Remembering the ‘tough love’ of Julia Meara

Julia Twomey Meara was no June Cleaver. Nor did she strive to be. Julia, who died on the last day of November at age 93, was much more concerned with the ownership of her space, wherever that was. All you had to know about my mother was that the patients at the Ellis Nursing Home in Norwood, Mass., named her to the complaint committee. No word if the vote was unanimous. She was chosen to bring the gray-haired complaints to the administration.

Pity the administration.

She was the full load of Irish fury if she felt she had been shortchanged. More than once, I saw her back off my 300-pound father who spent his days bossing a few hundred roughnecks at a Boston railroad freight yard.

When she once deemed that the Sunday roast beef had too much fat, she collected all the uneaten portion of the meat and brought it back to the unfortunate meat manager at the First National Store on Center Street in West Roxbury. She demanded that he weigh the fat and return her the exact price she paid for it. She had a voice you could hear in Roslindale Square and the meat manager forked over the dough, just to get her out of the store.

Ralph Nader could have used Julia.

At 129 Perham St. in West Roxbury, precious little time was spent on the “feelings” and “self-images” which are so popular today in child rearing. Bob and Julia ruled the house and their four children like benevolent despots and there was no appeal to higher courts. If you mouthed off, you got ready to duck a swift and expert backhander from either one of them, whoever was closer.

At the classic Boston wake last week, many cousins and old friends confessed how intimidated they were by my mother and father. Join the club.

Child abuse was an unheard-of concept at “129” and every other house all the way to St. Theresa’s Church. I remember the night my neighborhood pal David Walsh had a disagreement with his contractor father. He emerged the next morning with knots on his head, the unmistakable sign of a dreadfully lost argument.

I always thought of “129” as an Irish boot camp and always considered the rest of the world to be comparatively easy. More than once I told my unlistening children, “Once you get by your family, the rest of it is a snap.”

Bob and Julia held out until the last gun and lived their lives exactly the way they wanted. My father smoked one more cigarette while he waited for the ambulance to take him to the hospital where he died.

My mother was in and out of consciousness at the nursing home during my last visit.

She didn’t recognize her grandchildren and great-great-grandson. We stayed for more than an hour, but she remembered only a few minutes. When we rose to go and take the four-hour trip back to Maine, she woke long enough to say, “Wasn’t much of a visit.”

As we started down the hallway (careful not to look in any of the other rooms) her always booming voice filled the corridor.

“Thanks for coming … anyway,” were her last words to me.

I am assuming that angels have already elected her to their complaint committee.

Poor God. He has his hands full now.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.