September 28, 2016 -  A salute to my Mom on my Birthday

A few years ago, when my Mom had her 90th birthday my sister-in-law, Peg, created a birthday book and invited everyone to make some notes about Mom to be included.

Below are those notes.  I write them here as a Salute to my Mom as I come up on the anniversary of the day she bore me - her only girl - after two boys.

Days after the 9/11 tragedy when Americans were scrambling to find flags to fly she wrote me:

                   “A home without an American Flag is

                   like a home without a frying pan!”

The day I arrived home for my Daddy’s funeral:

                   “My GIRL is here now, I am okay.”

Anytime any of us kids did anything good or when she is speaking to our friends and acquaintances she always says with pride:

                    “That’s my  KID!”

When Mom taught me embroidery:  “You can tell the quality of a lady by her stitches.”

About a woman’s purse: “A real lady always has a clean and neat purse.”  [To this day I empty and clean mine out twice a week to live up to her standards.]

Some of the one-liners we heard as teenagers as we walked out the door:

“Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do.”

“I don’t want to see you in tomorrow’s newspaper!”

“I don’t care what time you get home, but you WILL BE in church in the morning!”

Her advice on parties:

          “Be sure to invite the neighbors; then they can’t complain about the noise.”

Party Food: Have something hot, cold, crunchy, soft, sweet, and salty – that way you cover all bases.

Special dinners:  Every food on your plate should be a different color – red, green, yellow, etc.

“My house is ALWAYS clean enough for a party!”

Things she said to us kids when we were growing up:

          “You can be anything you want to be – even President!”

          [Directed to me] “Girls can do anything the boys can do – sometimes even better.”

“No one can ever take your education away from you.”

“If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

Teaching us proper table etiquette: “You never know when you will be invited to the White House for dinner.”

         

The boys were building a tree house in the woods.  I was enlisted to run and fetch and hand up boards.  But, when the tree house was done they declared it wasn’t for girls and that meant ME.  I went crying to Mom.  She came down with hands on her hips and squared my brothers away.

“If she was good enough to help build it, she is good enough to play in it!”

How can we forget how Mom and Dad made our young lives like a Norman Rockwell painting?

          Making homemade root beer – outside on the picnic table, bottling it, and then putting it along the walls in the cool cellar.  Is there anything better than a homemade root beer float with vanilla ice cream?

          Every Halloween when we were young kids Mom would make Hoot Owl cookies:  a pair of chocolate sugar cookie centers with chocolate chips for eyes, surrounded by white sugar cookie dough on the outside edges squeezed to make the ears – then  pushed together and a cashew added for the beak.  SCRUMPTIOUS!

          When we were kids most Sunday afternoons were spent going to visit Grammy and Grampy Nixon in Littleton, Massachusetts, at the Farm and then stopping by the St. John’s in Harvard on the way home.  Often, I, [Tessie] would be sound asleep in the back seat between my brothers when we got home.

My Mom taught me:

          How to sew and put sleeves in a garment without a pucker;

          How to write a thank you note;

          How to arrange flowers;

          How to make real whipped cream from scratch;

          How to make a puffy omelet; and

          How to bake a perfect meringue on a lemon pie.

When I was old enough as a kid, Mom asked me what kind of cake I wanted for my birthday and I answered, “Blueberry Pie”.  It is exactly what I got and many more birthday pies for many years after.  I don’t really care for cake – I like PIE and Mom never forgets that!

A Few Memories of me and Mom:

After Mom and Dad visited our new house in North Carolina, for the next few months while cleaning or dusting I found several oval pieces of paper on shelves, in cabinets, or drawers with my mother’s familiar handwriting that said:  “Housekeeping Seal of Approval”.

Once when my husband and I drove up from New Jersey to visit in the early spring, Mom told my husband she had grown some green onions especially for him.  We all went out to the garden.  There was a short row of fresh green onions standing in the cool breeze.  My husband was most appreciative and Dad winked at me.  Mom urged him to pick some for our salad and so he did – only to discover that they came out too easily.  Mom laughed and admitted she had bought them at the grocery the store and planted them. 

When I come home to visit there is always a chocolate on my pillow at night.  

When we were kids our dentist was near High Street in Clinton.  On more than one occasion Mom ordered the taxi and it dropped Mom and me off at the donut shop just up the hill across the street from the Olde Timer’s Restaurant.  There we had donuts.  I always had the gooey, lemon filled kind.  Then we would walk up to Grants and buy something or just look and then go out the back door, down the stairs, and go in the back door of St. John’s Church into semidarkness and the scent of lingering incense.  The sounds of the outside world were hushed as we quietly circled the inside of the church and looked at all the statues and eventually stopped to light a candle and pray.  After splashing Holy water on ourselves in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit we would go out the same door, half blinded by the bright sun outside.  I always felt God there. We’d walk back up to High Street to the Dentist’s office.

Many times when we would visit Roger and Franny’s camp at Island Pond, at the end of the day when the sun was low, Mom and I would take the aluminum row boat out with the dried worms stuck to the insides and a slush of rain bilge under our feet.   I would row across the pond past the pickerel reeds to the water lilies.  We would tug on the slippery, slimy stems for a few water lilies until they let go from the depths.  Pull them in and I would put my nose in the center fringe and inhale deeply.  There is nothing on earth like the fragrance of a fresh water lily.  We’d curl up the long stems and they’d float in the bilge as we made our way back to the camp silently with only the creaking of the oar locks and the ‘splush’, swish of the water under the oars accentuating the silence.  It was always the perfect end of a perfect day at the camp.

Mom is the best role model there is for a woman.  She has re-invented herself often as life’s circumstances changed her over the years:

          A stay-at-home Mom when we were kids;

          A great home maker and housekeeper;

          A fine lady at all times;

          A gracious diplomat;

          A Cub Scout leader;

          A Boy Scout Den mother;

          A return-to-the-workforce Mom making Ken and I responsible latch-key kids;

          A cleaning caretaker at the church;

          A Cook Book publisher for the church entitled “The Apron”;

          A used book lady at the church Bazaar;

          A Portuguese booth “Holy Roller”;

          A hysterical society member – oops - I mean Berlin Historical Society member;

          A 4^th of July bell ringer in the center of Berlin for many years;

          A Meals-on-Wheels volunteer;

          A Senior Citizens Club secretary and president and current member;

          A Senior News Cable TV personality.

          ACTUALLY, she is a little dynamo in a tiny frame with snapping brown eyes.

Lucky me, I’ve received weekly letters from Mom ever since I moved away at age 23.  When I open the mail box and recognize her handwriting on a simple number 10 envelope, my world can be in the middle of a high-drama crisis, but it is okay because Mom is with me.  

Mom taught me the “Power of the Pen” and she is my BENCHMARK.