The room was quiet and bathed in mid-morning light. I had been reading for an hour but it was
time to accomplish the work of the day.
I closed my book and looked over to where my mother sat at her usual
place on the couch, wrapped as always in a blanket for she is perpetually cold –
or so she says. Her eyes were closed; she was asleep. I noticed her hands resting on her chest. I began to cry. I
began to cry because something hit me sharp and hard. It hurt.
To those hands, which were always so strong and yet so gentle, I owe so
much. Those were the cool hands I felt
on my hot brow when I was sick; they were the ones that sewed my favorite
childhood dress. She let me pick the
fabric and I chose a soft white cotton with small cartoon-like drawings of
people on it: ladies in stylish hats and
carrying purses over their arms, little children running with hoops, men in
bowlers. I called it “my people dress”
and except for my wedding gown I can’t remember being more enamored with a piece
of clothing than I was with that one.
My mother took me shopping with her quite a bit. She didn’t drive back then and so we always
walked. As we walked, instead of holding
hands we would clap each other’s hand.
Walk, clap, walk, clap, walk, clap.
It was a silly game and so inconsequential that I should probably not be
able to remember it. But the longer I live the more I realize things which seem
of no particular consequence at the time dimple our memories with the deepest impressions. On these
excursions, we would usually pass a little bookshop on Cermak Road. I haven’t been back to the old neighborhood in
many decades, but it has probably been replaced with a fast food joint or 7-11
convenience store and is nothing more than an old ghost now. One day as we passed the shop, I saw a new
Nancy Drew book in the window. It cost
$1.00. I begged; my mother
hesitated. I loved books even then and
she always acted as co-conspirator and egger-on, feeding my habit. But a
dollar carried more heft in the late 1950s when a first class stamp was 4 cents
and a gallon of milk or a trip to the movies cost a quarter each. She
looked at me and at the window and at me.
I carried home my treasure.
At Christmas, weddings and funerals we always had
Potica. It is THE dish of Slovenia and
no occasion of joy or mourning could be complete without it. She would make the yeasty dough and roll it
out as thinly as she could without tearing.
Although there are variations, Mom’s filling would always be the same –
and of course I believe the best. It
consisted of ground walnuts, honey, meringue, and a little cinnamon. I watched as her hands manipulated the dough,
and spread the walnut concoction, and coxed the whole thing into a roll to be
placed in a tube pan. When it came out
of the oven, we could at last declare it to be Christmas. My mother was a wonderful cook, but she wasn’t
a particularly organized one. She was decidedly unappreciative of company in the kitchen during the preparation of a big
meal. If one was able to sneak a gander
at what was going on in there, the sight would alarm all but the stout of heart. Pots, dripping spoons, potato peelings, more pots
with covers belching steam, splashes of tomato or of gravy, cookbooks strewn hither,
scraps of paper that held instructions for the making of some exotic morsel
taped to a cabinet, yet more pots with
covers askew to overflowing, and lots of boiling, bubbling, gurgling chaos. What emerged, however, was nothing short of
fabulous – and with candles for the table.
It was only at the end of the perfect meal, when we children were assigned
the task of flotsam and jetsam removal, that the madness which preceded genius
was revealed.
Another of my mother’s specialties was something she called “Orange
Blossom Punch” and was made with two types of citrus sherbet, orange juice
concentrate, and 7-Up – with maraschino cherries tossed in “for color.” She always served it after midnight Mass on
Christmas Eve (with potica) and she always put the punch bowl on the
piano. I don’t know if it was out of a superstition
of some sort (both of my parents were blessed with an abundance of them) but
the piano it always was and always had to be.
Growing up, I remember so many holidays that my mother made special with
the work of her hands. One particular
Halloween I came home from school, eager to get dressed up as a bum, and found
the dining room table filled with wondrous things. While we were at school she must have spent
the entire day getting ready for the moment.
She had hollowed out oranges, cut smiling Jack-O-Lantern faces in the
shells, and filled them with jello.
There were also Hoot-Owl cookies she constructed using part chocolate and
part vanilla dough which she shaped into owl heads, a cashew for the beak. They were little works of art. But of, course, my mother was an artist.
If you look around my house or walk into my office you will
see the splendid examples of art wrought by my mother’s hands. She is – or was – very gifted. Although watercolor was her medium of choice,
she did splendid work in pen & ink and chalk. But she also built things, like the riding
toy made from plywood with a base that rocked.
On the sides she painted a crescent moon onto the rounded base, and higher up a cow in full jump in a sky full of
stars – with the words “…and the cow jumped over the moon.” This she made for my son, John. She made it quietly, with no fanfare. I can imagine her plotting it out, standing
back as she painted, judging her work, striving to get it just right. She painted it gently and brightly with an
awesomeness only she could manage.
My mother has entered her 96th year. She is often confused about the day – not just
the date, but whether it is morning or night, whether one puts milk or water in
the coffee maker, which of those doors upstairs leads to her bedroom. She
wonders when her son is bringing back her dog, the one he borrowed for the
weekend, the one that in fact has been gone for many years. When
her sister died last year at the age of 98, I decided there was no point in
telling her. I want her to be
happy. The past can be a nice
comfortable place to be. I just
finished a wonderful book entitled The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley, the first
line of which is “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Yes, they do.
That is where my mother calms a fevered brow, bakes surprises for her
children, works a band saw, paints a bowl of peonies or a crane in the marsh
looking for a fish. That is where she
captures the steeple of a church rising high above the tree tops reaching
toward heaven - reaching into forever. And where, suspended in the dark blue
firmament, a cow jumps over a silvery crescent moon, chasing stars.
