Happy Birthday Mom

Today is my mother's birthday. Time stopped for me when she died. I don't know how old she was when she passed, but she was pushing 80 years old. She kept her age a secret her whole life - it just wasn't lady-like to admit to your age. The last fews years of her life were very hard. She developed adult onset diabetes which turned insulin dependent when she couldn't stick to the diet. I'm not surprised. Food was always a big deal in my mother's life. I know I cook because my mother always cooked. It's just what you did for your family, no matter what. She was raised in the rural South, where church and food were a top priority. Her family was very prosperous and had a 2,000 acre plantation prior to the War. My brother was taken aside and told never to talk about that war, as we lost everything and never managed to get it back. They still had some land and raised hogs and timber. My mother was raised on pork products and delicious, rich southern dishes which would not be considered healthy these days. She battled her weight all her life. She and I are so different. I am more like my father, with his reserved Scandinavian personality. Once in a while I feel my mother's traits surfacing. She had a vivacious personality and was the life of the party, with a glass of Scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She had the gift of gab and lots of devoted friends, including the Bridge club she kept going for over 20 years. Mom was so political and always voted. That's what Americans do. She was a voracious reader and our breakfront was filled with books that I didn't appreciate until much later - Dostoyevsky, James Michener, Leon Uris, and Boccaccio's "The Decameron," which I didn't understand until MUCH later. There were no kiddy books in the house that I can remember, except a Children's Bible set and the World Book Encyclopedia. The first book I can remember reading was Gone With The Wind. When the movie came out my mom took me to see it in the theater and I can remember the tears rolling down her cheeks. It must have rocked her to the core, as she heard the stories from real slaves as a child in Georgia. My mom didn't cross the Georgia State Line until she joined the Army with her sister and two brothers in WWII. She didn't get very far, Alabama in fact, before she met my father, a Swedish guy from New York City, who was so handsome he took her breath away. They were married in Washington, DC, and took off for Munich, Germany, where my father was stationed during the liberation. Willie and Freddie were born there, in the castle that was divided up for American officer apartments. They came home just in time for me to be born in the new project built for returning veterans on Staten Island. My father was a NYPD cop and she nursed part time to buy us all those fabulous clothes at a place called "Cute Togs," in the Four Corners section of the Island near Wagner College where we lived. One day her husband came home and announced we were moving to the wilds of rural New Jersey. Things got weird for them after they left the city. I think his military intelligence activities in post-war Germany and subsequent Cold War doings got to him, along with Mob involvement when he was a NYPD lieutenant. Something snapped and he was "eccentric" to put it mildly. My mother had to raise us herself. Mom lived out her last years in her sister's antebellum house with the high ceilings and beautiful wrought iron porch in Warrenton, Georgia, that had amazingly survived Sherman's March to the Sea. Funny, they always referred to the little shack in the back yard as the "Library." I knew it was the slave quarters, but no big deal, that was part of their cultural heritage. Mom and her sister Lillian were busy with church and DAR meetings. One day she didn't come down the stairs for church and they found her on the bedroom floor. A stroke had taken half her body and her speech. That wonderful southern drawl that just didn't quit was silenced forever. It was the diabetes that killed her when she refused to have her leg taken off. It was eight years ago but it might as well have been yesterday. I miss her more with each passing year, and I recognize more of her in myself all the time. Too bad I didn't appreciate her more when she was alive. She was male-centric and adored my brothers. They could do nothing wrong and I hated the way she spoiled them. But I understand the dynamics in her own family that made her spoil her boys - her overbearing critical mother and indulgent adoring father. When the Depression hit the family moved to town and set up a boarding house for transient men. Her mother cooked and cleaned for their tenants and didn't have much time for her daughter, and she probably got more attention from the customers. Mom was a talented, devoted and creative woman. She adored my kids and spent as much time with them as she possibly could. I don't know how I could have managed premature twins without her. Funny how time heals and softens the sharp edges. I miss my mother.