Memories of Mom
My mother died when she was 50. As I approached that age myself, memories of Mom came flooding back. I assembled that mosaic of bits and pieces of who she was into an essay, “Fifty Things About My Mother.” An acquisitions editor read it, one thing led to another ... and my book was born. “Everything That Makes You Mom: A Bouquet of Memories” is a story of two moms: mine, told in vignettes, and yours, yet to be written, with the help of memory-jogging questions. It’s a way of saying, “See, mom? I know you well. I really was paying attention.”
Here are a few excerpts to inspire you on Mother’s Day.
Mom in the Home
There she is in the kitchen, cooking a birthday dinner, making gravy with glee, upholding holiday rituals, fighting grime … And there she is on the porch, and in the yard, doing whatever she did to make a house a home that we loved to live in and would want to return to, so naturally that we probably didn’t even notice.
She bought a gravy whisk that we saw in a specialty kitchen store not so much because she needed a gravy whisk, but because its packaging claimed, “It scoffs at lumps.” She gave it a new name: lump scoffer. When she made gravy, she whisked with glee, scoffing at those lumps herself with a single “Ha!”
• What kitchen tasks does she relish?
• Does she have nicknames for any of her gadgets?
• How has your mother been persuaded by advertising?
The time I got so mad that I announced I was running away from home, she asked me to pause long enough that she could note what I was wearing, so she would know how to describe me to the police when she filed a missing persons report. I made it three houses away before my resolve melted, but went all the way around the block just to save face.
• Did your mom ever deal with a fit by pretending to take you seriously?
• How has she made it hard to stay mad?
• Has she blessed your independence in ways that make you want to come home?
Mom in the World
She was our primary tour guide into the neighborhood, and then into the world of commerce, where she gave us our first lessons in choosing wisely from all the shiny things the world, or at least the five and dime, had to offer. Farther afield, there were family vacations. Some of our moms went into the world to work, and sometimes there, as at home, Mom fulfilled duties far outside the scope of the job description.
On summer evenings, the neighbor women who lived up and down Kennon Street would gather on Mrs. Menkemiller’s porch, and when Mom went, I got to go too, which was probably the first situation in which I learned that I could stay up late if I just quietly sat and listened long enough that the adults seemed to forget I was there.
• What neighbors did your mom visit with?
• How did she initiate you into the rituals or the company of neighborly adulthood?
• What have you picked up from simply listening?
Mom denied it, but Dad said she went sledding on a steep hill with the neighborhood kids, pregnant with me, the winter I was born, and I teased her —“I remember, it was chilly and dark and we went very fast!”—because I wanted it to be true.
• Do you remember playing winter sports with your mother?
• What is something about your mother that you know only through someone else’s storytelling?
• What do you like to tease her about?