Ode to My Mom: An Email

Mom, how are you?? I've been baking a lot of bread and thinking fondly of you each time I do. I am "perfecting" sourdough these days ... I use a bread machine to do all the hard work, then pull it out, tuck it into loaves and bake it in the oven ... Voila! I look like a hero! But I do recall another time when you spent an hour a loaf, kneeding with your sleeves rolled up to your elbows and flour in your hair. Phew, I don't have anything it takes for that! Still, I think of you fondly when I imagine you working away at that dough on the floured countertops of 4640 Pleasant Creek Road. I laughingly wonder if my own children will remember me hovered over the bread maker, muttering and interfering from time to time. When it comes from the oven smelling like something from heaven, I quickly employ your prize bread knife, a gift from you when I left home for college three years behind schedule. I know, from you, there is no such thing as too much butter, just as "too much chocolate" does not exist. I employ this philosophy liberally to fresh baked bread.

Julien is such a love! But my goodness I'm busy with all of these little ones! It occurred to me a while ago that Claire, Harriette and Julien are just the same ages apart as Lisa, Jennie and Geran! I was thrilled when I discovered this, cringing at the bedlam that must have been your life when five year old Lisa clung to babyhood via affected speech impediments while Geran wailed from neglect and two year old Jennie challenged you at every turn. At the same time, you somehow managed thousands of pounds of laundry, many tonnes of dishes without a dishwasher, cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, and everything else. All the while, you PLAYED WITH US.

I am certainly not that woman. Nicole does everything except raise my children and sleep next to my snoring husband : ). Baking bread is as close as I will ever get to "becoming my mother" and, for that, I use a machine. My girls are more likely to remember me pausing briefly in the morning to apply perfume to wrists bathed only every other day. My big mothering accomplishment could well be them not remembering me for my actual smell, but for the fragrant sweet cloud of "Channel Chance" that envelops me most mornings. I don't often cook, I only bake under the duress of descending visitors, I never ever can be found with a scrubber thingy of any kind in my hand, but darn I smell good.

My pinnacle of mothering this year was not giving birth to the world's sweetest boy, but wrapping all of my Christmas gifts sometime before Christmas Eve eve while the horde calls impatiently through the door. Additionally, my tree is completely decorated ( unless you count the side and back), and my great room, where the tree resides, is decorated (if you count a garland across the mantle and a mixing bowl of scented pine cones on the coffee table). Still, none of it compares to your precisely life-like arrangement of the nativity and collection of treasured ornaments from passions past ... The beans and seeds sunk into cobalt-blue glue in the shapes of stars and crosses, various macramé treasures, stained glass bits and printed scriptures varathaned to wood when burned edges were all the rage. How you, mom, found the time to exercise crafty impulses, I will never know. I don't remember you shouting, drinking, or smoking which is how the rest of us manage more than we are designed to handle. You were just superhuman, rinsing out dirty cloth diapers, baking, sweeping, cooking, teaching us the fun games from your own childhood and telling stories. You had firm beliefs about how a sink should be cleaned and perfected recipes for mayonnaise and pie crust. You once showed me the proper way to core an apple quarter. Your time tested techniques for handling laundry, from stain removal to wrinkle prevention, have the power to make a wardrobe immortal.

The homey holidays you managed to create on restricted budget may never be what my own children experience. Still, as I bake batches of sourdough of questionable character and rejuvenate the pot of mulling spice on the stove, all while smelling expensive if not clean, I hope i am creating the faintest image of a superhuman mom in the minds of three little girls and the world's darlingest boy.

You are an inspiration, mom. I love you!
Lisa

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