Mama’s Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes

When I was in grade school the high school put on a production of “I remember Momma”.  My father, mother , brother and I all went one evening.  Other than church plays it was my first encounter with live theatre.  It so moved me I wanted to be an actor, was in the drama club at Vincent Massey and later at the Manitoba Theatre School.  My first year at University of Winnipeg I took theatre with the aim of being a play write. 

I’d be waylaid by biology and biochemistry only to become a country doctor delivering babies and doing minor surgery.  I’d go onto specialize in Psychiatry where I did further training in psychodrama, dance and music therapy.  Personally I’d have seasons tickets to theatre, ballet, symphony and opera over many years. I really appreciated the arts though my day job was principally science. 

Recently I ordered “Momma’s Bank Account” by Kathryn Forbes.  This was the novel that was the  origin of the play called “I remember Momma’.  

I cried reading again reading it,  remembering my father coming home from work and giving his paycheque to my mother. Together they’d sit at the kitchen table and go through their budget.  

My brother and I didn’t receive an allowance but did jobs like delivering papers, mowing lawns and shovelling snow to have our own money.  All the saving and working and budgeting that’s condemned today as outdated ‘old stock Canadian.’  It’s summed up as ‘white priviledge’ and we’re shamed. 

I gave blood to pay for my books in medical school, along with a half dozen other students.  We formed an ad hoc study group to make use of the time we were being transfused every week until we became too weak and couldn’t carry on.  

These days I’m a dinosaur. Apparently ‘budget’s balance themselves’. Something ‘s rotten in the state of Canada. Unethical behaviour prevails at the very top.  Magical thinking is everywhere.  All manner of negligent and criminal behaviour goes on without any accountability even when exposed.  Billions of taxation money has gone missing.  Theft is the new norm, the new reset. 

I suppose there was a little self pity in my tears. Nostalgia for sure. I remember I didn’t appreciate my parents budgeting and cautious spending.  When I was young I was always exposed to the marketting world of television, the lies and false promises.   Looking at a neighbour’s flash new car, I once said to my father, “isn’t that something?”  He said it was ‘but Bill, I own my car and house and everything we have. The bank owns that car.”  

It was years before the government colluded with thieves and rioters and took money from the working people to give to their friends. The friends were slackards and thieves like them.  Why earn money when you can steal from citizens. 

When I was older I realized that the government used our pension funds as their private bank accounts too.  All the seniors were only getting half of the return on the money they invested in pension because the politicians today were little better than sociopaths.  Voltaire, paraphrased, said “steal a little and they put you in jail, steal a lot on they make you king’.  I wondered if that was truer today that when the cabal was inbred royalty rather than the grovelling elites today. 

The play, I remember Moma,  spoke to family.  Mama’s Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes is that story of a Norwegian family , hard working and loving.  I cried when I saw it as a child sitting beside my own mother with my family so like the family described.  Today, so much older , I cried to read it again.   It’s an old era of family values and responsibility.  Accountability and love.  Motherhood is little respected today as politicians denounce the family and mothers are called ‘ breeders’. The State is all .  Feminism of today is imitation of men.  It celebrates the sexy single girl.  As unCanadian as it is today I miss my homemaker mothr and  love this celebration of the Norwegian American matriarch.