« The Oldest Generation of Fowler's | Main | Studio Tour »
February 13, 2007
Mom
The best of my memories of mom are wrapped around my memories of the midwest. The stuff I think about when I think of the things I want to share with my children.
I loved the warm nights f summer, with the sun setting still being able to walk about in shorts and a t-shirt. The sun sets at 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. I remember clearly mom walking around the yard picking weeds, tending to her flowers, giving the gardens relief from the day's heat.
I remember eating fresh veggies form the garden -- peas, green beans tomatoes and cucumbers.
Food is an important part of my memories of my mom. She loved cooking, never making just enough, but always making pots and pots of food that would undoubtedly end up in the back of the fridge with a thin layer of mold across it long after we were sick of eating it. I too, can't for the life of me cook for just my small family. We always end up with too much, and we almost always end up sick of whatever it was before we finish it off.
I remember her salads, garlicky from the fresh-cut garlic she used to season the bowl. The taste was always a surprise, hot on the tongue. Anyone who ever stopped by for a steak dinner will remember the salad, ever present on the table.
The things that I remember mom for that I wish I was half as good at always starts with her ability to always see everyone as a potential friend - she was mostly fearless in social situations. She never mistrusted anyone form the start, and she was always able to find common ground. Sometimes it took a while for her to thaw when she was thrown into new situations, but once she put her mind to it it would be tough to shake her. Once she was in your life, she was there to stay, with only a few exceptions.
She would try anything -- I witnessed her try water skiing, extreme rides at the state fair, new foods, hot peppers, and exotic concoctions and new dishes -- but please hold the sour cream, She wouldn't touch anything that shared the same plate with sour cream.
Her love of nature and nature's beauty. Hikes near lake superior, to Gooseberry Falls, along Baptism River, down south in Canon Falls, and along Ocean Beach in San Francisco. She loved to absorb local flora, stopping, absorbing. Her dinner plate dahlia's -- the biggest in all of Minnetonka -- we're some of my favorite of her cultivations. In the summers when I was young, she' arrange a bunch of flowers in garage sale-found vases and set me up on the corner, selling her arrangements, and let me keep the earnings. She just wanted to share her creations.
Her sense of humor. She could always find something funny in everything. She almost always stick her foot in her mouth, and there was almost always a good chance that she'd offend someone. She might feel bad about hurting someone's feelings, but she was almost never embarrassed. She'd just try to get the offended to laugh with her, so they could understand her good cheer.
She had a perpetual energy for everything and anything. She bought books on just about any subject, she'd leaf through or consume. She had hundreds of reference books on birds, flowers, accupressure, dieting, and spirituality to name a few.
I miss her ability -- or perhaps it was a need -- to use talking out loud to work through her thoughts. Talking, turning words and talking through it again. Anyone who had a conversation with her knows exactly what I am talking about.
Fashion sense of the 70's and 80's, applique sweatshirts aside (you really do need to set those aside, you should see the pictorial evidence we have), mom was a beautiful woman. You knew it when you saw her. No, I insist you take the applique sweatshirts out of the equation. Really.
She had perseverance. She went through so much (you have no idea), and always made it through. With only one recent exception. She just moved forward in the face of everything that was flowing in the current against her.
My daughter knows Grandma Connie in only a small way. A visit a few years ago, a week this past summer. Mom was having a hard time during our visit, but Liv just saw a source of fun projects, and the host of playhouse in the back yard. Just after Liv was born, Mom made Liv some blankets -- just simple fleece blankets with ribbon sewn along the edge. They were such an amazing source of comfort for Liv, Jenny and me. They were the only way we could get her to sleep on many nights. They're still used almost daily to wrap her friends, animals an cars to keep them warm and put the to "sleep." there are a source of comfort -- we even used them puke clean up. They are understated things, simple and comfortable , much like mom's meals, her gardens, and her house -- and just like mom herself.
It's been a hard few months,coming to terms with her death. It's occurred to me that I never properly grieved my fathers death seven years ago. A simple, meaningless comment from my cousin at her memorial reminded me that there are only four us us "Fowler's" left. And now we have our own families and our own priorities and our own traditions and our won direction. And I feel like it's a string direction, and my own family's traditions are strong ones. But I still can't help but feel a little untethered and orphaned without the ability and opportunity to learn from my mom actively, or to have my daughter learn about where I came from. But I guess I'll do my best in trying to mange all of that with memories and reminders.
Posted by tdotjay at February 13, 2007 10:35 AM
