Thursday Thirteen #78

Just an edit from yesterday's Wordless Wednesday photos, the cat did not scratch David. I smacked him with a (cardboard) puzzle base that I was throwing down the hall to put away. He happened out just as the base reached that area. The look on his face was so hilarious that I rolled laughing but wasn't laughing when I (later) saw the cut on his head. Ouch! It seems that whenever something happens to Dave, it happens on or very near his nose. I hate to think what his nose will look like when he's a man.

So, don't blame the cat. I'm the one who pasted Dave and scratched up his face.

Thirteen Things about my mom I was thinking about blogging about something else today but I got some bad news (about someone else) last night and I just can't focus too much on anything else. Plus, this is the fourth anniversary of her passing. I was thinking about that last night. There was so very much going on when she passed and her passing was like flicking the first domino in a long chain. That was the start of my latest and greatest clinical depression. Four years later, I think I finally have a hold on that. And I still miss her, my heart still aches for her passing and for her life, but it isn't crippling anymore. For that I am thankful. Without further ado, thirteen things about Mom. 1. She had the most beautiful handwriting I've seen since they stopped teaching copperplate script in schools. 2. She was left-handed, as was my late, great mil. They loved that they were both left-handed and hoped that one of their granddaughters would be as well. Alas for Barbara (the late, great mil), none of her granddaughters was but one of my brother's girls shows great promise as a southpaw. 3. Mother had the most beautiful eyes. When I was there in her final illness, caring for her, Friend Cherylyn encouraged me to memorize the color of her eyes. I've been grateful for that ever since. Her eyes were a medium soldier blue (blue with a bit of grey in it) and so so lovely. 4. I taught Mom to do cross-stitch embroidery when I was in my teens. While my "works" consisted mainly of cross-stitched mottoes, hers were works of art. It was a craft at which she excelled and which gave her a great feeling of accomplishment over the years. 5. Mom baked a mean Italian Creme Cake, which was her friends' favorite thing for her to make for them. More than one of them asked her to make them for a wedding or an anniversary party. (Sad to say, it was not her children's favorite dessert.) 6. Mother loved babies. She was the woman in her congregation who would pop up to a new mother and beg for the privilege to hold their newborn. When my girls were born, she came out to spend a week helping out and would sleep with them either on her chest or right next to her in bed. When they woke up to be fed, she happily schlepped them to me and took them back when I was finished nursing them. I think if she had been able to, she would have had a houseful. 7. According to my dad, Mom had an easy time delivering her babies too. That was not my memory when she delivered my (half) sister Kimberley when I was 14, but Daddy says that my brother and I were born in record time with an impressively small output of effort. 8. I loved Mother's name but she really didn't, especially her middle name (Joy). Of course, two of her granddaughters have that as their middle name, one of mine and one of my brother's. 9. I don't know if it was just being a part of her generation, but Mom was very concerned about how she looked and she got very frustrated with me because of her perception that I didn't care. When I was in my last year of college, I was a confederate in a psychology experiment. This meant that I had to look like a freshman, which I attempted to accomplish by not wearing makeup to school. Mom was convinced that I was "letting myself go" and told me in no uncertain terms that the man who was to become Friend Husband in short order was a bad influence on me. Heh. Even in the last days of her life, she was plucking stray hairs and putting on makeup to go out to appointments. Go, Mom. 10. Mom loved her friends and her cousins. She gave a lot of time and energy to upkeep on those relationships. When I was in Texas for the family reunion, her cousins were pleased to see me and the extra undercurrent was that they missed Mom so much. And I still get cards and phone calls from her friends. Amazing! 11. Because she did not get a college degree and felt crippled in this in her job, she insisted that her children get their degrees. She (unlike my stepfather) didn't care what they were in as long as we had "that piece of paper". I think she was happier than we were when we got them. 12. One of the tenderest moments I had with Mom was when I was about to graduate with my Master's and had a miscarriage. She and my mil were coming up to "see me walk" to get my diploma and she tried so hard to get me to come back to Texas with her because I was so devastated by the miscarriage. You have to understand that she was not thrilled with my choice of Friend Husband as my life's mate and I think she wanted to do some coddling on her own but she accepted my "I...I...just want...to stay...with Doug," without a murmur. I know it doesn't sound particularly tender but it was. It was unusual for her to demur when she had her mind set on something, especially when she knew she could manipulate the situation easily to suit her wishes. That she chose not to in this case was a permanent plus for me. 13. Of course, Mom adored her granddaughters. When I was pregnant with Sarah, my oldest, and found out that the baby was a girl, Mom was over the top with happiness. I think she wanted a granddaughter to dress up in frilly, lacy clothes and hair bows. She made it plain that she was thrilled with granddaughters and that's what she got: six granddaughters before she passed. I think she would have laughed uproariously to hear what merry chases David leads me on but she did love her granddaughters. What to say? I miss her so much. While we were never close, there are still times when I think, "Oh, I'll have to remember to tell Mom about that!" Then it hits me that I never will. If you still have your mother, give her a big hug from me.

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Wordless Wednesday

Happy birthday?

Today, if she had lived that long, my mother would have turned 60.  It's kinda hard to know what to think or say about it.  I'm a bit sad today, but mostly just resigned to the fact that the ache will always be there since she is not.

She, my late, great mil, and I had a deal.  We all had summer birthdays and we all turned new decades the same year.  We got our photo mutually taken when we turned 50, 60, and 30, respectively and agreed to do it every 10 years.  They're both gone and here I am.  And no, I'm not getting my picture taken any time soon.  I know I've told that story before, it's just apropos to today.

So there it is...I'd say happy birthday but she doesn't know it's her birthday anymore.  I remember her on the special day anyway.  I was going to say that I wish that our memory of those special dates would pass along with the person but in the end, I don't.  I just wish I had my mama back.

Thursday Thirteen #58

Thirteen of Mother's Greatest Hits   My mom had a pretty limited repetoire of foods that she served.  She really didn't like cooking at all and pushed it off on me as early as she could get away with it.  Fortunately, I liked cooking, but I couldn't always make supper because I was at work or at soccer practice or whatever, so she had to.  As I was making Parmesan chicken for supper tonight, I realized that this was the only time I'd ever made it in our 18 years of marriage.  This was largely because it was Mother's alternate Sunday dinner.  The one Sunday a month that she didn't want to make a roast with potatoes and carrots, she made Parmesan chicken. But hey, Parmesan chicken is good stuff and so is roast, in moderation.  So I mused on the things that Mom made over and over again.  Here are 13 of them. 1.  The aforementioned Parmesan chicken.  The recipe called for sauteeing a sliced clove of garlic in olive oil in which to dip the chicken before you coat it in bread crumbs and cheese.  Mom was the kind of cook who would buy a head of garlic for Parmesan chicken, and then it would shrivel up and become dust in her cabinet, never having yielded another succulent clove or two to flavor a dish.  I, on the other hand, have more of a heavy hand with garlic.  Mom always said that, if she walked down my street blindfolded, she'd know my house from the garlic aroma wafting over it.  I take that as a compliment, although it may not have been intended as such.  So I put twice as much garlic in my olive oil as Mother, which shows great restraint, for me. 2.  The aforementioned roast with potatoes and carrots.  This one I do make every once in a great while.  Doug and the children really like it and it has the added benefit of being very easy.  It used to have the benefit of also yielding enough leftovers for another meal but that benefit no longer applies. 3.  Meatloaf.  Meatloaf was Mom's go-to dinner if she couldn't think of anything else to make.  That happened about once a week.  As a result, I loathe meatloaf.  I loathed it then and I really don't like it now.  Friend Husband, however, thinks that meatloaf is just grand.  Again, it's cheap and easy to make, so I usually make it for him at least once a winter. 4.  Spaghetti.  Mom loved spaghetti.  We loved spaghetti.  She made it every week.  My stepfather developed an aversion to it and told her not to make it anymore (or at least not to make it every week) so that was the end of our spaghetti dinners.  When he went out of town, though, we had us a big ol' pasta gorge.  Man, was that good.  I do make spaghetti (again, with much much more garlic than Mother dreamed could exist in the universe) at least once or twice a month. 5.  Chicken with rice.  When I was young, Lipton or Campbell's (I think it was Campbell's) did a campaign for something they called "souper rice".  This is rice over which is poured a can of cream of mushroom soup mixed with water and cooked with chicken atop it.  This was just lovely for Mom.  Easy and economical.  We had it once every two weeks or so. 6.  Pork chops with rice.  Not the same thing as the last entry.  This one featured rice mixed with chicken broth and cooked with seared pork chops atop it.  I make this once every 5 years or so, with lots of onions on it.  I don't cook pork chops too often, though. I will point out here that these last two dishes were about the only thing that my mom ever made rice with.  She wasn't much of a rice person.  We tend to eat it at least twice a week, but usually more often. 7.  Strawberry-cream cheese Jello salad.  I'm sure that you've seen these salads at church dinners or something like them.  Mom's had strawberry Jello, cream cheese, and pineapple, I think.  I did get the recipe from her a long, long time ago but I don't make it because Friend Husband is lactose intolerant and couldn't eat it.  Incidentally, this dish was the one that outed Mom's feelings toward Friend Husband after we became engaged.  She invited him over for dinner one Sunday and that dish was prominently featured in the array of foods.  I think she may also have made Parmesan chicken.  Anyway, he pointed to the salad and asked if he could eat it.  I, knowing about his inability to digest dairy, told him no, because it had cream cheese in it and the chicken had Parmesan in it.  Friend Husband happily loaded up on other food that he could eat (being a graduate student, he was happy with any sort of homecooking) but Mother was embarrassed and livid.  She thought he was making up this "lactose intolerance" just to diss her food.  To be honest, it wasn't that well-known of a disorder at the time, so she probably hadn't heard of it, but I think she was convinced for years that Doug just didn't like her food (which couldn't be further from the case). 8.  Ambrosia.  This was one of Mother's crowning jewels on the Christmas table.  For the uninitiated, it is orange pieces, banana, maybe pineapple (although I don't think Mom used that), coconut, and sugar all mixed together.  Mom put extra coconut and marischino cherries on top to make it look nicer.  It was good and it was only and always served at Christmas.  I usually make it once a winter, but with a lot less sugar than was on Mother's. 9.  Canned green beans.  These were the bane of my existence as a child.  Canned green beans (we didn't know that fresh were even available) just made me gag and I hated them with a passion.  Mother, on the other hand, really relished the ease with which she could put a vegetable on the table by opening a can of green beans.  I didn't serve canned green beans for years after we were married.  That was actually one thing that I vowed never to have on my table.  Funny enough, the twins dig them so I buy them for the twins and Rachel, who also likes them.  But I'm an adult now and I don't have to eat them. 10.  Ranch-Style beans.  These cropped up as a side dish many times.  I like them ok but they're not something I seek out.  It's hard to find them in Ohio anyway, but I usually bring back a case for Friend Cindy when we go to OK in June, and sometimes I bring back a can or two for us. 11.  Black-eyed peas on New Year's Day.  I don't know whether she was serious or not, but if you ate at her house on New Year's Day, you knew you would be having blackeyed peas for good luck.  I carry on this tradition by making Hoppin' John from a recipe that dates from the dawn of our country. 12.  Lutefisk.  Mother, being a full-blooded Swede, granddaughter of immigrants, tried to have this most Christmases.  I was never thrilled about it. 13.  Pecan pie on Thanksgiving.  Mom was a big fan of pecans, and we got them by the bushel in my grandmother's front yard, so more's the better.  Them's good eatin'! 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