My Mother

Now that my mother has followed my father, and I now grieve for them both with my brother and sister and others of our family and friends, I reflect on what I remember of her. I was unusually lucky as a child because I had a lot of attention from both of my parents, not just my mother. But my first memory of my mother was of when I about 4 or 5 and brought a snake that I had found in the backyard and asked “What kind of red string is this?” or something like that. Alarm! That’s when she realized I was colorblind, and also guileless. The second memory is of having found the “chocolate” Ex-Lax in a cabinet and eaten it all. No need to go further there, except that she was alarmed again. The third is taco night, on Sundays. My earliest memory of taco night is my dad frying up the taco shells so that they were taco-shaped, and my mother frying up the hamburger, and then putting them together for me. After that, TV: F-Troop, Mutual of Omaha’s ‘Wild Kingdom’ and finally, Wonderful World of Disney. Fast forward, then the memory of me sitting next to my mother while we watched the funeral of JFK, my mother sobbing even if she and dad were pretty committed Goldwater Republicans. Memories are typically gilded, but in my mom’s case, the gilding reflects real gold.