Remembering Bab
I’ve spent most of today thinking about my mother. Were she alive, she’d be 98. It rather startled me when I realized she’d be that old, but she had me, her only child, when she was in her mid-40s. She died in 1977 at the age of 67 after five years of suffering progressively more devastating strokes. She never got a chance to know me as a mature woman or see her grandchildren, the first of whom was born two years after her death.
My mother was a remarkable and charismatic woman. A tall (5′10) brown-eyed natural blonde, she possessed a joi de vivre and genuine friendliness that acted like a magnet drawing people of all kinds to her. Everyone adored her. She loved parties, going to them and especially giving them. She never used a cookbook, preferring to invent her own recipes (and they turned out wonderfully, needless to say.) She designed and made all her clothes, collected jewelry and fine antiques, and was a highly competent Mrs. Fix-It around the house, doing plumbing and electrical wiring and refinishing furniture. Up until her health failed, she ran her own interior decorating business. Her clients included celebrities on both East and West coasts and political figures in Washington, D.C.
She was an avid reader whose favorite authors were Shakespeare (whom she constantly quoted) and William Faulkner, a fierce bargain hunter who never paid full price for anything and a passionate lover of animals and children. She was generous to a fault, unfailingly gracious to the people for whom others have little or no regard (cab drivers, waiters, her clients’ servants, store clerks, bums, supermarket bag boys, garbage collectors, even the IRS man who audited her) and I never heard her utter a negative word about anyone. She drew hilarious cartoons, enjoyed playing tricks on my father and me, loved to travel and to dance and to have a good laugh (also a good martini.)
My ruminations today turned to what I learned from my mother, something I’ve never actually thought about before. Well, it sure wasn’t how to cook, clean or sew. “Phoebe will spend the rest of her life doing those things,” she’d tell my father when he fussed about me having no chores to do and being generally useless around the house. “Let the girl enjoy her childhood, for heaven’s sake.”
My mother was a smart woman and by her example taught me the really important stuff – being kind to all God’s creatures, keeping a positive attitude and your sense of humor no matter what, holding your head high in good times and bad, developing your creativity, enjoying the moment and inventing ways to make each day fun for yourself and everyone around you.
That’s quite a legacy you left me, Ma. I miss you.
–phoebe kate