Real Gifts - More Mama Christmas Memories

I'm all through with dootiful activities for the year and this is giving me time to sink indulgently into  Christmas Brain - which, this year, includes More Mama Christmas Memories.  I am one of those disgustingly cheerful Christmas celebrants who never gets enough Christmas music, enough Christmas tree, enough Christmas cards. I love it all and I loved it all from the very beginning. I get ready for Christmas all the way up to Christmas Day and then... I stop.

But I don't think Mama was such a Christmas gal. Not that she was ever depressed or grumpy or short tempered at that time. She just seemed a wee bit detached from it all. And for all that we talked about everything, I don't believe I ever asked her outright if she liked Christmas.  I am sure it's because I couldn't believe anybody would not like Christmas. Sort of like I can't really believe in sailing - I mean - when the wind blows from the South, how is it you can also sail south - even if it's only south-ish. Or flying. How can a 50 ton airplane fly? I know how it does. I demonstrated it to my boy scouts 30 years ago. But do I believe? Believe? Well. There you have it. We can know what we don't believe.

What I know, though, and believe, is that Mama was gentle and indulgent with us about Christmas. I remember the first time I ever went shopping for Christmas presents. One of the bigger stores had a corner blocked off with a wall decorated like a gingerbread house. It had a little low door that only children could get through and we traipsed in to find, not a witch, but some pretty girls dressed as elves and lots of small things scattered about that you could purchase for tiny bits of money. We went in with a list of recipients and whatever cash we had. The pretty elf girl helped us pick from among a treasure store of things  we'd never seen before - never even imagined - to give as gifts.  I don't remember a thing I bought but I do remember the experience. It was magic. It was Daddy who took us. He was the shopper in the family. He was also the one who would get emotionally ratcheted up till he would crack and we'd have a Christmas Crisis. But he loved Christmas like I did. There never was a year he didn't tell us "we're going to have a smaller Christmas than last year" and then shop like a mad man, heaping the toy piles higher and higher.

Which might go a long way towards explaining why Mama was so ... um... detached through the holidays. Somebody had to be the grownup in that house.

When we were living on the Southside (in the Palace off of Jhanke Rd) we shopped for Christmas at Southside Plaza. Mama would give us $5 because each of us had to buy 5 presents. Once at the shopping center we'd head first to Woolworths and if we didn't find everyone a present there we'd move on to G.C. Murphy & Co. But with riches like we were spending, there was lots to choose from.

I remember selecting a blue glass bottle, shaped like a poodle, filled with bubble bath, for Mama one year. I loved dogs. I loved blue. I loved bubble bath - so surely this would be the best gift for Mama. Evidently she had a tender spot for it too, since she kept the bottle long after it was empty.

I am guessing this was purchased around 1961 because the summer I was 9 I was deep in the Little House books and that Christmas I asked Mama if:

1. We could have long flannel nightgowns instead of pajamas and
2. Could we have an Old Fashioned Christmas and make our own gifts that year?

I can still feel the moment - the hopeful wonder - the breathlessness as I waited for her answer - which was an indulgent "Yes".  God knows what awful gifts I made for my sisters and parents in those early years but the experience left a lasting impact. To this day - if I didn't make it - no matter how much I spend on it - it's not a Real Gift. And of course, the spur of giving real gifts only made me work hard till I actually got good at making things. And even more of course - I will also buy gifts now and consider them real. Just not as real.

It was about this time that she gave all the cousins little cloth bags she had made, filled with drawing paper, crayons, scotch tape and round edged scissors.  It was the scissors that caused the disgruntled complaints to issue from aunts and uncles. One unsuspecting aunt later muttered in my presence "Who was it who gave those scissors last year? I could kill her. What a mess they made."

I was a famous blabbermouth, but that time, I did not speak up.

The most hilarious Christmas morning I ever experienced was the year I was 11. We'd moved into the city by then and my little sisters were in school; kindergarten and 1st grade. My youngest sister was an unusual child - precocious beyond belief and yet - with such odd ideas. Sometimes she utterly drove me batty but just as often I was enormously proud of her. That year, though, the kindergarten teacher had them collect leaves and bring a bottle cap to school. They glued the cap in the center of a paper plate and then glued the leaves around it. The whole was spray painted gold and the intended result was supposed to be a Christmas Candle Holder.

Of course - one must remember that all of the gluing had been done by a 6 year old. I am sure she used that peppermint scented paste that came in a jar. And the gift was sent home from school in a brown grocery bag for the child to wrap. An odd shape - a fragile object - Sister knew it needed to be carefully packaged. She used a cardboard box that Daddy's shirts came from the cleaners in - and she padded the gift with ... the trash from the bathroom trash can.

I told you - she was unusual.

A week of drying out in our warm house, lying beneath the tree, being picked up and shaken - for I am sure she was as proud as punch about making a Real Gift for Mama and displayed it frequently - did nothing to keep it intact. On Christmas day we sat and watched as Mama opened up the box - and began pulling out used tissues, a Reese's candy wrapper, and other assorted bits of gold flecked clutter, a crumpled paper plate with glue splotches on it - Oh La. I will never, ever forget the look on Mama's face: Her mouth an open "O", her brain feverishly trying to decide if this was a joke or a Real Gift. 

As the sisters and Daddy began to laugh (I'm actually laughing with tears rolling down my cheeks as I write this.) Baby Sister began to cry - realizing the completeness of her fiasco. Oh my goodness. Christmas. What is Christmas without a disaster or two? I do remember that Mama quickly recovered, hugged her nutty baby, and promised that she would help her re-glue everything and make it perfect.

I do not remember that I ever saw a candle in that holder but I do realize now that Mama taught me an important lesson that day. She showed me that the gift isn't the item. It's not the ring, or the dress, or the perfume. The gift is the time a person takes to think about you - contemplate your joy - long for your happiness - show you are worth stopping a busy day for. That is the real thing about gifts. That's what makes them Real Gifts.

Grieving through the week with fashion thoughts.

So I'm sitting here thinking "There's something evil about autumn coming and my mama isn't here to enjoy it with me" and immediately my brain kicks my heart and asks "What's evil about that? For that matter - when is the last time you enjoyed an autumn with your mama?"  And I can't remember. And I don't know. About the evil that is. I guess it's evil because I want my mama. I want to go visit her. I want to laugh with her. I want to tell her risque jokes and then laugh wickedly till tears stream down my cheeks. I want to bask in the utter approval she gave me. I want to feel like I am the bestest thing in the whole world - and in spite of all the loving kindness other people give me - nobody could bestow approval like mama.

Sometime over the funeral stuff my older sister commented on some memory and couched it with "... and of course I'd do anything to win mama's approval." And those words sounded so weird. Because I always felt her approval. It didn't just flow from her - it gushed. I always thought she thought we were the four most perfect human beings in the world. I also felt her disapproval when it came - and I was willing to change to get her to approve of me. It's just that .... I didn't have to change very much.

YES. I know. But it is NOT true.

Each of us is goes through life with our very own personal filter. So when you say "I like that red dress" I hear one thing and my next door neighbor hears something else and you probably mean something entirely different from both of us. So when you throw THAT in my face just know that my filter keeps it out. I hear it but I don't pick it up.

And speaking of red dresses - or any dress, for that matter, (Look! A Bird!) I guess I owe my mama a thank you for making me finally buy a black dress. I do not look good in black - I look jaundiced. So I don't ever buy black and had to borrow a black dress for Daddy's funeral and I looked like crap in it, too. In fact, Mama told me over and over again ... like, till I was sick of hearing her ... how bad I looked in it.


Getting through that funeral took two rather extensive doses of retail therapy and on the second one I found a black dress that had reflective fake jewels sewn along the neckline and what do you know? Wearing it, I didn't look like I'd just risen from the sick. Truth is, I looked pretty good in it. Those sparkly things even worked when I put on a black jacket so I wouldn't freeze in the church. Best of all - it was from Dress Barn which is an inexpensive store. I didn't have to drop a bundle on a dress I will only wear to funerals. (and no. I am not 18 feet tall like that model so the dress hits my legs at a reverent mid-knee spot)

You have to know, though, that a good black dress with reflectors on it has to have a hat and in another store (Macy's ... you can usually count on finding something there even between seasons) there was a black hat. There was a BlackHat too - that was about as glamorous as a hat can be but it was really too fashionable and attention grabbing for a funeral and honestly I'd have to line it with some other color to wear it, but OMG, it was drop dead gorgeous, with a brim that swooped over your head from shoulder to shoulder like cathedral architecture and now that I'm typing this, and now that I've thought about lining it, I maybe ought to go back and buy it since I have an occasion to wear it coming up and wow - there I could wear it without looking too greedy for attention.

Love me some run-on sentences.

But back to the hat situation - there was a black hat. And it was a modest hat. And it was intended to be worn on the top of your head, tilted over your forehead slightly in a saucy slant but, ugh. When I wore it that way you could see every bag, every wrinkle and every droop in my aged face. Of course there is a happy ending to this shopping story or I wouldn't bother to write about it at all. This particular hat could be worn on the back of the head in a very 1940's manner that made a kind of halo around my head. This was how Mama always wore hats anyway or at least - it was how she wore them when I remember her as a young pretty thing. Worn that way all the ugly shadows disappeared and the rest is shopping history. I won't wear this hat too often - but whenever I have a funeral to go to that is not in the Dead-0-Winter this puppy will come out of its box.

Here's what I mean about the halo effect. No. I do not have a picture of me in the funeral hat.



Gad, Wish I were that young again and ... you know .. I'd kinda like that hat too. And so would Mama.

Which is why I am nattering on about fashion when I'm really just puking with grief. Because Mama loved her some new clothes. It was something we shared deep within our souls. We loved the architecture of clothing. We loved the engineering of it ... how it could disguise a body flaw ... how it could cloak a body in those equilateral triangles that are the geometry of beauty.

We loved the color of fashion. We both of us were totally mystified by the Blackening of Fashion that has swamped Europe and is now blanketing even the brash colorful instincts of Americans. Mind now - even Not looking Good in black doesn't mean I am immune to it's powerful effect. How do you think the LBD ever became something that could be acronymed? Because black is a powerful color that Makes A Statement. Except - it doesn't any more because now that it's the only color anybody is wearing (just look at a street snapshot of London - my god - it's as dreary as a rain storm in a coal dust cloud) the statement is completely silenced.  Black deserves to mean something. It deserves to be heard. It is just too darn bad that it's being drowned out by the lack of contrast with the rest of the rainbow.

So that's my take on the blackening of fashion.

But to get back to the fun part - Mama and I also loved shopping and I have a favorite little shop I like to drop into regularly just in case I see something new. And yes. I have entirely too many clothes and really wear only the same 20 favorite things all the time - but I LOVE to look at new clothes. And as long as Mama was around I could always just say "hmmm. Maybe I can find a little something for Mama". Only not any more. I dropped in on Friday night and the first thing that hit me was .. can't tell that little fib any more. I never get to buy Mama something new again. And I hate that. I hate it so much I'm tempted to go find me a little old fashionable lady in a nursing home and start buying her little somethings I just picked up when I was in town.

And actually - that's not such a bad idea. I think I will go by the nursing home in town and see if there is a little old lady who could use a new blouse....

Huh. You never know, do you. You never know when an idea will float to the surface if you jabber on long enough.

So. It's been a though week. But it's over now. or - almost. Tomorrow will be the "One week ago we buried Mama" day and then it starts receding. I'm sure this is not the last time I'm going to talk about all this stuff. But at least I've begun to talk at all. I've been pretty numb and frozen this week - what with Issues and Stuff that had to be dealt with. I've been wearing my armor of Normalcy. It helps. Doesn't feel very good, but it helps. Just know. I'll be back. 

Mama. Oh Mama.

In the grey dark of dawn, gentle hands began to minister to my little mama and with that human touch, she took a breath ... and then she slipped away.

And with that snip the last thread that held her body here on earth was cut. My precious beautiful little mama - who had grown so tiny and so soft - has died. And how I will ever be able to pay tribute to the mama she was to me ... I haven't a clue. This cut is so deep that I'm not sure the words can bubble up through the loss. She left us so gently.  There wasn't any drama to rip away the scab and make grief easier to empty out. With Daddy (see? he is still butting into her story with his drama) there were crises and there were hospitals and sneaking of dogs into rooms and beeping monitors and all that stuff. With Mama there was just a whoosh. And then emptiness.

How to pay tribute to the Importance that was Mama. Mama was the sun around which I orbited. She was my lodestar. She was my mirror. She was even a Wrong Way Sign I heeded, making different choices with my life so that I did not wind up quite where she was. She was the font. She was where the stories came from and the songs. She was the only Druid I ever knew - and not some sort of cute modern day Wicken Druid but a woman who would look at me slightly vaguely and say "I'm sure God can hear our prayers in the woods."

In my two earliest memories, admittedly mostly about me, she is there - on the edge, close enough to pick me up if I fall. In the first she was in a car with the rest of my family listening to my 15 month old self cry. I asked her how long it went on and she said, airily, "Oh - the whole trip" which was from Richmond, VA to Lake Worth FL. 1,000 miles. I asked her how they could stand it and she said "The trip was planned and paid for. You were going to cry that long anyway and we were going to have to listen to you." Which is exactly the sort of Glenda the Good Witch pragmatism she practiced throughout her whole life. What must be endured will be accepted with a shrug and some sort of management procedure will be brought to bear upon it.

What a woman.

I have a-zillion memories of her - and though I shan't fill up this post with them, I have promised myself and LD that I will write them all down into The Story Of Mama - for him and for P and if we are so blessed, any grandchildren that come along. I love those memories. I like to pull them out of the treasure chest of my brain, like so many rubies and emeralds from a jewel box, and look at them, savor them - feel them again.

She and I had a special time together in those early years. By the time I was born, my older sister was in school so I had long days of being her Only Child and yet, because I already had a sister, the New Babies who came along were something she and I shared. There was never any sense of being supplanted. We were a team.

This team had formed before there were New Babies, of course. We did stuff together. She did not know how to drive before I turned 4 so we had to go everywhere by bus. We'd take a county bus to the city line and then walk across the street to a different corner to catch the city bus. Once when we were coming home from downtown - which is where people shopped when I was little - I started to cross the street to catch the county bus. She asked me what I was doing and I told her I was going to the bus stop. I was across the street by then. We argued for a while about which side of the street was the correct one and then she said "When the bus comes to my corner, I'm getting on it."

Well. I knew one thing - nobody was going to let a 3 year old get on a bus without her mother so I walked back across the street. And then the bus came to my corner, paused a moment, and seeing nobody at the stop, drove off and left us.  We had to walk home and we laughed the whole way.

It wasn't long after that, she learned how to drive. Not because public transport was so difficult but because of a near disaster caused by me. Big sister had started school so it was in the fall. Mama was heavily pregnant by then with the first of the New Babies. (those poor girls were still being referred to as TheBabies when they started high school) She was napping in the afternoons then and usually I loved to nap with her because she'd let me sleep in her bed with her. But this particular time I kept thinking about the candy in the bathroom - I must have just gotten over a cold. That candy in the bathroom was so delicious. It was orange flavored. It melted on your tongue. And if you climbed up onto the toilet and from there onto the sink you could get the cabinet open and you could pry the lid off with your bottom teeth. I took a few and let them make my mouth juicy. I went back to bed to try to nap. That candy called my name. I went back for another few. Then back to bed. Then back to the bathroom again. When there was only one candy left I figured I'd get scolded for eating the candy without permission but so long as I hadn't eaten it all it, I would probably not get a spanking. Much of our childhood decision making pivoted around the odds of the spanking. And then I went back to sleep with mama, on the Big Bed.

Of course, I had forgotten all about the moral dilemma by the time my sister came home from school. Instead, I bragged, "I had some tandy" (Always fun to get one up on the Big Sister) "Where's mine?" big sister demanded and I remember Mama saying "she didn't have any candy" and, completely forgetting the strategical advantage of silence I said "Yes I did. I had the tandy in the bathroom"

After that everything was pandemonium. No car. Couldn't drive anyway. No ambulance service in the county. Call Daddy. Call the neighbors. Most of the women neither drove nor had cars at that time. We were starter families in starter homes during the recession following the Korean War. Finally a neighbor took Mama and me to the hospital and I distinctly remember her saying "Now be a good girl and don't kick" so I asked her to hold my legs, which she did for me .... and then great big men with noisy silver machines did things and I threw up.

Yes. I was the sort of kid that inspired those pesky childproof caps on medicine bottles.  Sorry.

After that Daddy made her learn how to drive, left the car at home while he took the public transportation - for the rest of his working life. He found he liked not having to be bothered with a car during Richmond's modest rush hour.

Oh the memories. Oh the flood of memories. Mama knew more songs and more stories than any other mother in the neighborhood - in the world, I was sure. and I would brag on her and tell my friends they ought to hear my mother sing. And then I'd take them to her and she would sing. And when the ballet teacher wanted wooden milk buckets for her little tap dancing milk maids, it was mama who suggested using contact paper printed like wood to cover old paint cans. It was also mama who sewed our tutus and the milk maid costume. Black and white striped satin over red net tutus. Oh mama. mama mama mama.

and it was Mama who had the faith to drag me to every violin teacher in the city till she finally found one who would take a chance on a 5 year old. This was before Suzuki and the wunderkinds of today. And it was Mama who kept a scrap book of every program I ever played, every newspaper article, every award, certificate and medal. And when all her kids grew up and moved away ... she bought herself a violin and learned how to play it - and even won 2nd place in the Chesterfield County Fair Fiddle competition.

And Mama could draw. And she sewed. Oh she could make anything. She taught me how to make the Seven Dress for my dolls. You say you want to know how to make a Seven Dress?

1. You fold a square of cloth in half and then in half again 
2. Snip out the corner where the folds all meet, diagonally opposite the 4 loose points. 
3. Then cut away those 4 points in the shape of a 7. Open it up and you see a t-shaped garment with the neckline where the first snip was cut away. 

You can leave it like it is to make a pull over or snip it down the center to make a coat. So long as you make the body wide enough to wrap around your doll or teddy bear or G I Joe, you can just tie it at the waist or if you want to get serious you can glue the edges or sew them. I've taught countless little girls how to make the 7 dress but it came first from Mama.

Mama Mama Mama. Oh Mama how could I ever describe all that is you? How to explain that you didn't believe God could only hear you in a church. How to demonstrate the tenderness you showed us when you said "don't come crying to me. I can't help if you're crying" How to tell the pride I felt when you told me "If you need a day off from school, just tell me. I'll write you a note. But never tell me you are sick if you aren't"

How does one describe the utter joy of sipping coffee with the grownups after being invited by Mama into the living room, to sit on the sofa with her in the morning before school. What about the lessons in How To Catch A Man - which was the title of a book she bought and shared with us. "Stare directly into his eyes, then lower your own - twice, swiftly - and say "You are just so cute."

What about the hilarious laughter we shared watching comedy shows together. The way she managed to get us in the summer children's plays, the youth orchestras, the drama classes and the art shows. We were always everywhere doing cool stuff because Mama thought it would fun to try. "I mean, what's the worst that can happen? You had a few hours of trying something new." and the complete freedom in the kitchen - so long as you cleaned up after yourself. Yes. It was Mama who taught me to always have good toys - and to share them with abandon. Just ask any little girl who's spent time at Bess' Girls Camp.

Oh Mama. Mama. How could you go away?

And yet she has been going for a long time. She has been in a skilled nursing home now for almost 3 years - bedridden for the most part - and probably as much by choice as anything else. She no longer drew. She no longer read. She knew us all and remembered the new family members - the grand-daughters in law. The great grandchildren. But she only really roused herself when she talked about the old days. Old photos. Old stories. Old diaries. I had them all and I took them all to her bedroom. We could spend hours with these mementos of decades gone.

But on our last visit things were different. She is right handed but she picked up her diet Pepsi with her left hand and poked her face with the straw. She didn't recognize any of the photos, though I took big ones of her and Daddy and TheBabies. She smiled and did the polite thing but if I asked "recognize her?" she'd say "No. Who is this?"

After a while there were no more pictures. She lay back. She stared at me and said "I love you so"

And I crawled into bed with her and I held her close and I whispered to her all the words of pride and love and tenderness I had. I told her that she was the best mama ever in the whole wide world. I told her I loved her and would always always always love her. And we cuddled till the lunch staff came with her lunch.

And I went away thinking "she's going. She will be gone soon."

And now she is gone. In fact - she may have gone before that nurse gently touched her in the darkness of a Saturday morning. I hope they came for her - the way they did for Daddy. Perhaps it was Daddy himself. However it was, though - I am glad it was gently and I am glad the last words we shared with each other were I Love You.

Mama. Oh Mama. Goodbye.

That Late August Feeling with some views of the garden

Do you know it? The nights are cooler - even if the days are hot. There's something different in the sunsets - though they still linger till after 8 o'clock. And the music! The sounds! And don't get me started about the fragrance! Ripening scents are everywhere - in the trees, the grasses, the croplands ...

We seem to be having one of those damp cool Augusts. There hasn't been a triple digit day for weeks and we're promised 10 days of temperatures below 90 in today's weather dot com prediction. Right now it's overcast and about 80 and I am wishing I'd done my Saturday housework yesterday when it was not so dank. Now if I mop the floor it won't get dry unless I turn on the oven and bake something ... which I just might do.

I'm reminded of another August that was cool, but wet. LD was moving into his first apartment at the start of his junior year of college. I'd come down with one of those summer cold/wet weather mold allergy things and felt like death - but I was adamant that nobody could set up housekeeping without a cast iron skillet and the only place to buy one was at a serious shopping mall. (Walmart sells them now but this was then - when all they carried was the cheapest of aluminium products) So. Off we went to Fredericksburg to buy New Apartment stuff. I was so tired and dragged out by the time we got home all I wanted to do was to crawl in bed. I told the Darlings to fix their own dinner out of whatever crumbs were scattered in the kitchen. As I changed into pajamas I noticed a car driving up to the house. A foreign car - not anybody I recognized. Two women got out of the car and I thought "missionaries" because they're the only unexpected strangers who ever drive all the way down our lane. I was just about to shout out to someone to go shoo them off when I noticed one of the women pulled a gift out of the back seat and suddenly I remembered. Weeks ago - before the summer cold/allergy thing, before the long spell of dank weather, when I was at work, not in my Last Chance to Baby My Almost Grown Son mode, via that relatively new form of communication: e-mail - I'd invited some seriously distant kinfolk - a daughter and her mother, who were coming to Virginia to do genealogy research - to stop by for dinner.

Right. No food in the house. Me in pajamas. Everything in disarray for getting PreciocusAngelBabyDarlingOnlySon back to college. The house as dim and dank and unwelcoming as it could be. And out of town guests. Come for dinner!

I served them strange mystery meat in gravy over rice for dinner and fortunately, my BigDarling can always entertain genealogists - and they were his kinfolk, mind, so he knew all the lines. Nevertheless - it was an awkward evening. Both of them knew I'd forgotten. It was too obvious to miss. The mother thought it was hilarious and said it was just like something she would do. The daughter - an accountant for the IRS - did NOT think it was funny and has never spoken to me again.

Ah well. Some things can't be fixed. But as summer winds down with that late August feeling, we try to get in the last of whatever is left of the season and ... whatever can't be done does not get done.

Yes. Summer is winding down and it's doing so quickly.

My Amazing Mother

I have always had the most wonderful relationship with my mom. I could never understand the classic mother/daughter struggle, even though, as much as anyone could, I got along with Dad too. Of course - it could be that I am just such a stellar person that nobody could ever not get along with me - at least, it's fun to imagine so. Still, we shan't investigate that too deeply, now, shall we?

The truth is - I've had a school girl crush on my pretty mother ever since I can remember. She always made sense to me - even when Other People said she was ... well, let's use the word "flaky". She was like some magical fairy - like Glenda the Good Witch as she was portrayed in the movie version of Wizard of Oz. (the literary Glenda is much more like a wise headmistress at some very well run girl's school - nothing near as ditsy as the lady with the frizzy hair saying "Home?!? Why didn't you say so? I thought you wanted to go to Kansas!")

Mama always knew a song you hadn't heard before - and she had a pretty voice to sing it with. She knew how to take a pair of scissors, make 2 cuts and VOILA! You had a new dress for your doll ... even if you couldn't sew. Till she grew old and crippled, her house was spotless and I don't remember ever seeing her clean it - not dust it, push a vacuum, or wipe a counter.And yet there were the odd bits of clutter that kept our home from looking like some magazine lay-out. I know I got my trick of keeping one room "company ready" from her.  Granted she had daughters who were assigned house cleaning chores but we never had to do it all. She was a durn good administrator, now I come to think of it. 

She believed that everybody needs a day off now and then, and gave us carte blanche to pick the day - just so long as we weren't avoiding real responsibility. The knowledge that you could duck out of school some day for no real reason except you wanted to was like having a jewel in a treasure box - no school year ever lasted too long with that sort of wealth. 

Her weakness was food - which she could barely cook - we had some awful meals interspersed with a raft of bland food, punctuated, now and then by inspired deliciousness. She was quick to resign cooking duties and all her daughters were given free rein in the kitchen. I began cooking at 12 and I'm still having fun with pots and pans. Mama, otoh, preferred to eat the 4 C's: cookies, candy, cake and cheese - with a little ice cream on the side. She struggled with weight all her life and it curtailed a lot of her choices once she crossed into Old Age. And yet - she'll be 90 on her next birthday - so .. she's contradicted all the statistics. Not that I would want the Old Age she's had - because it's so sedentary and so alone. Still and all - it's something to think about - this striving for eternal youth we Baby Boomers cling to. 

Yesterday I visited her and took along a notebook of stories, memories and poems she wrote in the 1980's. I hadn't realized how many of these I had not read. Her memories included the tale of her parents' cross country road trip in the 1910's, driving a Stanley Steamer from Pennsylvania to California. They included stories about being a student nurse at the hospital in Wimber, Pa. They included tales of boys she knew who died in WWII. They also included one painful episode from my teens. They are powerful and they are precious.

Some of her stories were about how hard it was to be the Not Pretty sister in a big family with a terrorizing bully for a big brother. And yet - she refused to be crushed by that. She decided that if she couldn't be pretty (???!!!???) she could still be attractive and boy could she attract people to her ... like flies to a honey pot. I know there have been, from time to time, within the family and without, people who thought Mama was either silly or insincere or something. They were wrong. Mama was what she was - and she wanted to belong. She was willing to add to her store of social tools to fit in, but she never compromised her own gifts to do that. She enjoyed flirting. She liked to sparkle at the center of attention. But she never gave up her essential self. As I said - she merely added a dressing to the salad.

And it was that belief that, if you didn't like what you had you could do something about it, that she passed on to me: Perhaps the greatest gift a parent could give a child - the gift of action - of choice - of possibility.

Obviously ... I still have a crush on Mama. 

We have a book in the library by Rosemary Wells: Hazel's Amazing Mother. I read it at story hour every May near Mother's Day. It's my favorite story about how amazing mothers are and whenever I read it I think "Yup. Bess' Amazing Mother" Because boy did I have one. If you know an amazing mother - especially if she's a new young mother - you might want to give her a copy of this, come next Mother's Day.