The Mother Lode of Mother's Day Wisdom |
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Like Mother, Like Son
A ThirdAge Interview with Laurie Williams
I was Robin's playmate. His father was the disciplinarian. -- Laurie Williams
The smiling woman in the front row who got the first kiss when Robin Williams won his Oscar last month was none other than his mother, Laurie Williams, a tiny, supercharged, late-ThirdAger who, like her famous, funny, and very talented son, is more than willing to go out on a limb for a good laugh.
For example, sitting at a table in view of the Golden Gate Bridge, wearing one of the hats from her large millinery collection, she unabashedly tried to convince me that her son was a "shy child, an introvert." You don't need more than a split second of Laurie William's company to know where Robin Williams learned to love making people laugh. Adjusting a flippant little hat, she declares, "I have a cloche made of peapods," with the same winsome and preposterous cockiness that are Robin's stock-in-trade.
"Take the cash, leave the credit and play a winning game," was her advice to Robin when he left for Hollywood. She repeats the line to me in her generous--almost operatic--Southern accent. If you're going to raise an actor and comedian, it helps to have the stage presence of a true Southern Belle, which she is. But Laurie also quickly confesses to succumbing to a rebel urge to break the conservative bonds of her Dixie background.
"The South is so focused on image. You have to walk such a rigid line. I used to dress in Grecian sandals, dirndl skirts, and peasant blouses. Like Robin, I was raised as an only child, but I grew up close to many cousins. I listened to a different drummer, and man, did I get lost!"
A rebel, yes, but Laurie also displays a grace and kindness which may be simply the result of good breeding, and maybe some hard times, too. Few women of her age were married twice. She mentions working in Washington, D.C., as a translator of weather reports broadcast in French during World War II, and her experiences returning home to visit family in Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans.
"In the South, they can tell how well you're doing by which train you take home. Nobody would meet the Hummingbird, but if you came in on the Panama Limited, which was all Pullman cars, there'd be a band to meet you." There was more music when the visits ended. "My family danced in the streets when I left," she laughs.
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