On becoming my mother

 

The Chicago house of my childhood.

Several years ago, when my oldest granddaughter, Maddie, was five or six, she and I were in the guest room giggling about something, the rest of the family was in the living room, and the dogs were in the back yard barking continually.

“Colin really must do something about those dogs,” I said, getting up off the bed and heading for the living room. Maddie darted ahead of me, stormed into the room, and hands on hips said, “Colin, you really must do something about those dogs.” She mimicked me perfectly—tone, inflection, even the semi-angry stance. I clearly heard myself. Everyone laughed, and Colin went to quiet the dogs.

That incident came to mind because I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the conventional wisdom that every woman turns into her mother. In my case, that would be a very good thing. But it’s not her laughter or her wisdom, her passion for learning and food, its not even her enveloping love that I’m thinking of. It’s little things.

In Chicago summers, in an old house without air conditioning, Mom would throw the house open in the early morning to bring in cool, fresh air; by noon she had it closed up tight, shades drawn against the sun, and it stayed that way at least until dark set in. I do the same with my cottage, turning off the a/c and opening the French door so Sophie can come and go, and I can get the feel of being outdoors, even at my desk.

For her children, Mom was a one-woman clipping service, often sending us news pieces that she thought we would or should enjoy. I’m afraid Christian gets the brunt of that from me because I’m always sending him links to stuff about garden and lawn care (I did just this morning) or recipes I think he’ll like. I did send all the kids a note yesterday that their favorite greasy spoon in Waco is for sale and I wondered if they wanted to make it a family business. Only a million and a half.

Mom lived through the Depression as a young wife and mother, and the rest of her long life she wasted nothing. When we cleaned out her refrigerator that last time, we found baby food jars with unidentifiable bits of food in them, some of it moldy. She used paper towels twice—once on a counter spill and the second time on a floor spill—and she had a special place she kept them in between. She saved bits of string, used gum wrappers (they were aluminum back in the day), and rubber bands. She canned her own tomatoes, made her own applesauce and soups, and cooked from scratch. I’m not as frugal, a fact she often pointed out to me once I had my own home, but I save leftovers in the freezer, and I do a lot of scratch cooking. I thought of Mom the other night when I made salmon croquettes, one of the dishes she regularly rotated though in retrospect I can’t imagine how she got my meat-and-potatoes father to eat them.

I’ve got a long way to go to be as kind and gracious as my mom, let alone as good a cook and as good a mom, but sometimes I hear her in my voice or recognize her in my attitude. It makes me smile.

On another note, I slept so hard and dreamt so vividly this morning that I woke thinking if I could write like I dream I’d have best-selling novels and box-office hits to my name. My dreams were jumbled but somewhere in there was a sit com about New York fashionistas enduring the hardships of camping for the sake of the men in their lives—it was all slapstick humor, and, by the end, there was not much love to be lost. And then there was a movie about what a wonderful life on the lam a runaway girl had, and I remember thinking what an awful, unrealistic role model that was for young girls. No, it had nothing to do with the movie by that name or the band. It probably came from a book I was reading last night where a young girl is kidnapped, and some officers insist that she was probably just another runaway.

Here's my cheer for the day: to Jou Joubert, barbecue pitmaster who was delivering the wedding dinner to a party at a private home, only to learn that the minister hadn’t shown up and the bride was in tears. Asked if he was an ordained minister, he told them yes and married the couple in a ten-minute ceremony.

And here’s my boo-hiss for the day: to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for a headline proclaiming that Beto swore at an Abbott supporter. Beto’s got too much class for that kind of cheap political stunt. Swear he did, but who the man would vote for wasn’t the issue. Beto swore out of passionate, deep-down anger at a man who would try to make a joke out of AR-15s and the massacre at Uvalde. I might not have used the same word, but I’d have sworn too. Go, Beto!

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