Doris Cotts

Eulogy by Cynthia Cotts Delivered at the Doris Cotts Memorial Service Northwood Presbyterian Church, Silver Spring, MD, Sept. 14, 2019 In March 2019, I came to my mom's room one night with a list of questions. I wanted to make sure that I knew every twist of her life story. At first she resisted. "Why are you making such a fuss?" she asked. "Mom," I said, "I'm writing your biography. I want to remember all of your accomplishments." "Oh Cynthia," she said, "I never accomplished anything." I mentioned her degree in education and psychology, her work as an elementary school teacher and PTA president, her travels with Arthur, her dancing skills. She perked up. "See," I kept saying, "that was an accomplishment!" "As long as you're making a list," she said, "why don't you start by saying that I invented the telephone and the telegraph?" That was my mom. She progressed from shy and self-deprecating; to outgoing, engaged and caring; to witty and wise. Doris Lee Granger was born in Topeka, Kansas, on Feb. 2, 1929. Her parents, Walter Granger and Esther Johnston, grew up on farms in Kansas. After serving in World War I, Walter got a job as a postman. When my mom was a toddler, her grandmother moved in with them. Alice Johnston was a Methodist with strict rules: no dancing, no drinking, and no card-playing. That was a bit much for Dodie, as she was called. At a carnival, she used a fishing pole to snag herself a deck of cards and then played solitaire in secret. When Doris was a child, she could not pronounce words correctly. Her mother sent her to an enunciation coach, and she was forced to recite "little stories" to her mother's friends, which she hated. After that she became a promising student. By the time she entered high school, she was a confident gal with an unforgettable smile. Topeka High School had a Gothic bell tower. The tradition was that by the time you were a senior, you had to climb the tower. "You weren't supposed to," she told me, "but I did." Meanwhile, she learned to dance and her father taught her to drive. She dated a guy named Kenny. In Doris's senior year, Kenny was editor of the school newspaper and she was a business manager. That meant driving around town, soliciting ads for the newspaper and yearbook. "I almost pity the poor Topeka merchants," Kenny wrote in her junior yearbook. "You'll probably talk them into buying such big ads so often they'll go bankrupt. Your beautiful eyes could talk anyone into anything." Of course, my mom excelled at selling ads. "It took a lot of guts," she said. In 1946, Doris enrolled in Kansas State College and joined a sorority. Arthur Cotts was president of Kappa Sigma, but my mom hardly knew him. He was an older man who had served in World War II and was studying engineering. After my mom graduated with honors, she moved to Kansas City. Her apartment was near the Plaza, a landmark outdoor mall with Spanish tiles, ironwork and terra-cotta rooftops. She got a job teaching elementary school, and her father sold her his blue Buick. The Plaza brought my parents together. "It was daytime in the winter," Doris told me. "Our paths crossed--I was going in one direction and he was going in another. We talked, and he asked for my number." On their first date, they went to an Italian restaurant. The tables were on the second floor, overlooking the sidewalk. My mom came in wearing white gloves. Soon after they started dating, Arthur was offered a prestigious job on the East Coast. "Come June," Doris recalled, "we got married and took off in the blue Buick. For our honeymoon, we drove to Silver Spring, Maryland." Looking back, Doris saw the move as the first big metamorphosis in her life. That was her word: metamorphosis. She now lived two thousand miles from her parents, and she had to learn to be independent. My parents rented an apartment in Silver Spring, and Doris taught second grade. "On my own," she wrote in a letter, "I learned quickly how to control thirty-five second graders .... I married, and then really learned to be in charge, because I continued to teach and now had a house and husband to be responsible for, cook meals, wash, iron, etc. In those days, the role of the male was to earn the money, come home, be fed, watch the news." My brother was born in 1954. I was born in 1958, after my parents moved into a house in Wheaton. I adored my mommy. She read children's books to me and sang me to sleep. On my first day of kindergarten, she told me, I picked up a book and started reading to the teacher. I immediately jumped to first grade. In one of my father's Christmas letters, he called Doris a "jack-of-all-trades without whose efforts the rest of us could not keep going." Truly, she was a tireless champion of her husband and children, listening to our needs, cherishing our accomplishments and worrying when we had setbacks. For each of us, she was a beacon and a refuge. In the mid-1960s, she became a guide at the National Gallery of Art. Her specialty was French impressionists and post-impressionists, and she gave me a personal tour, introducing me to Matisse, Manet, Monet, Van Gogh and Gauguin. I can never look at Renoir's Girl with a Watering Can without hearing my mother talk about the artist's use of brushstroke and color. In 1970, the state PTA gave Doris a life membership. The speech in her honor called her a "highly capable person" with "boundless" energy. After serving as a PTA president for two years, she worked at a Girl Scout camp, where she proved to be resourceful "at anything from firebuilding to pulling teeth to fashioning slings." My mom's biggest coup was persuading Arthur to take dance classes. She put together a notebook with sections on the fox trot, the tango, the cha-cha. They soon became regulars at the Candlelight Waltz Club. One of my dad's favorite songs went, "When we're together, it feels so right / Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?" My parents traveled widely and they loved to walk. When David and I were kids, the four of us hiked at Great Falls. My parents walked the C&O Canal path into Georgetown. They took up the annual Chesapeake Bay Bridge walk. And then there was Brookside Gardens. The route from our house was almost five miles round-trip, through lush woods, and they walked it often. I'll always be grateful to Arthur for his devotion to my mother. My dad died in 1997. His death was sudden and in my mom's words, "devastating." She wrote him letters, praying, "Please feel my arms around you, and hear me whisper that I miss you so much." But she was on her own again, at 67. She would call it "my second metamorphosis." Her journals from this time reveal her faith in the Lord. She read Psalm 121 and lifted her eyes unto the hills. She prayed for guidance in buying a new car and for the stock market to remain stable. She missed her parents. But mostly she prayed for the ability to be content with what she had and to accept the things she could not change. She started exercising and lost weight. She learned how to use an ATM and a gas pump, how to prepare tax returns. "I'm stronger, have more self-esteem," she wrote. "I look pretty good." After visiting me one spring, she wrote, "I learned to hail a cab like a true New Yorker." In 2000, she climbed Machu Picchu. In 2002, she went to Greece and retraced the steps of Paul the Apostle. In 2004, she started to slow down. My Uncle Ron and Aunt Ellen encouraged her to move to Riderwood, for which I'll always be grateful. She chose an apartment, and then came downsizing. I took three months off work and dismantled the house I grew up in. My mom called the experience "horrendous," but she put a positive spin on it. "I am polishing my image," she wrote, "redecorating, starting fresh." The move was good for Doris. She had a sunlit two-bedroom apartment on the top floor. She had always had a green thumb, and in 2006, she acquired her own plot in the community garden. She sectioned it into arcs and planted perennials before most residents had gotten around to mulching. She hauled in stones to form a path between the flowers and the outer arc, where the tomatoes would go. In 2010, her plot was named a "Garden of the Month." She later joked, "I paid them fifty dollars for that. They held out for more and I offered a hundred. Then they wanted my tomatoes." At Riderwood, my mom became friends with the widower Paul Schwartz. He took Doris to dinners, concerts and family gatherings. I'll always be grateful to Paul for giving my mom his affection and respect. He died in 2012. My mom was still going strong on her 85th birthday. Later that year, she fell and broke her arm, a break that never healed. Without two good arms, she could no longer drive or even use her walker. She still got around in her power chair, but she missed driving. When I visited in March 2015, I borrowed a wheelchair and we drove to Brookside. It was a glorious day, sunny and mild. With me pushing, we made it to the ponds. The cherry trees were in bloom--it looked like a Monet painting. I left my mom to climb a stone path to the Japanese pavilion. When I got back, she was crying. "What's wrong?" I said. "I've been thinking about Arthur and all the times we came here," she said. "Don't worry, I'll be okay." She kept talking about my dad. "He'd be pleased to know you're pushing me around today!" My parents were Republicans, but Doris was almost liberal on social issues. She supported abortion rights, and she supported my cousin when he came out. She wanted me to find Mr. Right, but she accepted that my career got in the way. In 2016, she confided to me that she could not bring herself to vote for Trump. In 2017, I moved her to assisted living. She didn't feel that she belonged there, but she liked the way I set up what she called "my nest." In 2018, she had a mild stroke and I moved her to long-term nursing. They put her in a wheelchair that she could not move on her own. Once again, Doris adapted. She maintained a stubborn belief that one day she would walk again and "get back home." That fall, I reminded her that she would turn ninety in February. "Mom," I said, "I have to give you a birthday party!" "Oh Cynthia," she said, "Don't bother. No one will come." But they came, and Doris was thrilled. Surrounded by old friends, she knew she was loved. When she saw the cake, her eyes got wide. "What are you going to wish for?" a friend asked. "Should I wish for another ninety years?" she replied. In March 2019, a nurse called me. "Your mother's oxygen is way below normal," she said. "I think this is the beginning of the end." My brother and I rushed to Maryland. "Both of my children are here at the same time!" my mom said. "What did I do to deserve this?" I explained how the nurse believed that she was dying. Doris said, "Nobody told me!" A few days later, the nurse declared that my mom was making a comeback, as she had so many times before. I stayed about two weeks that time. I negotiated with staff. I brought my mom hot coffee with cream in the morning and cold water at night. I read stories to her and interviewed her about her life. "If I had it to do over again," she concluded, "I would be a museum curator." In July, a nurse called to tell me Doris had had a second stroke. Soon I was at her bedside. Her breathing was labored and she could not speak, but the nurses were sure she could hear me. I visited her room for days. I read scripture and poetry. I sang. I rubbed lotion on her lips, face and arms. I told her that we were all there, Doris, Arthur, David and Cynthia, that we loved her and we would always be together. I said, "Mom, it's okay to let go. Put it in God's hands." The day she died, I began muttering to myself: the dear, the poor dear, the dear dear. As her executor, I had a million phone calls to make. On the first long hold, a Supremes song came on, "My world is empty without you, babe." I have cried every day since I lost my mom. ?ut today I rejoice, because she is with God, as she is among us, with her unforgettable smile.