My Mom’s Death Anniversary

April 21st marks the anniversary of my mother’s passing. Every year, I honor my mother by doing an activity she loved. One year I went to the humanman, my mother loved a good steam and lived in Turkey in her 20s. Another year, I bought a new shade of lipstick, she loved make up and she had quite the variety of lipsticks. 

Since my father moved to Vancouver in 2020, we have spent her anniversary together. This year we went shopping for our home. My mother loved beautiful things, loved to beautify her home. She had lots of plants, books, records, photographs, art. She loved to cook and was really good at it. There was a time when she would spend every Saturday afternoon making a delicious meal. The house would smell of onions, herbs and whatever meat she was preparing. That night she would present her efforts on a well plated dish. As a child, I couldn’t appreciate it as much as she wanted me to. There aren’t many 7 year olds who wants to eat duck, lobster or snails but I enjoyed watching her delight. She took such joy in it.

I digress.

This year, I asked my father about my mother’s favorite authors. My mother was an avid reader and a writer at heart. His list included William Faulkner, George Elliot, Italo Calvino, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jorge Luis Borges and Thomas Merton. 

When we packed up my mother’s house, I only took a few books and one was “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” by Italo Calvino. I tried reading it a few years back and it didn’t speak to me but I kept it. I picked it up that night and it has been resonating with me. As I read it, I imagine my mother doing the same. It was published in 1979, I was born in 1980. When did she read it? Did she buy it when it first came out or did she happen upon it at a bookstore later on? Has she read all his other books? What does she like about his style of writing?

The book starts by breaking the fourth wall and talking about it’s reader. How excited the reader must be to get the new Calvino book. It goes on to set the stage of the novel but continues to break the fourth wall with sentences like “The novel begins in a realiway station, a locomotive huffs steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph.” I’m appreciating the meta style of this book. I am aware that I am a novel. I am aware you’re reading this novel.  

Reading it makes me feel closer to Frances, my mother.

Why is that we seek to understand those who are no longer with us? 

Does that seeking help to revive them, so to speak?

I was close with my mother. We spoke on the phone on Sunday mornings most weeks. I had a sense of who and what she was. And, I didn’t know her completely. I didn’t know who she was prior to my birth. My father did. They were together fo three years prior to my birth. I love hearing the stories he has of her. One of my personal favorites –

My parents lived in Tucson, Arizona for most of their relationship. They had been trying to get to The Farm in Tennesse but all their rides kept taking them west so they ended up in Arizona. 

One day my father had made a peyote tea and it was too warm to drink so he went for a walk. At which point my mother came home and drank the tea. My father returns, excited for the tea and sees my mother wrapped in a sheet to mimic a toga and sitting in a tree in their backyard speaking to Aristotle and Plato. 

I remember when my father told me that story, I almost fell out of my chair. The Frances I knew worked on Wall street, wore suits and seemed, for the most part, very straight and narrow. I could never have imagined that she would a)drink peyote tea b)sit in a tree speaking with dead philosophers. I saw my mother in a new light and I loved it. It created more depth to the character known as “mom”.

When my father met my mother, she used to carry around 5 vinyl albums. I loved this idea that she was ready to set the mood anywhere she went.

My father believes we choose our parents, and I am so glad I chose them. Both my parents were the black sheep of their families. And they fostered in me a strong sense of individuality, meaning to follow my own curiosities.

I leave you with a birthday card my mom wrote me that I have framed on my shelf.