Q is for Questions—The Ones I Wish I’d asked my Mom

Thanks to fellow blogger, Beth, for suggesting this topic, I have something to write about for this edition of the A to Z Bloggers Challenge. My mom was in her early seventies when she died and I’ve written about that before so I won’t go into detail. But I will quote myself below so new readers will understand why it was traumatic, and why it left me with no time to ask the questions I didn’t yet know I’d want answers to.

“She’d been going to the doctor every week for a dozen weeks complaining of pain. Near the end my brother started going with her to get some answers about what was going on and the doctor told him Mom was just getting old and looking for attention. Mistakes one through ten. Unbeknown to anyone she had a small hole in a kidney and blood was slowly seeping out and filling up her body cavity. Mistakes eleven and twelve came the day she died and the ambulance got lost trying to find my parents’ house. (They lived on a lake in a rural area where the township didn’t keep their maps up to date.) Mistake thirteen through fifteen happened on the way to the hospital when the ambulance caught on fire and they had to wait for another. She died of septic shock ten minutes after arriving a the hospital and a doctor told me later that dying that way is very painful. Her death was a series of human errors and oversights and it was filled with the kind of shoulda, coulda anguish that only comes with hindsight.”

My mom had a way of answering questions that didn’t really tell you anything. (Remember me writing about how when asked what's for dinner she'd say things like, "An old dead cow.") Another example of her non-answers was when I asked her where I came from and I thought I’d get the birds and the bees story I heard rumors about. The idea that the daddy bee stings the mommy bee with his—gasp!—penis was so outlandish that I counted on her to set the story straight. She did. She told me she found my brother and me under a pile of rocks. A few years later she finally did set the story straight—not with a conversation, of course, but by handing me a pamphlet from the health department.

One of those things she didn’t want to talk about was a screw-back, silver and blue Air Force wings pin that I found in her jewelry box. I didn’t have any uncles or grandfathers who served in the Air Force. Where did it come from and why did she let me wear that pin to high school during the period when I had an imaginary boyfriend named Roger who was off serving our country? And did she know about Roger? Did she read my diaries when I was at school? Years later I thought she might have had a boyfriend before she married my dad who died in a ‘dog fight’ in the air space over Europe during WWII. In my golden years I still think she had that boyfriend, but if so, why was she willing to let me wear that keepsake? I would have snatched it out of any daughter of mine’s hands and locked it away. Maybe she trusted me more than I realized. Or maybe she didn’t think of it as a keepsake at all. Maybe she found it under a pile of rocks.

After she died I went through her cedar chest and another mystery was discovered among the mostly photos and knickknacks. A pair of soft pink satin and cream-colored lace panties that buttoned down the side. 1940s boy-cut style. Why did she keep them for thirty odd years? Who does that? My parents were married in the late ‘40s so maybe it was her version of keeping a wedding dress? She was married in a drab gray suit trimmed in brown fir over a weekend spent in Chicago. I have pictures of that trip and she and my dad both looked really happy. Oh, and that drab suit? Mom cut it up to make a coat for a doll I got one Christmas and I still have them both.

What did I do with the panties? You ask. I put them in a fresh plastic bag with a note about when and where I found them and put them in a small trunk that is earmarked to go to my oldest niece. She still has the cedar chest I found the panties in and I suspect they will end up back in that chest for my great-niece to discover one day. Some families hand down grandfather clocks and quilts. I’m thinking I might be starting a tradition of handing down underwear.

In all seriousness. The questions I wish I’d asked my mom before she died are about gaining more details of her childhood and her parents. I know the basics of how her own mother died when she was nine and all seven siblings where separated and sent off to various places. It was like an informal foster care known as ‘farming children out’ that was arranged between families rather than the state. But knowing my mother, she probably wouldn’t have told me very much. Her childhood ended too soon, when she went off to live with a grandmother who ran a boarding house where she was expected to work for her keep. In her teens she was working in other people's homes as a housekeeper and by the time she met my dad she'd been a waitress for several years. 

My mom was not a reminiscing type like I am. Maybe the past held too much pain? She focused on the future, always planning and plotting for ways to hedge her bets against bad luck and foul play, so to speak. We all leave a few blank pages behind; but with the brief outline she did leave, I’m pretty sure I could flesh her story out. But I know the important part: she was a strong woman who loved her family and I wish I'd have told her more often how much I loved her. ©

Photo at the top: Mom and dad on their honeymoon. 

Stirring Up Memories: What Cooking Taught Me About Time

Family recipes have a way of carrying more than instructions—they hold the quirks, shortcuts, and “heaping tablespoons” that define the people who made them. This post follows Jean’s attempt to recreate her mother’s cooking, from tapioca pudding once known as “fish eyes” to Depression‑era mock apple pie. Along the way, it becomes a reflection on memory, legacy, and the bittersweet moment when you realize you’re the last keeper of certain stories. It’s a journey that’s part kitchen experiment, part time travel, and part reminder that the flavors we miss most aren’t always about the food….AI

When I was growing up, my mom didn’t call foods by their proper names. “What’s for dinner?” my dad would ask, and she’d answer, “An old dead cow,” or “an old dead chicken.” One of my favorite desserts was “fish eyes pudding.” I don’t know how old I was when I finally learned those chewy, translucent little balls I loved were actually tapioca. We had it often because it was a good way to use up milk or eggs that were about to spoil. My mom was the queen of using leftovers. If she boiled potatoes on Tuesday, the extras became sliced and fried potatoes on Wednesday. Her soups were never the make the same twice because any left-over vegetables or starch went into the pot.

Mom didn’t follow recipes, which made it impossible to learn to cook from her. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it, even though I can hear my brother’s ghost laughing somewhere in the Great Unknown. As a teenager he took an interest in cooking and was often looking over Mom’s shoulder...or vise-visa as Jerry tried his hand. I don’t have to tell anyone who knew the two of us that he turned out to be the better cook while I turned out to be a five‑trick pony. I can make scrambled eggs, grill a steak, make chili, bake bread and order pizza.

When I was a teenager, Mom would warn me I’d never find a husband if I didn’t learn to cook. I’d tell her I planned to find one who was rich enough to take me out every night—or one who liked to cook, like my brother. It was hard for her to argue back when she herself had broken the norms of the ’50s by teaching a boy—gasp!—the secrets of marinating, roasting, simmering, sautéing and frying.

Circling back to tapioca: I loved the way Mom made it, and when I was living on my own I tried to recreate it, but it was never as rich as hers. One day I went to her house and asked her to make it while I watched. “You just follow the directions on the box!” she insisted. But the problem was, she didn’t. Her tablespoons were heaping, not leveled off like I’d learned to do in high‑school home‑ec. She added extra egg whites and more vanilla than the side‑panel recipe called for, and she didn’t even realize she was doing it.

Recently my youngest niece made a batch of chili sauce using Mom’s recipe and she gifted me some. The sight of those jars brought back such a nice memory of Mom and me standing side-by-side chopping red and green peppers and onions, and of the sweet aroma that filled the cottage as the chili sauce simmered on the stove. My husband’s favorite Christmas gift was a dozen jars of Mom’s chili sauce, a tradition that lasted between them for years. When she died and our stash came to an end, my chili was never the same because my “secret recipe” was simply a jar of her sauce, a pound of hamburger, a can of Bush's red kidney beans in mild chili sauce and a can of Hunt's basil, garlic and oregano diced tomatoes. And a tablespoon of sugar. One thing mom did drill into me is you always add a little sugar to anything with tomatoes in it, "to cut the acid." 

My niece’s chili sauce planted a seed: maybe I could replicate a few other family favorites using the box of stained and yellowed recipe cards written in Mom’s handwriting. And then serendipity stepped in. While I was looking through the recipes, one of my neighbors here in the independent living building stopped by with a half‑dozen peanut‑butter cookies that tasted exactly like Mom’s. She bakes often, but this was the first time she’d given any to me. The serendipity didn’t stop there. That same night our chef served barbecued spare ribs that almost matched Mom’s. So I checked the ribs off my list—too messy to clean up afterward, I remembered—and I moved making cookies to the bottom.

I also crossed off her baked beans, a favorite with any kid who tried them. Reading the ingredients, I can see why. No one today would use a pound of brown sugar for every pound of beans. Would they? I could feel the fat jumping onto my hips just reading the recipe. That narrowed my list to tapioca pudding and mock apple pie. If you’ve never heard of mock apple pie, it’s made with Ritz crackers instead of apples, and as I remember, its taste and texture fooled everyone. A Google search surprised me: this Depression‑era favorite is making the rounds on TikTok! I decided to make it sometime when I need a dish to pass.

So my legacy‑cooking experiment began with tapioca. Here’s a mini history lesson: tapioca originally came from Brazil, where Indigenous tribes harvested the tubers of a shrub called cassava. The extracted starch (the tapioca) became known worldwide, especially as “poor man’s food” during the Great Famine of 1876–78. Fast‑forward to the 2010s, when tapioca became internationally popular again as the key ingredient in bubble/boba tea. Tapioca is sweet and savory, and here in the U.S. it comes in pearls, flakes, and flour. The flour is gluten‑free and is used in baking as well as to thicken soups, sauces and gravies.

At the store, I chose a bag of instant tapioca (by mistake) for my adventure back in time. My first batch was a control batch, made from the recipe on the bag. The main difference from Mom’s recipe is in the modern version you no don't have to separate the eggs and, of course, she didn't use instant. I was pleasantly surprised, however, at how good it tasted. Next I went to Trader Joe’s and bought a bottle of pure vanilla and a bag of small pearls tapioca for my second batch, which I made following Mom’s “enhanced” recipe with its heaping measurements, extra eggs and vanilla. I loved it.

The only downer in my tapioca experiment is that since my brother passed away there is no one left who is old enough to remember my mom's and my arguments over me learning to cook. It’s a strange place to be in life, isn’t it. To realize there’s no one left who shares the memories of large chunks of your life. We can write about our memories. We can even tell them so many times that a loved one can fill in the details we leave out. But it’s not the same as having a sibling who speaks the shorthand of a shared childhood, who can laugh and cry over the same moments.

If you still have siblings… I’m just sayin’. Time doesn’t stand still. ©

 See you next Wednesday... 

Can’t Stop Thinking About a Dream

I’m at an age when I can’t remember whether or not people have died. So when I see a cousin or friend I haven’t seen in a long time I’m afraid to ask questions like, “How’s your dad doing?” or “Where’s your brother living these days?” even though I’m genuinely interested in knowing the answers. I had a dream a few nights ago that had me trying to remember if a person I’d known since birth was alive or dead. In recent years I’ve made good use of googling a person’s name plus the word “obituary” to get answers to the ‘dead or alive’ questions. As my mom used to say, “There’s more than one way to skin a kitty.” 

That phrase, by the way, first appeared in print in the mid eighteen hundreds when a man was brought before the courts of England in an animal crudity case. He was literally skinning cats alive. Such a gruesome image but since my mom didn’t sit around reading old court records from countries she’d where she’d never been, I have to believe she read it in a Mark Twain book. He used a variation of the phrase as a metaphor in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court in 1889. “…She was wise, subtle, and knew more than one way to skin a cat, that is, more than one way to get what she wanted.” Mom had a related skin-the-kitty phrase she used often when I was growing up and even after her grandchildren came along. “Let’s skin the kitty,” she’d say as she helped us out of our pajama tops and sweatshirts. Heck, even I say it to Levi My Mighty Schnauzer when I peel his winter sweater off his body. And it just dawned on me why he takes off like he’s been shot out of a cannon when I’m finished with the task. The word “kitty” is an important noun in his life. “Is that kitty in the yard again?” “What’s that kitty doing back there?” “Stop barking at that kitty!” He’d probably thinks there’s a cat near-by when I mention skinning one.

Back to my the dream that had me wondering if an old friend---Al---was alive or dead. In the dream I was snuggling up to him and my husband walked by and said, “Well, I guess you’re with him now” and kept on walking. “I am?” I asked Al and he gave me the alpha male predator smile and pulled me tighter to his body. Al and I spent all our summers growing up just four cottages away from each other. Along with his younger sister and my older brother, we spent our days playing cowboys and Indians, hiking around the lake, camping in the woods and walking to the store several miles away for ice cream. As teenagers we played a lot of poker and Monopoly together on rainy days and long nights before TV was invented. And I never, ever had a romantic thought about him in all those years or since so the idea of snuggling with him in my dream shocked me awake. 

I couldn’t let go of the fact that I was dreaming about a person I hadn’t seen in probably twenty years. We’ve exchanged Christmas letters every year, though. He’s a good writer with a better memory than me so I always enjoyed reading the reminiscing he’d shared in his holiday letters. That dream and the fact that he didn’t send a letter this year had me searching the internet. The problem with that is there are fewer and fewer people choosing to put obituaries into a searchable format so the fact that I didn’t find an obituary for Al still leaves a slight doubt in my mind. We used to be able to check the phone book to see if someone is still listed. And if you are asking, “What’s a phone book?” you’re too young to be reading old people’s blogs.

I remember many of my dreams and often look them up in the Dream Moods online dictionary. Here’s what it said about seeing a childhood friend in a dream: It “…signifies regression into your past where you had no responsibilities. Things were much simpler and carefree. You may be wanting to escape the pressures and stresses of adulthood.” Not Shit Sherlock! Have you seen the news lately! But when figuring out the meaning of our dreams the so-called experts say the action in them is the most important part and about getting hugged, the dictionary says, “To dream that someone is hugging you suggests that you need to let down your guard and allow your true feelings to show." It could also mean “that you need to allow yourself to heal emotionally.” But the million dollar question is was it the hugging/snuggling the most important action in my dream or was it the fact that my husband was essentially abandoned me? I’m not sure if I really buy into dream analysis other that it’s a fun diversion but its spooky how often the interpretations fit. For abandonment the dictionary suggests that it may be time to leave past feelings behind and that “the fear of abandonment is part of the healing process after losing a loved one." ©

Note: The photo at the top is of the kids I spent all my summers with growing up. We were at a camp we built back in the woods behind our cottages. I'm the one holding back from watching a snake in the creek. 

Doilies and Drawings

My mom, like other moms in the 1940s and ‘50s, was prolific at crocheting and embroidery and while emptying out the basement I ran into a dozen or so pieces she made. They sat in my garage for a week, making me feel impotent because I couldn’t decide what to do with them. The local auction house would have ended up selling the entire lot for a dollar and after the fees were paid I’d get a whole eighty-two cents and e-Bay doesn’t have a strong market for that sort of thing either. Throughout the week the Salvation Army with it cardboard box labeled as such sat on the garage floor mocking me for my inability to let go. I had already given my nieces some of her handiwork last summer, thinking that was all I had until these pieces showed up so passing them on to them wasn’t a strong possibility either. 

Sometimes what goes on in the back of my mind surprises me. With seemingly no forethought I woke up one morning, marched directly to the garage still in my nightgown and I took some pictures of the embroidery, posted them on Facebook and tagged some of mom’s nieces to offer the handcrafts up as gifts. By nightfall they were all spoken for including things I hadn't even photographed and I mailed everything to various relatives the next day and, boy, did that feel good. One of my cousin’s collects crocheted doilies which I didn’t know and she ended up with an entire bridal party of dolls in dresses that mom made back in 1950. Another shirt-tail relative from out of state who I’ve never met offered to take some of Mom’s handiwork for the museum she runs and I gladly complied with her request for a photo of Mom and a small write-up about her to display with them. One cousin who had an terribly abusive childhood came to the give-away post late and she ended up with a couple of things I had planned to keep for myself. She and my mom had a special relationship and I figured she needed the physical connection to my mom more than I do.

It was an emotional week in the Department of Downsizing. Another task I had in the garage was sorting through decade’s worth of art supplies plus drawings from classes I took back in the 1980s. I don’t know why I thought it was important back then to save every edition of prints I’d pulled off metal plates, wood blocks and lithograph stones in a printmaking class or all the drawings of every naked person who stood before me in figure drawing classes. Judging by the style of some of my prints I was trying to be the next William Blake. My mom had died the year before---under traumatic circumstances---and apparently I was trying to make peace with her death by writing cryptic poetry and committing then to etching plates. I hate the color orange with a passion, always have, so for me spend time making an etching plate and pulling twenty orange editions off it---the class requirement---boggles my 2019 sensibilities. I was in a very dark place.

Not all my prints were weird poetry, some had pedestrian subjects. Thankfully, we were graded on learning the process, not the subject matter of our projects.

For those who might not know of William Blake (1757-1827) according to Wikipedia he was “an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.” Obviously, he was a prolific saver of his work because you can’t study printmaking or poetry without falling all over him. At least you couldn’t during my age of being a sponge in the world of art history. I admired him. I wanted to be him…or Michelangelo. Among the other art supplies I still hoarded in the basement was my set of marble cutting chisels---my 1960s period. I ended up sending all the usable art supplies to Goodwill---enough pastels, charcoals, chalks and tablets for half a classroom and just in time for back to school. And trust me when it say it hurt to send a large set of portrait, oil pastels off because I also dreamed of being another John Singer Sargent. All my expensive printmaking blotters went to recycling. That hurt too. Dried up oil and watercolor paints and printer inks were set aside for another trip to hazardous waste. My art room upstairs already has my prim pencils and acrylic paints and I hope to be able to take up art again once I move, so they will go with me. I'll have an eight foot long closet to divide up between art, quilting and/or knitting supplies plus out of season coats, the vacuum and whatever else I can get in there and still close the doors.

I had two whole boxes of drawings folded up for recycling before I thought about taking a few photos.

 

People say that downsizing must make me feel “lighter” or “freer” and at times those words apply. But downsizing also reminds me that most of my life is in the rear view mirror and there is no turning back, no making up for lost time during my caregiving years. Other times downsizing makes me angry for having kept so much or spent so much money on stuff that I abandoned---wasted cash that could have been growing in the bank. Often times downsizing makes me worry I won't be me anymore without the visual queues from my past to remind me of where I've been, what I've done. And this week of downsizing chastised me for not living up to my youthful fantasies. Did I not work hard enough, not have enough raw talent? Or worse yet, did I have talent that I let gather rust to the point that it’s lost forever? Downsizing is like going to a funeral. Sometimes the mourners stand up and tell funny or sweet stories, sometimes they stand up and share their tears and fears. Either way they confirm the fact that the past is really past. ©

Part two of downsizing my art stuff will be posted on Saturday.