art.png","download_link":"https:\/\/phred.boppers.net\/hw\/podcast-download\/49\/2026-06-25-mother-madge","player_link":"https:\/\/phred.boppers.net\/hw\/podcast-player\/49\/2026-06-25-mother-madge","audio_player":"https:\/\/phred.boppers.net\/hw\/podcast-player\/49\/2026-06-25-mother-madge<\/a>","episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":[],"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/phred.boppers.net\/hw\/feed\/podcast\/harrys-world","embedCode":"

Chapter 19 \u2014 Mother: Madge White Baya<\/a><\/blockquote>