Remembering Mama

Today, if she were still alive, my mother would be 100 years old. I am glad that she is no longer struggling in her body, as she surely would be if she had lived this long. But I do miss her. I wonder what she would make of the Internet and Facebook. Had that come along in her lifetime, I am sure she would have used it well to connect with the women whom she had gone to high school and then nursing school with in the 1920's and 1930's.

She lived through the watersheds of the Great War (World War I), World War II, the Great Depression and Vatican II. She knew food shortages and rationing--I remember her stories about adding food coloring to the margarine to make it look like butter and the shortage of sugar during World War II. I am sure that she and her mother must have planted a Victory Garden.

She loved pretty things--I still have a plum-velvet gown that she wore to go dancing and several vintage bags that speak "roaring twenties" when I take them out of my drawers now and hold them in my hands.

Mama made the best lemon-meringue pie that I have ever eaten. So much so that neither of her daughters even try to replicate it. She also made stuffed cabbage and apple dumplings, good German dishes that filled a cold winter's day kitchen with warmth and wonderful smells.

I remember "helping" her to make a meatloaf when I was about four. Her patience was amazing. I also remember wanting to imitate her by ironing--I was allowed to start with the dish towels, pillow cases and Papa's handkerchiefs and work up gradually to more complicated items. Eventually, I was accomplished enough to use the Mangle not only for flat things but even for my father's dress shirts.

Mama was an accomplished musician, singing in the church choir and playing the piano. The piano has not been played for many years, but will move to Phoenix soon, I hope, there to be played by her great-grandchildren.

She would have loved the picture-sharing of digital photography and the Internet that makes it possible to see a new-born baby or the Christmas celebration almost immediately. Her daughters have not learned how to use Skype yet, but I think she would be using it.

I live in the house she lived in. I cook with her pots and pans, bread pan and tools. While I have added some things of my own, there is a continuity here that I love. I love picking up tools that either of my parents used and having a sense of connection of my hands to their hands. I still have the yellow Pyrex bowl that Mama used to mix that meatloaf in that I helped to make when I was four.

The furniture in the living room is the same--some of it belonged to my Grandmother. It has become "antique", simply by lasting for so long. I like thinking about Mama and her Mama when I go into my living room.

When my mother was a child, Gregorian Chant was the norm for the liturgy of the Catholic church. The school, St. Mary's, that Mama attended as a child, had its own prayer book for the children. I have that book. I also have her beautiful First Communion prayer book and a collection of missals that she treasured. She and Papa were both grateful to find a Gregorian Mass in the seventies, and I am grateful that community is still here.

I wonder what she would make of today's culture, all the media blur, the noise and distractions and especially the incivility. I remember both of my parents for their courtesy and kindness.

So I remember you my dear, today. One hundred years is a long time indeed. I am grateful for this lady who was my mother. Grateful to be alive to remember her, too.

Mother's Day

Wishing all the moms I know a happy Mother's Day and remembering my own mother.

Her middle name was Rose and she loved roses so. I look out as I write this on a half-century old rose bush in the far corner of the back yard. Identified a few years ago by my friend G. (a mother herself) as Cecil Brunner, it is coverd in pale pink blossoms and buds.

In the far corner of the front yard is the "cornflake" rose, the one that Mama planted. We ate whatever cereal it was that had the offer. Three boxtops were sent in and the bare-roots plant arrived. Papa planted it in the far corner. At one time, it filled that corner with a huge bush. The bush is struggling to survive against the poisonous oleander planted on the other side of the fence. Sigh.





I would love to identify this rose so that I could find another. At one time it was so fragrant that all I had to do was open the front door and the fragrance filled the house. Over the years, it has lost its fragrance.

When we lived in Toledo, Mama also grew beefsteak tomatoes in the summer. Very best tomatoes I ever ate. My memories of her are of a woman always busy with her hands. Laundry, cooking, washing dishes, ironing and finally at the end of the day a few minutes to herself to play her beloved piano.

Sometimes, looking back, I wish my parents could have home schooled us. Music and literature, French and cooking, history and domestic science could have come from Mama. Math and science from Papa. It would have been much more fun than school. Of course, it wasn't done then and I am sure she never thought of herself as a teacher. When we came to California, she became one, teaching in the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine program at St. Athanasius, our local parish church. She would have been a wonderful piano teacher too.

Sunday mornings bring back memories of Mass, followed by brunch. Ah the smells of bacon and eggs and cinnamon toast! The Sunday comics were followed by homework in the afternoon and more cooking for Sunday dinner. Bike rides around the neighborhood on Sunday afternoons, especially in the Fall, finished with coming home to those good food smells. Finally, in the evening we would all watch Maverick.

Mama loved life and her laughter, love and music filled our lives. We were so blessed and are so grateful.

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

I see by the links that today is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. I remember as a child being fascinated by the apparition stories. Bernadette was a heroine of sorts and the movie made in the 1940's, "The Song of Bernadette" is one of the loveliest movies ever made, in my opinion.

People asked my mother why my parents didn't take me to Lourdes for the healing shrine was being written about and was known all over the world. I think the answer was quite simple. Although my mother certainly had enough faith, we did not have the money to take the family--even though we were only four--on such a long and expensive journey. Mama probably spoke sufficient French to make the trip work, if there had been that money. On the other hand, I can't imagine the disappointment if the "miracle" had not worked!

All of my life I have been interested in sacred or charismatic healing though, even though I have not experienced it in so dramatic or complete a way. Prayer for healing has been part of my life in other ways, smaller than being able to hang the crutches on the shrine wall and walk away. The tradition of healing continues at Lourdes, at Knock, at the church of St. Jean Baptist in New York, where the statue of St. Ann has been ascribed healing powers and at Beaupre, Canada where another statue of St. Anne also resides. I have a small, cast iron St. Anne figure that my mother brought back from Beaupre when she made a trip there at some time in the 1930's. (I've incorporated it into a design on my cafepress shop. Here it is on the tote bag.)



You can find it under a section "For All the Saints" if you click on the link to my shop in the links to the right.

The statue is one of my most loved possessions for its connection to Mama and because of the ease and familiarity that she had in praying to St. Ann, almost as though St. Ann was right there in the kitchen and would hear and take heart. That kind of Catholic familiarity with the saints is part of the legacy I have from my Mama.

For the next week, I will be thinking of Mama most particularly for this is the week of the anniversary of her death. She "coded" on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, fitting for she loved Mary under all of her titles. Mama's heart did not stop beating until February 19, though, so that is her official death date.

Late on in my journey, I read Victor Turner's book on pilgrimage and was struck particularly by the chapter on healing shrines in Ireland, where people left crutches, rosaries and pieces of cloth tied to tree limbs or "clooties" as they were known, to mark a miracle, a victory of the liminal over physical illness or injury.

I am grateful for this heritage, this feast day and the opportunity to share it with you. If you want to know more specifically of the story of Lourdes, please click on the link to the right--better yet, watch the movie.

Remembering Mama

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of my mother, Helen Rose. A petite woman, she had more than sufficient energy and fire to make up for her small stature. I remember that she was pretty, had a ready smile and a lilting laugh. Her complexion was perfect, "peaches and cream" or rosy like her nickname. Her eyes were large and brown and both her daughters inherited them.

Her hands were always busy and once when I was small I commented that her hands were beautiful--I had been watching her ply a needle deftly and quickly into blue fabric she was transforming into doll clothes for one of my dolls. She looked down at her hands and was startled. "These hands?", she said. "These are dish pan hands." But she never failed to keep her nails neat and I also remember sitting at her vanity watching her put on lipstick and wanting to be old enough to do the same.

My mother graduated from a Catholic girls school, in fact the same school that decades later her granddaughter, would graduate from, Notre Dame in Toledo, Ohio. The depression came soon after; Mama put aside her dream to be a music teacher and instead of going to a four year college went to nursing school at St. Vincent's School of Nursing. It was a boarding in school, so even though she lived within walking distance of home, she "boarded in". She told wonderful stories of how strict the nuns were (the nun who taught dietetics threw things if the students got the material wrong), mutton cooking in the cafeteria and smelling so bad that she never again ate either mutton or lamb, and of hiding with other girls in the walk in closet, a blanket carefully stuffed along the bottom of the door so that no lights from their flashlights would show as they devoured a goodie basket someone had received from home, or studied after lights out for exams.

Her graduation picture in her starched uniform is on the buffet in the dining room and I can look over as I write this. The formal uniform with its cap speaks of her accomplishment and professionalism that I totally took for granted growing up. Mama described herself as "just a housewife", in today's terms a "stay at home Mom". How blessed we were!

She taught us to cook and bake, to sew, to sing, to pray, to laugh, to believe, to serve others, to hope and to love. She made the best birthday cakes--mine were usually chocolate with chocolate frosting and I still have her recipes. I remember that when a bad thunderstorm threatened she would unplug the tv (after we got one in 1952) and put the kitchen stool in the middle of the living room floor with her little statue of St. Anne de Beaupre and kneel and say the rosary that the storm would pass.

In fact, so far as I know, the only real vacation trip she ever took before she married was to the shrine of St. Anne in Canada. The statue was her souvenir and she bequeathed it to me.

Her piano still sits in my living room, virtually unplayed now for twenty-five years. It will find a new home soon,again and a voice with someone who will play it.

I miss her today and remember her with love, gratitude and joy.