Mother's Day memories

 

Me, Jordan, Christian's sister Julie, and Christian's mom

Facebook was alive with pictures of mothers today, many of them vintage, taken when the mothers were young. I loved looking at them, but it made me sad that I have few such of my mom, and they are packed away because of my limited space. When she was very young, Mom’s father told her she took such a bad picture the only place he would hang it was in the barn. She avoided the camera the rest of her life, but at midlife, when my best memories are, she was lovely with wavy auburn hair and a quick smile.

That’s the first thing I think of when I recall Mom—laughter. She was always quick to find something to laugh, even giggle about. When we were young, she told my brother and me stories of our fathers (they were roommates) in their medical school days, and the tears would roll down her cheeks. She could recall her own foibles with equal glee, like the time she signed important legal papers Alice P. MacBread (the name was MacBain, but she was making toast).

Once secretary to Robert M. Hutchins, chancellor of the University of Chicago and founder of the Great Books program, she remained intellectually curious most of her life, reading everything from historians Will and Ariel Durant to nutrition theorist Adelle Davis. She was a strict believer in Davis’ theories, and healthy eating was important to her. She was equally comfortable fixing a full dinner each night for my meat-and-potatoes father or entertaining twenty or so friends and Dad’s colleagues. In summers, she carried clothes and groceries on her back in a duffel bag for a mile and fed us from a primitive kitchen that had no electricity, no running water, and only bottled gas. Mom taught me to cook by letting me experiment in the kitchen, and I bless her to this day for that.

She was tough. Born in 1900 (always easy to keep track of her age), she lived through the Spanish Flu and WWI, lost a husband to complications from a war wound, lived through WWII and married my father, saw us through the polio years (one of the stories she didn’t laugh about) and all the ups and downs of life in America until the early 1980s.

I lost Mom in 1987, but I really lost her much before—to dementia caused by a series of small strokes. It broke my heart, and I wanted to shake her and ask where the gracious lady, full of manners and good taste, had gone. As it was, I didn’t handle it well, but I did the best I could. To this day, I talk to her—about people from the past, about cooking, about her grands and greats—she never knew any of the greats though she adored the grands.

One other woman mothered me. In my sixties I met Bobbie Simms, bookseller and former English teacher, some thirteen years older than I. She was half mother, half sister, a great booster of almost anything I did but never shy about telling me when she thought I needed bringing up short, from having on too much perfume (I didn’t—she was sensitive) to being overly ambitious for my writing. She adopted my grown children because she said they still needed a grandmother, and they adored her. “Bobbie tells it like it is,” they used to say. For a few years, we had a grand time doing “literary” things and lunching and shopping. I lost Bobbie in 2000.

The two are buried in Greenwood Cemetery here in Fort Worth, and I used to drive by, wave, and shout, “Hi, ladies! Are you talking about me?”

We had a lovely Mother’s Day lunch today, joined by Christian’s parents, his sister, her husband and two daughters. Much laughter, many stories told, and memories shared. Christian fixed pulled pork sliders, I made potato salad, and Jordan made a huge fruit salad. So good. Julie and Aaron brought rich, rich desserts which did me in, and I had to nap for two hours after dinner. Just barely recovered now, at seven, but it was a wonderful day. And I am blessed.

Mother's Day table