It doesn’t hurt this year. Not in the way her absence from this world ricocheted through my mind and heart the past two years.
I realize I write about with so much sadness. Let’s try something new this year.
And whatever sadness I feel is mitigated by knowing she is safe. Hopefully, she’s safe in the heaven she imagined with the Blessed Mother. She so deserves her comforts to be true. She would sing songs to the Blessed Mother when she was scared, for example walking in the dark. I’d like to think Catholic Mary thanked her for that and they sing together.
Here’s a funny story – my mother’s younger brothers were identical twins. She always sent birthday cards to her family. One year she bought duplicates of the card and wrote something to the effect of “I’m trying to save money. After you read this, send it to your brother.”
That’s hilarious. But what was really funny and made her laugh for years was that both of her brothers took it seriously and called their mother to see if my Dad has been laid off or something like that. My grandmother called my Mum and they had a really good laugh over that. She called both of her brothers and poked them with it for years.
Going back to her childhood, her mother would make chicken noodle soup using Lipton dried soup packets. I don’t know why – it is really meant to be for cooking. She would stretch out the soup by adding egg noodles. However, my grandmother believed boys before girls (??) and so by the time my Mum got soup, it was all broth.
Soup and noodle resentment were lifelong burdens for her.
She would also make Lipton soup for us and pack it full of egg noodles or macaroni. Then she would forget to check it and we’d end up basically with a bowl of overcooked noodles with a slight hint of chicken soup. She ate it with gusto. To be fair, she did serve her children first and in birth order (me then my brother.)
She was big on stretching food. For example, she would cook a small chicken pot pie for us to share and serve it over noodles to make a sizable meal. I still eat potpie over noodles.
Mum was not a great cook. Not even close. One time she made pot roast and forgot to strain out the bay leaf. She was upset about the prospect of us kids eating it. So my Dad invented a game “Who Got the Bay Leaf?” with some small reward so we’d make an effort not to accidentally ingest. “Who Got the Bay Leaf?” was on repeat in our house. She got even by not using a Bay Leaf and letting us strain our feed carefully while she ate away.
Another good memory involved her and my Dad. My brother and I grew up believing we hated olives and buttermilk. I literally still despise both. When I moved back home for graduate school, I brought this up and my mother confided that they had tricked us about this – they didn’t want us to eat her olives or drink his buttermilk, both of which were treats for them, so they came up with this scheme. We had never actually tried either to her knowledge. Mum told me most of the treats in the household were for us so she felt no remorse.
NO REMORSE!
I miss you, Mum.
