Me, Mom and Manhattan College by Bill Flynn

After graduating high school, I moved on to Manhattan College. That fact that Manhattan College was actually located in the Bronx should have made me suspicious of the whole experience, During the summers I worked at the Breezy Point Surf Club as a cabana boy and a bartender. This was a great job.  I literally made enough money from tips to pay my entire college tuition without taking any loans.  When I bragged about this years later at a family party, my mother, who had been a little “over served,” chimed in that not only had I paid my tuition but also half of my brother Pat’s.  What???  This was news to me.  Pray tell Mom, tell me more. My mother laughed.

The story goes that every Sunday night I would come home from my jobs at the Surf Club with pockets literally stuffed with money.  It wasn’t unusual to make four or five hundred dollars a week and I would leave the money on top of the dresser and go to bed exhausted.  Mom and I had an understanding.  She would deposit the money in the bank for my school bills and leave me with fifteen or twenty dollars for the week to come.  I never kept track.  After all, this was my mother who was taking care of things. Well, as Mom confessed, Pat and I both went to Manhattan and our bills came due at the same time.  Pat worked as a Parkie at Rockaway Beach during the summer making $67 a week sleeping under the boardwalk.  What I didn’t know was Pat was dependent on my parents and student loans to pay his tuition.  Mom didn’t always have the money to supplement Pat’s bills so, you got it, she would dip into that other pot of money. My money.  Of course, I never knew anything.  I didn’t even know what my bank balance was, much less that Mom was borrowing from it.  All I knew was that my bills always got paid and I had pocket money from my job as a school bus driver with the Riverdale Country Day School. (A little distraction here, this school’s most famous graduate was JFK.)  I never got mad about this.  Honestly, I laughed when I found out about it and spent the next twenty years telling Pat it was OK and there was no need to thank me.  Pat always said that I didn’t have to worry about getting either the “thank you” or the money.  I’m smiling now as I write this.  I would kid my mother over the years and when she was visiting at my house I’d say, “Sit tight Mom I’ll be right back, I’m going upstairs to count my money” We always had a good laugh over it.

Mom was the queen of just making things work.  There were seven of us in a two bedroom, five story walk up.  Dad had two jobs and Mom was the glue that made it all go. I loved her and Pat dearly and this is just one example of her inventiveness that helped us all get a good start in our lives.  Job well done Mom.