My mom was a badass.
She was the epitome of a homemaker. When we were young she made a majority of our
clothing and eventually taught me how to sew.
I’m pretty sure she was self taught out of necessity. When our family was struggling financially on
my dad’s piddly Navy salary we kids never knew.
She had the gift of stretching a dollar.
I remember one year she gave us all copies of the list of Columbia House
records that you found in magazines – the kind where you buy one record and get
10 “free”. She asked us which records we
would want if we could have any. We didn’t
think anything of it at the time but at Christmas she used those lists and the
free records as part of our gifts since money was tight. I didn’t realize this until years later when
something sparked my memory of that Christmas.
When we lived in Illinois in the 70’s there was a house we
passed all the time with huge apple trees and apples all over the ground. We stopped there one day and asked the old
man that lived there if we could have the apples and he said to take as many as
we wanted because he lived alone and was too old to pick them anymore. My mom was a master canner so we had endless
Mason jars of cinnamon apples and homemade applesauce which was amazing! As a thank you to the man we made apple pies,
apple strudel, apple bread and baked apples and brought him so many cans of
apple goodness he probably died before he could finish them all. She canned her ass off. Dad always had a garden so when you went into
the cupboard to grab a vegetable it more than likely wasn’t in an aluminum can,
but instead a glass Mason jar.
She was the model Navy wife.
When my dad was gone for months at a time she took care of us three
brats, paid the bills and ruled the roost.
Actually my mom was the CFO of the house my entire life! She was incredibly involved when we were kids
and was always my room mother in elementary school, was my Brownie troop leader
and then my Girl Scout leader. She was
at every softball game we played and each football game we cheered for. She always volunteered to chaperone every
field trip we went on which was embarrassing at times. My friends loved my mom but as a kid I would
just roll my eyes at their adoration and say that they were crazy.
Mom was an amazing cook and I never saw her use a recipe
though she had a ton of cookbooks and clipped recipes from magazines and newspapers
constantly – I found hundreds of clippings when I was going through her things
after she passed away. I had to make
sure I wasn’t throwing away any important pieces of paper so I had to look at
every damn one of them which took days.
My friends loved coming over for dinner because she usually cooked every
day and was especially known for her lasagna and meatballs which were
incredible. Our neighbor in Goose Creek
was always after mom for her meatball recipe but she would never give it to
him. When he passed away she finally
wrote it down on a recipe card and slipped it into his pocket at his wake. I still think about that recipe and where it
is in Jim’s pocket each time I pass Carolina Memorial Gardens… How I wish I had it!! Another thing she made every year was rock
candy. She made us kids help her and
although the house smelled heavenly because she made upwards of 30 different
flavors during the holidays I hated helping because I always burned my fingers
on the hot candy mixture when she poured it into the powdered sugar filled
pans. She sold the candy every year and
also gave jars away as gifts to her doctors, friends, people she knew at the
grocery store and elsewhere. Every flavor
of candy had a signature color and she always made a list of the flavors and
what color they were and attached it to every decorated jar.
There wasn’t a craft that mom couldn’t do. She quilted, attempted knitting but didn’t
really care for it. She tried macramé in
the 70’s and needlepoint in the 80’s and floral arranging in the 90’s... You name it, she did it. She would have craft parties and invite friends
over and teach them how to do whatever she was into at the moment. For years she sold her crafts at the flea
market in Ladson and was so excited when she got her own tax ID number for her
business. Dad always joked that when she
died he was going to put a cash register in the attic where all of her supplies
were and open a craft store. She was an
amazing artist and unfortunately I didn’t inherit the gift of drawing or
painting. I can craft my ass off but can’t
paint to save my life! One time I took
her to Charlotte to go to the Society of Decorative Painters national
convention. She saved money for over a
year to go to this thing and little did I know that she brought me with her so
I could carry her bags of purchases! We
were at this one booth and she was looking at paint brushes and when she went
to pay for them I saw that one of them…
ONE of them… was $30! She looked at me and said “You tell your dad
and I’ll kill you!!” She probably wasn’t
joking. My dad had no clue what she
spent on those paint brushes! It’s a
good thing she saved her pennies all those years by making our clothes and
canning! I still have the ribbons mom
won at the county fair for painting competitions.
Mom was always up for an adventure. I would say “let’s go” and she would always
say “Where are we going?” and I’d say “Trust me” and she always did though she
would bitch the whole way to wherever I was taking her; wanting to know where
the hell we were going. I got my love of
history from her so I’d always take her some place cool in Charleston that I
had discovered. She especially loved
when I would take her to movie or TV sets when they were filming in town. One time mom shut down the filming of the miniseries
Scarlet because the sound guy could hear her talking from the 3rd
floor piazza where we standing as the scene was being shot. He shouted “cut!” and then looked up at us
and yelled “I can hear you!!” All of the
actors, including Joanna Whaley Kilmer, Jean Smart and Julie Harris looked up
at us as I was smacking my mom to be quiet.
Oops!
There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of my mom
or want to pick up the phone to call her.
When I go to the beach I think of the last time I went with her. I went to get the car so she wouldn’t have to
walk far and after she didn’t show up for over 10 minutes I went back to find
her sitting on a sand dune. I asked her
what was wrong and she said she fell and felt unstable walking in the
sand. As I was helping her up she said
to me “I guess this is the last time I’ll ever visit the beach” and sadly, since
I moved away soon after, it was. She
loved any kind of beach. Every summer we
lived at the beach or lake. We’d pack a
huge picnic basket (which us kids had to carry!) and go to the beach for the
entire day. She’d read her book while us
kids swam for hours. We’d only see her
when we got hungry and then we’d get mad at her for making us adhere to the “no
swimming for ½ hour after you eat” rule.
So lame.
She was the kind of mom that went to the club with us and
gave us dollar bills to tip drag queens.
One time at The Treehouse she told me “I hate it when you play this
music at home but I love listening to it here!” as she danced back and forth to
the throbbing rave beat that vibrated the entire building.
There are constant reminders of her. Every time I see something with a painting
palette on it at a store I pick it up to purchase it for her collection and
then I remember she’s not here anymore. When
I visit historical places I always think to myself how my mom would have loved
it. When my photo was on the cover of Charleston
Magazine I so wished she was alive because I know she would have carried that
damn magazine around for weeks to show everyone she knew. She would never tell us that she did these
things when she was proud of us but we’d eventually hear about it from friends.
In early 2009 I called my mom to tell her that I was going
to be moving back to Charleston that summer and she was so excited because I
always took her on those crazy excursions – she said she couldn’t wait! At the time she didn’t have a car and never
really went anywhere fun (If only Uber existed then!) Two weeks later, at the young age of 62, she
died very unexpectedly and I’ll never believe she died of anything other than a
broken heart from missing my father who died on the same date, February 3rd,
six years earlier.
Mom was an exceptional woman who took care of her family and
made it seem effortless. I really wish I
would have told her this when she was alive.
If you are lucky enough to still have your mom don’t hesitate to tell
her how much of a badass you think she is.
