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You are here: Home / My Family / Christmas Eve: My Mother’s 111th Birthday

Christmas Eve: My Mother’s 111th Birthday

December 24th, 2015 by Sallie Bingham in My Family 14 Comments

Mary Caperton Bingham

Mary, June Queen and Graduate, St. Catherine’s School; photo from Richmond Times-Dispatch

She is not still with us in the flesh and has not been for a decade but her influence and even her palpable presence in my life are still dramatic, perhaps more so than when she was here in fact.

Mary Caperton Bingham: born on December 24th in Richmond, Virginia, fourth child and third girl in a family struggling to deal with the brood they already had. That birth placement, and that context, in the south still trying to cover from the Civil War, taught her survival skills not always expected, or obtained, by a girl of her class and generation: determination, outspokenness, ambition, all hidden behind the pretty blond persona of a Richmond debutante.

She would go on to become the first woman in her family to graduate from college, on scholarship, from Radcliffe, in 1928, and to obtain a prestigious fellowship at the American University in Athens for the following academic year—a professional future almost guaranteed in a university, but that, it turned out, was not what she really wanted.

She wanted romance, and was willing to pay a high price for it.

I understand her decision although it causes me a spasm of regret, as all the dreams abandoned by women do: the great heap of the unrealistic and the unrealizable that lies alongside nearly every woman’s life.

It always demands a high price, it seems to me.

To win my charming, handsome, intelligent father and access to his inherited fortune meant abandoning Greek and Latin and Restoration Drama—her fields—and the big world itself for a lifetime as a publisher’s wife in Louisville, Kentucky, and the mother of five children. The middle one, and the third child, was me.

I understand her decision although it causes me a spasm of regret, as all the dreams abandoned by women do: the great heap of the unrealistic and the unrealizable that lies alongside nearly every woman’s life.

I understand it because of Christmas Eve—or rather, because of the way our father chose to celebrate it, with a special dinner and a play produced by her husband and offspring while she sat, the sole audience member, in her velvet tea gown on a gilt chair.

How did I know—or did I know?—that this festivity was designed to erase her memory of a birthday seldom celebrated, in a chaotic family, on the day before Christmas?

How did I know—or did I know?—that my father understood, intuited, or perhaps was told that she needed this celebration to begin to heal the hurts of her past?

Whether she ever healed or not—her sharp tongue seems to mean she did not—she was awarded one day that celebrated her, one day when quarreling offspring and distracted husband joined to entertain her; and if it was not healing, at least it was a potent gesture in that direction.

Who would not give up dreams of a professional life, inevitably at that period alone for a woman, for the momentary warmth of that Christmas Eve recognition?

I wish for all of us who work so hard today and tomorrow to provide solace and cheer for our families, a moment of congratulation and celebration, in honor of my mother, who had one such moment on Christmas Eve.

Mary Caperton Bingham

Mary Clifford Caperton, 1924

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In My Family Christmas Mary Clifford Caperton Bingham

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Comments

  1. Dolores S Delahanty on Facebook says

    December 24th, 2015 at 2:59 pm

    Poignant remembrance.

    Reply
  2. Jan S. Karzen on Facebook says

    December 24th, 2015 at 5:11 pm

    Poignant and beautifully expressed

    Reply
  3. Steve Catron on Facebook says

    December 24th, 2015 at 6:09 pm

    A lovely woman on so many levels. She is missed by all that knew her Sally.

    Reply
    • Jeff Durham on Facebook says

      December 24th, 2015 at 6:51 pm

      The Binghams were a treasure for our Commonwealth!

      Reply
  4. Kate Whaley Archer on Facebook says

    December 24th, 2015 at 6:19 pm

    Adored her! And your dad.

    Reply
  5. Diane Fisher on Facebook says

    December 24th, 2015 at 6:55 pm

    Sallie, it was nice visiting with you @ DTS this morning.

    Reply
  6. Charlie Bennett on Facebook says

    December 24th, 2015 at 6:58 pm

    Remembering Mary as the amazing force that she was as an advocate for KY’s environment

    Reply
  7. Carolyn Charlene Lewis on Facebook says

    December 24th, 2015 at 7:01 pm

    Lovely picture Sallie, your mother and I share Christmas Eve birthdays !!

    Reply
  8. Susan Spalding Munroe on Facebook says

    December 24th, 2015 at 10:11 pm

    a striking beauty. No wonder Father so smitten

    Reply
  9. Kathy Scherer on Facebook says

    December 24th, 2015 at 10:44 pm

    Thank you for this treasured bit of memory…

    Reply
  10. Judy Hanekamp on Facebook says

    December 25th, 2015 at 7:17 am

    She was a role model .

    Reply
  11. Carol M. Johnson says

    December 25th, 2015 at 2:01 pm

    My guess is that your mother treasured this one day perhaps more than most of us, because your father gave of himself – in his only way of expressing his love – undivided attention to her and the family. What may seems like a rather “stiff” celebration, possibly reminded her, momentarily, of a young love they once shared….

    Reply
  12. Laurel Catto says

    December 25th, 2015 at 5:57 pm

    Lovely tribute, Sallie.

    Reply
  13. Tom Watson on Facebook says

    January 14th, 2016 at 9:44 am

    Beautiful.

    Reply

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